do you know when learning a language is great?

[Chris-3DT]

I'm learning some Afrikaans on a private basis and discovered somethat made me slap my forehead.

Most of you have probably heard of the boomslang and the adequate English pronouncement.

now i learn that boomslang is actually a loan word from Afrikaans and means no more than a tree snake.

boom is Afrikaans for tree and accordingly slang is snake...

damn, i love to learn new things that widen my horizon and lift the curtain of stupidity for a second...

[the_solidshadow]

rrriiiiiiiiiiiiiight.....

[Daniel]

well my roomate is african and he has no clue what your talking about, lol

[JHarford]

i seeee.
learning africaan eay .:)

im learning malay german and french
lol

[the_solidshadow]

i believe afrikaans is spoken in South Africa

[Knut]

Originally posted by Chris-3DT
boom is Afrikaans for tree and accordingly slang is snake...
.

Funky, slange means snake in Norwegian.:roll:
Maybe the viking plundered down there once and also brought home a new word =D

[Chris-3DT]

Originally posted by DanielB
well my roomate is african and he has no clue what your talking about, lol

like the solidshadow said, Afrikkans is spoken in South Africa (mostly) and in neighbouring countries.

if your room mate is eg. from côte d'ivoir he is likely to speak French and will therefore not recognize the word "boomslang"

[Chris-3DT]

Originally posted by Knut
Funky, slange means snake in Norwegian.:roll:
Maybe the viking plundered down there once and also brought home a new word =D

A little (= not thorough) lesson about linguistics, if you will listen :)

In Europe we find languages that are derivatives of the Indo-Germanic langugage. These are basically Romanic, Germanic and Slavic.

The Romanic languages are those influenced mostly by Roman (who would've thouhgt...). French, Spanish, Portugese are Romanic.
Slavic langugages are seperated in South-, West,- and East-Slavic languages-

West: Polish, Sorbian
East: Russian, Ukranian, Belarussian
South: Serbian, Tchec, Moldavian, and so on...

My favourite group are the Germanic languages, because they are the ones i relate to best, and which i understand easiest.
Germanic languages are:

German, Dutch, Flemish, Schwytzerdeutsch, English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Islandic (i beleive) and Afrikaans, for both Dutch and Afrikaans are derivates of middle-netherlandic.
Afrikaans, also referred to as Cape Dutch, is the language developed in South Africa by the dutch settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries. It has undergone heavy infulences from "bush"-languages (isiXhosa, isiZulu, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Pedi, Sotho to name some of them), French, English, and German, because they too settled there.

So, Knut, in fact it is the other way around: "Vikins" ("Germans") brought their language to Africa. The Vikings btw, "only" got to the black sea, as far as i know, which is quite considerable indeed!

Please don't beat me for not touching Greek, Gaelic and Finish here, I simply lack sufficient information on those. :)

[3dGator]

From what I know, Greek is the result of that once famous civilization, peaked in the times of Alexander the Great. It developed an alphabet of its own (which also influenced so-called Romanic languages, among others - an example alphabet = comes from Alpha Beta!!).
There are three forms of gaelic: Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic, each one with its own spelling and twist in pronounciation. Gaelic was developed from Celtic cultures.
I'm not too aquainted with Finnish, so I'll leave that for someone else! ;)
Good luck with learning all those languages, Chris! :)

[john silver]

BOOMSTICK!!!!!!

[claWda]

language is power, too bad i.e americans won't get that, seeing how the majority show interest for one language...their own (this doesn't go for all americans, clearly)

well as for myself, my experience is that just as you Chris, the more languages you know, these connections happen to you quite often, I speak swedish, persian, ein bisschen Deutsch :p, english and I know some phrases in bosnian which I find is a funny language to learn, learning language is a fun thing and it's very rewarding

[ross_coe]

Chris - u forgot Gaelic in your list of Germanic languages :p

although I dont speak gaelic (shame on me and most scottish people!!!) i've been led to believe that a lot of it comes from german and other northern european languages.

perhaps you could help me out.....

the word "kirk" in gaelic means "church"....is that the same in german?

apparently during WW2, a lot of German prisoners of war were taken to the scottish islands, such as Orkney....and they got on very well with the Gaelic speakin Scots because of the similarity in language.

