GMG Classical Music Forum

A thread about language discussion in general.

QuoteList Of Mutually Intelligible Languages

Written And Spoken Forms

Afrikaans: Dutch
Azerbaijani: Turkish
Belarusian: Russian and Ukrainian
Bosnian: Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian when written in Latin script
Bulgarian: Macedonian
Croatian: Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Serbian when written in Latin script
Danish: Norwegian and Swedish
Dutch: Afrikaans
Galician: Portuguese, Spanish
Kinyarwanda: Kirundi
Kirundi: Kinyarwanda
Russian: Belarusian and Ukrainian
Serbian: Bosnian, Croatian, and Montenegrin when written in Latin script, Portuguese
Swedish: Danish and Norwegian
Turkish: Azerbaijani
Tuvaluan: Tokelauan since Tajik is currently written in Cyrillic alphabet and Persian and Dari in Perso-Arabic script.
German: Yiddish since German is written in Latin script and Yiddish in Hebrew script
Hindi: Urdu since Hindi is written in Devanagari and Urdu in Perso-Arabic script
Lao: Thai since Lao is written in Lao script and Thai in Thai script
Persian: Tajik
Yiddish: German

Written Forms Only

Faroese: Icelandic

List Of Mutually Intelligible Languages In Ancient Times

Old English and Old Saxon

So... how close are some of these languages, really? I'm assuming more than the relationship between Spanish and Portuguese, so I guess that would make them pretty close...

Quote from: Greg on October 14, 2010, 02:22:44 PM
A thread about language discussion in general.


So... how close are some of these languages, really? I'm assuming more than the relationship between Spanish and Portuguese, so I guess that would make them pretty close...

I saw a documentary in which the presenter (Eddie Izzard) was taught some phrases in Old English (unrecognisable to modern English speakers) re: purchasing a cow. He then went to.... oh here's the video haha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeC1yAaWG34

http://www.youtube.com/v/OeC1yAaWG34

Quote from: Benji on October 14, 2010, 02:35:56 PM
I saw a documentary in which the presenter (Eddie Izzard) was taught some phrases in Old English (unrecognisable to modern English speakers) re: purchasing a cow. He then went to.... oh here's the video haha

Wow, that was definitely interesting and funny, thanks!  :D

Today I found someone on youtube reading a bunch of texts in different languages, such as Frisian, Old English, Middle English, Gothic, Danish, Swedish, etc.

Here's Old English:

http://www.youtube.com/v/RLJGTYkEKLI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLJGTYkEKLI

(I found the top comment interesting):

Quote
3 months ago 19
im icelandic and my mind is boggled by how much of this i understand

Definitely a completely different language, but if you watch the video for Middle English, it's easy to understand many of the words.

As a Swedish speaker, I can read Norwegian and Danish without much difficulty. Spoken Norwegian is somewhat comprehensible; spoken Danish... not very much.

Your list doesn't include Czech and Slovak, which are definitely mutually comprehensible, at least as much as Norwegian and Danish.

As for Russian/Ukrainian, speakers of the first often have a hard time with the second, due to the huge number of Polish-origin words in Ukrainian. Ukrainians are almost all bilingual in both Ukr. and Rus., so they have no problems with Russian (in fact many speak it better than Ukrainian).

This illustrates an important linguistic distinction: that between Ausbau, which refers to languages that arise as a result of separate standardization from a common origin (like Czech v. Slovak), and Abstand, which relates to languages that differ primarily because their origins are different (like Swedish v. Finnish).

By the way, why is Portuguese listed as mutually intelligible with Serbian? Looks like somebody screwed up.

Quote from: Velimir on October 14, 2010, 10:25:09 PM
By the way, why is Portuguese listed as mutually intelligible with Serbian? Looks like somebody screwed up.

Convergent evolution [of language]? ;)

My mother is Turkish and can understand most of, or at least 50% of, not just Azerbaijani but Uzbek, Turkmen, and other Turkic languages of central Asia.

Estonian sounds alot like Finnish

Quote from: abidoful on October 15, 2010, 03:26:34 AM
Estonian sounds alot like Finnish

Despite their common origins, the major Finno-Ugric languages have diverged to the point where there is only one complete sentence that looks similar in all of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_living_fish_swims_in_water

Quote from: Velimir on October 15, 2010, 03:33:38 AM
Despite their common origins, the major Finno-Ugric languages have diverged to the point where there is only one complete sentence that looks similar in all of them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_living_fish_swims_in_water

I'm a Finn and I studied for a while in Hungary, and honestly I couldn't find any similarity in the languages whereas Estonian really does sound alot like Finnish--in a weird and funny way.

Quote from: abidoful on October 15, 2010, 03:45:03 AM
I'm a Finn and I studied for a while in Hungary, and honestly I couldn't find any similarity in the languages whereas Estonian really does sound alot like Finnish--in a weird and funny way.

That's  because the Ugrian languages split off from Finnic long ago (like 2000 years ago maybe), so there are few provable correspondences. It's like looking for common vocab between English and Hindi - you'll find some items but not very much.

The closest relatives to the Hungarians, interestingly enough, are two small peoples living in Western Siberia, the Khanty and the Mansi. They number a few thousand each, and follow a traditional way of life of hunting and fishing, reindeer herding, and shamanism - in other words, about as different from their relatives in Budapest as one can imagine.

Have you heard any of the Volga Finnic languages (Mari, Udmurt, Komi etc.)? I guess they would be a lot more comprehensible to you than Hungarian (though less than Estonian).

Quote from: Velimir on October 15, 2010, 04:01:21 AM
Have you heard any of the Volga Finnic languages (Mari, Udmurt, Komi etc.)? I guess they would be a lot more comprehensible to you than Hungarian (though less than Estonian).

Nope, I guess would be fun though!

Quote from: abidoful on October 15, 2010, 04:07:23 AM
Nope, I guess would be fun though!

You can find some of them represented on YouTube - mostly in the form of folk music and dancing. This is nice, because I find Finno-Ugric folk music quite captivating.  :)

Quote from: Velimir on October 15, 2010, 04:13:24 AM
You can find some of them represented on YouTube - mostly in the form of folk music and dancing. This is nice, because I find Finno-Ugric folk music quite captivating.  :)

Cool, I'll check 'em out :)

Quote from: Daidalos on October 14, 2010, 08:14:44 PM
As a Swedish speaker, I can read Norwegian and Danish without much difficulty. Spoken Norwegian is somewhat comprehensible; spoken Danish... not very much.

I understand it's basically like a dialect continuum- which would make sense, since Sweden and Denmark are the furthest apart. Supposedly, if you start from Denmark, it goes like this: Danish->Norwegian Bokmål->Nynorsk->Swedish, or something like that, I guess...

Quote from: Velimir on October 14, 2010, 10:25:09 PM
Your list doesn't include Czech and Slovak, which are definitely mutually comprehensible, at least as much as Norwegian and Danish.

Another one! Cool.

Quote from: Velimir on October 14, 2010, 10:25:09 PM
By the way, why is Portuguese listed as mutually intelligible with Serbian? Looks like somebody screwed up.

I didn't even notice that... yeah, just might be a mistake.  :D

  In Turkey,Azerbaijani is considered to be a sort of hick,substandard Turkish,and some Turks say that it sounds downright comical to them.
  The Azerbaijanis call standard Turkish "Istanbul Turkish",but the Turkish spoken in the eastern part of the country is quite close to Azerbaijani.
  In Turkey,Turkish has been written inthe Latin alphabet since the time of Ataturk, Azerbaijani in the former Soviet Union was written in Cyrillic,and still with the Arabic script in Iran,where most of the Azerbaijanis live.
  There was a curious situation where if a Turk from Turkey, one from the Soviet Union and one from Iran all met,they could easily converse,yet could not read Turkish as written in the different alphabets !
  Hungarian is basically Finno-Ugrian, but is strongly influenced by Turkic languages, because the people who brought the Hungarian language from Asia to Europe had mixed with various Turkic peoples.
  When Bartok went to Turkey to study Turkish folk music,he also studied Turkish,and was struck by all the Hungarian words he could recognize !

Quote from: Velimir on October 14, 2010, 10:25:09 PM
This illustrates an important linguistic distinction: that between Ausbau, which refers to languages that arise as a result of separate standardization from a common origin (like Czech v. Slovak)

Frankly, I don't think the distinction between Ausbausprache and Abstandsprache is as fundamental as you make it seem. I think the terms are rarely used outside sociolinguistics?

Anyways, I was going to ask something. About the Czech - Slovak distinction. Can you elaborate a bit please? I have read a similar statement before (precisely in the context of Kloss' terminology), but I have no idea what the reasoning behind it is, and would really like to know. There seems to be an implication here that either Slovak is a dialect of Czech, or that both Slovak and Czech are dialects of some other language. AFAIK, both of these claims are false.

The dialects which were later to become Czech and Slovak began to differentiate as far back as the 9th century. For instance, the Proto-Slavic -ort-, -olt- groups, which retain the o sound in Czech, changed into rat-, lat- in Slovak dialects. But there are many more examples of early differentiation.* And these dialects continued to develop more or less independently (to the extent that that is possible in case of adjacent populations). In both cases there was a group of dialects (a group of dialects which could be called "Czech dialects" and a group of dialects which could be called "Slovak dialects"), and at some point one of these dialects became the dominant (literary) variant (this appears to have happened much earlier in the case of Czech)...

Unless, of course, I am misunderstanding something about the term Ausbau - which is also possible... ;D (Especially since I've never read Kloss.)


[* -  more of them can be found in the first paragraph here: http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejiny_slovenčiny (http://sk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejiny_slovenčiny) - I just chose the ort olt example because or/ol is such a wonderful group to study in the history of Slavic languages - I'm sure anyone who has ever had to will agree! ;D >:D 0:) - )

Quote from: toucan on October 15, 2010, 05:56:55 AM
The connection between Serbian and Portugese is bound to be a misprint.
Though travelling to Portugal once I was struck by the Portugese accent, which seemed closer to Russian than to Brazilian

Indeed, portuguese is a 'hard' language (i.e. not very fluid with hard consonant sounds) and the comparison with russian wrt what it sounds like is common.

Portuguese people usually understand spanish without learning it; spanish people have a hard time understanding portuguese.

The difference between portuguese from Portugal and portuguese from Brasil is exactly like american english vs british english.

Another language that sounds very much like portuguese and actually has some striking similarities in written form is catalan, much more so than (castilian) spanish.

Quote from: petrArch on October 15, 2010, 06:25:07 PM
Indeed, portuguese is a 'hard' language (i.e. not very fluid with hard consonant sounds) and the comparison with russian wrt what it sounds like is common.

Portuguese people usually understand spanish without learning it; spanish people have a hard time understanding portuguese.

The difference between portuguese from Portugal and portuguese from Brasil is exactly like american english vs british english.

Another language that sounds very much like portuguese and actually has some striking similarities in written form is catalan, much more so than (castilian) spanish.

My friend from Columbia wants to learn Portuguese, and I'm thinking, "Why not?" I bet he could be fluent with just a year of study.

It's such a bizarre experience reading a language you've never even studied and understanding what it says. I'm not even fluent in Spanish, yet I can read a surprising amount of Portuguese and Galician, even though I've never studied the languages (sometimes entire paragraphs). I think the fact that there are so many cognates with English is part of the explanation for that, but still...

Quote from: Maciek on October 15, 2010, 01:14:10 PM

Anyways, I was going to ask something. About the Czech - Slovak distinction. Can you elaborate a bit please? I have read a similar statement before (precisely in the context of Kloss' terminology), but I have no idea what the reasoning behind it is, and would really like to know. There seems to be an implication here that either Slovak is a dialect of Czech, or that both Slovak and Czech are dialects of some other language. AFAIK, both of these claims are false.

Czech and Slovak were both standardized out of closely related West Slavic dialects, and could quite easily have been standardized into a single language if events had taken a different turn. Literary Czech was codified in the Middle Ages, but standard literary Slovak was not codified until the 19th century (interestingly, this happened at the same time that Czech was being revived and effectively "re-standardized" after falling out of use as a literary language).

As for claims that one is a dialect of another, or both are dialects of something else, that's hard to give a clear answer to. I will quote here the linguist David Short: "Before [standardization], there had been writing in 'Slovak' - various hybrids of Czech and local dialects written according to a variety of spelling conventions. It has recently become the practice to refer to these prestandardisation versions of the language as 'cultured western/eastern/central Slovak.' Throughout the gestation and parturition of Slovak as an independent literary language there was also a continuous current which favoured the use of Czech, either as such, or in a mutation of a common Czechoslovak." So one can see that, quite late in history, there were people viewing Czech and Slovak as at least potentially a single language.

Incidentally, although mutual comprehensibility is still very high, I have been informed that it has suffered a bit since the breakup of Czechoslovakia, due to the fact that Czechs and Slovaks are no longer exposed to each others' languages on a regular basis.

As for the Ausbau/Abstand distinction - that's just a useful and handy way to think about languages. You're right, normal people don't use such terminology  :D

I've been entertaining myself with Latin Wikipedia's list of the 50 largest US cities, arranged in descending order of size. The meanings of some of them are not immediately obvious and require a modicum of thought:

Novum Eboracum • Angelopolis • Sicagum • Hustonia • Philadelphia • Phoenix • Sanctus Antonius • Didacopolis • Dallasium • Sanctus Ioseph • Detroitum • Indianapolis • Iacsoniapolis • Franciscopolis • Columbopolis • Austinopolis • Memphis • Baltimora • Arx Vorthensis • Carlotta • Passus • Milvauchia • Seattlum • Bostonia • Denverium • Ludovicopolis • Vasingtonia • Nasburgum • Campi • Portlandia • Oclahomopolis • Tucson • Albuquerque • Litus Longum • Atlanta • Fraxinus • Sacramentum • Nova Aurelia • Cleveterra • Kansianopolis • Mesa • Litus Virginiae • Omaha • Quercupolis • Miamia • Tulsa • Honolulu • Minneapolis • Fontes Coloratenses • Arlintonia

Dutch:German
I speak german. In some situations I can understand dutch better than the Schwitzerdütsch (German spoken by the Swiss).

Looks like this year they are adding a bunch of new kanji to the Japanese Jouyou Kanji list (basically, it's the list of kanji which are most used, and the only ones which are allowed to be printed in the newspaper, unless you have a its pronunciation accompanying it).

The original list contains 1,945. They are going to add 195 or so around the end of this year and delete these 5, bring it to ~2,035:

Quote銑セン pig iron
錘つむ spindle
匁 もんめ a unit of weight
勺 しゃく a unit of capacity
脹 チョウswell

which I think is a good move. Pig iron?!  :D

Looking at the list of kanji to be added, I see quite a bit that I'm surprised wasn't even on the list in the first place, since they are so common- which is probably why they are being added. There's also quite a few that are completely novel to me- this one looks pretty cool, for example: 喩.

   There's a cool website for any one interested in language and languages with a great forum and all kind of information on how to go about learning almost any language called unilang.org.
   It's very easy to register for th eforum,and I've been on it for some time.
  You can also learn about such exotic languages as Faeroese,
  Catalan, Georgian, Kakzh, Circassian and Cjechen and many,many other languages. Try it.

I think the Bantu languages are pretty cool. I found a video of someone teaching you how to pronounce some of the click consonants in Xhosa.

http://www.youtube.com/v/31zzMb3U0iY&feature=related

And yes, it is very challenging!  8)

  The click consonants of Xhosa appear to have  come from the influence from the so-called Khoisan languages Bushman and Hottentot.They are not indiginous to the Bantu languages.

Quote from: Superhorn on November 03, 2010, 03:34:28 PM
  The click consonants of Xhosa appear to have  come from the influence from the so-called Khoisan languages Bushman and Hottentot.They are not indiginous to the Bantu languages.

That's right. There is very little info on the net about the Khoisan languages and nobody actually learns them, but Zulu and Xhosa are a bit different, since a lot of people actually speak those languages (being some of the main languages of South Africa)- although it's still uncommon for anyone to actually study them in comparison to major languages.

Interesting, though... if the click consonants were adopted from the Khoisan languages, that means the vocabulary which includes the clicks are most likely the same or similar to the Khoisan words. It doesn't seem likely that they would adopt the clicks by themselves just to sound cool...  :D

Quote from: Daidalos on October 14, 2010, 08:14:44 PM
As a Swedish speaker, I can read Norwegian and Danish without much difficulty. Spoken Norwegian is somewhat comprehensible; spoken Danish... not very much.

Mmm, being Danish I can read Norwegian and Swedish without much difficulty. Spoken Norwegian on the other hand is difficult to understand, unless spoken slowly - and this is not often the case. Spoken Swedish BTW is easy to understand.

Quote from: premont on November 03, 2010, 04:04:07 PM
Mmm, being Danish I can read Norwegian and Swedish without much difficulty. Spoken Norwegian on the other hand is difficult to understand, unless spoken slowly - and this is not often the case. Spoken Swedish BTW is easy to understand.

Still, is it possible to say that you basically know 4 languages?
(English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish)

Or maybe you can almost say that (if you can't actually speak Norwegian or Swedish yourself) ?

Quote from: Greg on November 03, 2010, 04:06:43 PM
Still, is it possible to say that you basically know 4 languages?
(English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish)

Or maybe you can almost say that (if you can't actually speak Norwegian or Swedish yourself) ?

I know (read) English  only because I learnt it at school. This applies to German and French too. Other than Danish and English I speak a little Swedish and German.

Quote from: premont on November 03, 2010, 04:04:07 PM
Mmm, being Danish I can read Norwegian and Swedish without much difficulty. Spoken Norwegian on the other hand is difficult to understand, unless spoken slowly - and this is not often the case. Spoken Swedish BTW is easy to understand.

I don't know if there's any merit to this, but I've always imagined spoken Swedish to be more comprehensible to Danes and Norwegians than the other way around. If we disregard the more bizarre Swedish accents (here I show my Stockholm-bias: riksmål ska det vara!), Swedish strikes me as a more "clear" language compared to its other Nordic counterparts. Do you think there's anything to this, or is it simply some kind of linguistic prejudice?

Quote from: Daidalos on November 03, 2010, 11:14:21 PM
If we disregard the more bizarre Swedish accents (here I show my Stockholm-bias: riksmål ska det vara!),

Speaking of which: how different is Finland Swedish from the language spoken in Sweden? Any comprehension problems?

Quote from: Velimir on November 03, 2010, 11:45:00 PM
Speaking of which: how different is Finland Swedish from the language spoken in Sweden? Any comprehension problems?

I have relatives in Finland who speak finlandssvenska and I can understand them to the same degree that I can understand other dialects of Swedish. There are quirks that distinguish the two languages that can be mildly confusing, but on the whole conversation should present little difficulty. The same goes for conversations between Swedes and denizens of Åland (which belongs to Finland), who speak their own version of Swedish.

Some Swede once said that finlandsvenska/suomenruotsi sounds "cute". Officially Finland is bi-linquistic (?),I studied Swadish in grammar school, in some parts of Finland Swedish can be heard more more than others, in Helsinki for instance all the street signs are in Finnish as well as Swedish.

Quote from: Daidalos on November 03, 2010, 11:14:21 PM
...I've always imagined spoken Swedish to be more comprehensible to Danes and Norwegians than the other way around. ..Swedish strikes me as a more "clear" language compared to its other Nordic counterparts.

From my experience I think you are right.

Quote from: Daidalos on November 04, 2010, 12:21:50 AM
I have relatives in Finland who speak finlandssvenska and I can understand them to the same degree that I can understand other dialects of Swedish. There are quirks that distinguish the two languages that can be mildly confusing, but on the whole conversation should present little difficulty. The same goes for conversations between Swedes and denizens of Åland (which belongs to Finland), who speak their own version of Swedish.

Are there any anachronisms of idiom, since it is a substantial time since Finland was subject to the Swedish crown?

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 04, 2010, 09:31:32 AM
Are there any anachronisms of idiom, since it is a substantial time since Finland was subject to the Swedish crown?

I confess that I don't quite know, but I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if that were the case. I haven't been to Finland for a couple of years, and I was pretty young at the time (~12y). But I do distinctly remember that conversations flowed smoothly for the most part, until a particularly confusing discrepancy showed up. We would then have to resort to things like "when you say X, what do you mean? When I say X, I mean Y..."

Looking at the wikipedia entry for finlandssvenska (http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandssvenska) (Swedish, sorry; the English version is understandably not as exhaustive), I recognise the kind of differences of expression between the two languages.

For example:

"Jag kommer nog" would be understood by Swedish speakers to mean "I will probably come", whereas to someone speaking finlandssvenska it evidently means "I will definitely come".
"Jag hämtar blommor" I would translate to "I will bring flowers/I am going to get flowers"; a finlandssvensk would mean "I have flowers with me".

Somewhat bewildering, I'd say.

