Language Learners

Started by greg, October 14, 2010, 02:22:44 PM

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Archaic Torso of Apollo

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
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

Tapio Dimitriyevich Shostakovich

#21
Dutch:German
I speak german. In some situations I can understand dutch better than the Schwitzerdütsch (German spoken by the Swiss).

greg

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: .

Superhorn

   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.

greg

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)


Superhorn

  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.

greg

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

premont

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.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

greg

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) ?

premont

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.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Daidalos

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?
A legible handwriting is sign of a lack of inspiration.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

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?
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

Daidalos

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.
A legible handwriting is sign of a lack of inspiration.

abidoful

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.

premont

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.
γνῶθι σεαυτόν

karlhenning

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?

Daidalos

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 (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.
A legible handwriting is sign of a lack of inspiration.

Florestan

Doamnelor şi domnilor, în numele poporului român şi al limbii române, vă doresc vouă ceea ce îmi doresc şi mie!  8)
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

greg

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

Florestan

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

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini