The Language Thread!

[Sweety-Sama]

Posted this yesterday at the wmyl thread


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Using a future communicator stolen from the NCC-1701

[Steinar]

It's easy to get started with English (at least for Norwegians), but becoming good at it is ridiculously difficult. I have tried for something like 30 years, and with English default for written communication at work for more than a decade... And I'm still struggling. The aspect system is hard for a person with a Germanic language as L1, and the number of inconsistent pronunciations, idioms, etc is just mind boggling. And that's before stuff like we're taught UK English in school here, but what most of us will need at work is US English.

[derekmac]

What to you hear Newfoundland English!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[magentus]

English is a nightmare! I say this as a well educated Englishman. My daughter is highly dyslexic and because of this we chose to home educate her. It's a rich language because of all the influences we've absorbed, but it's so vague! There are no hard and fast rules.

As a history buff my daughter longs for the 15th and 16th century ways of spelling however you like and I can't say I disagree with her.

I admire all of you who speak and write English as your second language. 

[MadPlumbarian]

Oda ouya owkna igpa atinla??
JR

[Aloha]

English is a nightmare! I say this as a well educated Englishman. My daughter is highly dyslexic and because of this we chose to home educate her. It's a rich language because of all the influences we've absorbed, but it's so vague! There are no hard and fast rules.

As a history buff my daughter longs for the 15th and 16th century ways of spelling however you like and I can't say I disagree with her.

I admire all of you who speak and write English as your second language. 

English here in the US is spoken differently in other states.  Pronunciations are funny and I'm one to talk.  Have you seen my postings  :face palm:
 
 

[firiki]

Oda ouya owkna igpa atinla??
JR

Pig Latin gives me a headache

I barely speak "Crow's tongue" or "Korakistika", the Language of Blackbirds as this guy calls it: https://ancientwordtour.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/pig-latin-korakistika-and-kus-dili/ . Great job he's done

In a nutshell, you duplicate every syllable's vowel adding a [K] (for example, myky screekeen nakameke iski fikirikikiki). It can be too easy so you can use it combined with reversed speech (kymy keenscree mekenaka kiis kikifikiriki).   

Finally, in the past you would just say "chi" before every syllable.


fikirikikiki... 

[MadPlumbarian]

English is a nightmare! I say this as a well educated Englishman. My daughter is highly dyslexic and because of this we chose to home educate her. It's a rich language because of all the influences we've absorbed, but it's so vague! There are no hard and fast rules.

As a history buff my daughter longs for the 15th and 16th century ways of spelling however you like and I can't say I disagree with her.

I admire all of you who speak and write English as your second language. 

English here in the US is spoken differently in other states.  Pronunciations are funny and I'm one to talk.  Have you seen my postings  :face palm:

TOTALLTY! I'm originally from Ct, the wife from philly, and her sister from Boston mass, and it's funny! Now I've lived with my wife for 17yrs and she's lost the city slang, but whenever she talks to someone with it, it's like *snap* she's right back to it and she doesn't even know. She was out with a friend a while back and the waitress asked what she wanted to drink, so she said wader, they sad huh, is that a new drink? No water, you know h2o.. Oh! lol..
JR

[Etherealicer]

I'm a bit surprised that people find English a difficult language. I always thought the wide availability of movies, books and computer games in English makes it rather easy to learn; to get a decent vocabulary / understanding of the language.
The problem is more, that many English-speakers never learned another language and are quite poor at understanding poorly pronunciated words . If you speak to a guy from Switzerland you could use beer or bear interchangeably and he still would understand you , I mean we have some pretty wild dialects (depending on where you are "Zeche" could mean "ten", "toe" or "outstanding dept").

[Etherealicer]

Oh and about English pronunciation.

Why can't you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom?

Show content

The "p" is silent

[SAK Guy]

Oh and about English pronunciation.

Why can't you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom?

Show content

The "p" is silent

 

[ColoSwiss]

English is a nightmare! I say this as a well educated Englishman. My daughter is highly dyslexic and because of this we chose to home educate her. It's a rich language because of all the influences we've absorbed, but it's so vague! There are no hard and fast rules.