Doamnelor şi domnilor, în numele poporului român şi al limbii române, vă doresc vouă ceea ce îmi doresc şi mie!  8)

Quote from: Florestan on November 04, 2010, 12:50:51 PM
Doamnelor şi domnilor, în numele poporului român şi al limbii române, vă doresc vouă ceea ce îmi doresc şi mie!  8)

Wow... that's a Romance language?  :o :D

Quote from: Greg on November 04, 2010, 05:03:39 PM
Wow... that's a Romance language?  :o :D

All words in that sentence are of Latin origin. Hard to believe, eh?  :D

   The indiginous languages of the Caucasus are among the weirdest on the planet. They fall into three families,the southern Caucasian or Kartvelian languiages,Goergian,Mingrelian,Laz,and Svan,
the northwest or Circassian branch,and the northeast branch,which include,Chechen,Ingush,Avar,Lezgi, and others. The northeastern may actually be three separate language families.
   The Georgian language has virtually no limits on the most tongue-twisting consonant clusters. There is a town called Mtskheta.(the kh is pronounced as in chutzpah). The alphabet is called Mkhedruli (kh pronounced the same as before), and one of the numbers beyond 10 is called Tskhridi. And those are some of the easier ones!
   The northwest or Circassian languages have a staggering number of different consonant phomemes,between sixty and 80! 
   And they tend to have only two vowels! 
    The northeastern languages also have very large numbers of consonants, and have staggeringly complex grammatical systems,with in some cases up to 30 or more cases. 
    I heard circassian at the website globalrecordings.net,where you can hear lines from the Bible in literally thousands of languages,and it sounded so guttural and back of the mouth as if the speaker were talking with his mouth full of food!
   Chechen might as well be Klingon!  It sounded like some one speaking a language on a tape running backwards, and is full of strange hiccoughing and coughing sounds.
  The Abkhazian language,related to Circassian, has been descrbed as sounding like the buzzing of insects !

Quote from: Superhorn on November 05, 2010, 07:31:32 AM
   The indiginous languages of the Caucasus are among the weirdest on the planet.

Ubykh, which went extinct in the 1990s, had 81 consonants and only 3 vowels!

Quote from: Florestan on November 05, 2010, 12:43:16 AM
All words in that sentence are of Latin origin. Hard to believe, eh?  :D

That really is hard to believe. So you could kind of say that Romanian is the black sheep of the Romance language family?  :D

Quote from: Velimir on November 05, 2010, 09:22:05 AM
Ubykh, which went extinct in the 1990s, had 81 consonants and only 3 vowels!

I think I read about that before. That is... beyond insane.

I probably found it somewhere on this site:
http://krysstal.com/language.html

which I used to read a lot- had tons of info about language families and stuff.

Three vowels are plenty. I'd like to buy one, Pat.

Quote from: Superhorn on November 05, 2010, 07:31:32 AM
   The indiginous languages of the Caucasus are among the weirdest on the planet. They fall into three families,the southern Caucasian or Kartvelian languiages,Goergian,Mingrelian,Laz,and Svan,
the northwest or Circassian branch,and the northeast branch,which include,Chechen,Ingush,Avar,Lezgi, and others. The northeastern may actually be three separate language families.
   The Georgian language has virtually no limits on the most tongue-twisting consonant clusters. There is a town called Mtskheta.(the kh is pronounced as in chutzpah). The alphabet is called Mkhedruli (kh pronounced the same as before), and one of the numbers beyond 10 is called Tskhridi. And those are some of the easier ones!
   The northwest or Circassian languages have a staggering number of different consonant phomemes,between sixty and 80! 
   And they tend to have only two vowels! 
    The northeastern languages also have very large numbers of consonants, and have staggeringly complex grammatical systems,with in some cases up to 30 or more cases. 
    I heard circassian at the website globalrecordings.net,where you can hear lines from the Bible in literally thousands of languages,and it sounded so guttural and back of the mouth as if the speaker were talking with his mouth full of food!
   Chechen might as well be Klingon!  It sounded like some one speaking a language on a tape running backwards, and is full of strange hiccoughing and coughing sounds.
  The Abkhazian language,related to Circassian, has been descrbed as sounding like the buzzing of insects !

I looked up some videos on youtube of those languages and definitely see what you mean.

Seems to me you can think of a couple of different types or categories that describe phonology of languages (whether they're related or not):

- Tone-based: basically Chinese (though supposedly not Shanghainese), Thai, etc.
-Consonant-based: Those extreme examples listed above, but also ones with lots of sounds and sound combinations. I'd probably even categorize Germanic and Romance languages under this, although less midly.
-Double-sound based: Finnish, Japanese (my favorites) which used double cosonants and double vowels as a very major phonetic component.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 05, 2010, 11:34:23 AM
Three vowels are plenty. I'd like to buy one, Pat.

Lol, nice- never would've thought of that.

  Languages such as Turkish,Finnish and Hungarian have a curious phnomenon called vowel harmony,in which words are constructed as chains of roots with numerous suffixes attached.
  For euphony, the vowels of the suffixes must agree with the vowel of the root.
  For example,Turkish has 8 vowels :as well as a,e,i,o,u, there are
  a kind of guttural i spelled without a dot, and o and u with umlauts,pronouced the same as German.
  A,undotted i ,o and u are the back vowels,pronounced further back in the mouth,while, e,i with a dot,o and u with umlauts are the front vowels. o,u, and the ones with umlauts are the rounded vowels,produced by rounding the lips,while a,e,i and undotted i are the unrounded vowels.
  If the vowel of the root has a back vowel,all the suffixes in the word must be back. If there is a front vowel,all the vowels in the suffixes must be front. Rounded vowels go with rounded,and unrounded with unrounded. 
   For example the word horse it At,and the word for house is ev.
   The plural suffix is either lar or ler.  So at takes the plural suffix lar to make atlar,and ev takes the plural suffix ler to make evler.
  It gets much more complicated, and to learn Turkish,you have to learn to match the vowels correctly.
   This language is highly polysyllabic, and tends to combine the various parts of speech into together,to the point where sometimes a lengthy sentence can be one polysyllabic word! 
   There are occaisional exceptions to the vowel harmony,though.
   If a noun which is a root has both front and back vowels, usually foreign words, the suffixed must follow the root of the last vowel.
   Turkish has however, an incredibly regular structure,and there are no irregular verbs!  Conjugating verbs is a matter of chains of roots and suffixes, using the vowel harmony.
   In this sense,words are almost constructed like chords in music.   

Quote from: Superhorn on November 05, 2010, 01:07:23 PM
  Languages such as Turkish,Finnish and Hungarian have a curious phnomenon called vowel harmony,in which words are constructed as chains of roots with numerous suffixes attached.
  For euphony, the vowels of the suffixes must agree with the vowel of the root.

I don't follow this with respect to Finnish. (Either I don't understand what you mean, or I understand what you mean, and it doesn't actually apply to Finnish.)  Could you furnish Finnish examples? Thanks!

  I don't have specific examples offhand,as I don't know Finhish as well as Turkish. But there is similar system of back and front vowels.
   You can google the Finnish language,and there's plenty of information about it. The closely related Estonian language,however,does not have vowel harmony.

The Finnish Ä is similar to hungarian E?

   That Finnish A with the umlaut is pronounced as the English hat,not
   the one without it,which is like the English father.
    In Hungarian,what looks like an accent over a vowel indicates a long vowel,not an accent. In Hungarian ,Finnish and most other
Finno-Ugrian languages,the accent is always on the first syllable.

Quote from: Greg on November 05, 2010, 11:26:54 AM
That really is hard to believe. So you could kind of say that Romanian is the black sheep of the Romance language family?  :D

I don't know. Let's find out together.   :)

Doamnelor: in the context, plural vocative case of doamnă (lady, mistress) < Lat. domina; cf. It. donna, Sp. doña

şi (and < Lat. sic (semantical modifcation)

domnilor: in the context, plural vocative case of domn (gentleman, sir, mister) < Lat. dominus; cf. It. don, Sp. don

[related words: a domni (to reign); domnitor (monarchical ruler); dominaţie (domination); dominion (take a guess! :) ); dominant (take another! :) )]

în (Eng. in) < Lat. in

numele (Eng. the name): definite form of nume < Lat. nomen; cf. It. nome, Sp. nombre, Fr. nom

[related words: nominalizare (nomination); nominativ, nominal (take two guesses! :) ) ]

poporului: singular genitive case of popor (people) < Lat. populus; cf. It. popolo, Sp. pueblo, Fr. peuple

[related words: popular, populism, popularitate (take three quesses! :) )]

[cf. Lat. Senatus populusque romanus, Rom. Senatul şi poporul roman]

român (Romanian) < Lat. romanus (interestingly enough, we are the only people of Latin origin whose name derives not from the geographical area we inhabit, but directly from the name our ancestors identified themselves with: civis romanum sum)

şi: see above

al limbii: singular genitive case of limbă (language) < Lat. lingua; cf. Sardinian limba

[related words: limbut (talkative}; limbariţă (talkativeness, if this is a word); limbaj (language, with the meaning as in musical language, Rom. limbaj muzical); lingvistică (linguistics); lingvist (yes, exactly! :) )

române: feminine form of the adjective român: see above

vă doresc vouă (literally, (I) to you wish you --- in Romanian the pronoun can be ommitted and in certain cases the subject of an action is anticipated) is comprised of: vă < Lat. vobis + doresc: singular first person conjugation of the verb a dori (to wish; also, to long for), which is the verbal form of the noun dor (desire, longing) < Lat. dolus (pain) + vouă < Lat. vobis; cf. It. vi, voi; Fr. vous

ceea (that) < Lat. ecce illa; cf. It. quella, Sp. cual, Fr. quelle

ce (in the context, which) < Lat. quid; cf. It. che, Sp. que, Fr. que

îmi doresc şi mie (literally, (I) to myself wish and to me) is comprised of îmi < Lat. mihi + doresc (see above) + şi (see above) + mie < Lat. mihi; cf. It. mi, Sp. mi, Fr. me.

So, the sentence above translates thus: Ladies and gentlemen, on behaf of the Romanian people and of the Romanian language, I wish you that which I wish to me too..

And I continue:

Adică sănătate şi fericire! 

Adică (that is) < Lat. adaeque (equally, likewise, in the same manner)

sănătate (health) < Lat. sanitas; cf. It. sanità; Fr. Santé

fericire (happiness): the state of being fericit (happy), modern form of ferice < Lat. felix; cf. It. felice; Sp. feliz.

Some more similarities with other Romance languages:

It. Buona sera --- Rom. Bună seara

Fr. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité --- Rom. Libertate, Egalitate, Fraternitate

Fr. un soldat mort --- Rom. un soldat mort

Catalan: laborator acreditat --- Rom. laborator acreditat

It. La critica della raggione pura --- Rom. Critica raţiunii pure

Fr. Les documents secrets du club Pickwick --- Rom. Documentele secrete ale clubului Pickwick

Back to Latin, we have for instance:

In patria nostra multi montes sunt --- Rom. În patria noastră mulţi munţi sunt.

Anno Domini --- Rom. Anul Domnului

A curiosity: while in all other Romance languages, the word for "church" comes from the Greek "ekklesia" (cf. It. chiesa, Fr. église, Sp. iglesia, the Romanian word, biserică, derives from Latin basilica.

Romanian prononuns: eu, tu, el, ea, noi, voi, ei, ele

Romanian numerals: unu, doi, trei, patru, cinci, şase, şapte, opt, nouă, zece

Days of the week: luni, marţi, miercuri, joi, vineri, sâmbătă, duminică

Months of the year: ianuarie, februarie, martie, aprilie, mai, iunie, iulie, august, septembrie, octombrie, noiembrie, decembrie

I think you'll have no difficulty in recognizing the following musical works:

J. Haydn: Simfonia nr. 22 în mi bemol major "Filosoful", Cvartetul de coarde op. 76 nr. 3 "Imperialul"

Tschaikovsky: Simfonia nr. 6 în si minor op. 74 "Patetica"

I'll rest my case here. Now, you tell me: how black is the sheep actually?  ;D

Seems more like the writing or something obscures the relation. I don't know how it sounds, but it's just different enough to where a sentence can seem very different from Spanish-Portuguese-Italian. When you explain it like that, it reminds me how when I've looked at words in Dutch or Danish before, they look alien to me, but when I find out the definition of the English translation, the words actually are similar.

Quote from: Greg on November 06, 2010, 06:20:46 PM
Seems more like the writing or something obscures the relation.

The two main "problems" for an English speaker might be that (a) Romanian orthography is not ethymological, but phonetical: the word is written exactly as it sounds and (b) the pronunciation is very different than the English one (some sounds are even absent in English).

Quote
it's just different enough to where a sentence can seem very different from Spanish-Portuguese-Italian.

Sure; OTOH there are sentences that sounds, if not exactly like Sp-Pt-It, at least very close.

The degree of mutual intelligibility between Romanian and other Romance languages is paradoxical: while for an average-educated Romanian understanding (a lot of) Italian or Spanish is relatively easy, the reverse is not true.

The closest to Romanian is Italian and especially the Southern Italian dialects, such as Napolitan and Sardinian. Catalan is also very similar; from personal experience I can testify it is closer than Spanish (Castilian). The furthest way is French.

There are also words of Slavic origin, about 20% of the whole vocabulary, but the grammatical structure is Latin in the minutest details.

QuoteI don't know how it sounds,

Here (http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poezii/mistretul.php) is a poem by the great poet Ştefan Augustin Doinaş
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Etefan_Augustin_Doina%C5%9F) which you can also hear recited, by clicking the .mp3 link in the left column. Please let me know your thoughts on spoken Romanian.  :)

Quote
When you explain it like that, it reminds me how when I've looked at words in Dutch or Danish before, they look alien to me, but when I find out the definition of the English translation, the words actually are similar.

See? That's the idea. :)

Quote from: Florestan on November 07, 2010, 02:46:04 AM

There are also words of Slavic origin, about 20% of the whole vocabulary, but the grammatical structure is Latin in the minutest details.

I was sitting on a bus in Munich once, listening to some guys argue in a language that sounded like a mixture of Spanish and Russian. I figured it must be Romanian. I didn't ask them; but I can't think what other language it could have been.

Quote from: Florestan on November 07, 2010, 02:46:04 AM

The two main "problems" for an English speaker might be that (a) Romanian orthography is not ethymological, but phonetical: the word is written exactly as it sounds and (b) the pronunciation is very different than the English one (some sounds are even absent in English).
Sure; OTOH there are sentences that sounds, if not exactly like Sp-Pt-It, at least very close.

The degree of mutual intelligibility between Romanian and other Romance languages is paradoxical: while for an average-educated Romanian understanding (a lot of) Italian or Spanish is relatively easy, the reverse is not true.

The closest to Romanian is Italian and especially the Southern Italian dialects, such as Napolitan and Sardinian. Catalan is also very similar; from personal experience I can testify it is closer than Spanish (Castilian). The furthest way is French.

There are also words of Slavic origin, about 20% of the whole vocabulary, but the grammatical structure is Latin in the minutest details.
Here (http://www.romanianvoice.com/poezii/poezii/mistretul.php) is a poem by the great poet Ştefan Augustin Doinaş
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%9Etefan_Augustin_Doina%C5%9F) which you can also hear recited, by clicking the .mp3 link in the left column. Please let me know your thoughts on spoken Romanian.  :)
See? That's the idea. :)

Very interesting.

Listening to that link and following along with the text, I have to say- I didn't recognize a word!  :o There were probably not more than 4 or 5 words that I could make an educated guess of.

To me, it sounds like French, or a mixture of French and Russian (though I could understand it sounding like a mixture of Italian and Russian, too). I guess that makes some sense geographically, being in the middle.

So you're saying that Romanian spelling is as easy and straightforward as Spanish? (or no)?

Quote from: Velimir on November 07, 2010, 06:04:42 AM
I was sitting on a bus in Munich once, listening to some guys argue in a language that sounded like a mixture of Spanish and Russian. I figured it must be Romanian. I didn't ask them; but I can't think what other language it could have been.

Chances are great that they were actually from the Republic of Moldova (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova), part of the historical Principality of Moldavia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldavia), annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812, united by plebiscite with the Kingdom of Romania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Romania) in 1918, annexed by the USSR in 1940 and independent since the latter's break-up in 1991. They speak Romanian with a strong Russian accent, use many words of Russian origin (unknown in Romanian proper) and some archaisms which are long since out of use in standard Romanian.

Now, standard Romanian is based on the vernacular spoken in the Principality of Wallachia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallachia), mainly due to political reasons: it is from here that the movement for the political unity of Romanians sprang and gained momentum, especially in the early 19-th century. The vernaculars spoken in Moldavia proper (the principality mentioned above) and Transylvania (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvania) differ only by accent and pronunciation and, a few regionalisms apart, are the same language.

It's interesting to note that, Romanians being the only people of Latin origin to adopt the Eastern Orthodoxy as their religion and consequently Slavonic being the official Church language, Romanian was written in the Slavonic alphabet up to late 18-th century. The movement towards the adoption of Latin alphabet (naturally more suited to Romanian than its Slavonic counterpart) was initiated mainly by Transylvanian linguists and historians. Thus, during the first half of the 19-th century written Romanian oscillated between full Slavonic and a peculiar (and for us modern Romanians, even laughable) mixture of Slavonic and Latin letters. The transition to full Latin alphabet was completed after 1859.

Also interesting is that in the second half of the 19-th century, a handful of Transylvanian linguists and historians (the so-called Latinist School) advocated and used in their writings an artificially constructed version of the Romanian language, in which all words of Slavic, Turkish, Greek and Hungarian origin were purged and replaced by their Latin counterparts and whose orthography was strictly ethymological. Needless to say, the result was so far-fetched and so remote from the normal speech of Romanians everywhere that they remained a fringe movement, ridculed and opposed by all their colleagues. I can assure you that reading their works is guaranteed fun for a native Romanian.

Quote from: Greg on November 07, 2010, 07:46:46 AM
Listening to that link and following along with the text, I have to say- I didn't recognize a word!  :o There were probably not more than 4 or 5 words that I could make an educated guess of.

I was expecting something like that. Well, blame it partly on the phonetical orthography, which as you have seen in my last post, obscures the origin of the word, and partly on some words being of non-Latin oriign.

Quote
To me, it sounds like French, or a mixture of French and Russian (though I could understand it sounding like a mixture of Italian and Russian, too).

That's a surprise for me, because the French accent (mainly on the last syllable) is very different from the Romanian one (hearing Romanian spoken with French accent is great fun for Romanians).

Quote
So you're saying that Romanian spelling is as easy and straightforward as Spanish? (or no)?

Exactly. What you hear is what you write and the same letter (or group of letters) represents always the same sound.

This article is very informative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language). Be sure to check the main articles in the text for more in-depth information.

Quote from: Florestan on November 07, 2010, 10:06:35 AM
Chances are great that they were actually from the Republic of Moldova (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova),

That would make sense.

Venturing even farther afield, last week I met a woman from Yakutia. The Yakut language is sort of like Romanian, in the sense that it's cut off geographically from the rest of its language group. It's actually Turkic in origin - for some reason, the Yakuts went to northern Siberia and settled in some of the coldest territory on earth, while the other Turks went west. My contact said they were probably fleeing Genghis Khan.

About the Yakuts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuts

  I once had the opportunity to check out a Yakut grammar by an American expert in Turkic languages. It's somewhat divergent from the other Turkic languages,but still very closely related to them,and
shares much common vocabulary with Turkish and has basically the same grammatical structure,with vowel harmony even more complex than in Turkish.
  It's amazing how close it has remained to the other Turkic languages despite centuries of isolation from them.

Don't forget : Dutch =Flemish!

Belgian Dutch ( Belgisch-Nederlands (help·info)), the national variety of the Dutch language as spoken in Belgium,[2][3][4] be it standard (as used in schools, government and the media)[5] or informal (as used in daily speech, "tussentaal ");[6] Nevertheless, the use of Flemish to refer to the official language in Flanders is erroneous. The only official language in Flanders is Dutch.
East Flemish, West Flemish and French Flemish are related southwestern dialects of Dutch.[7]

Check Wiki for more details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish

Peter- who speaks Dutch, French, English, some German ( writing is difficult).

Quote from: pjme on November 08, 2010, 10:43:15 AM
Don't forget : Dutch =Flemish!

Belgian Dutch ( Belgisch-Nederlands (help·info)), the national variety of the Dutch language as spoken in Belgium,[2][3][4] be it standard (as used in schools, government and the media)[5] or informal (as used in daily speech, "tussentaal ");[6] Nevertheless, the use of Flemish to refer to the official language in Flanders is erroneous. The only official language in Flanders is Dutch.
East Flemish, West Flemish and French Flemish are related southwestern dialects of Dutch.[7]

Check Wiki for more details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish

Peter- who speaks Dutch, French, English, some German ( writing is difficult).

During my one-year stay in The Netherlands, after an intensive Dutch course I noticed that, while reading a newspaper posed no problem to me, understanding the spoken language was much more difficult --- but I understood the most while watching Belgian TV stations. It seems to me that the Flemish pronunciation is more stressed and clear than its Dutch proper counterpart. :)

IMO Dutch is a mixt between bad spoken and written English and German.  ;D

Quote from: Florestan on November 09, 2010, 12:47:36 AM
During my one-year stay in The Netherlands, after an intensive Dutch course I noticed that, while reading a newspaper posed no problem to me, understanding the spoken language was much more difficult --- but I understood the most while watching Belgian TV stations. It seems to me that the Flemish pronunciation is more stressed and clear than its Dutch proper counterpart. :)

IMO Dutch is a mixt between bad spoken and written English and German.  ;D

lol, I can see what you mean. Understanding spoken language is almost always harder than written language. Sometimes I think I need subtitles for this guy that works with me who has a strong Jamaican accent.

Tuning one's ear to the cadence of the foreign language is the greatest challenge.

   The Chuvash language,spoken in the Volga region of Russia,is the most divergent Turkic language of all.
  It's so different as to be scarcely recognizable.
  I've seen examples of it,and here and there I could recognize a few words,but some one from Turkey or Azerbaijan would find it as incomprehensible as an English speaker would find Icelandic.
   The Chuvash are Chrsitians and are indistinguishable in appearance from Russians and Finnic people who live next to them like the Mari and Mordvins.