I also heard (in the pub so it mighta been bull) that a lot of scottish slang comes from swedish....so perhaps the swedes in here could enlighten me...and ignore the spelling....

the work "breeks" in scotland is slang for "trousers"
the words "braw hoose" means "great house"

Anyways, if thats all rubbish just slap me for confusing myself :p

[Motivity]

boomslang, thats no african :) thats dutch :D

[Chris-3DT]

I'm not sure wheather or not Gaelic is a Germanic languag, so I left it aside, as I mentioned.

To answer your questions nontheless:

Kerk (Afrikaans), Kerk (Dutch), Kirche, (German) Church (English)
These are the ones that I know right now, in the other Germanic languages they are likely to be similar.
But: the words's origins lie in Old Greek, that had a similar word with the meaning: group of worhippers/beleivers.


Broek is Afrikaans and Dutch for pants, there's a very similar wold with the same meaning in Russian also. German is different: Hose.

German "Haus", Dutch "Huis", English "House": variations of the same word.

[ross_coe]

if you want a mega-challenge try learning thai :p my girlfriend is thai and she's tried to teach me a bit here and there....but it's very confusing :p

not so much to do with the actual words....more to do with the tone. for example...the word "mai" can have different meanings depending on which tone you use....
the sentence "mai mai mai mai mai mai" means "the wood didn't burn, did the silk burn?" - each time the word "mai" is pronounce it is done with a different tone.

so in europe we use tone for expression and emotion - in thailand the use tone for pronounciation....which is probably a bit confusing for most people who spent their whole lives speaking european languages :p especially when the difference is so small that to the untrained ear it all sounds the same

and u might have to be careful what you order when eating in thailand......
if you order orange juice, but dont pronounce it correctly, you might get a glass of toilet water (roughly spelt "nam soom")

anyway, i hope to learn thai properly sometime :) and japanese :p

[Chokin Hazard™]

Even though Im Asian,Thai confuses me!

Lol

I think the thai,vietnamese and cambodians have similarities, I guess.....

[MariusvZyl]

Hey Chris. My first language is Afrikaans and yes. "Boomslang" is an arborial snake (quite pretty too).

We usually hose ourselves when whatching Discovery channel and the pronounciations of "boomslang".

If you need any help let me know, I'm learning German from cd's atm.



Of all the languages, why Afrikaans though?

[Chris-3DT]

I fell in love with a South African, and, whether anything will come of this love or not, I anticipate emmigrating to SA.
I'll be there form 14t August till 12 September and have a look at your supposingly beautiful country. :)

many thanks for your offer, perhaps we can help each other. learning German is...demanding. to say the least.

[MariusvZyl]

SUPPOSINGLY beautiful countrySUPPOSINGLY beautiful country ??

German.Demanding.Understatement!

[Chris-3DT]

It is ****ing difficult to learn German - but I didn't want to say that in order not to scare you off ;)

supposingly because i haven't seen it yet (photos don't count).

[claWda]

what are you talking about? german is easy, and sorry but it's one of the ugliest languages I've ever heard :p it's not romantic, or sound gentle or anything

[MariusvZyl]

So that's why Rammstein sounds so good in german!:D

Each to his/her own.

[Chris-3DT]

makes me wonder why so many important pieces of literature, prose as well as poetry and drama, come from fair Germany? :)

[claWda]

just my opinion, and rammstein, omg the guy sings about the sun coming wtf is up with that!? :D

and chris, sure, it still SOUNDS a bit harsh and very unpolished

[Knut]

Originally posted by Chris-3DT
It is ****ing difficult to learn German - but I didn't want to say that in order not to scare you off ;)

No $hit!
I spent 5 years in school trying to learn that language, yet I am not able to communicate with ANYONE using it.

English <3

[3Dan]

Originally posted by ross_coe
Chris - u forgot Gaelic in your list of Germanic languages :p

although I dont speak gaelic (shame on me and most scottish people!!!) i've been led to believe that a lot of it comes from german and other northern european languages.

perhaps you could help me out.....

the word "kirk" in gaelic means "church"....is that the same in german?

apparently during WW2, a lot of German prisoners of war were taken to the scottish islands, such as Orkney....and they got on very well with the Gaelic speakin Scots because of the similarity in language.

