Languages!

[kbieniu7]

Hello everyone!

I looked over this great forum and I didn't found any topic about languages, what actually surprised me a little bit. In this case I decided to start such thread right there.

Last months (bah, even years!) I have been a bit outta* playing Simcity, focusing more on the real life - especially the university, which obviously takes most of my time. However, one of my favorite topics are foreign languages - the thing I love and I could spend hours learning, analyzing and reading about interesting facts.

So, I thought - why not to put this topic into such multilingual and friendly community? I'm sure, that you have a lot of great insights to share!

For example, I'm curious:

What languages do you speak?
Have you ever used them in real life, for real purposes?
Have you ever been to other country and used local language instead of English?
Which language sounds for you most beautifully?
Which one fascinates you the most?
Maybe there's one which scaries you!?
Which one would youlike to try?
Have you ever been surprised by anything in foreign language?

If you have you own insights, reflections, or question, feel free to write them!


What is more, I come with another idea. Learning language at school/university/courses etc. might be efficient, but there is no better way to improve your skills, than speaking, listening or writing - simply, just using it! So, there's my reflection:
We more or less know each other. We discussing a lot of things, both theese connected with the game and the other ones from the real life. Many of us have similiar interests, just like architecture, infrastructure, geography and so on, so why not take advantage of it?

I mean - to talk. For example on skype.

I speak English, some basics of German and French and I'm just trying a little bit of Turkish. I would really appreciate to talk with somebody on skype or by e-mail - especially in German and French. If there is anyone, who would like to try - please send me a PM

I hope that you liked it. And remember never be afraid of making mistakes! They are a natural part of learning process.

Regards!
Kamil

*Can any native English tell me, do I use this slang word in correct situation?

[MandelSoft]

I currently speak three languages:

1. Dutch (native language)
2. English (almost at a native level)
3. German (moderate)

I'm currently learning Danish too at Duolingo, and I'd like to add Swedish soon too.

I've tried French at high school, but I could never get the pronounciation right, especially when listening to French. I just can't make anything out of it because French don't pronounce half of the letters they use to write a word. This makes it for me very hard to understand.

I've learned a lot of English just simply by using it, mainly here and on SimTropolis (thanks guys!). Currently, my English is at such a level that strange things start to occur:
- It has gotten to my subcouncious: I can think and even dream in English
- Sometimes I know the English terminology better than the Dutch one. Sometimes I can't come up with a word in Dutch while I know the English word just fine.
- I make the same errors in English as in Dutch while speaking. The effort of using either one of them is almost equal.

So far, I made it fine here using English and Dutch for 98% of the times. One time in Switzerland I had to use German and in Panama, not a lot of people can speak English (and I can't speak Spanish, so you are directed to the good ol' Hands and Feet method). So why learn Danish? Because I like the Nordic languages and they are close to my own language family.

Anyway, that's my story.

Best,
Maarten

[Vizoria]

To answer your * the only time I hear "outta" is when folks say get outta of here.

[carlfatal]

Wow, that is a lot of languages you actually speak, Kamil and Maarten!

I am native German speaker. In school I first started with Latin, then English, then Old Greek. And I hated English, I think cause of the first teacher I had. She wanted us to pronounce everything in some kind of - what she thought would be - Oxford English. Damn, some of my neighbors were US Americans, and they did speak like normal people...

Some time later, when I studied, I had some friends, who were US Americans (Common in these days, kids of soldiers). From then on I started learning English by doing it. And as Frankfurt is a town with more than 80 nationalities, English is quite common here. Would be stupid, not to learn.
After I´ve got my first internet connection, English became more and more important. Most stuff I read is English, the most movies I look, are English dubbed or subbed.
I still have no clue about Grammar, I do it, like I hear it. But if you speak German, Grammar is can be the pure hell, you only can try to "feel" the right way. If you want to know all minor cases, you can become a linguist (what I studied). And this was the second reason for me to learn more about the English language: the roots of German and English are so similar, Saxonian words are still common in both languages, although English is much more influenced by Latin.

Now I know, what Maarten said, this strange feeling, if you look for a word, but you can only imagine it´s English counterpart. But my level? Can´t answer that...

[trabman11]

Usually, when you use " outta' ", you are saying to 'get out' of somewhere. The word "oughta" is similar in pronunciation, but means that someone 'ought to' do something, or that they should do something.

I.e. - "You oughta get outta' here, boy..."  <--- Something a redneck would say XD

Hope this helped 

BTW - I am native English speaker, however I know how to speak Polish (I can read it better than I am able to speak it though) as my parents immigrated from Poland to the USA. Currently I am studying Spanish, as well, I guess you just need to know Spanish now 'adays.

[noahclem]

Cool idea for a topic!