Here's Chuvash:
http://www.youtube.com/v/_hFvTXk1KRY

As the comment says, the language sounds like Russian, even though it's supposed to sound like Hungarian.

Quote from: Florestan on November 09, 2010, 12:47:36 AM
IMO Dutch is a mixt between bad spoken and written English and German.  ;D

Almost correct. Both are indeed well-known dialects in relation to the standard Dutch - which itself, in its turn, relates as a dialect to my native Low Saxon :)

Quote from: Christo on November 10, 2010, 12:03:57 PM
my native Low Saxon :)

Low Saxon was once a language of prestige, being the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League.

Quote from: Velimir on November 10, 2010, 09:54:11 PM
Low Saxon was once a language of prestige, being the lingua franca of the Hanseatic League.

It was, and we are very much aware of it. Also: a perfect historical explanation for my otherwise unforgivable stubborness :)

Are there any notable differences between Low Saxon as spoken in the Netherlands, and Low German (Platt)? Or is it all really the same language?

Quote from: Christo on November 10, 2010, 12:03:57 PM
Almost correct. Both are indeed well-known dialects in relation to the standard Dutch - which itself, in its turn, relates as a dialect to my native Low Saxon :)

:)

This remembers me a friend who, after emmigrating in Montreal, Canada, told me that the French spoken there was horrendous, but "they are very proud of their peasantly vernacular".  ;D

Honestly, and meaning no offense, before going to Holland I used to consider German a harsh language but after leaving Holland, German sounded like music to my ears.  :D

Quote from: Velimir on November 11, 2010, 12:10:33 AM
Are there any notable differences between Low Saxon as spoken in the Netherlands, and Low German (Platt)? Or is it all really the same language?

There is no standard Low Saxon. Nowadays, it's no more than a large collection of related dialects, spoken especially in Northern Germany (over ten million). In the East and North of the Netherlands, there are about two million speakers of a handful of dialects that might differ so much that the speakers hardly recognize each other as belonging to the same Low Saxon at all. E.g. a northern variant, Gronings, is basically a Low Saxon superstructure on a Frisian substructure - making it hardly recognizable as Low Saxon at all.

But for me, they are all related and many features of `my' Low Saxon are clearly discernible all across nothern Germany and along the Baltics - and of course in the inscriptions on buildings stemming from Hanseatic times in cities like Tallinn, Riga,  Kaunas, Klaipeda (Memel), Gdansk, Gotenburg, Turku, etc. :)

Quote from: Florestan on November 11, 2010, 01:27:29 AM
:)
Honestly, and meaning no offense, before going to Holland I used to consider German a harsh language but after leaving Holland, German sounded like music to my ears.  :D

:o ;)

My Romanian visitors (students from Brașov) last night, did not dare to suggest anything of that kind, not even after having consumed my last bottles of Romanian wine :) :) (And yes, we played Romanian music too - but only folk music).  8)

Quote from: Christo on November 13, 2010, 12:06:11 AM
My Romanian visitors (students from Brașov) last night, did not dare to suggest anything of that kind, not even after having consumed my last bottles of Romanian wine :) :)

Why of course! It would have been the top of rudeness from them to drink your wine while making fun of your language!  :D

For my ears the most "harsh" feature of Dutch is the hard glottal h.  ;D

(runs away)

Quote from: Florestan on November 13, 2010, 12:31:13 AM
For my ears the most "harsh" feature of Dutch is the hard glottal h.  ;D  (runs away)

Just try something like: `Achtentachtig allemachtig prachtige grachten' (88 extremely beautiful canals) in Amsterdam - and you'll be cured, sheer poetry ... :)

While in Morocco this week, I had a surreal "wow" moment when I realized that, purely in terms of sound-world, Arabic and German have a lot in common. In fact, if it weren't for the insh'allahs and alhamdulillahs, I would have happily suspended myself in a state of manufactured ignorance and soaked in the possibility that everybody was actually speaking German.

Quote from: Brian on November 13, 2010, 02:32:21 AM
While in Morocco this week, I had a surreal "wow" moment when I realized that, purely in terms of sound-world, Arabic and German have a lot in common. In fact, if it weren't for the insh'allahs and alhamdulillahs, I would have happily suspended myself in a state of manufactured ignorance and soaked in the possibility that everybody was actually speaking German.

Interesting.
Though... I wonder how the sound of Arabic from, say, Iraq, would fit into this...  :D

Quote from: Christo on November 13, 2010, 01:01:22 AM
Just try something like: `Achtentachtig allemachtig prachtige grachten'

Graag gedaan!

In Romanian phonetical orthography transliteration, the expression above reads:

Ahtăntahtăh alemahtăh prahtăhe hrahtăn. (Looks like a line from Wulfila's Gothic Bible, ain't it?  :D )

Now, for balance, try pronouncing : "Şase saşi cu şase saci"! ;D

Hint: "Ş" is like "sch" in German, "şi" in this context is like "sj" in Dutch (I mean, like German "sch" followed by a (very) short "i"), "ci" in this context is like German "tsch" followed by a (very) short "i", "s" everywhere is like German "ss" and "cu" is exactly like Dutch "koe"...

After you pronounced it correctly, guess its meaning.  :D. If you're right, I'll replace ad libitum two bottles of your gone Romanian wines  (provided, of course, you did not seek the help of your Romanian acquaintances  ;D ).

Bonus: guess what "dop" means in Romanian.  ;D

Quote
and you'll be cured, sheer poetry ... :)

You gotta be kidding.

Here's what poetry sounds like:

Un vultur sta pe pisc
Cu un pix şi-un plic in plisc.

Go figure the pronunciation and the meaning.  ;D

Inuit:

http://www.youtube.com/v/aCA0YsIS3yY

What's interesting is- listen closely- how pronounced the pauses are in their speech. It sounds like a doubled consonant that you'd find used commonly in Finnish or Japanese (like the "ck" in bookcase), but they have a very emphatic pause, like they're almost holding their breath for a half a second each time.

BTW, what languages (other than the native one) do you speak / read, gentlemen?

I have fair reading knowledge of French and Italian;  with a week's practice, I could rehabilitate conversational speech.

I do speak and read Russian; no surprise, as those nearest and dearest to me are native Russian speakers.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 23, 2010, 04:33:41 AM
I have fair reading knowledge of French and Italian;  with a week's practice, I could rehabilitate conversational speech.

I do speak and read Russian; no surprise, as those nearest and dearest to me are native Russian speakers.

Your kids are bilingual then?

I speak fluently English and French. I can have a fairly decent conversation in Spanish and Italian and a very basic one in Dutch.

I read fluently English, French, Spanish and Italian and I can find my way through Portuguese, Dutch and German.

Although I have studied Russian in secondary school for 4 years, because of lack of practice I don't remember much behind the most basic conversational level, although I can perfectly read the Cyrillic alphabet. As far as reading goes, I can read the Greek alphabet as well, although my Greek vocabulary is limited to isolated words and expressions.

Interesting question. Since I do legal translation for a living, I find it particularly relevant  :)

English. Native language. I'm American, but because I've spent so much time abroad and in different parts of the US, a lot of foreigners take me for Canadian due to lack of a strong US accent.
Russian. My best foreign language; not surprising since I live in Moscow and use it all the time at both work and home.
German. My second best foreign language. I can read it fluently (just finished Kafka's Der Prozess), and speak it quite well, although due to being in Russia I apparently have a Slavic accent in German (a German guy told me this just last week).
Czech. Spoke it pretty well when living in Prague several years ago; can still read it fairly fluently. 
Polish. Can read it quite well, used to speak it better than I do now because I was in Poland several times and had the opportunity to practice.
Spanish. Almost a native language because I lived in Argentina for a few years as a child. However, despite my good passive knowledge, I have a hard time holding a conversation in Spanish. I think it would all come back if I spent a concentrated period of time in a Spanish-speaking country. Currently reading Borges' Ficciones while commuting on the Metro.
French. Decent reading knowledge (I'm plowing through Baudelaire at the moment), but poor/fair speaking knowledge due to lack of practice.

There are also languages I've studied but wouldn't claim to speak at all, such as:

Lithuanian, which I studied for obscure reasons I won't get into here; and
Japanese, which I studied for a year just because I wanted to understand the structure, but have since forgotten almost everything except a few sentences and grammar rules.

Also had my brushes with ancient languages: Latin and Old Church Slavonic.

Native: English
Studying: Spanish, Japanese

(Probably everyone already knows this.)
I studied Spanish for 3 years in high school, and a little bit before and after high school on my own. Pretty much the only thing I've used it for since then was helping my friend translate stuff he wrote in Spanish to English for class work- I haven't studied in a long time, though maybe one day I'll kinda re-learn it.

I've been studying Japanese on and off for 7 or 8 years...  ??? I think I wasted my time for many years not learning anything just because I didn't have the proper resources and tried out methods of studying that just don't work. Now that I do have decent ways of studying, I've noticed huge improvements that I've never seen before. Still, though, this is the language to study if you want to take foreeeeeeeeever to learn anything (the only language that could possibly be worse is any of the Chinese dialects). It's very easy to pronounce words/sentences and you don't have to deal with gender/articles/complex verb conjugations, but the part that is just excruciating is the large vocabulary and the subtle uses of grammar that can only be understood if using subtitles or translations.

Quote from: Greg on November 23, 2010, 06:19:00 AM
I've been studying Japanese on and off for 7 or 8 years...   

I think the only real reason to study Japanese is if you're really, really interested in Japan specifically. This is because 1. Japanese is very little spoken outside Japan, so it has no value as a lingua franca; 2. it's an isolate, which means it has no close relatives that will be easier to learn thereafter; and 3. as you stated, it's hard. So I hope you're really interested in Japan!

As I recall, the thing that drove me up the wall about Japanese was the counting system.

Quote from: Velimir on November 23, 2010, 06:27:48 AM
As I recall, the thing that drove me up the wall about Japanese was the counting system.

That was one of the most amusing bits!  But it would be vexatious out in the field.

Yes, the time-scale needed to acquire Japanese properly is one reason I gave it over.  In my case, an extremely impractical language, though its challenges were a welcome mental stimulation once on a time.

Andrei!  We haven't children yet . . . I suspect they'll be bilingual, if I live long enough to teach them English ; )

Quote from: Velimir on November 23, 2010, 06:27:48 AM
I think the only real reason to study Japanese is if you're really, really interested in Japan specifically. This is because 1. Japanese is very little spoken outside Japan, so it has no value as a lingua franca; 2. it's an isolate, which means it has no close relatives that will be easier to learn thereafter; and 3. as you stated, it's hard. So I hope you're really interested in Japan!

As I recall, the thing that drove me up the wall about Japanese was the counting system.

I couldn't possibly agree more with that.  ;D

The counting system would actually be pretty easy (at least, until you get to a certain number) if it weren't for the fact that, besides their common system of counting, they have other ways of counting that are supposedly based off of ancient Japanese numbers. These, being combined with counting markers which can sometimes transform slightly based on how they're combined into different words (or sometimes into words completely different) make it quite a crazy experience. So crazy that I pretty much just learn numbers as I go.  :D

And on that note... don't get me started about names.  :-X Let's just say that if you have not seen a name before, you will not know how to pronounce it. I don't know of any other language like this- based on my (limited) knowledge of some of the Chinese names I've seen, I suspect that even Chinese isn't as bad as this. It's best to just learn real peoples' names one at a time, and eventually you might see them written again for another person, and you'll recognize it. Sometimes, there is logic to the writing, sometimes there is no logic at all. Often, there are at least 5 ways of writing the same name.  :D

I thought Velimir meant the use of different words depending on what the bejeezus is being counted . . . .

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 23, 2010, 06:50:51 AM
I thought Velimir meant the use of different words depending on what the bejeezus is being counted . . . .

Yep, that's what I'm referring to.

(http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/numb_samp.gif)

Also, for people:
Hitori 一人　one person (exception)
Futari 二人 two people (exception)
Sannin 三人　three people (regular) etc.

And there are also counters for anything cylindrical (本), counters for flat stuff like sheets of paper (枚), and even counters for houses! (軒)  :o The above hitotsu, futatsu... list is for anything that doesn't match an already existing counter.
Counting the days of the month is also a pain... I prefer not even to think about it.  :D

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 23, 2010, 06:49:14 AM
Andrei!  We haven't children yet . . . I suspect they'll be bilingual, if I live long enough to teach them English ; )

Hah!

May you live long enough to teach your grandsons English, my friend!

As for oriental languages, lately I've been exposed to a lot of Korean via some TV series broadcasted on the Romanian State TV. I caught by ear some phrases and words which I could use if need be.  :D

Quote from: Florestan on November 23, 2010, 07:15:46 AM
Hah!

May you live long enough to teach your grandsons English, my friend!

As for oriental languages, lately I've been exposed to a lot of Korean via some TV series broadcasted on the Romanian State TV. I caught by ear some phrases and words which I could use if need be.  :D

Have you learned how to read the script yet?
Can you read this? 김정일  >:D

Quote from: Greg on November 23, 2010, 07:23:28 AM
Have you learned how to read the script yet?
Can you read this? 김정일  >:D

I can't learn the script by listening. :)

Portuguese. Native language.
English. Fluently spoken and written. It's the language I use at work and outside the house. It's been 10 years since I moved to an english-speaking country (UK, USA, now Hong Kong).
French. Fluently spoken and written. It is the primary language on my mother's side of the family, even though everyone also speaks portuguese. Haven't practiced speaking it in a very long time, but I read a fair amount in french (french authors and some music literature).
Spanish. Can follow a conversation or a book fairly easily. Could probably "invent" my way through (by adapting my portuguese) if I needed to speak it.
Italian. Can follow a conversation or a book with some difficulty.
German. Have some very rudimentary knowledge of it, it is the next language I would like to learn just to be able to read the large amount of literature on music that is available only in german.

Quote from: petrArch on November 24, 2010, 12:34:14 AM
Portuguese. Native language.

So which Lusophone country do you come from? I can understand Portuguese (mostly) when I see it written, because of proximity to Spanish. However, the spoken language is either difficult to understand (Brazil) or impossible (Portugal).

Oh, and how's the Cantonese going?  :)

Quote from: Velimir on November 24, 2010, 01:16:25 AM
So which Lusophone country do you come from? I can understand Portuguese (mostly) when I see it written, because of proximity to Spanish. However, the spoken language is either difficult to understand (Brazil) or impossible (Portugal).

Oh, and how's the Cantonese going?  :)

I come from Portugal. Brazilian Portuguese is typically easier to understand for a foreigner because it's spoken more openly, with broader and accented vowels and the intonation helps clarity. Portuguese from Portugal is much more closed and I would say somewhat guttural, making it harder on the ear. Foreigners usually say it sounds like russian. As an anecdotal episode, during a vacation trip to Brazil (my wife is brazilian) some friends of the family actually thought I was english (since we had just arrived from the UK or the USA), because they couldn't understand a word of what I was saying.

Haven't started on Cantonese :). The issue I have with it is that I'd rather learn to read it (always had a fascination for the characters in japanese and traditional chinese), and that is an undertaking that requires enormous effort. I have figured out some of the symbols myself, but it is a weird feeling to know what they mean and have no idea how they sound.

Quote from: petrArch on November 24, 2010, 05:44:45 AM
Haven't started on Cantonese :). The issue I have with it is that I'd rather learn to read it (always had a fascination for the characters in japanese and traditional chinese), and that is an undertaking that requires enormous effort. I have figured out some of the symbols myself, but it is a weird feeling to know what they mean and have no idea how they sound.

Cantonese  :o... (out of the languages you can actually learn well without having to go live in the area), that seems like the hardest language in the world to learn. 6 tones sounds like a nightmare!  :D

There is probably some type of popup dictionary for this. Hopefully, anyways...

A question for Florestan: did you ever have spelling words when going to school?

Sometimes in elementary school, we would have separate words for spelling and vocabulary- like, 10 of each each week. I wonder if in countries where the language has such straightforward spelling (like in any Spanish-speaking country), there are just vocab words, but they have to be spelled right, too.

Quote from: Greg on December 06, 2010, 05:25:35 AM
A question for Florestan: did you ever have spelling words when going to school?

No. Spelling is a non-issue in Romanian: what you see (or hear) is what you get; when you learn a vocabulary word you automatically learn its spelling as well.

The straightforward and easy orthography is more than compensated for by a very complex and difficult grammar, though.  :)

Quote from: Florestan on December 06, 2010, 06:05:11 AM
No. Spelling is a non-issue in Romanian: what you see (or hear) is what you get; when you learn a vocabulary word you automatically learn its spelling as well.

The straightforward and easy orthography is more than compensated for by a very complex and difficult grammar, though.  :)

Ditto Finnish. With very few, minor exceptions. The grammar issue is also similar: very complex.

And there end the similarities between these two languages. I happen to have a Rumanian student, an adult man, who is very confused with the fact how difficult it is to learn this odd, obscure, isolate language of ours. He certainly is not the only one - only the Hungarians may have some advantage, but even Hungarian is only a very distant relative to Finnish. Some similarities in the structures of grammar, I have been told, but the vocabulary is entirely different. Only three words resemble each other somewhat: fish, blood, and obviously.... mother-in-law. :)

Quote from: matti on December 06, 2010, 06:21:57 AM
And there end the similarities between these two languages. I happen to have a Rumanian student, an adult man, who is very confused with the fact how difficult it is to learn this odd, obscure, isolate language of ours. He certainly is not the only one - only the Hungarians may have some advantage, but even Hungarian is only a very distant relative to Finnish. Some similarities in the structures of grammar, I have been told, but the vocabulary is entirely different. Only three words resemble each other somewhat: fish, blood, and obviously.... mother-in-law. :)

Apparently there are more (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_living_fish_swims_in_water). :)

How do you say blood and mother-in-law in Finnish / Hungarian?

Quote from: Florestan on December 06, 2010, 06:30:29 AM
Apparently there are more (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_living_fish_swims_in_water). :)

Well, Estonian is such a close one, so close that I forgot to mention it. Yet, I speak Swedish and can read Norwegian and Danish newspapers without much difficulty. Estonian - nope. 

How do you say blood and mother-in-law in Finnish / Hungarian?

Blood in Finnish "veri", in Hungarian "ver".

Mother-in-law in Finnish "anoppi", in Hungarian "anyos"

Mind you, I don't speak Hungarian, but I have a Hungarian workmate who speaks perfect Finnish and who told me these things.- And with perfect I mean perfect: you could not tell she is not Finnish. Usually there's always something in the accent that reveals the speaker is not native no matter how perfect the speech grammatically is. In her case no such thing, she is quite surprising.

Quote from: matti on December 06, 2010, 06:58:12 AM
Blood in Finnis "veri", in Hungarian "ver".

Mother-in-law in Finnish "anoppi", in Hungarian "anyos"

Thanks.

Quote
Mind you, I don't speak Hungarian, but I have a Hungarian workmate who speaks perfect Finnish and who told me these things.- And with perfect I mean perfect: you could not tell she is not Finnish. Usually there's always something in the accent that reveals the speaker is not native no matter how perfect the speech grammatically or is. In her case no such thing, she is quite surprising.

In Hungarian the accent is mainly on the first syllable. (I don't speak it but there is an important Hungarian minority in Romania). The few Finnish movies I've seen left me with the impression that this is also the case in Finnish.

Quote from: Florestan on December 06, 2010, 07:02:58 AM
In Hungarian the accent is mainly on the first syllable. (I don't speak it but there is an important Hungarian minority in Romania). The few Finnish movies I've seen left me with the impression that this is also the case in Finnish.

Exactly. Accent always on the first syllable, I can't think of any exceptions.

Quote from: matti on December 06, 2010, 07:08:30 AM
Exactly. Accent always on the first syllable, I can't think of any exceptions.

Well, this is the reason why your Hungarian workmate speaks Finnish with no foreign accent whatsoever: her native accent is exactly as the Finnish accent.  :)

Quote from: Florestan on December 06, 2010, 07:28:20 AM
Well, this is the reason why your Hungarian workmate speaks Finnish with no foreign accent whatsoever: her native accent is exactly as the Finnish accent.  :)

It helps of course, but believe me, I have heard MANY Hungarians speak perfect Finnish, with less than perfect accents. Although the accent of the first syllable is invariably spot on.:)

Quote from: matti on December 06, 2010, 07:36:12 AM
It helps of course, but believe me, I have heard MANY Hungarians speak perfect Finnish, with less than perfect accents. Although the accent of the first syllable is invariably spot on.:)

I see.

In Romanian there is no strict rule for accent; it can fall on the first, the penultimate or the last syllable. There are even instances where the same word has different meanings with different accent: copii accented on the first syllable means copies, while accented on the last syllable means children. Add to this the fact that the accent is never graphically marked, save in cases where confusion could really arise (they are few, though), or that in poetry, if the rythm and rhyme asks for it, the accent in a word can fall differently than in prose --- and God help you learning the right Romanian pronunciation.  :)

Quote from: Velimir on November 23, 2010, 05:41:04 AMEnglish. Native language. I'm American, but because I've spent so much time abroad and in different parts of the US, a lot of foreigners take me for Canadian due to lack of a strong US accent.
Russian. My best foreign language; not surprising since I live in Moscow and use it all the time at both work and home.
German. My second best foreign language. I can read it fluently (just finished Kafka's Der Prozess), and speak it quite well, although due to being in Russia I apparently have a Slavic accent in German (a German guy told me this just last week).
Czech. Spoke it pretty well when living in Prague several years ago; can still read it fairly fluently. 
Polish. Can read it quite well, used to speak it better than I do now because I was in Poland several times and had the opportunity to practice.
Spanish. Almost a native language because I lived in Argentina for a few years as a child. However, despite my good passive knowledge, I have a hard time holding a conversation in Spanish. I think it would all come back if I spent a concentrated period of time in a Spanish-speaking country. Currently reading Borges' Ficciones while commuting on the Metro.
French. Decent reading knowledge (I'm plowing through Baudelaire at the moment), but poor/fair speaking knowledge due to lack of practice.