I also heard (in the pub so it mighta been bull) that a lot of scottish slang comes from swedish....so perhaps the swedes in here could enlighten me...and ignore the spelling....

the work "breeks" in scotland is slang for "trousers"
the words "braw hoose" means "great house"

Anyways, if thats all rubbish just slap me for confusing myself :p

Slap, slap and an extra slap for the weekend!:D

"Kirk" and "Kirche" derive from "Church". In any language there are words taken from others (for instance "Ffenetr" means "window" in Welsh and can only come from the Italian "Finestra"; Welsh "Llivr", Gaelic "Lébor", from the Latin Libris). They all come from Sanskrit as you well know.
The Scots were an Irish tribe that ended up naming the whole of Scotland. Gaelic is Celtic, never Germanic. Of course, so many invasions along History from Danes, Saxons, Norsemen and the like left a colorful unique heritage. Ye ken, lad?;)

[3dGator]

and "fenêtre" in french, as well...

[Chris-3DT]

Originally posted by 3Dan-3DT
"Kirk" and "Kirche" derive from "Church".

Nay, church, kerk, kirk, Kirche and so on all derive from old greek "kyriaké". I said that earlier allready :p

[3Dan]

<bows deep down in acknowldege>:o

[MariusvZyl]

And "Venster" is Afrikaans for window.:)

[Chris-3DT]

"Fenster" in German.
"Raam" in Dutch. Note that in German "Rahmen" is the "f_rame" of a window.

[Chris-3DT]

Originally posted by 3Dan-3DT
<bows deep down in acknowldege>:o

No need to bow, mate :)

[MariusvZyl]

Yes venster raam is the frame of a window in afrikaans as well.

[Chris-3DT]

in Dutch it is just "raam" - pars pro toto. :)

[il_paulio]

In dutch raam is the glass and venster the surrounding. But u could say raam to the whole thingie too :) And ive had german too for five years but i dont think its so difficult. Only the erm dont know the word... u know what i mean if I say an auf hinter bei blablabla that stuff.

[Ironbuket]

Originally posted by ross_coe
if you want a mega-challenge try learning thai :p my girlfriend is thai and she's tried to teach me a bit here and there....but it's very confusing :p

not so much to do with the actual words....more to do with the tone. for example...the word "mai" can have different meanings depending on which tone you use....
the sentence "mai mai mai mai mai mai" means "the wood didn't burn, did the silk burn?" - each time the word "mai" is pronounce it is done with a different tone.

anyway, i hope to learn thai properly sometime :) and japanese :p
There are “problems” like this in Japanese too, but I think its only because we are used to Romanised alphabets that we see it a big problem.

Example:

ATSUI = Hot (as spoken by Tom Cruise in “The Last Samurai”)
ATSUI = Thick (as in wide in cross-section)

The first ends in attenuation, but the second is the opposite. At first glace it seems confusing, but the two words have different Kanji (Japanese characters). So both the sound and the written form are distinct in the native language. I expect the same is probably the case for Thai?

[MariusvZyl]

gesuntheid

[Chris-3DT]

Originally posted by il_paulio
In dutch raam is the glass and venster the surrounding. But u could say raam to the whole thingie too :) And ive had german too for five years but i dont think its so difficult. Only the erm dont know the word... u know what i mean if I say an auf hinter bei blablabla that stuff.

paulio, the difficult thing you are thinking of are the cases (die Fälle). Unfortunately they are a major thing in the language, if you don't get them correctly you end up with wrong German. Of course you will be able to communicate with German-speakers anyway.

Apart from the cases which are a huge cause of errors, another one is the gender.
In those other germanic languages I know the gender nly exists in certain remainders (for example in English it is not possible to call a baby an "it": You cannot say "cute baby, what is its name".)
The big problem with the gender is that it is not "hardcoded" into the words like it is in Russian. Some of the genders are assignd by logic: die Frau is female and der Mann is male. But das Mädchen? Nope, no obvious logic there.
Sometimes the gender says something about the quality something had. The sun, being warm and neccessary too live is female. The moon, cold and scary at times, is male.
In French it's the other way around, supposingly because it is considerably hotter in France and therefore the sun can be of danger.

the only advice i can give is: when you learn a noun, always learn the plural form and the gender by heart as well.

