:smug: Languajes

[errrzarrr]

Hey! Let's talk about languajes. Tell us your first languaje and a foreing languaje you talk, if you have.

Let's go deeper. Which are the pro's and con's of your languaje. Are you OK with it? What you think will happen with those languajes you talk in a near future? And, mainly, Let's talk about people communicating with foreingers for bussines/pleasure or whatever. There are a lot of languajes in the world and the world is globalizing(?). There are a LOT of alphabets out there too. We western people have almost everybody the same latin alphabet, but russians, chinnese, japanese have another completely different system. So it is harder to learn those languajes or they learn our languajes. There are even characters on spanish that there arent in English (like ñ, eñe) or the french and catalans have the Ç that we dont have. Communication in the future should be easier and functional.
Let's talk about Esperanto too. Does anyone speaks speranto here?

______________________

I will start first: My main languaje is Spanish and I learn learned English as a foreing lang. Spanish is a lot more expressive and communicative than english. If you speak spanish you can understand like the 85% of Italian/portuguese/catalan and Galego without even studied it and like 50% of french if you have some imagination. Those phrases and names in Latin are easier to undestand too. The drawback is there are a LOT of grammar rules, conjugation of verbs, accentuation, tilde.

English is easier to learn, at least the basics. But sometimes it is trivial.

Now ur turn. :P



(If this thread does not belong to this section, move it please; anyway, I think here is the best place)

[nightfire]

Mother tongue - Lithuanian, proudly one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world... And bearing many similarities to ancient Sanskrit. Foreign languages: English, French, Russian and a bit of German. English is easy (except the accent), French is beautiful and playful, Russian is quite easy and versatile, German is easy technically, but one of the least attractive languages I have used. Esperanto was/is an interesting experiment, but I don't see its viability, especially since English has become the universal language, and never tried to learn it.

Spanish is a lot more expressive and communicative than english. If you speak spanish you can understand like the 85% of Italian/portuguese/catalan and Galego without even studied it and like 50% of french if you have some imagination. Those phrases and names in Latin are easier to undestand too.

That is because of the same language group, not because of some unique properties of Spanish language. For example, I can also understand a majority of Spanish/Italian texts, even though I have never studied these languages - they share a lot of words/similarities with French (Romance language group). And regarding the expressiveness - don't you think it's just because this language is your main language? As far as I have seen, there is not a single language (even German) that you cannot be expressive enough with, when you master it well :)

[errrzarrr]

[...] And regarding the expressiveness - don't you think it's just because this language is your main language? As far as I have seen, there is not a single language (even German) that you cannot be expressive enough with, when you master it well :)

Well Yeah. Your argument is valid and I think that is the main reason. But I have compared it objectively to other languajes and I still remain the same conclusion. Anyway, it is truth that you express yourself better with your own languaje.


...hey ...write some Lithuanian I want to see how it is. I bet is something like russian or swedish/norwaygian. I keep saying it is like russian. Do you have our alphabet or the russian?
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edit: about the english pronunciation that's true. Mainly when you learn it as a foreign lang. That's due the vocals. In almost all romanic languajes the sound as their name is. In english is not that way, they have the name and sounds different on different ocasions.

Like the vocal e. Name it. It is like i in Pi. But in the word Trek it sounds completly different. It does not sound in Trace. It sounds as one with -a: Weak and trick like week or been. The same for O. LooK or No. Same happens with the rest of vocals. It could get trivial for us and need to hear someone else to know how it is.

[Firelie]

Honestly, I think Spanish is easier than English.

From what I've noticed, Spanish has more clear-cut grammar rules and more consistent vowel rules (meaning a vowel has the same sound almost all the time...for instance, in the sentence preceding this comment, there are 2 different ways to say the letter i, 2/3 different ways to say the letter o, 3 different ways to say/not say the letter e, 2 different ways to say the letter u, 3 different ways to say the letter a...).

Plus I like how, with the use of accent markers, you don't have to guess how a word is supposed to be pronounced if it's different than the normal pronunciation...and if a word is spelled the same way as another word, well, you can throw up an accent somewhere and know that it's a different word.

[nightfire]

...hey ...write some Lithuanian I want to see how it is. I bet is something like russian or swedish/norwaygian. I keep saying it is like russian. Do you have our alphabet or the russian?