There are also languages I've studied but wouldn't claim to speak at all, such as:

Lithuanian, which I studied for obscure reasons I won't get into here; and
Japanese, which I studied for a year just because I wanted to understand the structure, but have since forgotten almost everything except a few sentences and grammar rules.

Also had my brushes with ancient languages: Latin and Old Church Slavonic.

Impressive. I speak german, english (spoke it 1/2 year 10 years ago, now speaking goes much less fluently). Learnt french for 2 or 3 years at high school, was very good but forgot almost everything. Because my father moved to greece and I was often there, I was even able to communicate at a very basic level with old greek citizens. Mostly with hands and feet though... The opposite of poli megallo knowledge. But at least I can read it as well as russian, but that's not difficult.

The interesting things were "words" you don't learn at school. Example: Americans say "wow", we say like "boar" and the greeks: "po po po" - sounded funny for me :)

I want to learn dutch one day.

What foreign languages do you learn /have to learn?) in the US? Spanish, depending on the distance of the mexican border (or french::Canada)?

Quote from: Tapio on December 28, 2010, 06:52:23 AM

What foreign languages do you learn /have to learn?) in the US? Spanish, depending on the distance of the mexican border (or french::Canada)?

Spanish is in the No. 1 position by a large margin. Geography and demography naturally explain this. French and German are probably still 2 and 3 respectively, though I'm too lazy to look this up. Certain elite or well-equipped high schools may offer other "exotic" options, like Japanese, Chinese, or Russian.

I think the strangest thing about US language education is the general absence of Portuguese in the system, despite the fact that it's the language of by far the biggest Latin American country.

Quote from: Velimir on December 28, 2010, 09:39:01 PM
Certain elite or well-equipped high schools may offer other "exotic" options, like Japanese, Chinese, or Russian.

The high school I went during my last year was neither- just lucky. Our teacher knew Japanese and had spent time living in Japan. He even went on to offer a Japanese 3 class, which a couple people I knew took, but I had to graduate after one year, unfortunately.

Nothing unfortunate about being graduated ; )

Cantonese: Mother tongue. Love speaking it, writing it and reading it, as it is an incredibly rich and complex dialect. Has many unique characters, semantics, lexicon, syntax AND phonetics that are not used in any other Chinese dialect. I sometimes wonder what it'd be like to study Cantonese as a foreigner, as many have noted its tremendous difficulty.

Mandarin: Second dialect (as opposed to language) of Chinese. Being raised in HK, this is a mandatory subject for Primary and Secondary school students. Much, much less difficult compared to Cantonese, as far as speaking is concerned. Less diversity in vocabulary too, which is not as fun to a native Cantonese speaker  :(

English: Second most fluent language (more so than Mandarin, actually). I traveled and moved between Canada and HK all my life...something like 5 or 6 times already (and I'm only 19). I guess I could also say that it ties with Cantonese as my most fluent language(s), as I have native fluency in both, as a result of my frequent relocating between HK and Canada. But I do feel I'm closer to Cantonese culture than English culture, and needless to say, that greatly affects how I use both languages.

Japanese: Third language learned, did 2.5 years of formal study with native teachers, and a lot of individual study in my free time. I can't claim to be "fluent" in speaking it, but reading newspaper articles and asking for directions while traveling there alone is no issue to me.

German: Er...I know all the alphabet (including the trouble some rolled "r", which according to my teacher, should sound like an old man gargling and preparing to spit  >:D), does that count?  :D


I do hope to learn more European languages (particularly German and Italian) in the future, as it will be tremendously useful in my future learning and development as a music major.

Quote from: imperfection on December 29, 2010, 10:10:40 PMGerman: Er...I know all the alphabet (including the trouble some rolled "r", which according to my teacher, should sound like an old man gargling and preparing to spit  >:D), does that count?  :D

I'd say yes, what you describe is the "Hochdeutsch" "r" which is usually spoken. You may have spoken it in the morning when you transported the mucus stuff up your throat ;) It comes more from the back of the mouth.
In southern areas, also Austria and Switzerland, and rather from older people, you may often hear a softer rolling "r" as you may have heard it in speeches of a most infamous guy from our past. It's created by gently pressing the tongue agains the mouths front/top, with air flow it's because of tongues flattering.
If germans (children) imitate german speaking asians, they usually replace "r" by "L", because Asian german sounds a bit like this. "Johannes Blahms", "Anton Bluckner".

Cantones and Mandarin: Are those complete different languages or do people understand each other to a certain degree?

Quote from: Tapio on December 30, 2010, 03:13:57 AM
If germans (children) imitate german speaking asians, they usually replace "r" by "L", because Asian german sounds a bit like this. "Johannes Blahms", "Anton Bluckner".

That's funny, because in English-speaking languages, the Asian stereotype is exactly the opposite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46WcFObgYhI).

Quote from: Brian on December 30, 2010, 03:17:41 AM
That's funny, because in English-speaking languages, the Asian stereotype is exactly the opposite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46WcFObgYhI).

I remember that!  :D

Though it seems like only the Chinese would do that, since they actually have an "R" sound similar to English in their language.

Quote from: Tapio on December 30, 2010, 03:13:57 AM
I'd say yes, what you describe is the "Hochdeutsch" "r" which is usually spoken. You may have spoken it in the morning when you transported the mucus stuff up your throat ;) It comes more from the back of the mouth.
In southern areas, also Austria and Switzerland, and rather from older people, you may often hear a softer rolling "r" as you may have heard it in speeches of a most infamous guy from our past. It's created by gently pressing the tongue agains the mouths front/top, with air flow it's because of tongues flattering.
If germans (children) imitate german speaking asians, they usually replace "r" by "L", because Asian german sounds a bit like this. "Johannes Blahms", "Anton Bluckner".

Cantones and Mandarin: Are those complete different languages or do people understand each other to a certain degree?

That's interesting to know, thanks for that. I know I still need a lot practice to be able to do the R properly. Do they roll the R the same way in Spanish and Italian too?

As for Cantonese and Mandarin, they are technically the same language (Chinese), but Chinese is not actually a language in itself, as it contains many dialects and even Mandarin, which is the standard accent for government and formal institutions in Mainland China, is a dialect, not a language. As far as mutual intelligibility is concerned, a Cantonese person who has never heard Mandarin in his/her life will not understand it when it is spoken to them, and vice versa. There are 4 tones in Mandarin and 6 in Cantonese (though some linguists say around 10), and some of them sound similar, so those who are exposed to Mandarin as a Cantonese native speaker could theoretically guess some of the dialogue. Of course, that doesn't make the two dialects mutually intelligible.

As far as writing is concerned, however, it gets much, much more complex. Usually, all Chinese people write using the Standard Writing System, especially in formal documents or newspapers. In Cantonese, however, one can write in both the Standard Writing System AND the spoken way (writing words that are considered slang and otherwise do not exist in the language when not spoken). Therefore, there really are two ways of writing anything that is spoken in Cantonese, and if it is done the latter way, a Mandarin speaker would have absolutely no clue what those characters mean (as they don't exist in Mandarin).

So no, to answer your question, they are neither separate languages nor mutually intelligible dialects.  :D

Be cool - speak Deutsch!

The contamination of German with English words appears to have reached the point of no return:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-w0-lZldWA

Be cool - speak Deutsch! (http://be%20cool%20-%20speak%20deutsch!)

I would like to but I am lazy.  Any suggestions for quickfire German?

Quote from: Velimir on February 11, 2011, 05:57:43 AM
Be cool - speak Deutsch!

I would like to know the use of der and die

Thanks

Quote from: romboid on June 01, 2011, 06:49:38 PM
I would like to know the use of der and die

Thanks

I know nothing about German but isn't that singular vs plural?

I don't know. 

;D

I thought it would be fun to start a general-purpose thread for anyone studying a foreign language.

First of all, what is your native language?

What (or which) are you studying?

How long have you been studying?

Why did you choose this language in particular?

Have you reached any important attainments or milestones (learning to read a non-latin alphabet, conversational fluency, etc)? Feel free to brag. :D

Any insights or tips on learning, or advice for someone learning your language of choice?


WRT myself: My native language is English. I am studying Japanese.

As of now I've been studying seriously for about 4 months. I chose Japanese because I love their tradition of philosophy and aesthetics, and plan on living and working in the country as a linguist or instructor. So far I am proficient in kana (the Japanese syllabic form of writing), can construct a few simple sentences and can recognize and write about 70 kanji (Chinese characters).

I've found that hearing native speakers speaking Japanese at normal pace, and constant spoken repetition of words and phrases has helped me in understanding conversation. With the written forms, creating mnemonic devices, no matter how stupid or silly they might seem (and in fact, the more ridiculous they are, the better I remember them) has been essential, especially with the complex kanji — for instance, the symbol for "words" and the symbol for "sell" together equals the symbol for "reading", so you can think of reading as "selling words"... or something.

Right now I'm supplementing my college course with a Japanese-English dictionary, a book on essential Japanese grammar, and these:

(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51tPB%2BKtagL._SS500_.jpg)

which is great for hearing native speakers, and also gives good explanations for the constructing of sentences. The lessons are initially spoken at a pace slightly-lower than that of a native, but later are presented as they would be for most Japanese.

and

(http://i44.tinypic.com/2igism0.png)

which teaches Chinese characters in a more logical and memorable way than the way they are normally learned: through sheer brute force of repetition. Highly recommended.

Nice idea! :)

I love languages and enjoy learning them.

My native language is Mahlerian English. At the moment, I am learning both French and Italian at school. I started both of these languages in my first year at secondary school, so when I was 11 I think. It is compulsory to take at least one language for GCSE at our school, but as I love both languages so much, I decided to take both, and am enjoying both very much, and fortunately my results seem to be rather good. ;) In all my recent mock exams I have been getting A*, so I am very happy! :D

I love both languages and hope to continue them into A Level too, and hopefully visit France and Italy regularly. (whether to conduct their orchestras, or admire the beautiful culture/landscapes etc)

I would also love to learn many more languages to a decent level, as you know, it is my ambition to be a conductor (As well as composer), so I don't want to just stand in front of a foreign orchestra and ask 'who speaks English here?' ;)

Quote from: madaboutmahler on April 02, 2012, 12:14:34 PM
My native language is Mahlerian english.

Ah, but in English we capitalize languages, I've heard, as well as Mahler's name : )

Quote from: karlhenning on April 02, 2012, 12:16:43 PM
Ah, but in English we capitalize languages, I've heard, as well as Mahler's name : )

Very true, Karl! I must have slipped into Mahlerian there...

My native language is Italian.
I really love learning foreign languages; I've studied English at school since I was 5 years old, and I also learnt some French, Spanish and Dutch (French and Spanish by myself, Dutch when I went to Holland for a school trip).
Now I'm learning German, which I've studied for a year; to do this, I mainly use grammar books and old handbooks of conversation, but I also watch documentaries in German (especially about composers and conductors) and read Wagner's essaies and libretti. ;D Having learnt Latin at the high school has been helping me a lot, because German language has declensions as well.
I have no idea about how much they are used nowadays, but I got to know Gothic characters too.
I started studying it because I've always adored Austria and Germany, their culture, their history and especially their music; and moreover, I hope to live in Vienna one day. ;D

My native language is Chinese. Obviously, my second language is English. I can read a bit of Italian, French, German, mostly due to opera and classical music (with the booklets usually in multiple languages!), and can understand and speak some Spanish having lived in Los Angeles for 22 years.

Now I am thinking about learning a bit more of one of those languages. the reason is because my soon to be four year old daughter Kimi speaks Chinese and English equally well. It's nice she has two mother tongues. I want to give her a "foreign language". No other languages are taught in Chinese schools (when she starts in 2 1/2 years). Spanish is the most nature since I already know some. But I wonder which one would be a possibly better choice? French?

Now Kimi can count in Spanish, and speak a little bit of "speedy Gonzales". She seems to like French and German better since both she has picked up a bit simply by using the wrong language button on DVDs. Her diction for German seems to be the best. Her Spanish simply sounds like "speedy Gonzales"!

My language is Spanish. I'm starting to memorize basic vocabulary in German and French (through brute force of repetition), languages which I consider pillars of cultural banks.

Quote from: springrite on April 02, 2012, 01:11:30 PM
My native language is Chinese.

Now I am thinking about learning a bit more of one of those languages. the reason is because my soon to be four year old daughter Kimi speaks Chinese and English equally well.

I have always been a bit confused by this, so perhaps you could help. I always thought there was no 'Chinese' language per se and that there were several languages spoken in China - Mandorin, Cantonese, etc. Now I understand that the great majority speak Manodrin. And I assume that when you say 'Chinese' you mean Mandarin? Or is this understanding incorrect and is there a genearlly accepted Chinese language that is now spoken by everyone (which I would assume is Mandorin or something based on it)? Are the other languages (or is dialects more appropriate?) dying out?

Possibly of interest - our already existing language thread:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/community/index.php/topic,17367.0.html

Huh, I searched for that thread and it didn't come up. Perhaps a mod could merge this with that thread?

Thanks!

Quote from: Coco on April 03, 2012, 05:37:07 AM
Thanks!

My pleasure. Interesting to see what progress has been made by some of the people who posted here earlier.

8)

Quote. . . Manodrin.

No longer availabe without a prescription.

Quote from: mc ukrneal on April 03, 2012, 12:18:05 AM
I have always been a bit confused by this, so perhaps you could help. I always thought there was no 'Chinese' language per se and that there were several languages spoken in China - Mandorin, Cantonese, etc. Now I understand that the great majority speak Manodrin. And I assume that when you say 'Chinese' you mean Mandarin? Or is this understanding incorrect and is there a genearlly accepted Chinese language that is now spoken by everyone (which I would assume is Mandorin or something based on it)? Are the other languages (or is dialects more appropriate?) dying out?

I know many Chinese; nearly to a person, they know Mandarin, but they speak Cantonese. I don't know how universal this is, I would hate to generalize... :)

8)

http://www.youtube.com/v/jL8hV-zjJ_4

Quote from: mc ukrneal on April 03, 2012, 12:18:05 AM
I have always been a bit confused by this, so perhaps you could help. I always thought there was no 'Chinese' language per se and that there were several languages spoken in China - Mandorin, Cantonese, etc. Now I understand that the great majority speak Manodrin. And I assume that when you say 'Chinese' you mean Mandarin? Or is this understanding incorrect and is there a genearlly accepted Chinese language that is now spoken by everyone (which I would assume is Mandorin or something based on it)? Are the other languages (or is dialects more appropriate?) dying out?

If I may confuse the matter even more while attempting to clear things up, here it goes:

First of all, Cantonese is a dialect spoken only in most parts of one of the 30 provinces. The only reason that Westerners think most Chinese speak it is because the British owned HK for over a century, and they speak Cantonese there, and most of the first group of Chinese immigrants were from that area. Otherwise, we are talking about a dialect spoken in ONE of the 30 provinces ONLY.

Secondly, yes, most Chinese people can communicate within the same dialect, which we call "standard Chinese", or Putonghua. In the west, it is called Mandarin, which is a rediculous mistake that it is now too late to correct so we continue to use the term because Westerners insist on it. You see, the Manchus were in power when The West first went into China (not counting Marco Polo, of course). The Manchus accounts for roughly 2 percent of the population, if that much. They had their own language, which should be called Mandarin. The other 98% of the population speak some form of Chinese. The real Mandarin is NOT even Chinese. It is a totally different language. But since the Manchus were in power in China, westerners mistakenly used the word "Mandarin" to mean things that are "officially Chinese". At the time, what is "officially Chinese" happens to be this "standard Chinese", which the Westerners begin to call Mandarin. The fact is, the Manchus decided that the only way they could rule China long term is to become more Chinese. So they more or less gave up their own lauguage and much of their culture in order to solidify political rule. Since the middle of the 20th century, the actually Mandarin lauguage is officially a dead language, with hardly even a scholar left who could read or speak it. But the term "Mandarin" is strangely still alive, used by Westerner to mean "Chinese".

The reason all dialects are considered still some form of Chinese instead of different languages is partly because of political and culture reasons, as Margaret Mead pointed out that "language is dialect with a political border", but also because in whatever dialect, the written form is the same. For the most part, only the pronounciation is different, and the preferred words for certain expressions are different. (Not much different from STOP in North America but HALT in the UK). You can't say that about Italian and Spanish, Dutch and German, for instance, even though they can be very similar.

Since in both China and Taiwan, the schools are taught in "Mandarin", basically every person under the age 80 can communicate in "Mandarin" with minimal difficulty. They may speak a different dialect at home, but at school and at work, most people do sound alike and communication has never been an issue.

In the 80's and early 90's, there was a surge in Chinese people learning to speak Cantonese. That is because HK is a powerful economic power and most people there speak only Cantonese but not "Mandarin". From someone in China,being able to speak Cantonese gives one added advantages in terms of career opportunities and money making possibilities. But after 2000, it has turned the other way. People in HK are learning to speak "Mandarin" and all business or other communications are done in "Mandarin" because China is now the more powerful entity, and being able to speak "Mandarin" gives those in HK more opportunities.

You have to go to a very very remote village to find people under the age of 80 who is unable to communicate in "Mandarin". I still detest using the term Mandarin to mean Chinese. It is like somehow people from Poland has to call their language German because everyone else is calling it that.

Very enlightening post, Paul. As I learn more, it is astounding to me the sheer variety of who and what is corralled under the heading "Chinese".

Quote from: springrite on April 03, 2012, 06:42:12 AM
If I may confuse the matter even more while attempting to clear things up, here it goes:

First of all, Cantonese is a dialect spoken only in most parts of one of the 30 provinces. The only reason that Westerners think most Chinese speak it is because the British owned HK for over a century, and they speak Cantonese there, and most of the first group of Chinese immigrants were from that area. Otherwise, we are talking about a dialect spoken in ONE of the 30 provinces ONLY.

Secondly, yes, most Chinese people can communicate within the same dialect, which we call "standard Chinese", or Putonghua. In the west, it is called Mandarin, which is a rediculous mistake that it is now too late to correct so we continue to use the term because Westerners insist on it. You see, the Manchus were in power when The West first went into China (not counting Marco Polo, of course). The Manchus accounts for roughly 2 percent of the population, if that much. They had their own language, which should be called Mandarin. The other 98% of the population speak some form of Chinese. The real Mandarin is NOT even Chinese. It is a totally different language. But since the Manchus were in power in China, westerners mistakenly used the word "Mandarin" to mean things that are "officially Chinese". At the time, what is "officially Chinese" happens to be this "standard Chinese", which the Westerners begin to call Mandarin. The fact is, the Manchus decided that the only way they could rule China long term is to become more Chinese. So they more or less gave up their own lauguage and much of their culture in order to solidify political rule. Since the middle of the 20th century, the actually Mandarin lauguage is officially a dead language, with hardly even a scholar left who could read or speak it. But the term "Mandarin" is strangely still alive, used by Westerner to mean "Chinese".

The reason all dialects are considered still some form of Chinese instead of different languages is partly because of political and culture reasons, as Margaret Mead pointed out that "language is dialect with a political border", but also because in whatever dialect, the written form is the same. For the most part, only the pronounciation is different, and the preferred words for certain expressions are different. (Not much different from STOP in North America but HALT in the UK). You can't say that about Italian and Spanish, Dutch and German, for instance, even though they can be very similar.

Since in both China and Taiwan, the schools are taught in "Mandarin", basically every person under the age 80 can communicate in "Mandarin" with minimal difficulty. They may speak a different dialect at home, but at school and at work, most people do sound alike and communication has never been an issue.

In the 80's and early 90's, there was a surge in Chinese people learning to speak Cantonese. That is because HK is a powerful economic power and most people there speak only Cantonese but not "Mandarin". From someone in China,being able to speak Cantonese gives one added advantages in terms of career opportunities and money making possibilities. But after 2000, it has turned the other way. People in HK are learning to speak "Mandarin" and all business or other communications are done in "Mandarin" because China is now the more powerful entity, and being able to speak "Mandarin" gives those in HK more opportunities.

You have to go to a very very remote village to find people under the age of 80 who is unable to communicate in "Mandarin". I still detest using the term Mandarin to mean Chinese. It is like somehow people from Poland has to call their language German because everyone else is calling it that.

Most enlightening, thanks, Paul.

 Actually, the Manchu language, which is pretty much extinct, is not related to Chinese at all, but is a  polysyllabic language more closely related to Mongolian than any of the different forms of Chinese .
Many people in northern China are of Manchu descent, but only thei rancestors spoke the Manchu language .
   Manchu is part of the Tungusic sub family of the Altaic languages which include the Turkic languages,Mongolian and  the variou s Tungusic languages spoken by small numbers of people in Siberia, including the Evenkis, Lamuts, Goldi and Nanai .
    Some linguists believe that Japanese and Korean are realted to the Tungusic languages, but not all agree.

During the Qing dynesty, which is the last one, which lasted almost 300 years, China had four official languages-- Chinese, Mandarin, Mongolian and Tibetan. Every official document had to be written in four languages, and every monument must have four languages on it. It is interesting that Mandarin was the one that became extinct. During the reign of the last emperor, the only person known to be fluent in that home language was the official who had the job of written that official document. Of course, now we simply assume that he actually knew it since there is (and was) no one to verify it!