:)

[Chris-3DT]

Originally posted by MariusvZyl
gesuntheid

spelled "Gesundheit".

light at the end of the tunnel: all words that end on the suffixes -heit or -ung are female and spelled with a capital letter (they are nouns).

[Chris-3DT]

also, if you do a forum search you might find a thread with some simple German for beginners here in off-topic.

[Xullion]

"These are basically Romanic, Germanic and Slavic."

I never heard of the word "romanic"....I think you mean Latin.

[Chris-3DT]

The family of the languages derivating from Latin is refered to as the Romanic Language Family :)

[Profane]

romanic rules!!!!!!Sorry but no one except 3d dan have mentioned italian...:(
we,the romans,'gave birth' to french and spanish (and still a couple of stuff are into english)and then french and spanish have ruled italy over the 16th and 18th century 'contaminating' our language...well actually we've been contaminating from germans during middle ages too so ...result :italian is a mess!
we,italians,speak a formally language known as italian,but actually every single parts of italy has got plenty of dialects,which reflect the domination we had during the last two centuries...
I've lived in the north of italy and the local dialect was so damn close to french...now i live right in the middle of italy and the local dialect is very similar to a grose latin due to the Catholic Church domination over the renaissance...if you move to the south you'll hear of course a more spanish accent ...

....ps:I found german so damn hard to understand and very difficult to learn...infact i quit! the easiast lanuage i learnt is spanish...(quite obviously)

[Wormin8or]

Just thought I'd mention that learning German ain't so hard when you speak English. Many common verbs are very similar in both languages eg

swim, swam, swum = schwim, schwam, schwum

Similarly, certain sounds are commonly translated such as the the use of 'k' in German when 'ch' is used in English ie Church, Kirche.

[Ironbuket]

I believe the problems with learning German come when you get quite advanced at it. My dads been doing private lessons for 4yrs as its needed for his work and hes always complaining how illogically difficult it is at times.

Hes no idiot either hes already fluent in French.

[Chris-3DT]

*ROFL*

look up that word in a dictionary please!

[mr_demon]

i see nobody seems to know anything about the finnish language. well, it's part of the finno-hungarian group of languages which includes only four (finnish, estonian, latvian and, yep u guessed it, HUNGARIAN). despite the fact that they're allocated in the same language group they're quite different from each other and even more different from the all the other languages. i'm not sure but i think it was settlers from finnland who basically moved to the south who started the group.

you also mentioned russian, well, russian is grammatically one of the most, if not THE most, complex language there is. u have tonns of rules and exceptions. (in case nobody has got it yet, i'm russian) over the centuries russian has also sucked up a lot of grammar and vocabulary from mainly german ('rama' in russian also means window frame, words like aufschnitt - if you separate the word you get 'up-cut' which if translated word for word into russian also means aufschnitt (slices of meat)). this is mainly due to the large amount of germans who emmigrated to russia in the time of peter the great (who incidentally founded my home town of petrozavodsk (also known as petroskoin for the finnish of you) close to the finnish border). i'm learning german right now and of all the languages i know (french, english, greek, german and russian) i'm suprised to say that german is the language that has by far the most similarities with russian (any lignuist would think it would be greek because of your cultural similarities i.e. both are orthodox; or maybe even french - in the old times all middle and higher class russians spoke fluent french [it was cosidered classy]).
finally, isn't french also supposed to be a gaelic language? i mean france was called land of the gaulles, before it was named france, and in greek france is even now known as 'gallia'.

[Chris-3DT]

As far as I know many different groups of ppl settled in today's France, among them Normans, Allemans and Gauls. Still it is considered a Romanic language. Don't forget that the territory of France is big, don't forget that, it's at least a thousand kilometers from north to south and no less from west to east.

Btw, I love to quote all those German words that the Russians found no own expressions for: Landschaft, Absatz, Schlagbaum, Butterbrot, Kurort, Rucksack.
It works in the other direction too though: Russian "bistro" (= fast) became French "Bistro" (place where you eat quickly made food), when Naopleon's soldiers returned home. And from France the word spread all over Europe.

Leaving aside the different alphabets, which don't mean that much in the end, Russian and German have certain similarities, but there are also numerous differences. Two of which are that German has only 4, Russian 5 cases and that Russian usually doesn't use "aiding verbs" (forgot the term, sorry) in the present tense while that would mean an error in German.