English - native
Finnish - functional but less than fluent
French - poor but previously competent
Italian - remember very little (verbally) but could get by with basics when I lived there for a semester

I had about 5 years of French before I visited a place that spoke the language and while I never felt comfortable speaking it as a student I was quite surprised at how well I could speak and understand the language when I was forced to. I visited France/Belgium/Monaco five times between 2003-2012 but by the last time I was having difficulty because whenever I'd try to formulate a sentence Finnish words kept sneaking in, just as French words would do when I was first learning Finnish. Apparently my mind categorizes language into "English" or "other" categories though I hope I can teach it to sub-categorize "other" so I can re-familiarize myself with French some day and hopefully learn Spanish--if I move back to the States some day I'd really like to learn that language.

These days Finnish is my primary language outside the home but it's been very difficult to learn as it's non-Indo-European, so very different, and there are no classes available in the village I live in (it's a winter sports and nature area with few services not relating to tourism). I've lived here for almost five years and am now eligible for citizenship but need to pass a language test to do so--time to really work on my skills I guess

[CahosRahneVeloza]

Primary Native Language = Tagalog

Secondary Native Language = Kapampangan

Foreign Language I can adequately speak = English

I can't speak English fluently because I was taught the language in school incorrectly. By that what I mean is we were first trained to value grammar above all else, instead of first training us to be comfortable in speaking the language then afterwards train us about grammar. What effect this bad training method on me has is that my subconscious grammar Nazi renders me unable to speak fluently and as a result... talking to me in English in person feels like you're talking to a two year old

Foreign Language I have some grasp on = Japanese (it's an Anime and Super Sentai thing really)

Made up but actual Language I can speak = Swardspeak or "Filipino Gay Lingo"

Made up language inspired by media I can speak = Simlish

[travismking]

English - native
Spanish - native

[Vizoria]

Made up but actual Language I can speak = Swardspeak or "Filipino Gay Lingo"

Made up language inspired by media I can speak = Simlish

Best laugh I have had in ages.

[MandelSoft]

I forgot to mention I can speak technobabble and algebra fluently

[noahclem]

I forgot:

cat: expert
hybrid Finnish/English/nonsense I speak around the house with wife: fluent

[carlfatal]

I forgot to mention I can speak technobabble and algebra fluently

Why doesn´t this make me wonder? 

@CahosRahneVeloza,
Yeah, Simlish! Sulsul! 

[Vizoria]

I forgot to mention I can speak technobabble and algebra fluently

That makes two of us brother! I completed my degree in mathematics a year ago!

[compdude787]

I forgot to mention I can speak technobabble and algebra fluently

What about roadgeek-speak?? I think we're both pretty fluent in that!

[CahosRahneVeloza]

Best laugh I have had in ages.

It is a real language though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swardspeak

@CahosRahneVeloza,
Yeah, Simlish! Sulsul! 

Dagdag! 

[isii94]

I'm kind of boring...

I speak English and German at about the same level (and I sometimes mix them up in everyday life which can be kind of embarrassing) and a few words  in Italian and Spanish that you learn when you're there on holiday for a week.

[GDO29Anagram]

Native language: Ganaramian English

Would-be second language: Tagalog

Other languages I considered at one point: Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Dutch

Other languages I looked at but never had the time or interest to dive in: Arabic, French, Korean, Esperanto

Languages whose alphabets or writing systems I vaguely know or can distinguish or differentiate, but cannot read: Arabic (alright, there are a lot of languages that have writing systems based on the Arabic abjad, so that makes it a bit harder), Russian (same situation with the Cyrillic alphabet), Hindi (Devanagari; probably the same situation as Arabic and Russian), Thai, Korean (Hangul), Japanese (Kanji only), Chinese, Esperanto (there are six letters with circumflexes that are not used in any other writing system in the world), French (it's full of circumflexes, also), Spanish (strangely enough, there's what I call a Hispanospherepony with an ñ for a cutie mark; I'm not kidding), Italian (kinda; all I know is that if there's a u, it has a slash that's backwards from ú), Portuguese (There's ã)

In short: I'm monolingual.

-----

Take note of what my native language is. Ganaramian English. It's a personalised variant of the English language that is only ever designed for me, and this is why it's easyhard for me to even communicate in English. I think that the language a person speaks is personalised in the way that fits them, such that you have nuances that are only ever found in the way you speak that others don't.

This can be a problem if your upbringing is something different. Here's one instance: A religious person refuses to click on an icon because they've been taught to never worship icons, even though "icon" is just a technical term for a "picture thing".

Or this can be just downright quirky and (d)evolve into wordplay. Sometimes when I speak, I leave "to be" unconjugated (so instead of saying am/is/are, I just say "be", like in "what be it?"). What's the opposite of downright? Upleft.