Quote from: springrite on April 03, 2012, 08:06:33 AM
During the Qing dynesty, which is the last one, which lasted almost 300 years, China had four official languages-- Chinese, Mandarin, Mongolian and Tibetan. Every official document had to be written in four languages, and every monument must have four languages on it. It is interesting that Mandarin was the one that became extinct. During the reign of the last emperor, the only person known to be fluent in that home language was the official who had the job of written that official document. Of course, now we simply assume that he actually knew it since there is (and was) no one to verify it!

You mean . . . he might have been faking it? : )

Quote from: springrite on April 03, 2012, 06:42:12 AM
If I may confuse the matter even more while attempting to clear things up, here it goes:

Very helpful. I see now why I was confused (besides the mis-spellings) - it's confusing! :) But you've set me straight.

Quote from: karlhenning on April 03, 2012, 07:30:22 AM
Most enlightening, thanks, Paul.

Ditto.

I forgot this thread even existed...

can't wait until one day I have enough time to "master" Japanese. Really, the only difficult parts of it are:
1) the sheer number of words necessary to memorize
2) it can sometimes be hard to understand the meaning of some sentences (mainly in somewhat archaic Japanese)
3) reading Japanese literature that's pre-WWII (often words aren't in dictionaries, making it harder to understand).
4) names. I'm pretty sure many Japanese can't even read uncommon names.

but mainly, #1. If I could simply plug in a list of several thousand vocabulary words into my brain, that would take care of most of the work instantly. That's why I've always wondered if there is a shortcut to memorizing vocabulary words, but I haven't found any method more effective than learning in context, unfortunately.

Quote from: Greg on April 03, 2012, 10:52:31 AM
I forgot this thread even existed...

can't wait until one day I have enough time to "master" Japanese. Really, the only difficult parts of it are:
1) the sheer number of words necessary to memorize
2) it can sometimes be hard to understand the meaning of some sentences (mainly in somewhat archaic Japanese)
3) reading Japanese literature that's pre-WWII (often words aren't in dictionaries, making it harder to understand).
4) names. I'm pretty sure many Japanese can't even read uncommon names.

but mainly, #1. If I could simply plug in a list of several thousand vocabulary words into my brain, that would take care of most of the work instantly. That's why I've always wondered if there is a shortcut to memorizing vocabulary words, but I haven't found any method more effective than learning in context, unfortunately.

My Spanish friend had the best advice: Sleep with the dictionary. :)

Quote from: mc ukrneal on April 03, 2012, 11:00:40 AM
My Spanish friend had the best advice: Sleep with the dictionary. :)

Sleep with someone who grew up knowing the content of the dictionary?

(How did you think I mastered all those dialects, huh?)

Quote from: mc ukrneal on April 03, 2012, 11:00:40 AM
My Spanish friend had the best advice: Sleep with the dictionary. :)

Hmm... I might consider reading through my paperback dictionary every now and then. The problem with bilingual paperback dictionaries is that they don't have nearly enough words.

Check out this evil/awesome hanzi:

(http://www.simplifierlab.com/uploads/Biang.gif)

The meaning? Biángbiáng noodles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi%C3%A1ngbi%C3%A1ng_noodles).

Quote from: Coco on April 03, 2012, 04:38:10 PM
Check out this evil/awesome hanzi:

Oh yeah, I remember that one.

Somewhat more difficult than the average character to remember because there are so many components...
and then there are some which are ridiculously easy, despite having a high stroke count:


(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Taito_2_l.png)
84 strokes and 10 seconds to memorize.  ::)

Here's a difficult word for me to remember how to write:
憂鬱- melancholy     

Quote from: Coco on April 03, 2012, 04:38:10 PM
Check out this evil/awesome hanzi:

(http://www.simplifierlab.com/uploads/Biang.gif)

The meaning? Biángbiáng noodles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi%C3%A1ngbi%C3%A1ng_noodles).

This, like many other difficult word with too many strokes, are usually marketing gimicks. A noddle shop in Xi'An centuries ago came up with this idea. They decided to make up a word to name their noodle. By making the word with too many strokes and almost impossible to memorize, they made the word itself a talking point. What's more, this made-up word has no other meaning other than referring to THIER noodle. The idea worked.

Quote from: springrite on April 03, 2012, 07:30:47 PM
This, like many other difficult word with too many strokes, are usually marketing gimicks. A noddle shop in Xi'An centuries ago came up with this idea. They decided to make up a word to name their noodle. By making the word with too many strokes and almost impossible to memorize, they made the word itself a talking point. What's more, this made-up word has no other meaning other than referring to THIER noodle. The idea worked.

A noodle company nowadays could use this idea to the extreme: maybe have a character for their name which is two rows of the biangbiang character and the taito character side by side. The result would be a 272 stroke character. (If printed with a 12-point font, it'd just show up as a black block).

Quote from: Greg on April 03, 2012, 07:09:49 PM
Oh yeah, I remember that one.

Somewhat more difficult than the average character to remember because there are so many components...
and then there are some which are ridiculously easy, despite having a high stroke count:


(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Taito_2_l.png)
84 strokes and 10 seconds to memorize.  ::)

Yeah, I guess it's the kanji equivalent of using a pretentious-sounding word rarely used instead of a more common one in order to sound educated. :)

Quote from: Greg on April 03, 2012, 10:52:31 AM
I forgot this thread even existed...

can't wait until one day I have enough time to "master" Japanese. Really, the only difficult parts of it are:
1) the sheer number of words necessary to memorize
2) it can sometimes be hard to understand the meaning of some sentences (mainly in somewhat archaic Japanese)
3) reading Japanese literature that's pre-WWII (often words aren't in dictionaries, making it harder to understand).
4) names. I'm pretty sure many Japanese can't even read uncommon names.

but mainly, #1. If I could simply plug in a list of several thousand vocabulary words into my brain, that would take care of most of the work instantly. That's why I've always wondered if there is a shortcut to memorizing vocabulary words, but I haven't found any method more effective than learning in context, unfortunately.

What method are you using to learn the kanji?

I used to use the "Remembering the Kanji" book by James Heisig, because my Japanese teacher highly recommended it. However, it just did not prove useful in the long run because of lack of practical use and necessity of learning extra useless information.

What I've found most effective is not using much of a method- as I came across new words, I simply use Rikaichan or Rikaikun to see the popup dictionary definition of the new word. With that info, you can see kanji info as well. If you recognize that the kanji has something related to what you previously learned, excellent! You've just made an important connection. If not, move on. Studying kanji themselves has not proven effective for me much at all... if you find something that works for you, though, then go for it. Everyone's different.

Quote from: Greg on April 04, 2012, 07:22:51 PM
I used to use the "Remembering the Kanji" book by James Heisig, because my Japanese teacher highly recommended it. However, it just did not prove useful in the long run because of lack of practical use and necessity of learning extra useless information.

That's the book I'm using. I like it, and I've actually learned about 60 kanji just in the past few days. When I tested myself using the keywords alone, I surprisingly remembered all but 3 — and even those I could recognize by seeing the character. I don't care for some of the mnemonics he uses (like "baseball" for (http://kanji-symbol.net/common/images/txt/num0013-gyo.gif)), so I make up my own instead. Did you use volume two at all?

Quote from: Greg on April 04, 2012, 07:22:51 PM
What I've found most effective is not using much of a method- as I came across new words, I simply use Rikaichan or Rikaikun to see the popup dictionary definition of the new word. With that info, you can see kanji info as well. If you recognize that the kanji has something related to what you previously learned, excellent! You've just made an important connection. If not, move on. Studying kanji themselves has not proven effective for me much at all... if you find something that works for you, though, then go for it. Everyone's different.

I've enjoyed the Heisig so far. My previous method was going through the list of Jōyō kanji and trying to remember both the characters and their readings. It not only took forever, but some of the characters have so many readings that it's extremely difficult to recall them all without any context. As of now, I'm focusing on just remembering the English meanings. Once I feel confident with those, I'll move on to readings.

Quote from: Coco on April 04, 2012, 08:28:46 PM
That's the book I'm using. I like it, and I've actually learned about 60 kanji just in the past few days. When I tested myself using the keywords alone, I surprisingly remembered all but 3 — and even those I could recognize by seeing the character. I don't care for some of the mnemonics he uses (like "baseball" for (http://kanji-symbol.net/common/images/txt/num0013-gyo.gif)), so I make up my own instead. Did you use volume two at all?

I used to make up my own.  ;D
Haven't used volume 2... looks like it doesn't use any mnemonics.

Quote from: Coco on April 04, 2012, 08:28:46 PM
I've enjoyed the Heisig so far. My previous method was going through the list of Jōyō kanji and trying to remember both the characters and their readings. It not only took forever, but some of the characters have so many readings that it's extremely difficult to recall them all without any context. As of now, I'm focusing on just remembering the English meanings. Once I feel confident with those, I'll move on to readings.

Yeah, remembering all of that at the same time won't work (I bet I've also tried that at some point lol). Right now, I recognize most of the Jouyou characters visually, but if I were quizzed on the meanings and readings...  :P

I've been thinking about the question of the most difficult language to learn since yesterday...
the main factor is: IT ALL DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU KNOW.

The question must be narrowed down: two rules that I will consider are:

1) it must be spoken enough to be learnable in the first place.
2) it would be based on the point of view of an American that only speaks English.

Supposedly, among the hardest languages based on my research:
Korean, Japanese, Chinese (any dialect), Arabic, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian.

To me, Arabic seems like it would be the hardest, but it all depends on how many different dialects you want to learn. I hear that Egyptian Arabic is the main one to learn, but there is also Classical Arabic and the countless dialects. Korean looks easy to me, but people who master it say it's extremely difficult to master. Polish, Lithuanian, and Hungarian share the same Roman alphabet as English, but the difficulties lie in pronunciation and extremely complex grammar.

What makes Japanese difficult is mainly the many readings of the kanji: On-yomi ("Chinese readings") and Kun-yomi ("Japanese readings"). These readings add layers of complexity to many characters, so with most characters you can't just look at and learn right away as in Mandarin. Modern Japanese is really a combination of ancient Chinese, Japanese, and Modern English, also, to the extent that you absolutely have to know English in order to even think about learning Japanese.

It would be interesting to compare how difficult learning each language would be in the above perspective, but you can't really measure that, because once you learn one language, anything similar will be easier. For example, Mandarin and Portuguese, even now, would be way too easy to learn for me after learning enough Japanese and Spanish. Also, if you take the perspective of someone who, for example, only knows Russian and does not know English, Japanese would be probably impossible to really learn and Dutch would be more difficult than if they knew English.

Quote from: Greg on June 11, 2012, 08:23:27 AMSupposedly, among the hardest languages based on my research:
Korean, Japanese, Chinese (any dialect), Arabic, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian.

Here is the result of a french research about the hardest languages:
Korean, Japanese, Chinese (any dialect), Arabic, Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian.

SCNR (but fortunately no french here who'd hate me now ;D)

I've been attending Mandarin conversation classes for seniors lately (Senior Mandarin classes sounded as if it were intended for civil servants) at a nearby community centre.  It's only a session weekly, concentrating on phonetics.  A large number of participants are Chinese who had found they could not communicate when they went back for a visit, particularly to Taiwan.

Hi everyone. It's been awhile!

Lately I've been digging into Latin using the Cambridge University courses. It's very clear, simple, fun and moves at a reasonable pace instead of simply starting off by throwing all sorts of case endings and declensions at you at once. I love how logical the language is, and seeing the connections it has with French, Italian and English.

I've also started a bit of Esperanto — I'm just so intrigued by the idea of it: politically, philosophically and aesthetically. I'm using LiveMocha.com (which anyone who is learning a language wanting to connect with native speakers should check out) and I've ordered Teach Yourself Esperanto and a dictionary to help.

I haven't been very active with my Japanese over the summer break as I felt like I came to an impasse with my Kanji learning and that I wasn't retaining as much as I thought I could, as well as not wanting to continue with my current textbook (as my Japanese 102 class which starts next month will be using the same text) nor starting over with another one. I can still remember all the sentences I've learned and the grammar markers etc. but I had to look up a couple hiragana because I couldn't recall how to write them from memory. I'm using LiveMocha to brush up a bit before classes start.

Quote from: Corey on July 14, 2012, 07:43:06 PM
I haven't been very active with my Japanese over the summer break as I felt like I came to an impasse with my Kanji learning and that I wasn't retaining as much as I thought I could, as well as not wanting to continue with my current textbook (as my Japanese 102 class which starts next month will be using the same text) nor starting over with another one. I can still remember all the sentences I've learned and the grammar markers etc. but I had to look up a couple hiragana because I couldn't recall how to write them from memory. I'm using LiveMocha to brush up a bit before classes start.

First of all, good to see ya again!

If you are really serious about learning the language, almost all of your work will be spent reading (online + Rikaichan/Rikaikun is the best method I know of), and then from there, logically, listening, speaking, and writing (I added that last part because I know someone will say something about it). Textbooks are like a drop of water in the ocean, though they are good for getting started.

Recently, I decided that I would just go ahead and read Japanese whenever I felt like it, rather than take a long hiatus. A few weeks ago, I ended up reading quite a bit off of the NHK website (a place I HIGHLY recommend, since they have news videos along with the text) and noticed a very nice improvement in vocabulary, comprehension, etc. And of course, I'll need a much wider variety of sources, but you can't beat a source that gives you daily updated news with over 40 new video article a day.  ;D

Quote from: Greg on July 15, 2012, 12:45:06 PM
First of all, good to see ya again!

If you are really serious about learning the language, almost all of your work will be spent reading (online + Rikaichan/Rikaikun is the best method I know of), and then from there, logically, listening, speaking, and writing (I added that last part because I know someone will say something about it). Textbooks are like a drop of water in the ocean, though they are good for getting started.

Recently, I decided that I would just go ahead and read Japanese whenever I felt like it, rather than take a long hiatus. A few weeks ago, I ended up reading quite a bit off of the NHK website (a place I HIGHLY recommend, since they have news videos along with the text) and noticed a very nice improvement in vocabulary, comprehension, etc. And of course, I'll need a much wider variety of sources, but you can't beat a source that gives you daily updated news with over 40 new video article a day.  ;D

Thanks for the advice. I'll keep Rikaichan/kun in mind, but as yet I still don't have a computer of my own. I think this semester I'll look into Japanese-language meetup groups in town. Plus, there are probably a lot of helpful programs through the Japanese Consulate here.

One thing I didn't know that my Japanese teacher (who is a native speaker himself, but is fairly old and hasn't lived there for years) didn't mention at all: how the "g" consonant is sometimes pronounced like an "n". What a difference there is between a textbook and actual spoken language! LiveMocha is pretty good for hearing native speakers, so hopefully that'll help with my pronunciation (which isn't horrible, but it gets tough when the sentences are more complex) and my pace (I'm still very slow).

Quote from: Corey on July 15, 2012, 02:32:56 PM
One thing I didn't know that my Japanese teacher (who is a native speaker himself, but is fairly old and hasn't lived there for years) didn't mention at all: how the "g" consonant is sometimes pronounced like an "n".

That's something I overlooked for quite a while. Especially in the particle "ga," it's basically pronounced like a nasal "n"- "nga." Yep, if we ever get to be pros at speaking Japanese, we'll get to reserve the right to complain about foreigners who can't speak comprehensible English.  :P

Finally finished my Esperanto textbook. I now have a pretty good grasp of the grammar, can read most sentences and can express myself in sentence form. Since very few people speak Esp, I'm focusing on improving it through reading texts, so I have an ancient Esperanto reader (Fundamenta Krestomatio) to keep it up.

My Japanese is going pretty well. I'm up to around 250 Kanji which I can read on sight without struggling to remember the readings. I've got a progressive reader that starts from texts in hiragana and goes all the way to technical papers, excerpts from Mishima and classical Japanese poetry. Now I'm just trying to work out all the various verbal and adjectival conjugations. Next semester I'll be taking the 104-level course at my school if I can pass the placement exam that allows me to skip 103.

After this semester ends I plan on starting German. Pretty excited as it was originally my first choice before I got pulled into Japanese and fell in love with it.

There's one thing I've been doing over the last week or two which has seemed to help.
I'm at the point where the only thing really holding me back in Japanese is vocabulary... it's probably 90% of the learning, anyways.

I'm using my old dictionary which I wasn't using any more as a vocabulary book:
(http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lHNDwrtJL._SL500_AA300_.jpg)

The thing is, I'm not sure if there is an Japanese-English dictionary that is near comprehensive other than something like jisho.org- my dictionary only had the words maybe half of the time when I used to use it as a dictionary.

My method:
-start at a certain section; maybe "p", "shi", "z", "ka", etc. Try to look over it enough so that you might get a few stuck in your head later.
-move on to another section the next day- whatever you feel like at the moment.
-make sure to go back to previous sections and review sections you went through maybe 2-3 days ago.
-(also, of course, make sure to draw as many connections/disambiguations, etc. as possible)

Considering I feel like I'm learning vocabulary at a much faster rate than reading, for example, news articles, I feel it's working, and in the long run, vocabulary should be less of a problem.

If you ever decide to experiment with my method, Corey, let me know.  8)

I have Kodansha's Furigana dictionary, which is pretty great as I don't like romaji (and if you're seriously studying Japanese you've probably learned the kana at the very beginning). I'm not sure how comprehensive it is, but I'm sure the internet could fill in any gaps. IMO if you've exhausted an entire dictionary you're probably pretty well off, and actual conversation will be the next step.

I have thought about doing something similar, just learning a few new words each day, going alphabetically, and making flash cards for them. FCs have been the best thing for learning kanji for me, so I think it'd work well for other things too.

My 先生 asked if I was going to take the JLPT coming up. I thought about it, but I don't really see the point unless you know you're at Level 1 — in which case you don't need a test to inform you of your proficiency, and all you'd have to do to show your skill is to speak Japanese. I am probably at level 4 or 5 at the moment.

Quote from: Corey on November 10, 2012, 09:07:01 AM
My 先生 asked if I was going to take the JLPT coming up. I thought about it, but I don't really see the point unless you know you're at Level 1 — in which case you don't need a test to inform you of your proficiency, and all you'd have to do to show your skill is to speak Japanese. I am probably at level 4 or 5 at the moment.

Flash cards are great if you like them. Just as effective (I just don't use them because I never liked them).

That's a great point about JLPT. I would probably take it first to reach Level 2, since Level 1, if I remember correctly, is native level of decent intelligence, and Level 2 is fluent for a foreigner (am I wrong about this?).

Quote from: Greg on November 10, 2012, 12:02:23 PM
Flash cards are great if you like them. Just as effective (I just don't use them because I never liked them).

That's a great point about JLPT. I would probably take it first to reach Level 2, since Level 1, if I remember correctly, is native level of decent intelligence, and Level 2 is fluent for a foreigner (am I wrong about this?).

I think that's about right. You're at a comm. college at the moment, right? Are you going to transfer to a university?

Quote from: Corey on November 11, 2012, 05:44:27 AM
I think that's about right. You're at a comm. college at the moment, right? Are you going to transfer to a university?

Yep to both. UCF in spring '14. The entire course is online, but I'm just hoping that the additional mandatory classes are, too.

Quote from: Greg on November 11, 2012, 08:31:35 AM
Yep to both. UCF in spring '14. The entire course is online, but I'm just hoping that the additional mandatory classes are, too.

Cool, I know some people who graduated from there. Have you considered maybe taking some Japanese courses? You could probably test in at a level higher than the introductory course.

Quote from: Corey on November 11, 2012, 10:35:10 AM
Cool, I know some people who graduated from there. Have you considered maybe taking some Japanese courses? You could probably test in at a level higher than the introductory course.

Only if they are part of an mandatory elective and online; I'm trying to avoid driving there (1 1/2 hours away) or moving there (extra ~$150 a month to live with my friend in his one bedroom condo- although he's nice and would sleep in his living room lol).

You'll have to move out sometime!

Quote from: Corey on November 12, 2012, 06:39:12 AM
You'll have to move out sometime!

When I get a job that pays enough to survive on, I will (meaning after I graduate).
Even with my friend's special rent price ($250/month), staying with him will probably mean losing $50/month (unless they pay better in Orlando, and not including surprise car repairs, etc.). Let's just say I need to eat much more than most people.  ;)

Just something I thought I'd add here:

the studying the dictionary thing is going well. But it's more of a long-term thing. You won't see the results immediately, but compared to the rate I was learning by reading, there's no comparison. The biggest obstacle to learning a language has to be the thousands of words, and this is hardly ever addressed in any form for some reason. This method is proving very useful.

Had to take a few months off from learning earlier this year, but back at the dictionary vocabulary strategy, and it really is the quickest way to pick up new words. Of course, the dictionary itself probably doesn't even have half of the vocabulary I'll need, since many of the words I don't know aren't in it.

I wonder sometimes how often Japanese have problems communicating.

きゅうしょく　kyuushoku means:
休職  leave of absence from a job
求職  searching for a job
給食  school lunch
旧職  former job
九食  9 meals
九色  9 colors

かがく　kagaku means:
科学  science
化学  chemistry


I understand that it's all about context, but these aren't even the worst examples...

the Japan Times has had a series of interesting columns
at http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/language/

Quote from: listener on June 26, 2013, 08:36:54 PM
the Japan Times has had a series of interesting columns
at http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/language/

Interesting, indeed!

For about a week I have been watching anime with Japanese audio/English subs and reading the Japanese subtitle in a browser.

I've never had this amount of rapid increase of comprehension of spoken Japanese before. If I kept doing this for 6 or 7 months, I'd probably be awed at how much I could understand. I might turn on Japanese TV and watch it as if it were in English.  ???