Ja Christian.
Engl.: I [am] Christian.
Germ.: Ich [bin] Christian.
if you leave the verb away it is wrong, not so in Russian. :)

[mr_demon]

to continue ur list:

(FR) je [suis] Dima
(but in greek) eimai o Dimitris
{i am}
yet we also don't have articles like 'a, the' which sets us apart from almost all other languages, except for maybe chinese or japanese and the like.....we use prefixes and suffixes instead to convey these concepts

each nation is also to some extent reflected in their own language: e.g. with german u have to think before u talk because the position of each word in the sentence is crucial for correctness - germans r usually neat and organised; with russian u have no articles and no separable verbs, yet the diversity of the language is amazing - russians r often hasty and not very thorough with what they do, but when we do something well, we do it REALLY, even uncannily well e.g. in 1998 we didn't get past qualifying in the fifa world cup, and in the next year we won in a friendly with france 3-1 :dance: OR our cars and other consumer engineering is basically sh1t, REALLY sh1t, so sh1t u just wanna shoot urself if u come into contact with any of it :mad: , but we also have the best aeroplanes, space suits, anti-air rockets, rifles (AK-47; mosin-nagan (WWII) had a targeting distance of over a kilometer) and a few other things in the world

also i'd like to correct you, we have 6 cases, not 5, and as i mentioned before, probably at least 40% of russian is adapted from various foreign languages. so much so that last year, when the Duma (russian parliament) tried to pass a dumb nationalist law (i think it was the communists) to ban the use of all non-russian words within the parliament seatings, the text of the document itself contained over a hundred words of foreign origin :mad: as if the parliament had nothing better to do..........

[Profane]

as italian i gotta thank french for let us understand the 'importance' of greetings such as 'good morning' 'bonjour' (buon giorno in italian) and 'goodbye', 'au revoir' 'arrivederci'...the last one was originally Addio wich literally means :'To God'(yeh...we've been always so catholic...) before french domination we did not use to say good mornin...and so on and so forth....we were basically saying
just 'ciao' or 'vocal' sounds.....
(Can we have back our monnalisa now???)

monnalisa ...come back home :p :p

[Chris-3DT]

imenitel'nij, roditel'nij, datel'nij, binitel'nij, tboritel'nij, predloznij padez - you're right: 6! my bad. :(

It is not so very true that it is always crucial were a word goes, but in general it's true that russian allows more variations :)

E.g. object of time can be placed in three spots inthis simple sentence. In Egnlish it can only go at the end or out front.
- Ich gehe 2010 nach Südafrika.
- Nach Südafrika gehe ich 2010.
- 2010 gehe ich nach Südafrika.


i find this thread really refhreshing, i hope to continue this for some longer!
i might study linguistics as my second course, btw :)

[mr_demon]

i'm impressed :) how did u know the names of the cases?
also, that sentence is quite short, with longer sentences u have even less variation

[Chris-3DT]

I studied Slavistics/Russian for half a semester nutil I decided two things: a) I will never want to scientifically work in this field and b) i'm too lazy to learn a language at university.

I did pick up some Russian, which was enlightening and widened my horizon, so that semester wasn't really lost in the end. :) Also Sessy, my ex-girlfriend who walks about these forums too is Russian.
I pciked the names of the cases from my Russian exercise book I needed to get for Uni! ;)

[Wormin8or]

Chris, I'm sorry I refered to those words mentioned as verbs but I meant them as stems ie schwimmen. My point was that the prefix or stem of the verbs is essentially the same.

[Chris-3DT]

No need to apologize, Worminator. It made me laugh that the verb (zu schwimmen) was flected incorretctly, making it sound very funny (to me).

Ich schwimme.
Ich schwamm.
Ich bin geschwommen.

[mr_demon]

cool, so what other languages did u study? an what exactly did u study in uni that included russian?

[Chris-3DT]

I'm studying a 2-Course B.A.
Both courses are to be equal but my secret primary course is Comparatistics (general and comparing literaturesciences), when i enrolled last semester (WS 03/04), I choose Slavistics as my secondary course with Russian as the language to learn. Now I kicked Slavistics away and have to take up a new course next semester (WS 04/05). It will either be:

Media-Sciences, Linguistics or Germanistics. Dnno, we'll see ;)

Unfortunately I only speak German, my beloved mothertounge and English. I also understand Dutch (and a god deal of Afrikaans). I know a tid bit of Russian and some French. :)

Your turn!

