| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Language just for fun Thread poster: Roni_S
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Ty Kendall 
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:17
Hebrew to English
| Great language! | Sep 2, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote: Ty Kendall wrote:
I'd quite like to learn that too, especially since Iceland is relatively close. However, I have a real desire to learn Welsh (I only live a few miles from the Welsh border). I speak, to one degree or another, English, French, Japanese, Chinese and Welsh. I am not a native speaker of Welsh, although I did most of primary education through the medium of Welsh. I find it by far the most difficult of the languages I have encountered in terms of its grammatical idiosyncrasies and oddities like its very extensive system of mutation. But it is a pleasant language to my ears, and it has a very long and proud heritage. Dan
I love mutations! I look out for them whenever possible! I haven't encountered anything yet that I find particularly frustrating to grasp, although whenever I'm convinced I've mastered the pronunciation of LL I find I've lost it again.
I need to just move to Caernarfon and immerse myself in it - watching S4C is good, but hardly a substitute.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:17
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Go West, but in a southerly direction | Sep 2, 2015 |
Ty Kendall wrote:
I need to just move to Caernarfon and immerse myself in it - watching S4C is good, but hardly a substitute.
You'll get a funny accent if you learn Welsh up north. Very nasal, those Gogs. Teifi valley is good for speaking, North Preseli where I am is also very Welsh.
Also there is a significant difference in the climate, especially rainfall. Seems unlikely, given that only a few dozen miles separate us, but it really does rain a lot more up there.
Pembrokeshire is far milder and sunnier, especially on the coast. There's a reason that the main sources of new potatoes are Pembrokeshire and Jersey.
Dan
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:17
Hebrew to English
| I would do but... | Sep 2, 2015 |
I'm totally in love with Gwynedd (and to a lesser degree Conwy) - despite the dodgy weather! But maybe I need a visit to the south to see what I'm missing!
| | | | | Welsh would be very interesting | Sep 3, 2015 |
I find that language so beautiful. I am also interested in some of the Native American languages, though I think they'd be very difficult to learn.
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4 years ago I found my passion in life. It's never too late to read Anna Karenina in Russian...
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Dan Lucas wrote:
You'll get a funny accent if you learn Welsh up north. Very nasal, those Gogs. Teifi valley is good for speaking, North Preseli where I am is also very Welsh.
Shwdy boi. I'm not sure the rest of Wales would agree, Dan... The Cardi accent is widely regarded as a comedy yokel version of the Language of Heaven, and even though that's kind of how I speak it too, I have to agree...
Ty: ll = hl, simples!
| | | | Ty Kendall
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:17
Hebrew to English
| Diolch yn fawr | Sep 3, 2015 |
Chris S wrote:
Ty: ll = hl, simples!
Thanks! That's a good way of transliterating it I've never come across before. I've heard/read some ludicrous descriptions of how to articulate it which make it sound more complicated than theoretical physics.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:17
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| sa i'n gallu cytuno | Sep 3, 2015 |
Chris S wrote:
The Cardi accent is widely regarded as a comedy yokel version of the Language of Heaven, and even though that's kind of how I speak it too, I have to agree...
1) South Walians can't accuse anybody, anywhere of having a comedy accent given the way they sound.
2) North & Mid Walians think the hwntws are all sell-outs, but since they talk so far back in their throats that it sounds like they're being throttled and so nasally that they sound like they've got a clothes-peg on their nose, nobody can understand them anyway. Other than that, nice people I'm sure.
3) Lampeter is virtually Tregaron, and Tregaron is basically Mid Wales, which is the same as North Wales = see above.
4) The South-West is a beacon, nay a bastion of civilisation and pleasant articulation. Oh, and it's a lot warmer. I was in Cwmann one evening late last December and it was -1C by the time I got into the car. I got home to the other side of Cardigan and it was 4C!
That is all. I have spoken.
Dan
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Andrea Muller (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:17
English to German
+ ...
I would really like to learn a non-European language and have been playing around with learning Somali from a book and a CD for almost 2 years now. I am really struggling with it and don't think I'll ever be able to make a relative clause in Somali. But I enjoy it when I can understand the odd word of a Somali conversation or get to practice a bit in the oddest places, like public swimming pools or hospital waiting rooms.