Mainly, rather than learning tons and tons of new vocabulary, I think I'm just consolidating everything I know or barely remember and am able to hear more smoothly. This is where I get my subtitles:

http://kitsunekko.net/subtitles/japanese/

I'm glad this thread has come to life - all very interesting.  I read somewhere that Japanese is the largest Isolate (language unrelated to any other) - so good luck to anyone trying to learn it.  Although Wikipedia states that Korean is in fact the largest, and doesn't even include Japanese on its list, so maybe classifications have changed, or perhaps my memory is just rubbish.

Certain Celtic pairs also belong on the list of mutually-comprehensible languages: Welsh and Cornish, Scottish Gaelic and Irish.

I'm just beginning to learn Norwegian, as part of preparation for a cycling trip some time in the (distant) future, when my son is grown up and I'm retired - down through Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.  I asked a Norwegiophile friend what was the best lingua franca for getting around Scandinavia and he said Norwegian (well, he would, wouldn't he) - although reading past posts above suggests that perhaps Swedish would be a better bet.  Reassuring though that a Dane said he could understand Norwegian if it was spoken slowly - which will definitely be me.

Must now also include Friesland on my itinerary, to see if I can buy a cow.

DF

Quote from: DaveF on December 08, 2013, 11:46:22 PM
I read somewhere that Japanese is the largest Isolate (language unrelated to any other)

Basically, though knowing English first will help a lot (seems an almost mandatory prerequisite to me) and anyone who knows Chinese and English will have the biggest advantage.

Paul is ahead of the curve!

Quote from: DaveF on December 08, 2013, 11:46:22 PM
Must now also include Friesland on my itinerary, to see if I can buy a cow.
DF

You are aware of (West) Frisian, spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of Friesland, or Fryslân, as a separate language, aren't you? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language

Your best options for buying a Frisian cow, BTW, lie at the other side of the big pond: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holstein_Friesian_cattle

Quote from: Christo on January 25, 2014, 10:16:35 AM
You are aware of (West) Frisian, spoken by the majority of the inhabitants of Friesland, or Fryslân, as a separate language, aren't you? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language

That's an interesting topic: the dialects/languages of the Netherlands. IIRC, there are 16 of them --- 16 dialects and languages in such a tiny spot of land, amazing.  :D Are they mutually intelligible, Christo?

Frisian and English are close kin as far as languages go; not surprising when you remember that the Angles and Jutes came from Frisia and nearby areas.

From Wikipedia

The saying "As milk is to cheese, are English and Fries" describes the observed similarity between Frisian and English. One rhyme that is sometimes used to demonstrate the palpable similarity between Frisian and English is "Rye bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Fries.", which sounds not tremendously different from "Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.."

Quote from: Florestan on January 26, 2014, 07:23:18 AM
That's an interesting topic: the dialects/languages of the Netherlands. IIRC, there are 16 of them --- 16 dialects and languages in such a tiny spot of land, amazing.  :D Are they mutually intelligible, Christo?

You are right in that the diversity is bigger than in Romanian. :-) At the same time, social mobility and other modernization processes, given also the extremely small distances in Netherlands, a country just about the size of the Banat, have done much in reducing the role of dialects over the last decades. I'm a speaker of a Low Saxonian dialect myself, and I've witnessed these changes also in my original district (having left it for Amsterdam when I was 18).

Officially, apart from Frisian, only the dialect groups of Low Saxonian in the East and North and Limburgian in the South enjoy some special status. They are probably not mutually intelligible to the untrained ear - I remember vividly the complete bewilderment of a Surinam friend in Amsterdam on hearing me converse in my mother tongue with another Saxon :-) - but for me, they are. Basically, there are about five dialect groups, and all of them are under strong pressure from the standard language.

Quote from: Christo on January 27, 2014, 03:04:38 PM
You are right in that the diversity is bigger than in Romanian. :-) At the same time, social mobility and other modernization processes, given also the extremely small distances in Netherlands, a country just about the size of the Banat, have done much in reducing the role of dialects over the last decades. I'm a speaker of a Low Saxonian dialect myself, and I've witnessed these changes also in my original district (having left it for Amsterdam when I was 18).

Officially, apart from Frisian, only the dialect groups of Low Saxonian in the East and North and Limburgian in the South enjoy some special status. They are probably not mutually intelligible to the untrained ear - I remember vividly the complete bewilderment of a Surinam friend in Amsterdam on hearing me converse in my mother tongue with another Saxon :-) - but for me, they are. Basically, there are about five dialect groups, and all of them are under strong pressure from the standard language.

Yet ironically the home dialect of your Surinamese friend would be even more incomprehensible to you Saxons, since the various forms of Papiamento incorporate elements of Spanish and other languages in the Caribbean area (my closest encounter with Papiamento being the form used to amuse tourists in Aruba).

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on January 27, 2014, 06:17:34 PM
Yet ironically the home dialect of your Surinamese friend would be even more incomprehensible to you Saxons, since the various forms of Papiamento incorporate elements of Spanish and other languages in the Caribbean area (my closest encounter with Papiamento being the form used to amuse tourists in Aruba).

You're very well informed about Surinam's Sranan tongo - except that my friend didn't know it, as he'd grown up in the Netherlands (and his family had a different ethnic background; Sranan tongo would never have been that important to them). The Papiamento of these Caribbean islands is a different matter though.  :)

BTW the similiraties between English and Frisian are often exaggerated (but don't tell it to the latter! :-) and may be more a historical myth - the connection between present-day Frisian and Frisian culture of the early Middle Ages is a disputed one. Part of the similarities at least are an invention of tradition, as the creation of the modern Frisian standard and spelling in the 19th Century was based on this idea of history, and e.g. spelling was often modelled after English examples in order to create a bigger difference with standard Dutch. (E.g. Fryslân in stead of Friesland).  ::)

Quote from: DaveF on December 08, 2013, 11:46:22 PM
Reassuring though that a Dane said he could understand Norwegian if it was spoken slowly - which will definitely be me.

I recall that it was me. But I also confirmed Daidalos´(who is Swedish) assumption, that Swedish may be the best choice, if you want to make yourself understood in all Scandinavia.(See posts 27 - 36 of this thread)

Quote from: (: premont :) on February 11, 2014, 05:20:17 AM
I recall that it was me. But I also confirmed Daidalos´(who is Swedish) assumption, that Swedish may be the best choice, if you want to make yourself understood in all Scandinavia.(See posts 27 - 36 of this thread)

Agreed - and it ought to work at least passably in Finland too.

Quote from: North Star on February 11, 2014, 06:13:15 AM
Agreed - and it ought to work at least passably in Finland too.

Yes, and I also took that into consideration.

So I've been studying Japanese again for the last week or so and am trying to do it ~40 hours a week.

I don't know if it's the difficulty of the language, but this is so NOT fun that I'm thinking I give up on learning additional languages in my lifetime (other than Spanish and Portuguese). I'm studying in the funnest way possible (see picture) and it still feels like an endless grind. Of course, I know it will take months of full time study to improve, but that doesn't make me feel any better when I'd rather spend my time trying to play FF14 or something.

Japanese, although it's my favorite language, is almost as ridiculous as English in the way that things are spelled; then there is the matter of almost every word having several English meanings, so the meanings of things are unclear, and if you have a character with a dialect from a place like Osaka, you can't even get the translator to translate the words.

(http://i833.photobucket.com/albums/zz257/ibanezmonsterg/studyspace_zpsc2e00866.jpg) (http://s833.photobucket.com/user/ibanezmonsterg/media/studyspace_zpsc2e00866.jpg.html)

Great post I found from here: http://www.tofugu.com/2012/02/22/why-people-say-japanese-is-hard-to-learn-and-why-theyre-wrong/

Quotehave to mostly disagree with (the title of) this article. Of course, if the FSI says it's hard, it's hard, and they would know. I think that Japanese is one of those languages that's quick to learn once you get the hang of it, but there's a few problems:
Take Spanish, where when you learn the word "periódico". Once you know the word, and that it uses "el", then you're done.Now let's take Japanese: you can learn "shinbun" and great, now you can say "newspaper".But what if you see 新聞? Now you have to learn what seeing that means and to relate it to "shinbun".Let's say you've learned that. What if you have a piece of paper and need to write "shinbun"? Now you need to know how to write 新聞 which is a whole other challenge over recognising. And if you have a strict teacher, you'll need correct stroke order too.Now what if you see the word 新しい or 聞く? That's not "shinshii" or "bunku"- you need to know the OTHER ways of saying the same character, which is dependant on context and/or other kanji/kana around it.
So every time you learn a new (spoken) word, you feel proud of yourself that you learned something. When you learn a new kanji to use with that word, you feel proud. When you learn the kanji's on'yomi and/or other kun'yomi, you feel proud. When you learn how to write the word with its kanji, you feel proud. But all of those things put together are just one and a half challenges in Spanish: learning the word and its gender. Once you can say a Spanish word, you can instantly read and write it. (Technically if you use only kana in Japanese you can do that, but Japanese is annoying to read without Kanji and you'd look like a preschooler. Besides, Japanese people know 2000+ kanji and you'd better believe they'll use them against you).As for grammar, not conjugating verbs by person and number and not having genders and not having subjunctive is really really refreshing, but once you get beyond beginner grammar, Japanese grammar is harder than you'd think. It may be simpler than Spanish grammar objectively, but Spanish grammar is pretty similar to English, and Japanese grammar is wildly different (despite what some teachers may make you think). Being able to talk fluently without grammar mistakes in Japanese is at least as hard as with Spanish (believe me, I have learned both). Particles and collocation are a bitch, and the conjugations get fun once you learn conjunctive, conditional vs. provisional, passive (really weird), volitional, polite (masu), causative, etc. etc. (and note that in Japanese there's an entirely different theory on grammar than English-language textbooks will ever teach you). And don't even get me STARTED with keigo. In short, learning Spanish grammar is surely harder than learning Japanese if you're Chinese, but it's a different story if you're anglophone.As for pronunciation, sure it's nice that each kana is theoretically pronounced exactly one way (with two exceptions that I recall- は and を), but in practicality this is definitely not the case. The す in すき（好き） is indeed pronounced differently than the す in すむ（住む）.  端, 橋, and 箸, all はし, are pronounced differently by native speakers. Fluent, native-sounding Japanese pronunciation is about as hard to learn as the relatively insane-sounding French (again, I have learned both). Far too often do I hear a Japanese student completely butcher the language because they think all morae are pronounced exactly one way and they disregard the pitch-accent system entirely (好き sounds like "ski", not "sue key"!!!).Knowing all of this, you may ask "why do you even bother learning Japanese then?" Because it's -fun-. It's really, really interesting to me learning one of only two (I think) living languages that still ubiquitously use an ideographic script. The grammar is so foreign, and you start to think differently when you know it. And on top of that, it opens up the world of Japanese culture that is normally so secretive and closed-off.Can Japanese be hard to learn? Absolutely. Does it often get me really frustrated? Sure. Should you give up now? Definitely not. Learning Japanese is like exploring a brand new world. (And if you're American, it's listed as a "critical language", meaning great scholarship and job opportunities!)

Congratulations if you read through this whole post.

The languages that are rated at the highest level of difficulty by the US government are Mandarin (or any Chinese dialect, I assume), Arabic, Korean, and Japanese.

Trying to find opinions of people who actually know all three languages at high fluency.

Quote from: Greg on March 16, 2014, 02:22:48 PM
Great post I found from here: http://www.tofugu.com/2012/02/22/why-people-say-japanese-is-hard-to-learn-and-why-theyre-wrong/
The languages that are rated at the highest level of difficulty by the US government are Mandarin (or any Chinese dialect, I assume), Arabic, Korean, and Japanese.

Trying to find opinions of people who actually know all three languages at high fluency.

I only understand Japanese, so I cannot compare these languages, but Japanese learn Chinese writing and Chinese poetry at school, although we don't learn Chinese pronunciation. The order of subject/verb/predicate/etc. is different, and we learn how to rearrange Kanji characters so that it becomes similar to that of Japanese. We can guess the meaning of a Chinese sentence from familiar Kanji characters. (However, simplified Kanji characters are so different from Japanese Kanji that I barely recognize them.) So, one who knows Japanese may be able to learn Chinese reading/writing (if traditional Chinese characters are used) but pronunciation would be the most difficult part. (I don't know Chinese, so this is just my guess.) I have no idea about Korean.
I can understand Japanese language may be difficult. It is difficult even for Japanese. A Prime Minister once couldn't read a Kanji character correctly at his speech, and it became a news! Recently, young Japanese make many mistakes in grammar (for example, "See" is "Miru" and "can see" is "Mirareru" in Japanese, but many Japanese say "Mireru".) There is an argument that such mistakes should be accepted, because a language is alive and will/should change.
Also, we need to learn old Japanese, too, which is completely different from modern Japanese language. It was very hard for me.
I don't remember we learned Japanese intonation explicitly. But when pointed out, I can notice the difference.

This thread is very interesting. European language discussion (it is hard for me and I need to read it again) and springrite's explanation of Chinese/Mandalin were educational.

Quote from: torut on March 17, 2014, 10:28:29 PM
I can understand Japanese language may be difficult. It is difficult even for Japanese. A Prime Minister once couldn't read a Kanji character correctly at his speech, and it became a news!

Lol, I wonder which word it was. If it were part of a name, I don't see how that would be a big deal, considering Japanese names in general (how half the time the spelling is odd). If it were a normal word, that'd be pretty funny.

Quote from: torut on March 17, 2014, 10:28:29 PM
We can guess the meaning of a Chinese sentence from familiar Kanji characters. (However, simplified Kanji characters are so different from Japanese Kanji that I barely recognize them.) So, one who knows Japanese may be able to learn Chinese reading/writing (if traditional Chinese characters are used) but pronunciation would be the most difficult part. (I don't know Chinese, so this is just my guess.) I have no idea about Korean.

One time my friend went to this one website that he likes to go to that's in Chinese and wanted to see how many character meanings I understood just by knowing Kanji. I got a few meanings correct and others had different meanings in Chinese; it's also interesting to see characters that have similar readings.

Quote from: torut on March 17, 2014, 10:28:29 PM
I can understand Japanese language may be difficult. It is difficult even for Japanese. A Prime Minister once couldn't read a Kanji character correctly at his speech, and it became a news! Recently, young Japanese make many mistakes in grammar (for example, "See" is "Miru" and "can see" is "Mirareru" in Japanese, but many Japanese say "Mireru".) There is an argument that such mistakes should be accepted, because a language is alive and will/should change.

I've seen Mireru plenty before, and maybe it wouldn't be wrong to simply consider it slang?

Quote from: torut on March 17, 2014, 10:28:29 PM
Also, we need to learn old Japanese, too, which is completely different from modern Japanese language. It was very hard for me.
I don't remember we learned Japanese intonation explicitly. But when pointed out, I can notice the difference.

The difficult thing about old Japanese is the lack of definitions in Japanese->English dictionaries.

Quote from: Greg on March 18, 2014, 03:21:35 AM
Lol, I wonder which word it was. If it were part of a name, I don't see how that would be a big deal, considering Japanese names in general (how half the time the spelling is odd). If it were a normal word, that'd be pretty funny.

No, they were ordinary words like this: 怪我, 完遂, 焦眉, 順風満帆, 措置, 思惑, 低迷, 破綻, 頻繁, 踏襲, 前場, 未曾有, 有無, 詳細 Can you read them? I can read most of them correctly, but not every word.  :-[

Recent children names are completely insane. Parents assign arbitrary pronunciation to any sequence of Kanji characters. It will be nightmare if you are a teacher and need to remember the names of all the children in your class.

QuoteOne time my friend went to this one website that he likes to go to that's in Chinese and wanted to see how many character meanings I understood just by knowing Kanji. I got a few meanings correct and others had different meanings in Chinese; it's also interesting to see characters that have similar readings.

I can guess some of the meanings of this kind of Chinese poem.

  朝辞白帝彩雲間
  千里江陵一日還
  両岸猿声啼不住
  軽舟已過万重山

QuoteI've seen Mireru plenty before, and maybe it wouldn't be wrong to simply consider it slang?

Strictly speaking, it is grammatically incorrect. But I guess it will eventually become a part of the language.

QuoteThe difficult thing about old Japanese is the lack of definitions in Japanese->English dictionaries.

I don't know if there is a dictionary for archaic Japanese <-> English. This is online archaic Japanese dictionary (http://kobun.weblio.jp/), but of course you need to know modern Japanese first.  ;D (By the way, that site has good dictionaries of English<->Japanese, Chinese<->Japanese, Korean<->Japanese, and even sign language <-> Japanese!)

Quote from: torut on March 18, 2014, 12:03:19 PM
No, they were ordinary words like this: 怪我, 完遂, 焦眉, 順風満帆, 措置, 思惑, 低迷, 破綻, 頻繁, 踏襲, 前場, 未曾有, 有無, 詳細 Can you read them? I can read most of them correctly, but not every word.  :-[

I could read a couple of those words, though the way my browser displays Kanji doesn't help. Mainly tough words for me, though...

Quote from: torut on March 18, 2014, 12:03:19 PM
I don't know if there is a dictionary for archaic Japanese <-> English. This is online archaic Japanese dictionary (http://kobun.weblio.jp/), but of course you need to know modern Japanese first.  ;D (By the way, that site has good dictionaries of English<->Japanese, Chinese<->Japanese, Korean<->Japanese, and even sign language <-> Japanese!)

Ooooh, nice. Thanks for the link, looks interesting.

Quote from: Greg on November 01, 2010, 06:23:35 PM
I think the Bantu languages are pretty cool. I found a video of someone teaching you how to pronounce some of the click consonants in Xhosa.

http://www.youtube.com/v/31zzMb3U0iY&feature=related

And yes, it is very challenging!  8)

As children grow they lose the ability not just to make but to hear some phonemes. I have an Indian friend who swears two sounds she makes in her native language differ. I have a good ear but cannot tell them apart.

最重要的是我的英文很烂。

Back to focusing on tackling Japanese, but there are so many problems...

I spent a day off (Thursday) basically studying all day, but after so many hours, I got a headache and felt that it got to be counterproductive. Have been thinking of possible strategies to try out for the last few days. One of the biggest problems is the day-to-day studying. You can study all day and feel like you've gotten nowhere; it takes a long time to actually notice improvement in, say, listening or reading comprehension. I don't ever like going a day without feeling the feeling of achieving any progress towards a meaningful goal, but that's about every day when it comes to learning a language. For every handful of words you learn, you have to spend time relearning words you already learned so you don't forget, and oh yeah: if you learn a word for the first time, you won't remember it forever. You have to review it. Again and again throughout the space of years so you remember it until you die. And far more times for Japanese than a West European language because of the vast difference compared to English.

Quote from: Greg on May 25, 2014, 02:27:55 PM
Back to focusing on tackling Japanese, but there are so many problems...

I spent a day off (Thursday) basically studying all day, but after so many hours, I got a headache and felt that it got to be counterproductive. Have been thinking of possible strategies to try out for the last few days. One of the biggest problems is the day-to-day studying. You can study all day and feel like you've gotten nowhere; it takes a long time to actually notice improvement in, say, listening or reading comprehension. I don't ever like going a day without feeling the feeling of achieving any progress towards a meaningful goal, but that's about every day when it comes to learning a language. For every handful of words you learn, you have to spend time relearning words you already learned so you don't forget, and oh yeah: if you learn a word for the first time, you won't remember it forever. You have to review it. Again and again throughout the space of years so you remember it until you die. And far more times for Japanese than a West European language because of the vast difference compared to English.

In other words, you give up?

Quote from: Henk on May 26, 2014, 02:10:16 AM
In other words, you give up?

Hell no.

Right now, I'm thinking pacing myself might be a better idea, even if it takes a few more years to attain fluency. Study 4 pages of vocabulary from the dictionary each day, watch 2 episodes of anime with English subs, casually review pages of vocabulary previously learned: ~2 hours each day total. Eventually that will transform into writing more (will use lang8) and finding a Japanese person to speak with using some online service or something.

I will make sure to keep warning my friends who want to learn Japanese exactly what they would be getting into. Unless it is EXTREMELY important to them (like it is to me), it isn't worth the years of struggle- I heard somewhere that the dropout rate for learning Japanese is higher than the Navy Seals. People may study for over a year and realize that what they are getting into is way more than they imagined and quit, when for some of them, it would have been better to just learn the basics to satisfy their curiosity than waste their time.

I'm currently taking a crack at learning French through a combination of DuoLingo, MemRise, and a few other supporting apps (largely grammar apps on the phone, though Decoder French, a phonetics/pronunciation app is a godsend) and some workbooks.  At some point be digging into some French literature on Kindle when I get a stronger grounding in grammar and broaden my vocabulary a bit*, as well as joining some discussion groups and probably setting up the occasional Skype with a native speaker. (Thank you, Facebook!)  I'm about three weeks in at this point, so I'm currently focusing on getting the basics of grammar down and using DL to keep my vocabulary fresh.  I can worry about the heavier stuff later.  Also, it's given me an excuse to dig into French baroque recordings, along with songs. :)

*(According to Duolingo I'm at 283 words, but if I'm being honest probably it's closer to 100-150 that I feel comfortable with in terms of being able to translate by memory.)

In the meantime, if anyone has any plays (or movies, but plays in particular) they can suggest with English subtitles that would be available on YouTube/Netflix or at a reasonable price through Amazon I'd love to hear about them.