[mr_demon]

me? i'm finishing school next year, right now i'm doing my a-levels (pure & mechanics maths, physics, accounting and art) and i'm thinking of studying engineering in Aachen, Stuttgart or any other german university, and probably settling in germany in the end (i'm SERIOUSLY tired of cyprus). if i don't go down that path, i'm probably gonna try an get into a cg course, again in germany

the languages i know:
russian - because i AM russian (a-level: 576/600)
english - been speaking it since i was 6, even most english people think i'm english, u could say it's my second mother language (o-level for english as mother language: A)
greek - the local language which i kinda learnt because i was around greeks all the time (o-level for foreigners: A)
french - my parents made me take it as a 4th language, learned it for 4 years, i could understand and speak it fluently before, i still understand most of it but i can't really say much any more(o-level: A*, DELF: pass - they only have pass or fail)
german - i'm learnig it cause i wanna live in germany (o-level: A, and soon, hopefully Zertifikat and Mittelstufe)

i also understand a bit of ukranian, polish, lithuanian, dutch, danish, italian, and any other language that is similar to the five i know quite well

i guess i kinda got a gift for languages

[mr_demon]

Jetzt meine ich, dass ich nur Deutsch hier sprechen soll, weil ich ubermorgen die Zertifikatprufung machen werde :D. Wie kann man hier den umlaut schreiben?

[Chris-3DT]

Zertifikat_s_prüfung. Umlaut is a noun, spell it with a capital U. Pretty good other than that!


You'll have to use the ASCII Codes for äöü

[mr_demon]

Meine Deutschlernerin sagt, dass fur Zertifikat es OK ist.

[Chris-3DT]

Meine Deutschlehrerin sagt, dass mein Deutsch gut genug für das Zertifikat ist.

[mr_demon]

Gleich wie ich oben geschrieben habe. :)

[Chris-3DT]

pardon? the first thing you wrote was wrong and not the same as the correct line i posted. :p

[mr_demon]

it was the same idea though. to tell u the thruth, i don't get to speak to germans nearly enough to be able to write 100% correctly (it's the way u express ideas an stuff which only comes with plain old repetition i.e. what u do in a conversation), so at least until tuesday, try an write german if ur addressing me, that way i can practice :D. i still haven't quite got a feel for the language, but when i finally get it, with of course help of remembering some of the grammatical exceptions, i'll be able to speak pretty fluently (i hope.....)

[RickStefani]

I only know english and a bit of spanish. I would not mind picking up more languages but it is not as big to do here in the US because we are only surounded by two countries. Canada and Mexico. You may go into mexico for a vacation but most likely you are going to stay at a resort filled with americans. It is not as safe to just wonder off and move freely. In Europe you have many reasons to learn other languages, and the most important part, a way to use them to fine tune your skills. The reason is because of geographical Isolation. Langauge is not power here in the US. I can help but unless you work in a global economy, it is not the same. I am not saying military might is power. I feel it is the same as an argument. First one to raise their voice lost the argument.

Now please lets keep this civil.

If you know spanish then I heard Italian is easy to learn. What other langauges are very simular.

edit, I agree language is power here in the US too.

[Dr.N]

i know Arabic
English
French
Hebreu ( obligation) cuz it helps for the place i live in i think u know where... lol

oh and some spanish

[Chris-3DT]

Rck Stefani, Spanish belongs to the Romanic languages as we have outlined above, thus all languages from the same Family are similar: French and Italian

[Profane]

NO WAY GUYS....italian is so much better than spanish.....:D :D :D

where are you from Dr.N?

[Dr.N]

I live in jerusalem , but all my family lives in the US , i have no one here :( , its because my dad works in the american embassy in israel....

[Dr.N]

I live in jerusalem , but all my family lives in the US , i have no one here :( , its because my dad works in the american embassy in israel....

i go to a 100% french school soo i know many languages and its nice to know more than 2 or 3

[Dr.N]

sorry for the 2 replies :D

[mr_demon]

definitely looks good on ur CV