-----

Why is Tagalog my would-be second language? I'm Filipino (well, Filipino-Chinese-Spanish), and I grew up in a mostly bilingual household (English-Tagalog), but I was only ever taught English. Apparently there was this misconception going about in my time-region where, if a kid is brought up in a bilingual household, they'd confuse both languages together, and 20 years later, my family learned that that's just baloney. Yeah, you'd have codeswitching (Taglish), but you can perfectly English and Tagalog.

-----

There is a Youtube video I found listing someone's top 15 languages by how they sound. It's kinda too bad that they didn't put Tagalog on that list. Or Dutch.

Languages I find that sound cool: well, I kinda said it already: Tagalog and Dutch. Failing that, well, German and some other Romance language? I like the sound of several Romance languages, but Spanish is the one I have the most familiarity, having taken Spanish classes before. No hablo español o castellano fluently, however.

-----

On the topic of Spanish, I was a bit surprised to learn that Spanish != Spanish, and for the same reason that English != English. There were a few Polandball comics on the matter. The only one I can think of is Franceball learning Spanish from both Spainball and maybe some other countryball from South America, and the two Spanishes are just completely alien from another (it was actually three Spanishes).

I guess "surprised" isn't the right word to say, but I can't find another word that means "not-so-surprised-but-still-kinda-sorta-surprised". I mean, I can understand British English and American English more or less just fine, like lift = elevator, flat = apartment, nappy = diaper, and colo(u)r, center/re favo(u)rite, tire/tyre (at least with tire/tyre, you can easily distinguish the noun and the verb), and if a widespread language like English is like that, other widespread languages would be like that.

-----

A lot of how I developed Ganaramian English was from online social interaction. I will say this: the reason why I use British English spelling is because of Runescape. When I first saw British English, I first saw the word "defense" spelt as "defence" and though, "Oh, is that an alternate spelling or something?"

I had a similar kind of vibe when I was watching Dora the Explorer. I didn't realise that "ayudame" and "ayudamos" (I hope I spelt that right) fell under a completely different system than what any Germanic language used (those were commands, though). Romance languages, I realised years after watching DtE, have unique conjugations for everything. For example, Spanish word bailar, meaning "to dance", conjugated into present tense indicative.

bailo - I dance
bailas - You (informal) dances
baila - He/she/you (formal) dances
bailamos - We dance
baláis - You (plural you, informal) dance
bailan - They/you (plural you, formal) dance

For every person and number in Spanish (first/second/third person, singular/plural), there is a unique conjugation, whereas in English, a lot of the conjugations are shared. This means that, in most cases, you can eliminate the pronouns that accompany the verb. So, for example, "Los lunes, yo bailo en mi casa", I don't need to say "yo" (Spanish for I). Whereas in English, "Every Monday, I dance in my house", you can't just say "Every Monday, dance in my house" (or for that matter, "Thes Mondays, dance in my house").

It kinda gets weird if you begin to get into "ser" versus "to be", and that leads into my next thing, as well: contractions. Let's conjugate "ser", and assume you lop off all of the pronouns in Spanish, and compare it with their English equivalents:

soy - I am
eres - You are
es - He/she/it is
somos - We are
sois - You (plural) are (this is probably inequivalent)
son - They are

Here's what English can do that Spanish can't do except for about 5 words: contract words into one.

I'm, you're, (s)he's/it's, we're, you're (or in some places, you'll're), they're. Those might as well be one word, and Spanish doesn't do that kind of contraction. However, even in English, if those are all one word, you have a situation where English has unique conjugations for each verb, albeit just contractions.

This makes me wonder how English would work is it had a unique conjugation for every tense, person, and number, the same way Romance languages do it. You'd probably have to render all of the pronouns into affixes and just pop it onto the base verb.

On the subject of contractions, has there ever been a situation where a double or even triple contraction has been used? Well, there is one: 'n'. I guess if you're talking at 88MPH, you'd'ave a situation where all'd'words y''re sayin''re bein' mangled 'n't'one, 'r'av'it such dat dipthongs're being rendered down t' single letters, 'r maybe have letters dat're bein' lopped off an' replaced wi'dapostrophes. Imagin' dat.

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And there's one other thing of English that makes it weird in my book, and it can be summed up by something by Randall Munroe:



Think about it: I drink my drink, plant my plant, and water my plants with water, jar my fruits into jars, floor it in the garage and leave skid marks on the floor, see a fly fly, eye my eyes in a mirror that's mirroring my eyeing eyes, and type out a type of language feature.

Is this normal? No, it's not at a 90 degree angle, it's at a 94 degree angle. Knowing this makes communicating an English, to me at least, a blessingcurse.

That's all I can say; I kinda lost it right now. I could get more into how expressions work in other languages and my curiosities as to how they work, and how technical language works, and the weirdness of portmanteaus, but I think this is long enough.