Quote from: Geo Dude on June 01, 2014, 02:49:38 PM
I'm currently taking a crack at learning French

Good luck with it! What other Romance languages --- if any --- are you familiar with? It might help tremendously concerning vocabulary; the grammar, though, is in a class of its own.  :)

Quote from: Geo Dude on June 01, 2014, 02:49:38 PM
I'm currently taking a crack at learning French...
In the meantime, if anyone has any plays (or movies, but plays in particular) they can suggest with English subtitles that would be available on YouTube/Netflix or at a reasonable price through Amazon I'd love to hear about them.

Florestan is correct, French grammar is what the Brits might call "fiddly," and presents challenges.  Just take it slow and don't expect too much too fast.  Or take it real fast (go there and go the 'total immersion' route which is more effective anyway than a gazillion classroom or study hours).  Movies and plays are a good idea to begin with but at some point soon - just a suggest - switch to viewing with French subtitles, so you can read what is being said, best way to link the two in your brain and become more self-reliant, even if you don't know all the words!   

Quote from: ZauberdrachenNr.7 on June 04, 2014, 05:58:44 AM
Movies and plays are a good idea to begin with but at some point soon - just a suggest - switch to viewing with French subtitles, so you can read what is being said, best way to link the two in your brain and become more self-reliant, even if you don't know all the words!

That's indeed a good suggestion.

And, of course, don't expect the spoken language to be much like the literary one. For instance, in colloquial French the literary voiture becomes bagnole.  :D

French isn't too bad at all. I took five years (from French I in 8th grade to AP French in 12th grade) and I've been there twice for a month each time. The first time I stayed with a family as an exchange student in the summer in St. Malo (not too many there speak English well). I can definitely have a conversation, but I still struggle with listening. I'm a much better speaker. It seems like there is no general consensus based on people I've talked to -- people who learn second languages are either better at speaking (as I am) or better at listening.

Quote from: EigenUser on June 04, 2014, 06:32:42 AM
French isn't too bad at all. I took five years (from French I in 8th grade to AP French in 12th grade) and I've been there twice for a month each time. The first time I stayed with a family as an exchange student in the summer in St. Malo (not too many there speak English well). I can definitely have a conversation, but I still struggle with listening.

I've studied French for 4 years, from 9th to 12th grade, but I had no background for it, because from 4th to 8th grade I had studied English and Russian and consequently the teacher confined me and other like me to the status of "beginners", as opposed to those "advanced" who had studied French instead of Russian previously. I really learned functional French while living in Grenoble for a 1-year study grant. I am able to sustain a conversation on any topic, to write a decent letter or report and, best of all, to read --- but if you gave me a grammar test I would fail it brilliantly.  :D

QuoteIt seems like there is no general consensus based on people I've talked to -- people who learn second languages are either better at speaking (as I am) or better at listening.

There is yet another category: those who are best at reading, and that's me.  :) Except English, which I can speak, write and read with equal fluency, for other languages I am best at reading: French, Italian, Spanish (Castilian), Catalan, Portuguese and Dutch fall in this category. Of these, besides French I can make myself understood in Spanish and Italian, but I have the double advantage of (1) natively speaking a Romance language and (2) being quite gifted for learning foreign languages --- and also very modest, too.  :D

Quote from: Florestan on June 04, 2014, 06:55:08 AM
There is yet another category: those who are best at reading, and that's me.  :)

Seems like this should be able to apply to everyone, since reading is always the easiest thing to do in second language, even Chinese.

Quote from: Greg on June 04, 2014, 10:00:02 AM
reading is always the easiest thing to do in second language

I agree.

I can read French ziemlich gut but ein bischen langsam. I read Candide and some Balzac and Maupassant a few years ago. Balzac was hard. Had French in school for a few years, long ago.  I am entirely self-taught in German, and have read a modest amount, including some Grimm and Heinrich Ball stories. Un peu lentement.  My accent is I am told pretty decent. But you can never tell with Germans; they seem so shocked and grateful anyone would want to learn their language they are probably over-indulgent.

My goal is to read Death in Venice and The Red and the Black in the original.

Quote from: Greg on June 04, 2014, 10:00:02 AM
Seems like this should be able to apply to everyone, since reading is always the easiest thing to do in second language, even Chinese.

Yes. Perhaps this is a result of the way we tend to learn languages, though - I wonder what would happen if foreign language classes would begin with just oral & aural immersion - obviously it would take time, but children speak their mother tongue relatively well after a few years, and adults would surely learn faster than a newborn.

Quote from: North Star on June 04, 2014, 12:31:01 PM
Yes. Perhaps this is a result of the way we tend to learn languages, though - I wonder what would happen if foreign language classes would begin with just oral & aural immersion - obviously it would take time, but children speak their mother tongue relatively well after a few years, and adults would surely learn faster than a newborn.

No. Children would learn better, and faster. There is no doubt about this at all.
It's even true of just the phonetics. As an adult you have lost the ability to produce and even hear some phonemes, and are impaired at many others.

Quote from: Greg on June 04, 2014, 10:00:02 AM
Seems like this should be able to apply to everyone, since reading is always the easiest thing to do in second language, even Chinese.

This isn't totally related, but I feel like sharing anyways.

That reminds me of one of my best friends. Last year, we had a weekly heat transfer class from 5-7:30PM. We both liked the topic and the professor, but any lecture gets boring after two and a half hours. For fun (elective), he was taking an intro Chinese class and when he got bored, he'd start practicing writing characters on worksheets from his class. By the end of the lecture he'd have lines and lines of the same few characters :laugh: . I can't imagine trying to remember the stuff he was working on. ???

Quote from: Ken B on June 04, 2014, 12:36:08 PM
No. Children would learn better, and faster. There is no doubt about this at all.
It's even true of just the phonetics. As an adult you have lost the ability to produce and even hear some phonemes, and are impaired at many others.

Take a newborn Japanese and an American who's 20 years and just started to learn Japanese. See after a year who knows more Japanese.
Anyway, my point was that we read foreign languages better than we write or speak in them because our studying of them tends to be reading books.

Quote from: Geo Dude on June 01, 2014, 02:49:38 PM
I'm currently taking a crack at learning French

Bonne chance Geo Dude, I sympathize on the grammar front. Our grammar is a really tough cookie.

Down the line or just to train your ear to everyday French, you could try French news channel like :

BFM TV : http://www.bfmtv.com/video/bfmtv/direct/ (http://www.bfmtv.com/video/bfmtv/direct/)

I-TELE : http://www.itele.fr/direct (http://www.itele.fr/direct)

Quote from: Papy Oli on June 04, 2014, 12:45:33 PM
Bonne chance Geo Dude, I sympathize on the grammar front. Our grammar is a really tough cookie.

Down the line or just to train your ear to everyday French, you could try French news channel like :

BFM TV : http://www.bfmtv.com/video/bfmtv/direct/ (http://www.bfmtv.com/video/bfmtv/direct/)

I-TELE : http://www.itele.fr/direct (http://www.itele.fr/direct)

French grammar is complicated, but it has a logic to it. The rules for verb tenses and moods, while irksome to master, are really quite logical. English suffers from the lack of a subjunctive, which has withered away over time. It's the damned gender, worse in German, that is really a pain.

(http://arnoldzwicky.s3.amazonaws.com/CHGenders.jpg)

Quote from: North Star on June 04, 2014, 01:09:21 PM
(http://arnoldzwicky.s3.amazonaws.com/CHGenders.jpg)

In orchestra in college, our conductor (jokingly, of course) embarrassed all of the male violists. We were rehearsing the Bartok "Dance Suite" and Bartok is meticulous about using correct gender for different instruments in writing out sheet music. There's a viola solo towards the end of the piece and it was marked "sola" instead of "solo". Someone (not knowing this) asked him why and he said "it's a girly instrument" or something like that.

Quote from: EigenUser on June 04, 2014, 01:24:41 PM
In orchestra in college, our conductor (jokingly, of course) embarrassed all of the male violists. We were rehearsing the Bartok "Dance Suite" and Bartok is meticulous about using correct gender for different instruments in writing out sheet music. There's a viola solo towards the end of the piece and it was marked "sola" instead of "solo". Someone (not knowing this) asked him why and he said "it's a girly instrument" or something like that.

Only logical, seeing how it's bigger and has lower range than a violin.  ::)

Quote from: EigenUser on June 04, 2014, 01:24:41 PM
In orchestra in college, our conductor (jokingly, of course) embarrassed all of the male violists. We were rehearsing the Bartok "Dance Suite" and Bartok is meticulous about using correct gender for different instruments in writing out sheet music. There's a viola solo towards the end of the piece and it was marked "sola" instead of "solo". Someone (not knowing this) asked him why and he said "it's a girly instrument" or something like that.

insert oboe joke here.

Quote from: North Star on June 04, 2014, 12:41:28 PM
Take a newborn Japanese and an American who's 20 years and just started to learn Japanese. See after a year who knows more Japanese.

Though this can be very hard to compare, since everything really depends on how much time the American would put into studying Japanese. If they studied a lot, they can learn faster; otherwise, they'll be like me and still suck after 13 years, since I've spent many years in between not studying at all.  :P

Ken might be having in mind the myth that some people promote: that you can just absorb a language just by being in the environment. Sure, you can to a certain extent, but unless you are an exception, you won't learn the language by being passive. A baby will learn much more than you will in the first 3 years. Many people that teach English in Japan never actually learn the language after being there a few years if they don't have time to study it when they get home, for example.

Quote from: North Star on June 04, 2014, 12:41:28 PM
Anyway, my point was that we read foreign languages better than we write or speak in them because our studying of them tends to be reading books.

I'm glad everyone picked up on this point so I didn't have to explain.  :D
(and the other point I didn't mention was that you have all the time in the world to look up definitions for a written word, but speech isn't quite the same, since even if you're watching something and pause it, it can be hard to understand exactly how to spell what is being said if you don't know the word in the first place).

Quote from: Ken B on June 04, 2014, 01:00:18 PM
French grammar is complicated, but it has a logic to it. The rules for verb tenses and moods, while irksome to master, are really quite logical. English suffers from the lack of a subjunctive, which has withered away over time. It's the damned gender, worse in German, that is really a pain.

Every one who has never read Mark Twain's essay on learning German, should do so at once.  I know Ken has read it, since he was using a sig line that quoted from it.
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

Hebrew is another language that is complicated at first sight, since it's based on a totally different grammar system, in a totally different alphabet, and the inclusion, exclusion of one letter can completely change the meaning of a word.  Or even worse, one vowel, since in classical Hebrew there's no indication of vowels. 

Quote from: Greg on June 04, 2014, 06:52:18 PM
Though this can be very hard to compare, since everything really depends on how much time the American would put into studying Japanese. If they studied a lot, they can learn faster; otherwise, they'll be like me and still suck after 13 years, since I've spent many years in between not studying at all.  :P

Ken might be having in mind the myth that some people promote: that you can just absorb a language just by being in the environment. Sure, you can to a certain extent, but unless you are an exception, you won't learn the language by being passive. A baby will learn much more than you will in the first 3 years. Many people that teach English in Japan never actually learn the language after being there a few years if they don't have time to study it when they get home, for example.

Well sure, after three years. But that was not what I was talking about. And the baby's full-time job is to learn it's mother tongue. If you moved to Japan and did practically nothing else than study Japanese, you'd learn faster, too.

QuoteI'm glad everyone picked up on this point so I didn't have to explain.  :D
(and the other point I didn't mention was that you have all the time in the world to look up definitions for a written word, but speech isn't quite the same, since even if you're watching something and pause it, it can be hard to understand exactly how to spell what is being said if you don't know the word in the first place).

My point was directly related to your other point - since we spend most of our time studying languages in a way where we constantly check a dictionary, we grow accustomed to needing to check the dictionary whenever we hear a new word, or just aren't sure what the word meant. If we studied in a different way, our brains might be better at filling the occasional blanks and not letting them bother.

Quote from: North Star on June 04, 2014, 01:09:21 PM
(http://arnoldzwicky.s3.amazonaws.com/CHGenders.jpg)

While working on my (unfinished) PhD at the Technical University of Eindhoven, I took a course in Dutch. Now, the article in Dutch has two forms: het and de, but there is no logic about them, like one being male and other female; one must learn each noun with the corresponding article by heart. I asked one of the teachers: "If this is so, why don't you people simplify it and keep just one of them?" She replied quite vexed: "We won't change our language for the sake of foreigners!" To which I replied: "Oh, but it's not for my sake at all! In a few years I'll be away from The Netherlands. I was thinking of your poor kids who must learn those damned hets and des without knowing why one or another!" Her jaw dropped instantly and she changed the topic.  ;D

Quote from: Florestan on June 05, 2014, 01:40:08 AM
While working on my (unfinished) PhD at the Technical University of Eindhoven, I took a course in Dutch. Now, the article in Dutch has two forms: het and de, but there is no logic about them, like one being male and other female; one must learn each noun with the corresponding article by heart. I asked one of the teachers: "If this is so, why don't you people simplify it and keep just one of them?" She replied quite vexed: "We won't change our language for the sake of foreigners!" To which I replied: "Oh, but it's not for my sake at all! In a few years I'll be away from The Netherlands. I was thinking of your poor kids who must learn those damned hets and des without knowing why one or another!" Her jaw dropped instantly and she changed the topic.  ;D

That is a stupid feature to have in a language, for sure.

Quote from: North Star on June 05, 2014, 02:21:19 AM
That is a stupid feature to have in a language, for sure.

Woo hoo! English has CRAZY spelling but at least it (almost) does not have FRICKIN' GENDERS.

Quote from: Ken B on June 05, 2014, 08:08:31 AM
Woo hoo! English has CRAZY spelling but at least it (almost) does not have FRICKIN' GENDERS.

Finnish has the best spelling by far. apart from ng, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.

Quote from: Ken B on June 05, 2014, 08:08:31 AM
Woo hoo! English has CRAZY spelling

Sure does. ;D

Quote from: North Star on June 05, 2014, 08:11:05 AM
Finnish has the best spelling by far. apart from ng, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.

And Spanish and a few other Romance languages come quite close. The only things you can get wrong with Spanish are confusing if a word is spelled with an c or s in front of a vowel or if there is a silent h in front of a vowel. Oh yeah, and Korean pretty much spells words exactly how they are sounded out.

Something tells me there are no spelling bees for Spanish, Finnish or Korean speakers (probably add to that Portuguese, Italian and several other languages).  ;D

No spelling bees indeed. I haven't really studied Spanish, let alone the others, but the spelling vs. pronunciation relationship doesn't seem quite as straightforward as with Finnish.

Quote from: North Star on June 05, 2014, 08:11:05 AM
Finnish has the best spelling by far. apart from ng, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.

Romanian too has a very phonetic spelling: except for x in some words, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.  :)

Quote from: Florestan on June 05, 2014, 09:19:27 AM
Romanian too has a very phonetic spelling: except for x in some words, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.  :)

Greek as well; with the rare exception of two specific diphthongs in some very isolated cases.

hmmm... I'm a bit curious how good other natively English speaking countries are at foreign languages... namely, the UK countries, Australia and Canada.

Quote from: Greg on June 05, 2014, 10:07:58 AM
hmmm... I'm a bit curious how good other natively English speaking countries are at foreign languages... namely, the UK countries, Australia and Canada.

1. Canada is best. This is not a claim of lingustic proficiency. It is true on any match-up of admirable or desirable traits, with any countries.  8)
2. All three are poor. Canada is officially bilingual; but isn't remotely in fact. Most educated Canadians have a little French. Australians of course barely speak English.  >:D

Quote from: Ken B on June 05, 2014, 11:34:14 AM
1. Canada is best. This is not a claim of lingustic proficiency. It is true on any match-up of admirable or desirable traits, with any countries.  8)
2. All three are poor. Canada is officially bilingual; but isn't remotely in fact. Most educated Canadians have a little French. Australians of course barely speak English.  >:D

And spending so much time in school for spelling and reading English doesn't exactly help create time for study of other languages... not that that would be the whole reason why, but it's an aspect that doesn't help at all.

Quote from: Florestan on June 04, 2014, 05:27:36 AM
Good luck with it! What other Romance languages --- if any --- are you familiar with? It might help tremendously concerning vocabulary; the grammar, though, is in a class of its own.  :)

I took two years of Latin in high school and a year or so of Spanish in grade school (and Spanish is a fairly common spoken language 'round these parts), but I'd be lying if I said that I'm "familiar" with either; my only language is English.  On the other hand, the (very limited) experience with Spanish has helped with things like familiarity with the concept of gendered nouns.  It doesn't help when I see a similar word and tend to shift into Spanish pronunciation, though. :P

Quote from: ZauberdrachenNr.7 on June 04, 2014, 05:58:44 AM
Florestan is correct, French grammar is what the Brits might call "fiddly," and presents challenges.  Just take it slow and don't expect too much too fast.  Or take it real fast (go there and go the 'total immersion' route which is more effective anyway than a gazillion classroom or study hours).  Movies and plays are a good idea to begin with but at some point soon - just a suggest - switch to viewing with French subtitles, so you can read what is being said, best way to link the two in your brain and become more self-reliant, even if you don't know all the words!

The issue--at this point at least--isn't French grammar itself, per se, it's that DuoLingo takes a largely hands-off approach to grammar.  This is great for getting straight into sentence building and vocabulary, and keeping people from getting discouraged too easily by "boring" lessons, but it doesn't work for those like me who lack a natural intuition for grammar when it comes to more advanced material.  I could try to plow through and hope to develop an intuition while getting to the "better stuff", but I made that same mistake with mathematics in the past, and it didn't end well.  So, I'll focus on the grammar books. :)

As for the recorded plays:  Yes, my ideal would be to watch it once with English sub-titles, then watch it with French sub-titles and keep an English translation in book form for occasional reference.  Unfortunately, finding any plays with foreign language subtitles that I can order/stream has been difficult.

Quote from: Jeffrey Smith on June 04, 2014, 07:31:37 PM
Every one who has never read Mark Twain's essay on learning German, should do so at once.  I know Ken has read it, since he was using a sig line that quoted from it.
http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

Brilliant!

Quote from: North Star on June 05, 2014, 02:21:19 AM
That is a stupid feature to have in a language, for sure.

Of course, it is. As is the often highly artificial distinction between 'male' and 'female' forms in Indo-European languages to your 'Uralic' ears. Isn't it?  ;)

Quote from: Christo on December 14, 2014, 03:24:24 AMOf course, it is. As is the often highly artificial distinction between 'male' and 'female' forms in Indo-European languages to your 'Uralic' ears. Isn't it?  ;)

8)
(http://www.socomic.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ch140226.gif)

Is there anything more comforting and satisfying than a clean poop where you don't need to wipe? It's nice and smooth, like nature intended. The Japanese, in all their wisdom, have a word for this - 快便 kaiben, defined as "pleasantly smooth defecation." We should all strive for more kaiben.

But almost every civilized language has genders, even the romance languages (but confusingly only two).
Contrary to Twain, the gender assignments are not totally arbitrary. E.g. it is perfectly regular that Mädchen (girl) is grammatical neutral because all diminutives are neutral (like in Ancient Greek, I think, whereas in Latin and most romance languages they tend to keep the original gender, I guess), so there is a perfectly simple (and to my knowledge exceptionless) rule. And the diminutives are easy to spot by the "-chen" or "-lein" suffixes.

What's even better is that while mismatching the gender of an article and the noun will usually mark you as a foreigner it will only rarely contribute to serious misunderstandings. Although if you say "die Mädchen" and the context is not obvious this would mean "the girls" (plural), not the girl. (The case is confusing because a diminutive form became the standard, "Maid" exists and is properly feminine but rather archaic and restricted to fairy tales, Wagner ("Rüste dein Ross, reisige Maid") etc.

In any case, it might suck to learn to proper genders but the big exception here is English, not German. And of course English nouns *do* have genders, it only shows less frequently, but e.g. when you use personal or possesive pronouns, and most things have their "natural" genders. That ships and nation states are usually feminine can be confusing (in German the former usually are, but not the latter).

Native language: German

Foreign languages:

English fluent, I have given presentations and published papers in English, although I have an accent, of course and still make some mistakes. I can read stuff like e.g. Dickens or Poe without problems.

In school I also learned Latin, Ancient Greek and for one year: Russian. I never got very far with the latter, I can still decipher the kyrillic but even this is more deciphering than reading.
In Latin, I can read grammatically easy stuff, like e.g. St Thomas Aquinas fairly fluently but I'd struggle a lot with poetry and also forgot lots of vocab. Even worse in Greek (mainly because lack of vocab, straightforward prose like e.g. Herodotus should not be too hard otherwise) but even there I can still spot check the original in a bilingual edition and I understand some words and simple headlines in modern Greek.

I learned Spanish for about two or three years in my mid-twenties and could read newspapers and do small talk, but I have not really practiced since and never spent time in a hispanic country, so I'd probably struggle even with reading beyond simplified beginner's texts and can't really speak more than basic stuff. I can read a little French and Italian, too, but never studied these languages and cannot speak more than the most basic things (I had to some years ago when a hotel receptionist refused to speak anything but French). I always plan to get some better knowledge of at least one of them because it would not be so much trouble but I probably should rather refresh Spanish first.

I'd still like to learn Russian (or another slavic language) someday but not sure if I'll ever find the time and energy for it. The grammar is just damned hard...

Native language: Spanish

Learning: Portuguese and German

Would you recommend some German videos on tube?

Quote from: Florestan on June 05, 2014, 09:19:27 AM
Romanian too has a very phonetic spelling: except for x in some words, everything is always pronounced exactly as written.  :)

Interesting that Romanian is considered significantly easier for an English speaker to learn than other Eastern European languages

(https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/fsi_language_difficulty_map.png?w=750)

Quote from: bwv 1080 on December 06, 2017, 10:56:57 AM
Interesting that Romanian is considered significantly easier for an English speaker to learn than other Eastern European languages

(https://laughingsquid.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/fsi_language_difficulty_map.png?w=750)

Romanian is a Romance language so it's not strange that it should be in the same category as other Romance languages.