Here goes some Lithuanian (you may need to turn on the Baltic encoding to see some of the letters):

Greičiausiai tai bus vienintelis sakinys šioje temoje, parašytas lietuviškai. A quick analysis: greičiausiai (most probably; "grey-chee (a very short i, as in "it")-ow( as in "now")-sey"), tai (it; "tie (accent on the last letter, not on the middle one)), bus (will be; pronounced like "bush", just "s" instead of "sh"), vienintelis (the only one; "vien (like in Vienna, till the second "n") - intel - is (just "s" instead of "z")", sakinys (sentence; "suck-in-ees ("s", not "z")"), šioje (in this one; "shyo-ya"), temoje (in this topic; "te (short "e" as in "net")-more-ye ("e" as in "net")"), parašytas (written; "pah-rah-shee-tus (like "tusk" without the "k")"), lietuviškai (in Lithuanian; "l - ear - too - wish - kay (as in "kayak")").

And no, the only language Lithuanian is similar to is Latvian (Baltic language family). Here is a wiki article (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) about the language itself and its alphabet. We use the Roman alphabet plus some additional letters. And, here is some interview (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) with our president, if you are interested in how Lithuanian sounds like :)

Regarding the English pronounciation, I completely agree with you. Studying romanic languages is a relief after English.

[errrzarrr]

Honestly, I think Spanish is easier than English.

From what I've noticed, Spanish has more clear-cut grammar rules and more consistent vowel rules (meaning a vowel has the same sound almost all the time...for instance, in the sentence preceding this comment, there are 2 different ways to say the letter i, 2/3 different ways to say the letter o, 3 different ways to say/not say the letter e, 2 different ways to say the letter u, 3 different ways to say the letter a...).

Plus I like how, with the use of accent markers, you don't have to guess how a word is supposed to be pronounced if it's different than the normal pronunciation...and if a word is spelled the same way as another word, well, you can throw up an accent somewhere and know that it's a different word.

Yes. I have an Example: Médico, Medico and Medicó
Médico: The physician, the Medic.
Medico: Medicate, as in I Medicate.
Medicó: is verb to medicate in past, as in He Medicated.

That's tilde. It show where the accent goes (the syllabe pronounced harder). The first is Médico. The second is in the middle, just in this case you don't mark it: Medico. And the last is the same, the force is done in the last vocal; Medicó

[emaleth]

I speak several slavic languages- Croatian being my mother tongue) Serbian being pretty similar to Croatian (apart from certain complications with derivation form of the olde slavic JAT which in croatian is realized as IJE/JE and in Serbian as E) I also speak both Czech and Slovakian.

in addition to several slavic languages (of which i left out bosnian and montenegrian cause those are combinations of Croatian and Serbian- difference being mainly in stressing of vowels) i speak English and German.

Now what i like about Croatian?! it's a very difficult language due to the complicated stressing rules (with 4 types of accents it gets really really complicated) also croatian possesses 7 cases apparent in nouns, adjectives and pronouns (whereas english possess only the indication of a case in personal pronouns) so it is pretty difficult to follow it up. the order of words in a sentence however is less rigid than in English.

Also Croatian possesses special letters which people find rather fun :) such as

č sounding somewhat like the ch in church.
ć- sounding unlike anything in english so i can't really write an example.
š-sounding as the sh in shame.
đ- somewhat similar to J in rejoice (even though Croatian Đ is softer still)
dž- which is one sound sounding like J in Jockey.
ž-is a sound that can be best compared with French G in Gerard.
lj- also one sound a very soft L
nj- similar as the above, soft N.

also, people who aren't Slavs find it very difficult to pronounce words in which the letter R behaves as a vowel such as for example Tvrtko :)

also, it's a bit tricky to distinguish the accent-patterns cause the only thing that is fixed in croatian is a place where accent CAN'T be- and that is the last syllable- all else is possible and has to be memorized for each word separately.

which as i hear from the foreign students of croatian at my university isn't the greatest thing in the world.;D

[yondyr]

You lot humble me, I'm flat out in English.

[Pinkie]

I am English, so that's my first language and love, and then I have eight years of German under my belt. I don't quite see why Spanish is more communicative than English, though. Can you explain? By the way, I am fiercely in love with English and will argue about how great it is ad nauseam ;)

[Ytterbium]

I speak Swedish, Finnish, English and some German.

Swedish and Finnish are my first languages (grew up bilingual), then compulsory English in school and a compulsory third language German was my choice.
By knowing Swedish I get Danish and Norwegian as a bonus. As for Finnish, Estonian is fairly understandable. I tried study French a little but it's a very annoying language so I could not motivate myself.

[errrzarrr]

I speak Swedish, Finnish, English and some German.

