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What kind of languages can you speak?

de ceigered, 2010-januaro-22

Mesaĝoj: 29

Lingvo: English

IberianWolf (Montri la profilon) 2010-januaro-25 06:35:20

Portuguese at native fluency. Castillian and English at almost native levels.

Can understand French, Galician (mostly proper writing problems), Catalan, some Italian and some German, but not enough to have a proper conversation. I could probably give directions or ask for help/explain stuff in French with some success, mostly because I studied it in school.

Learning Esperanto. so yeah, I can pretty much understand the whole New World with those three up there. Western Europe isn't a problem either and some of Africa too. I also understand some Latin stuff, particularly "catchphrases" and even have dictionaries around. but my dad's a lawyer, so... kinda have to know what the hell he means by Res Ipsa Loquitur. also, it's always a nice touch in math. QED!

Ironchef (Montri la profilon) 2010-januaro-25 16:25:23

formiĉjo:While I'm not fluent, I'm pretty conversant in Cherokee.Kvakam mi ne estas flua, mi parolas iomete Ĉerokion
That is interesting! Are you Cherokee yourself or have you learned this language from the outside? If you have learnt it as an adult, how would you rate its difficulty?

It's amazing to the average person how many language there are still being spoken in the world, even by small groups/tribes. We all tend to generalise and think of the top 50 or so languages in the world but we often forget that there are several hundred more that are everyday languages for the people who speak them!

Uvi (Montri la profilon) 2010-januaro-27 05:10:16

I speak and write Spanish (Latin American), English and French with equally native fluency (I grew up with all 3 at once).

I can easily read an economic newspaper in Italian and understand the dialect spoken on the media (news, music, etc). The same goes for Galician and a few other dialects that I identify to my native Spanish, but of course Castilian Spanish is only a matter of transfer in my case.

I can hold a basic conversation in Romanian and I am learning to speak Western Armenian (my wifey's Armenian).

I'm in love with Esperanto, so it's only a matter of time before I attain decent control of it.

sal.gif

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-januaro-27 11:15:25

Looking at all the interesting responses (Armenian and Cherokee FTW!), I'm thinking I should have divvied up the categories as such:
West European (Which seems to be the most favoured, but also kind of "duh"ish)
East European
African (Sadly not many responses for this one. Then again, no doubt many are like me and are intimidated by the different systems in languages like Swahili)
West Asian
East Asian (Another point of interest. Amazing. It's like American politics - your either with us, or you're on the other side of the world)
Australasian and Oceanic (Not many Kaurna speakers, I suppose? lango.gif)
North American
South American
Conlangs (other than EO)
Lojban lango.gif

derverwandte (Montri la profilon) 2010-januaro-30 09:13:14

sal.gif i can speak Chinese fluently.and i also speak dialect in southern of China.the langugage is much different from the other dialect in China.so some people can not understand it.but they like korean a little okulumo.gif

Uvi (Montri la profilon) 2010-februaro-02 14:19:57

ceigered:Looking at all the interesting responses (Armenian and Cherokee FTW!), I'm thinking I should have divvied up the categories as such:
West European (Which seems to be the most favoured, but also kind of "duh"ish)
East European
African (Sadly not many responses for this one. Then again, no doubt many are like me and are intimidated by the different systems in languages like Swahili)
West Asian
East Asian (Another point of interest. Amazing. It's like American politics - your either with us, or you're on the other side of the world)
Australasian and Oceanic (Not many Kaurna speakers, I suppose? lango.gif)
North American
South American
Conlangs (other than EO)
Lojban lango.gif
Even so, I wouldn't know what category to fit Armenian in. lango.gif It's clearly European in its grammar. But, geographically, is Armenia considered to be in Eastern Europe, in Asia Minor, or in the Near East? sal.gif

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-februaro-03 05:49:45

I'm going Eastern European for Armenian based on the relationship (although not always a good one) with Russian and Greek - it's like the balkan languages, some aren't related but they get chucked into the same category. Otherwise west asian sounds good (if we wanted, we could divvy things up even more and have "eastern europe, eurasian border area, middle east, asia, north east asia" etc but I don't think there's enough room to put that many poll options! lango.gif)

Rogir (Montri la profilon) 2010-februaro-03 10:31:49

Armenian is no closer to Russian than it is to English. Also, the Germanic languages are closer to the Slavic languages than to the Romance languages, so a Western European group would not make very much sense.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4f/In...

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-februaro-03 11:11:33

Rogir:Armenian is no closer to Russian than it is to English. Also, the Germanic languages are closer to the Slavic languages than to the Romance languages, so a Western European group would not make very much sense.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4f/In...
Once again, not going by language families here (otherwise, basque would be very much out of place) but location, due to geopolitical reasons - anyway, if we wanted to do languages by actual genetic relationship, we'd need several forum topics due to poll restraints.

(regarding the genetic relationships though, Armenian pretty much fits into a Sprachbund with the langauges in its area and with historically relevant langauges such as Russian and Greek. As a result, it has no doubt adapted and changed a little due to influence from the before-mentioned languages. Regarding Proto Germanic, I was under the impression that PGmc was just as related to the Italic languages as it was to the Slavic languages, and the same for them two as well?)

Uvi (Montri la profilon) 2010-februaro-03 12:46:34

[/quote]As a result, it has no doubt adapted and changed a little due to influence from the before-mentioned languages. Regarding Proto Germanic, I was under the impression that PGmc was just as related to the Italic languages as it was to the Slavic languages, and the same for them two as well?)[/quote]Peculiarly enough, the cultural sentiment is very different within the Armenian community. A lot of those I have met from the diaspora and who are living in Canada tend to identify with eastern mediterranean culture: Greeks and Christian Arabs. Perhaps because many of them lived in Syria and Lebanon for a long time before coming to North America. On the other hand, many of the Armenians from Armenia proper that I've met identify with the surrounding Caucasian cultures and have a mocking attitude about "foreign" Armenians who visit and speak by adding Arabic slang in their vocabulary. lango.gif Interesting world indeed.

As for the proto-languages, I suppose that as we go back in time, we approach the fabled indo-european model more and more?

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