Quote from: North Star on December 06, 2017, 11:03:04 AM
Romanian is a Romance language so it's not strange that it should be in the same category as other Romance languages.

I guess we can all thank Trajan

Interesting to see that Welsh, Basque and Brittany are unclassified languages, and Catalan doesnt even exist on their map.  Biased foreign service institute ???

Quote from: Spineur on December 06, 2017, 11:25:02 AM
Interesting to see that Welsh, Basque and Brittany are unclassified languages, and Catalan doesnt even exist on their map.  Biased foreign service institute ???

They are diplomats, not anthropologists

I mostly watch English language videos on youtube, so sorry I cannot recommend any in German. But there are quite a few about learning German, usually adressed to speakers of English.

There is also a nice app/program (I am only familiar with the PC/web version as I do not have a smartphone) called duolingo. It's just for the basics but it is fun. I dabbled with Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Greek in the last year with this tool. Problem is to get the energy and time for what should follow or what one needs for backup in grammar because duolingo is to gamified to get a real grip on grammar...

Interesting that according to the map no European language is in the bright yellow category, German is the only one in the dark yellow, Icelandic is MUCH harder than the other Scandinavian languages (I would still have expected it to be easier than the Slavic ones or Turkish) and that Turkish is considered much easier than Arabic (I have no clue about either, I guess the writing is a big additional stumbling block in Arabic) I should also have thought that Dutch was easier for an English speaker than Swedish or Portuguese.

Catalan: red
Welsh: at least green or maybe light blue
Basque: at least dark blue or supposedly harder than that

North Africa is blue, so Arabic should be among the hardest for native English speakers. I second that.
My son is learning Finnish, supposed to be difficult.
This year I am concentrating on Japanese.
The problem for those who think in English are the constructions of different languages, those with verbs at the end such as German and Japanese. Arabic has them at the beginning. Inflections take some time getting used to rather than relying on the place of a word in a sentence. Clauses are such in Japanese that one has to think backwards. Google Translate has picked up on that and reverses word order but not all the time.

Because people learn the native language automatically, oddities of one's own language do not prepare one well for those of other languages because they are not made explicit. (English might be particularly bad as preparation for learning foreign languages because it is mostly very simple in grammar and hard in non-transferable things like grapheme-phoneme correspondence and idiomatic phrases. It is really pretty bad as an international lingua franca but history does not care.)

The best thing is probably to grow up multilingually (but again as a small child language learning works differently) and start learning foreign languages as early as possible. I guess some pronunciations will still always be very hard (especially for adult learners).

I never tried a non-Indoeuropean language with a very different structure and I guess that this can be really hard, maybe even harder if one already has knowledge of a bunch of similar languages (like English, French, German or so) and might have even more problems to wrap one's mind around totally different patterns. Vocab is also much harder, of course, than with fairly closely related languages.
Overall the learning times in the map seems quite optimistic and only apply to gifted people and/or total immersion in the foreign language + daily classes or so.

Quote from: North Star on December 06, 2017, 11:03:04 AM
Romanian is a Romance language so it's not strange that it should be in the same category as other Romance languages.

The funny thing is that, while for a Romanian is rather easy to learn other Romance languages, especially if s/he has native talent for and keen interest in that (like yours truly, for instance: I can understand 75% of spoken Italian / Spanish / Portuguese / Catalan and close to 100% when reading it, without any formal training whatsoever; I've studied only French), the reverse is not automatically true: Frenchmen or Spaniards have difficulty understanding Romanian without studying it. Of all the Romance languages, though, the closest to Romanian is Italian, followed by Catalan --- of all the Romance people I've met, the ones who were most able to understand something at first hear were from Southern Italy. 

Quote from: Florestan on December 07, 2017, 01:36:19 AM
The funny thing is that, while for a Romanian is rather easy to learn other Romance languages, especially if s/he has native talent for and keen interest in that (like yours truly, for instance: I can understand 75% of spoken Italian / Spanish / Portuguese / Catalan and close to 100% when reading it, without any formal training whatsoever; I've studied only French), the reverse is not automatically true: Frenchmen or Spaniards have difficulty understanding Romanian without studying it. Of all the Romance languages, though, the closest to Romanian is Italian, followed by Catalan --- of all the Romance people I've met, the ones who were most able to understand something at first hear were from Southern Italy.

Romanians in my circle of acquaintance used to read Corriere della Sera without blinking an eye. It was an effort for me to learn Italian, despite my background, having heard dialect spoken by my grandparents and my parents to them from a young age.  They also seem to be at ease in Latin.

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on December 07, 2017, 03:38:49 AM
Romanians in my circle of acquaintance used to read Corriere della Sera without blinking an eye.

Well, Corriere della Sera translates in Romanian as Curierul de Seară.

I just took a look at their website and picked this news:

Roma, esplode bomba davanti alla caserma dei carabinieri a San Giovanni.

Romanian translation: Roma, bombă explodată în faţa cazărmii carabinierilor la San Giovanni.

Latin: in patria nostra multe silvae sunt. Romanian: în patria noastră multe păduri sunt. The apparently dissonant word "păduri" (forests) is actually derived from another (vulgar) Latin word, padule.  :)

Quote from: Florestan on December 07, 2017, 03:52:55 AM
Well, Corriere della Sera translates in Romanian as Curierul de Seară.
I just took a look at their website and picked this news:
Roma, esplode bomba davanti alla caserma dei carabinieri a San Giovanni.
Romanian translation: Roma, bombă explodată în faţa cazărmii carabinierilor la San Giovanni.

Will be interesting to know qui a fatto questo. Did not hear about it on CNN.

Quote from: zamyrabyrd on December 07, 2017, 04:00:08 AM
Will be interesting to know qui a fatto questo. Did not hear about it on CNN.

L'attentato la mattina di giovedì, intorno alle 5.30 in via Britannia. Nessun ferito. Movente oscuro. Nella stessa caserma un altro attentato 30 anni fa. La procura indaga per terrorismo a carico di ignoti.

Quote from: Florestan on December 07, 2017, 03:52:55 AM
Roma, esplode bomba davanti alla caserma dei carabinieri a San Giovanni.

Romanian translation: Roma, bombă explodată în faţa cazărmii carabinierilor la San Giovanni.

Español: Roma, explota bomba frente al cuartel de los carabineros en San Giovanni.

$:)

Some fake polyglots on Youtube.

A few (apparently small) things about Dutch grammar which I cannot quite suss out on my own.

Should be plenty of Dutch people here to help with that.


Finishing up a game tomorrow (visual novel) entirely in Japanese, and am about to start a collection of short stories which haven't been translated into English. Feeling some progress, for sure, though unfortunately the whole learning process is so slow that you'll never get quick ecstatic jolts from it unless you have photographic memory or something. This language by itself takes as long to learn as 4 or 5 of the easier European languages, after all.

Quote from: greg on November 07, 2021, 09:11:31 PM
Should be plenty of Dutch people here to help with that.


Finishing up a game tomorrow (visual novel) entirely in Japanese, and am about to start a collection of short stories which haven't been translated into English. Feeling some progress, for sure, though unfortunately the whole learning process is so slow that you'll never get quick ecstatic jolts from it unless you have photographic memory or something. This language by itself takes as long to learn as 4 or 5 of the easier European languages, after all.

Yep, it's a mighty long haul.

I know that the Russian and Cyrillic alphabets were largely influenced by Greek letters. Any Greek influences on the nouns, grammars and others in the Russian language? I see many Russian people in Greece.

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on November 10, 2021, 09:06:53 AM
Any Greek influences on the nouns, grammars and others in the Russian language?

Not a lot. The most obvious influence is in personal names - a lot of common Russian names are of Greek origin (Sergei, Elena, Fyodor and so on).

Otherwise, there's some hidden Greek influence via calques (loan translations), which came in mostly via Old Church Slavic, and is mostly manifested in religious content. Example: "theology" is translated as bogosloviye, which is a literal translation of the Greek original ("word of God").

They are not closely related languages. Greek belongs to the "Kentum" branch (like all Western European languages) whereas all Slavic languages belong to the "Satem" branch (like all or most of the Indopersian languages) of Indoeuropean languages. Greek is not really close to any other modern language, I believe, the closest major language was Latin.
Russian has no articles, whereas Greek does, Russian has verbal aspects in addition to tenses whereas in Greek aspects are expressed by tense (at least in classical Greek but I am quite sure that it is the same in modern). The cases and case endings are also rather different; some commonality in the verb conjugation is probably just common IE heritage.

Cyril and Method were Greek missionaries, so naturally they used their Greek alphabet as a basis for their alphabet that eventually became the modern kyrillic.

Have fun:

https://www.thisworddoesnotexist.com/?ref=producthunt

Quote from: Jo498 on November 10, 2021, 09:54:29 AM
They are not closely related languages. Greek belongs to the "Kentum" branch (like all Western European languages) whereas all Slavic languages belong to the "Satem" branch (like all or most of the Indopersian languages) of Indoeuropean languages. Greek is not really close to any other modern language, I believe, the closest major language was Latin.
Russian has no articles, whereas Greek does, Russian has verbal aspects in addition to tenses whereas in Greek aspects are expressed by tense (at least in classical Greek but I am quite sure that it is the same in modern). The cases and case endings are also rather different; some commonality in the verb conjugation is probably just common IE heritage.

Cyril and Method were Greek missionaries, so naturally they used their Greek alphabet as a basis for their alphabet that eventually became the modern kyrillic.

Quite interesting that there are no articles in Russian.  How would someone then differentiate meaning between, for example, "Give me a book" vs. "Give me the book"?  I did find this website when I googled about articles:  http://mylanguages.org/russian_articles.php

PD

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on November 11, 2021, 05:23:05 AM
Quite interesting that there are no articles in Russian.  How would someone then differentiate meaning between, for example, "Give me a book" vs. "Give me the book"?  I did find this website when I googled about articles:  http://mylanguages.org/russian_articles.php

PD

I understand what you say. But often the usage of article is based on tradition, rather than rationality or logics- ie. The sun, dollar, the sky, the president. English speaking people believe that their usage of articles, words and grammars are rational, structural and logical. But often they are based on if it sounds right or not.

As for your question, they say give me some book(s) or give me that book.

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on November 11, 2021, 05:39:27 AM
I understand what you say. But often the usage of article is based on tradition, rather than rationality or logics- ie. The sun, dollar, the sky, the president. English speaking people believe that their usage of articles, words and grammars are rational, structural and logical. But often they are based on if it sounds right or not.

Oh, I'm not at all trying to imply that there's only one way to say something (or "right way").  I'm just curious as to language structure/meanings/cultural ways of viewing things (which change over times too)...all that goes into why a language is the way it is...including things like geography, history, etc.  For example, several years ago I poked my big toe in the water as to how Finnish was structured--which made my head swim; I'd still love to learn it though--along with a bunch of other languages.  :)

PD

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on November 11, 2021, 05:23:05 AM
Quite interesting that there are no articles in Russian.  How would someone then differentiate meaning between, for example, "Give me a book" vs. "Give me the book"?  I did find this website when I googled about articles:  http://mylanguages.org/russian_articles.php

PD

Well, you could probably say something like "give me some book" or "give me that book". There are quite a few languages where articles are not a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)

QuoteArticles are found in many Indo-European languages, Semitic languages (only the definite article), and Polynesian languages; however, they are formally absent from many of the world's major languages including: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, many Turkic languages (incl. Tatar, Bashkir, Tuvan and Chuvash), many Uralic languages (incl. Finnic[a] and Saami languages), Indonesian, Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Tamil, the Baltic languages, the majority of Slavic languages, the Bantu languages (incl. Swahili) and Yoruba. In some languages that do have articles, such as some North Caucasian languages, the use of articles is optional; however, in others like English and German it is mandatory in all cases.

Quote from: North Star on November 11, 2021, 07:26:41 AM
Well, you could probably say something like "give me some book" or "give me that book". There are quite a few languages where articles are not a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)

True!  And thanks for that info from Wiki.   :)

And that would save a lot of headache in terms of having to learn whether or not a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter (like in German for example).

PD

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on November 11, 2021, 08:23:46 AM
True!  And thanks for that info from Wiki.   :)

And that would save a lot of headache in terms of having to learn whether or not a noun is masculine, feminine or neuter (like in German for example).

PD

There are three genders in Russian, but, no, one needn't worry about corresponding articles 8)

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 11, 2021, 08:25:48 AM
There are three genders in Russian, but, no, one needn't worry about corresponding articles 8)

Interesting!  Thanks for the info Karl.  :)  And that's what I get for speaking too soon before digging further! lol  :-[Did you ever study Russian?  I did find this:  https://russianlessononline.com/gender-in-russian-language/

Come to think of it, isn't your partner/wife originally from Russia?

PD

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on November 11, 2021, 08:43:32 AM
Interesting!  Thanks for the info Karl.  :)  And that's what I get for speaking too soon before digging further! lol  :-[Did you ever study Russian?  I did find this:  https://russianlessononline.com/gender-in-russian-language/

Come to think of it, isn't your partner/wife originally from Russia?

PD

She is indeed a Petersburger. Yes, I studied Russian while in Tallinn & St Pete.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 11, 2021, 08:48:46 AM
She is indeed a Petersburger. Yes, I studied Russian while in Tallinn & St Pete.

Neat!  Did you meet her in St. Pete.?

PD

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on November 11, 2021, 09:01:16 AM
Neat!  Did you meet her in St. Pete.?

PD

I did, indeed.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 11, 2021, 09:36:00 AM
I did, indeed.

Sweet!  :)  Happy for you two.

PD

It was very romantic. we happened to be at the train station at the same time.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on November 11, 2021, 10:42:19 AM
It was very romantic. we happened to be at the train station at the same time.

So, did somebody decide to take a different train?  Or waiting at the same platform?  :)

PD

Russian does have demonstrative pronomina, like Latin; all romance language got their articles from shortened/modified demonstratives ("this", roughly "ille/illa" became "le", "el" (il/lo in Italian) and "la")
So you can say (my Russian is very sketchy) "daite mne knigu" "give me (a/the) book" or "daite mne etu knigu" (give me that book); and there is also a difference between this (here) and that one (over there).

And despite missing articles there are more forms/endings to learn than in German, I am afraid. Russian even distinguishes gender in some verb forms (and not in participles where it is common), something I have not encountered before. E.g. "he spoke" "on govoril" she spoke "ona govorila"

I can't measure the difficulty of German but Russian is IMO about as hard as Latin, probably harder, and considerably harder than e.g. French, Spanish, Italian. Unless you already speak a Slavic language, they are apparently all rather similar.

Quote from: Jo498 on November 11, 2021, 11:43:35 AM
Russian does have demonstrative pronomina, like Latin; all romance language got their articles from shortened/modified demonstratives ("this", roughly "ille/illa" became "le", "el" (il/lo in Italian) and "la")
So you can say (my Russian is very sketchy) "daite mne knigu" "give me (a/the) book" or "daite mne etu knigu" (give me that book); and there is also a difference between this (here) and that one (over there).

And despite missing articles there are more forms/endings to learn than in German, I am afraid. Russian even distinguishes gender in some verb forms (and not in participles where it is common), something I have not encountered before. E.g. "he spoke" "on govoril" she spoke "ona govorila"

I can't measure the difficulty of German but Russian is IMO about as hard as Latin, probably harder, and considerably harder than e.g. French, Spanish, Italian. Unless you already speak a Slavic language, they are apparently all rather similar.

Quite interesting regarding the verbs.  Thank you so much for sharing that Jo!  Quite enlightening.

PD

Quote from: Jo498 on November 11, 2021, 11:43:35 AM
I can't measure the difficulty of German but Russian is IMO about as hard as Latin, probably harder, and considerably harder than e.g. French, Spanish, Italian. Unless you already speak a Slavic language, they are apparently all rather similar.

The US Army's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, has a ranking of the relative difficulty of languages for native English speakers. Slavic languages are in Category 4 out of 5 (with 5 being the hardest). You can find the ranking here:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/language-difficulty-map/

Quote from: Archaic Torso of Apollo on November 11, 2021, 12:14:43 PM
The US Army's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, has a ranking of the relative difficulty of languages for native English speakers. Slavic languages are in Category 4 out of 5 (with 5 being the hardest). You can find the ranking here:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/language-difficulty-map/

I wonder what speaking proficiency means. (In the definition of the easy ones.)

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on November 11, 2021, 06:05:37 AM
Oh, I'm not at all trying to imply that there's only one way to say something (or "right way").

Yes, I see that! It is a nice question for good discussion. Have a great weekend!

Quote from: Archaic Torso of Apollo on November 11, 2021, 12:14:43 PM
The US Army's Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA, has a ranking of the relative difficulty of languages for native English speakers. Slavic languages are in Category 4 out of 5 (with 5 being the hardest). You can find the ranking here:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/language-difficulty-map/

I think we had an older version of this map earlier in the forum. There are some interesting things in it, e.g. that German is the only category #2 language in Europe and that there is no #3 at all in Europe. I am also a bit surprised that Icelandic is considered so much harder than the other Scandinavian languages. I don't know any of them and they seem harder/further from German than one might expect (at least to understand and speak, one might get pretty fast to reading comprehension like with Dutch) and Icelandic is the closest to old Norse, presumeably retaining stuff that got simplified/lost in the others. But as hard as Russian or Turkish?

I just looked it up and it confirmed what I had suspected or maybe read a long time ago. Proto Indoeuropean didn't have articles (overall articles are not that common) and definite articles were derived from demonstratives (and usually retain this function to some extent). Interestingly, the first documented language with articles is ancient Greek but the (far later) earliest sources for Germanic languages (Gothic bible) also has definite articles.

In German there is a regional difference wrt definite articles with proper names. It's frowned upon as wrong or at least dialectal by northern Germans but very common (although not obligatory) in the southern and western parts (and not only in dialects), so I think this is just typical North German snobbery. Classical Greek also often uses definite articles with proper names, apparently Portuguese as well but AFAIK most other romance languages and English do not.

Quote from: Dry Brett Kavanaugh on November 11, 2021, 06:22:53 PM
Yes, I see that! It is a nice question for good discussion. Have a great weekend!

Thanks, you too!

Quote from: Jo498 on November 12, 2021, 12:37:23 AM
I think we had an older version of this map earlier in the forum. There are some interesting things in it, e.g. that German is the only category #2 language in Europe and that there is no #3 at all in Europe. I am also a bit surprised that Icelandic is considered so much harder than the other Scandinavian languages. I don't know any of them and they seem harder/further from German than one might expect (at least to understand and speak, one might get pretty fast to reading comprehension like with Dutch) and Icelandic is the closest to old Norse, presumeably retaining stuff that got simplified/lost in the others. But as hard as Russian or Turkish?

I just looked it up and it confirmed what I had suspected or maybe read a long time ago. Proto Indoeuropean didn't have articles (overall articles are not that common) and definite articles were derived from demonstratives (and usually retain this function to some extent). Interestingly, the first documented language with articles is ancient Greek but the (far later) earliest sources for Germanic languages (Gothic bible) also has definite articles.

In German there is a regional difference wrt definite articles with proper names. It's frowned upon as wrong or at least dialectal by northern Germans but very common (although not obligatory) in the southern and western parts (and not only in dialects), so I think this is just typical North German snobbery. Classical Greek also often uses definite articles with proper names, apparently Portuguese as well but AFAIK most other romance languages and English do not.

That's quite interesting about the use of definite articles with proper names; I hadn't heard of that before now.  I ran across a discussion of it just now on a German language website.

PD

Quote from: Jo498 on November 12, 2021, 12:37:23 AM
I am also a bit surprised that Icelandic is considered so much harder than the other Scandinavian languages. I don't know any of them and they seem harder/further from German than one might expect (at least to understand and speak, one might get pretty fast to reading comprehension like with Dutch) and Icelandic is the closest to old Norse, presumeably retaining stuff that got simplified/lost in the others. But as hard as Russian or Turkish?

Yes, Icelandic is very archaic and still preserves those Old Norse forms. There's also a lot of purism, in the sense that they prefer to make up words from native roots rather than borrow them.

Otherwise, Scandinavian languages are considered among the easiest for Anglophones (particularly Norwegian for some reason). It doesn't surprise me that Afrikaans is considered the easiest. It's basically simplified Dutch; its verb conjugations are as simple as English ones.

Quote from: Pohjolas Daughter on November 12, 2021, 05:31:43 AM
That's quite interesting about the use of definite articles with proper names; I hadn't heard of that before now.  I ran across a discussion of it just now on a German language website.

It is probably safer to avoid articles with proper names in (formal) writing in German. "Die Merkel tritt zurück" would not be a headline and does look informal. No article is clearly preferable here.
But speaking it is different and in my usage I'd almost always use articles with proper names in everyday speech, especially when referring to someone by their first name. And it does sound slightly stilted for me if people refer to others by first name without article! Which is just being used to the article but it also shows its demonstrative function.
I think one usually needs the definite article if proper names are used with a modifier, e.g. an adjective, but there are also exceptions. It's more complex than I thought and I am not even sure there are hard rules for all cases.

Most intriguing.

In Spanish, the use of articles with proper names is considered "vulgar" in most countries except (according to the Real Academia) in Chile or among Spanish speakers whose first language is Catalan (as in Catalan —a language I do not speak but understand quite well— it is common to use articles with proper names).

Planning to learn Portuguese, German, French, Nahuatl.  8)