Generally, I always wondered whether it is easier to learn f... See more I would really like to learn a non-European language and have been playing around with learning Somali from a book and a CD for almost 2 years now. I am really struggling with it and don't think I'll ever be able to make a relative clause in Somali. But I enjoy it when I can understand the odd word of a Somali conversation or get to practice a bit in the oddest places, like public swimming pools or hospital waiting rooms.
Generally, I always wondered whether it is easier to learn from teaching material designed for speakers of your native language, or whether it makes no difference as long as you can understand the language the material is written in? ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Spanish by osmosis | Sep 3, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
Spanish seems to be considered the quintessential "easy to learn" language for anybody who has some background in Romance languages. From that perspective, it might be a nice idea. Given how widely spoken it is it's also probably quite useful, not professionally but just for travel and so on.
Romance languages may be tricky.
My native language is Brazilian Portuguese. My first wife spoke Romanian with her parents and, after 15 years, I could understand about 30~40% of what was spoken.
I had my share of fun with Romanian. Many years later, "ape murdare" (= waste water) immediately came to my mind when I watched an episode of "Desperate Housewives" where, in a birthday party, the monkey actually killed the clown, to add to the kid's mother desperation.
I studied Italian for 4 years in high school, still speak it sufficiently well to get by. When we went to Italy, in 1986, all the words I missed in Italian, due to my somewhat limited vocabulary, were identical in Romanian.
On the other hand, I worked for a company that had me coordinate some 5 international management meetings in Brazil, where 80% of the attendees were from varied ES-speaking countries in Latin America. Later, on account of my performance there, they had me coordinating one Brazilian management meeting in Argentina. (I began by arriving there a few days earlier, to sort out all misunderstandings resulting from negotiations in Portuñol - a PT+ES pidgin mix.)
While most Brazilians will easily understand Spanish, the reverse is not true. A fellow translator from Colombia explained me why: Though Brazilian Portuguese has all the sounds used in Spanish, the reverse is not true. Spanish doesn't have the sounds used in PT-BR for "ã", "ão", "ões", "lh". "nh", "Z", "J", "Ç", nor the possibility of the letter "X" having six different sounds, depending on the word.
Spanish-speaking ears are "deaf" to these sounds. As a Japanese teacher explained to me, he wouldn't be able to say a phrase in Korean in a way that it would be understood. He simply could not enunciate those sounds properly.
So, throughout all these events I learned to speak Spanish which such fluency that amazes me every time I do it. However I had inputs from people from so many places, that the ES "variant" I use is my own. People often get puzzled at the mix I use, as it is clearly Spanish, not Portuñol, but unplaceable.
Okay, I could get around pretty well with my Spanish in Argentina, Paraguay, California, Florida, and a few other places, but what's the use? As I didn't sit through one single Spanish class, I am completely illiterate.
What could I do with such level of Spanish, professionally? The only use I found for it so far is that I can time-spot video subtitles translated either from or into ES, however I definitely cannot fix any typos in ES.
So I don't see a point in deliberately learning half a new language. It should take years of study before reaching some competency for translation, no matter how close akin it is to any language we already speak.
| | | | | This could run and run | Sep 3, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
3) Lampeter is virtually Tregaron, and Tregaron is basically Mid Wales, which is the same as North Wales = see above.
4) The South-West is a beacon, nay a bastion of civilisation and pleasant articulation. Oh, and it's a lot warmer. I was in Cwmann one evening late last December and it was -1C by the time I got into the car. I got home to the other side of Cardigan and it was 4C!
Baby, it's cold outside. In Cwmann. Which is in Carmarthenshire...
One of the benefits of living in Ceredigion, apart from it being Sunshine Capital of the World, is that you don't have to sleep in your car because all the houses have been snapped up as holiday rentals...
Only trouble is everyone talks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk
Edit: Sorry, didn't register that the video is only subtitled in Norwegian, duh. It's about how even the Danes themselves can't make out a word of what other Danes say...
[Edited at 2015-09-03 15:23 GMT]
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