As a history buff my daughter longs for the 15th and 16th century ways of spelling however you like and I can't say I disagree with her.

I admire all of you who speak and write English as your second language. 

English is pretty straight forward. If you want a difficult language try Arabic or Japanese.

[firiki]

English is a nightmare! I say this as a well educated Englishman. My daughter is highly dyslexic and because of this we chose to home educate her. It's a rich language because of all the influences we've absorbed, but it's so vague! There are no hard and fast rules.

As a history buff my daughter longs for the 15th and 16th century ways of spelling however you like and I can't say I disagree with her.

I admire all of you who speak and write English as your second language. 

English is pretty straight forward. If you want a difficult language try Arabic or Japanese.

I understand that learning Russian can be quite challenging, too.

http://learningrussian.net/russianlanguage/

[Etherealicer]

English is a nightmare! I say this as a well educated Englishman. My daughter is highly dyslexic and because of this we chose to home educate her. It's a rich language because of all the influences we've absorbed, but it's so vague! There are no hard and fast rules.

As a history buff my daughter longs for the 15th and 16th century ways of spelling however you like and I can't say I disagree with her.

I admire all of you who speak and write English as your second language. 

English is pretty straight forward. If you want a difficult language try Arabic or Japanese.

I understand that learning Russian can be quite challenging, too.

http://learningrussian.net/russianlanguage/

Russian has a very complicated grammar but initial learning is rather easy (provided you speak English, German and French). Lots of words are recognizable. Once you have learned the letters you can read all the street-signs etc. you can navigate a city already quite well (even ride the marshrutka in St. Pete). Within two weeks you can do simple communication. After basic communication it gets difficult though.

Hardest language I started to learn was Thai because of the tones and intonation. For me it was difficult (== impossible) to hear and I found it very frustrating (I also only went with a friend so he didn't have to go alone, never really had the intention to learn Thai). Only good thing was that Thai people are very hierarchical and I outranked the teacher, so everybody in class had to greet me first .

[temo]

Just try to get understood. There are some things though you can get misunderstandings. Like I looked mugshot thread and googled what is a mugshot. From wiki "A mug shot or mugshot (an informal term for police photograph, or booking photograph), is a photographic portrait typically taken after a person is arrested." So might be term is used as portrait as more general meaning as well

[Humppa]

My son has to learn two languages now. He is 2 years old and almost starts to talk and all these things.

First of all is the regular dialect here - bavarian is an own language with its own grammar and stuff.

Then he has to learn the standard german - which is not much easier than the dialect.

But he seems to have talents on both of these...

[Steinar]

I think it is great you're keeping Boarisch alive! 

[firiki]

English is a nightmare! I say this as a well educated Englishman. My daughter is highly dyslexic and because of this we chose to home educate her. It's a rich language because of all the influences we've absorbed, but it's so vague! There are no hard and fast rules.

As a history buff my daughter longs for the 15th and 16th century ways of spelling however you like and I can't say I disagree with her.

I admire all of you who speak and write English as your second language. 

English is pretty straight forward. If you want a difficult language try Arabic or Japanese.

I understand that learning Russian can be quite challenging, too.

http://learningrussian.net/russianlanguage/

Russian has a very complicated grammar but initial learning is rather easy (provided you speak English, German and French). Lots of words are recognizable. Once you have learned the letters you can read all the street-signs etc. you can navigate a city already quite well (even ride the marshrutka in St. Pete). Within two weeks you can do simple communication. After basic communication it gets difficult though.

Hardest language I started to learn was Thai because of the tones and intonation. For me it was difficult (== impossible) to hear and I found it very frustrating (I also only went with a friend so he didn't have to go alone, never really had the intention to learn Thai). Only good thing was that Thai people are very hierarchical and I outranked the teacher, so everybody in class had to greet me first .