[carlfatal]

@ GDO28Anagram,

thank you a lot for this wonderful excursion into linguistics. That is, why I love this stuff. Nothing is more confusing than language, but we use it for communication.

When you mentioned the ability to contract speech, it reminded me to something. The most Hessian dialects are known as the most lazy German dialects. Pronouncing follows the rule, not to open the mouth and not to move the lips or teeth nor the tongue...
It is no wonder, that we have a lot of merged words, where we easily can loose parts of them like vokals you don´t really need for understanding. So a T changes into a D, an A into an E if followed by a I or E, vokals between the same consonants can vanish completely( Most of the dialects are vanishing recently, but some minor things will remain). Some examples?
"Guck einmal dort" becomes "guggemada"
"Guten Tag" becomes "Guude"
It is not easy to explain for a native English audience here, how this will be pronounced right without using phonetic symbols, but I hope, this can show, what I mean.

Another interesting fact is, that German knows near to no synonymes. Nothing is the same, but everything is similar.

Speech in fact is something we all personalize, caue we learn it by doing. And the communication with others let this personalized speech become common - or not... It is a fluent construction, that only works by using it in this way.

So I would differ between speech and language. We can read Latin language, but it isn´t personalized anymore, it is dead. Speech is a part of living languages, but language isn´t necessarily bound to speech.

So I have to admit, that I speak something like German, but with a lot of doubts about the language itself and it´s use, filled with own constructions and thoughts. Using a word in a discussion can easily end with a discussion about the specific word. And communication is the most difficult thing I know.

[GDO29Anagram]

When you mentioned the ability to contract speech, it reminded me to something. The most Hessian dialects are known as the most lazy German dialects. Pronouncing follows the rule, not to open the mouth and not to move the lips or teeth nor the tongue...

<>

"Guten Tag" becomes "Guude"

Waitwaitwaitwaitwatiwaitwait, I've to stop you here. Is that where the name GuudeBoulderfirst came from? I'm gonna have to look that up if I can.

Now we're getting into something interesting here, well, two things: etymology of names (where does the name Orteil come from and how does it correspond with toenail?) and when is a dialect a language and a language a dialect (is there ever enough overlap between two different languages, like Spanish and Portuguese, such that speakers of two different languages can more or less understand each other?).

I'm not gonna write a long comment this time (I'm gonna condense a lot), but mão (Portuguese) = mano (Spanish), and annus (Latin) = año (Spanish). Mão and año have something common: a tilde. I read somewhere that the tilde was originally shorthand for a second N, so ñ = nn and ã = an, the same way that ye = the in English (because there was a letter in English that meant th, and it was the letter þ, which stood for thorn, and corresponded with the /ð/ and /θ/ sounds, and y was apparently the closest thing to þ). And there's a good reason for shorthand: laziness-convenience. And printing presses.

OK, I'm gonna make it semi-long by going back to English contractions: the word "gonna". There's an alien on Youtube (Zogg from Betelgeuse) who explains the history of the word "gonna" as shorthand for "going to" in the sense of near-future or "about to". Which is why I chuckle at the phrase "We're gonna the theater". So you have a system in English where "going/want/have/ought to <verb>" is, as Zogg explains it, "eroded" into one word: gonna, wanna, hafta, oughta, along with other similar words, like kinda (kind of) and sorta (sort of). How are you gonna wanna do that? And I'm kinda sorta guilty of this kind of thing. Thing is, if this persists long enough, if you type gonna or kinda, your spellcheck will one day not even bother with saying that's wrong, and with my spellcheck (set to British English), "kinda" doesn't produce a red line underneath.

Watch:

[eggman121]

For the record I and most other Australians can only speak English. Probably due to the Isolation we have compared to the rest of the world. I have Greek, Belgium and German heritage but most people who speak other languages either 1) come from other counties, 2) speak another language at home or 3) learn another language while studying.

I work at a supermarket in the country aka outside a capital city and while most of the people I serve are Australian. The other day I served some people from Germany who where backpacking and doing farm work. My opening line to most customers is "Hello mate how are you?" and if you are visiting Australia the phrase can be quite confusing. I know my Korean Uncle who my aunty married had trouble with my accent and you really have to avoid slang and speak in just understandable words to communicate effectively.

I am always keen to try to bridge the gap for communication with people coming from other countries and do my best to communicate but I know at least 80% in Australia speak English and some people in Australia can be down right racist and rude if you speak a different language. I am so glad to be part of a site where we are courteous and kind to each other even though we come from different parts of the world and I hope that continues  .

Speaking of other parts of the world there are 2 places I would love to visit. Europe and Japan. They sound like awesome countries and have been an inspiration for the projects I have working on (Japanese HSR anyone  )

That is my spill on the subject for now.

-eggman121