Mesaĝoj: 42
Lingvo: English
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-09 10:58:12
When I read english here and there, I can understand the words but hardly the leading idea. It seems to me it's the most unclear language in the world...I think that there is something about English that makes it difficult for speakers of Romance Languages.
It must be a shock for speakers of languages who have a very limited vowel system (like Spanish and Italian) to encounter the 20 or so vowel sounds of English.
Also, English tends to load a lot of meaning onto the verb, which I think is alien to them.
And English is highly idiomatic so that foreigners can often sound comic when speaking the language, even if intelligible.
Then again, we English speakers have many near synonyms with substantial restrictions on the contexts in which they are used.
Whilst having specific terms which correspond to words in the Romance languages, we also have a commonly used alternative system which combines a verb with a preposition to create expressions with multiple meanings and sometimes great generality.
Last, but not least, the spelling is chaotic.
It's the perfect choice for the world's lingua franca! Or, to put that another way, the simplicity of the language has little connection with its widespread adoption as an international language. Esperantists, please note.
Genjix (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 02:03:30
you take an uneducated egyptian with an uneducated bahraini and they cannot communicate.
Miland (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 09:45:49
Genjix:you take an uneducated egyptian with an uneducated bahraini and they cannot communicate.I suspect that this may be exaggerated because of two things: Egyptian Arabic is the most widely understood dialect, owing to Egypt being the most populous Arab country, and even uneducated people are liable to have seen Egyptian films; and Bahraini Arabic or 'Gulf Arabic' is liable to be close to Arabian and classical Arabic because of geography (in fact there's now a causeway connecting Bahrain to Saudi Arabia).
From what little I've read, the real gulf may be between the dialects of the Maghreb and the others.
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 10:13:22
Anyway, it seems like the gaps in understanding are equivalent to the Italian/Spanish/Some Portuguese/French dialects and surrounding border languages situation.
Then again, it's all hard to judge from a 1st person perspective, since even the most "estranged" romance language, Romanian, has some elements that English speakers will understand easily, and even French, which English speakers should understand very well, has some highly strange parts to it which English speakers would not recognise even having had a glance at them first.
Anyway, we Europeans decided it was a great idea to categorise and cut off our own languages from each other, so we tend to neglect the idea that our own languages are very closely related.
Evildela (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 10:21:37
qwertz (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 11:52:07
twitter.com/EUInterpreters
Review of *Confessions of an Arabic Interpreter: The Odyssey of an Arabist, 1959-2009*, the memoirs of Leslie... fb.me/JBBTl2RC (www.guardian.co.uk link)
about 3 hours ago via Facebook
erinja (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 11:53:12
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Regarding Arabic, I have also heard that Egyptian Arabic is widely understood due to Egyptian TV. Regarding Lebanese, I have heard it's super different from other 'dialects' of Arabic. As an interesting note, I hear that it has many parallels with the Semitic base of Maltese (which is the only Semitic language written natively in the Latin alphabet). I can see why this would be the case due to geography, Lebanon's trading past, and Malta's being an island.
[I speak of a Semitic base because Maltese is Semitic in much the same way that English is Germanic; it's a mishmash of influences at this point. Maltese has heavy influence from English and Sicilian Italian.]
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 12:14:25
erinja:I think ceigered meant that an English speaker could understand some of French writing, not speaking.Yes, that would be more the case. Although, the phonetics are not so bad with bigger words, so while in writing it's ridiculously easy to understand many words, in the spoken language the smaller a word is (and the less cues there are to remind the listener of the correct word), the more emphasis there is on knowing those little pronunciation quirks.
Mainly, that almost everything is palatalised, nasalised, dropped or otherwise differently pronounced
. qwertz (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 13:37:40
erinja:I think ceigered meant that an English speaker could understand some of French writing, not speaking. I think most English speakers could guess the meaning of "Le train est important". But without having studied French, they couldn't understand the spoken version of that, since spoken French is difficult to relate written French, unless you've been taught the rules.Yes, that "malmotivigis" myself to learn French. Even if I really like the sound of French language. And that's the reason why I probable will start learning Spanish (one letter = one sound) one day I feel to put efforts an learning a new foreign language. (Still needs to improve my English for business reasons)
erinja:*grrr*. It's "Mischmasch" (e-o pronounced: miŝmaŝ) in German, too.
[I speak of a Semitic base because Maltese is Semitic in much the same way that English is Germanic; it's a mishmash of influences at this point. Maltese has heavy influence from English and Sicilian Italian.]
ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-oktobro-10 14:10:09
Evildela:Jezz Ceigered I think you over estimate us lower class English speakers. Even with my understanding of Esperanto I still have no idea what the French are saying - And I watch a lot of foreign language films. Though when it’s written, I can kind of guess words, but when it’s spoken... yeah I got better change of cracking the Egyptian Hieroglyphs.Haha. Well, I meant that in a text like:
"En garde, mon ami! J'espère que nous pouvons boire du vin après notre bataille!"
You'd probably be able to pick up "en, garde, mon, ami, vin (and by context "boire"), notre" and maybe "bataille" (battle). After all, most English speakers know the phrases "mon ami", "notre dame", etc. And the bigger words like "prononciation" are very, VERY similar to English.
In hearing that change of course, observe:
"En garde, mon ami! J'espère que nous pouvons boire du vin après notre bataille!"
"An gard, mon ami! Ĵesper ke nu puvon bwar du van apre notre bataj!"
(note that's not very precise, as "van" should be a bit more like "ven" than full out "van" Esperante)
Atentu, mia amiko! Mi esperas ke ni povas trinki (ne drinki! Nur ĝentila trinkado!) vinon post nia batalo!
Mishmashes have a funny etymological history. The English words "mix", "mash", "mishmash" (mash duplicated), and the German words "mischen", "mischmasch" (same thing as "mishmash"), and a few others, all come from the Proto-Germanic word "misk-"/"mask-" (two separate words).
Which is related to "-misc-" in "Immiscible" and "miscellaneous"
.