Aha! What happens if you don't speak all these languages, though? What I've always found fascinating about foreign languages is the fact that one can get a glimpse of how other people perceive things, to an extent how their thought process is formed.

[Sea Monster]

I love English because mastering it means dedicating a significant amount of time to arbitrary rules and elitist crap.

I'll confess I have become sloppy, as I suspect we all have, in the digital age. Language has become far more fluid and subject to popular use.

[firiki]

...

I'll confess I have become sloppy, as I suspect we all have, in the digital age. Language has become far more fluid and subject to popular use.

This could be the subject of a whole study! It probably is

[ColoSwiss]

Here's a language tree for the Indo-European languages. Supposedly the closer they are to one another the easier they are to learn.

I had a couple of years of German in school. A language professor told me German was the second easiest language for an English speaker to learn, after Swedish. A librarian friend who was into languages told me German was the second easiest to learn, after Dutch. So went with German.   

[Etherealicer]

Here's a language tree for the Indo-European languages. Supposedly the closer they are to one another the easier they are to learn.

I had a couple of years of German in school. A language professor told me German was the second easiest language for an English speaker to learn, after Swedish. A librarian friend who was into languages told me German was the second easiest to learn, after Dutch. So went with German.   

Nice, thanks.

I think there is an additional factor to be considered and that is the import of words. E.g. French was very influential in Russia and nowadays English words get incorporated in many languages (even the Japanese say DVD).

[dks]

and Greek and Latin must have more influence than is shown.

[Etherealicer]

and Greek and Latin must have more influence than is shown.

True, many Greek-/Latin words all over the place but mostly into the Italic and Germanic languages.

[dks]

You also get a lot of Greek sounding words in Russian/Slavic languages.  Many are the same, with a few different letters.

e.g. H = N, same sound

[ColoSwiss]

Here's a language tree for the Indo-European languages. Supposedly the closer they are to one another the easier they are to learn.

I had a couple of years of German in school. A language professor told me German was the second easiest language for an English speaker to learn, after Swedish. A librarian friend who was into languages told me German was the second easiest to learn, after Dutch. So went with German.   

Nice, thanks.

I think there is an additional factor to be considered and that is the import of words. E.g. French was very influential in Russia and nowadays English words get incorporated in many languages (even the Japanese say DVD).

Very true. English is structurally a Germanic language, but about half its words are from Latin, either direct or from French, Spanish, etc. Also a lot of other loan words, from the British empire, immigrants to the US, etc. One of several reasons its spelling is so messed up.

[Gerhard Gerber]

What I find fascinating is last night watching Black Sails S03E01 I learnt the origin of the word "koerant" (newspaper) in my smurf of a mother tongue: Afrikaans. 

One character was reading a paper named the "(something) Courant" and it caught my eye.

[magentus]

I love English because mastering it means dedicating a significant amount of time to arbitrary rules and elitist crap.

I'll confess I have become sloppy, as I suspect we all have, in the digital age. Language has become far more fluid and subject to popular use.

One of the things I love about the english language is that it's constantly evolving and maybe its ubiquity, richness and longevity is partly down to this (as well as contributions from invaders and our nasty foreign policy during the years of the empire).

What would improve the language (for me anyway) is an acknowledgment that the 'rules' are arbitary and elitist (to quote Sea Monster) and to bin those rules. For hundreds of years words have been spelt and spoken as people have seen fit. The digital age has spured on the evolution the language as text speak, emoji's and internet related words have crossed into our everyday speech and english is robust enough to cope with the constant change it's had these past couple of thousand years.

[pfrsantos]

When I come to this thread, I always remember this one:



 

[pfrsantos]

Although most people around the world speak about "spanish", in Spain they refer to the language as "castellano" (from the kingdom of Castilla).

There are also some local dialects that don't resemble nothing at all, derived from different populations coming toghether and trying to find ways to understand each other. We have one such dialect in the north of Portugal, near Spain. Mirandês/Mirandum (from Miranda do Douro). It resembles the language of the spanish Galiza mixed with archaic portuguese terms.