Swedish and Finnish are my first languages (grew up bilingual), then compulsory English in school and a compulsory third language German was my choice.
By knowing Swedish I get Danish and Norwegian as a bonus. As for Finnish, Estonian is fairly understandable. I tried study French a little but it's a very annoying language so I could not motivate myself.
If you want to learn any other languaje then I recommend Spanish, you can go to Spain on vacations or the whole latin america and meet some hot latina girl :P

[desg90]

It's language. Hablar español te deja con muchos prejuicios etimológicos y sintácticos, no?

l also speak Spanish as my first language.
English was absorbed little by little with books, movies, video games and a few trips to the U.S. ;)
A few years ago, I entered a French intensive course and now I use it as an academic tongue.
L'orthographe est un vrai cauchemar! :p

And, I plan to start German classes on February. Ja! ;D

[Bossy Mom]

Since I'm an American, English is my native language. I love my language. It is full and vibrant and Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, etc. (I could go on forever), are writers to be proud of. I love the English language. It has been enriched with the influence of other languages, and there is no other like it.

I also majored in Spanish and minored in German. I guess I just have a gift for gab. There are writers in Spanish, like Cervantes, and those in German, like Goethe, who are superlative.

[Rick]

English and Spanish. Used to speak Urdu/Hindi fluently...20 years ago. Some German, French, Nederland, and Italian, but I've forgotten most of it apart from the syntax. I can still understand a goodly part of those, though, after hearing them for a while.

I have a gift for languages. INTJ characteristic?

[errrzarrr]

It's language. Hablar español te deja con muchos prejuicios etimológicos y sintácticos, no?
...


Oh, thanks, I forgot that. Language. No es prejuicio, simplemente se me escapó.

Btw, It looks like here are many INTJ's with curiosity and/or skills for langs. In my personal case I am very curious and investigative about languages, even if I am not that talkative and Introverted.

[Danisty]

I know a good bit of Spanish, but not enough to really say I speak the language. I do find it really easy to learn a language, but if I don't use it, I forget it easily. My problem is that there really aren't a lot of people with foreign language skills where I grew up, so I didn't have the opportunity to use any of it. We also only had Spanish in high school here. I plan to learn a few languages though, starting with Russian. I've studied the alphabet on my own already and found it surprisingly easy to learn. Has anyone here used the Rosetta Stone programs?

As far as an interest in language goes, I've had that since I was little. There were just no opportunities in the small town where I grew up.

[AgentofGaming]

I don't know if I should select Chinese perhaps if there was an option of "A Chinese based language" it'd be easier.

Chinese isn't exactly a spoken language; Mandarin and Cantonese are, and I don't speak Mandarin. There a hundred or so of derivations, dialects, etc of languages in China. Not to mention Kanji, a Japanese writing system uses Chinese characters.

Chinese is a writing though, but then you'd also have to distinguish between Simplified and Traditional Chinese too.

If it's confusing think of it like this. What if Europe got conquered by an empire and all Europeans had to use the same writing say Latin but were allowed to speak their own language. Then I ask you if you know the language of European it wouldn't be so simple. That example was a parallel to this To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

I forgot to mention the assimilation went somewhat well. I think I read somewhere that people in South China are more genetically similar to the Vietnamese than people from North China. So that's what happens to the conquered.

[Hdier]

I speak English, and am learning Spanish.

[1OFMANY]

English- the American type.

I can read and speak some arabic but no way near fluent yet. Plus growing up in southern california I inherently know some spanish lol.

[ushop]

I grew up with English and Spanish, though I'm more comfortable with English. I took Italian in high school, and am planning to stay my junior year of college in Florence, Italy.

Spanish is a fun language. Gossip sounds juicer, for some reason. :D

[desg90]

A poco, no?!
I agree, it sounds juicier...
But it still has a certain something that I, a native speaker, dislike.

[cielo market]

I've got a few years of French under my belt and could probably communicate the basics decently. But I am more fluent in English and Spanish (I grew up bilingual). However, living in the States kept me quite unfamiliar with most (latino) idioms. I learn SO much from my cousins during my trips to Mexico heh
I also tried Japanese for a year or so (tanoshimi da ne...). But I want to try more Romance languages first, though :)

</bragging>

[anthrogirl]

I speak English as my first language, and Dutch and medium Spanish. I learnt Dutch as an exchange student and then living in Amsterdam when I was older, and I learnt Spanish from being married to a latino. I did a university spanish paper last year to try to understand the grammer which was quite difficult. My Dutch is better than my spanish. I liked Dutch for the fact that I could be a lot more blunt and too the point in Dutch since it lacks the 'padding' words we use in english (eg, instead of 'could you pass me the salt' it's just 'pass the salt' in dutch). I find Spanish they have more endearing and feeling words than either dutch or english, so in that sense it is more expressive.