Multi Language Thread.

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Originally Posted by Koa

So you don't speak Basque even if you are in the Basque country??? Interesting... I've always wondered about thos bilingual places... I've met 3 Basques in real life in the past year, that was so interesting :) AGUR is one of my favourite words ever :)

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Well, the Basque Country is suppossed to be a bilingual place, but... you know, some parts are mainly Spanish-speaking areas, while others are mostly Basque-speaking. And I happen to live in one of the Spanish-speaking ones :-) I had 12 years of Basque at school, but language teaching over here is kind of... not as good as it could be, so I ended up being able to understand Basque (I can even watch the TV in Basque!) but I am completely unable of speaking :S

If you are interested in any other useful phrases in Basque, just let me know here/in a PM/in a mail ;-)

Wish you all the best,
Keltic Banshee

Ni hao!Ni hao ma?Wode hen hao!Wode shi Audaliyaren!:)

Wow Chinese :D

I guess the meanings of the first 2 sentences are:

Hello,

How are you doing?

:)

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Originally Posted by RococoLocket

Haha, I'll probably be "corrected" again, but I've always been told that ahlain [methinx with a language that uses it's own alphabet, the English phonetic spelling is debateable] means Welcome :) I wouldn't know about source words though i'm afraid, i'm far from fluent, although i'd love to be & intend to learn Arabic properly one day :)

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I am not correcting you, just correcting myself.
Actually you are probably right it is a sort of welcome but what I meant is it doesnt literaly mean welcome.

Sorry my mistake:blush: my sister who is better at these things than me says that Ahlan is welcome and marhaban means more welcome with joy, or joyful greetings.

:D

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Originally Posted by Monica

In Polish it's "cześć" but I've no idea how to explain to you how to pronounce it :D You can also say sth like "hej" or now even "hello".

Try to say "cześć" and don't get discoursaged :)

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hey Monica I'll try to help you with the pronounciation but please correct me if I'm wrong.
"cześć" is pronounced like [chesh] "ch" as in chat and "sh" as in she. hope I got it right.... :confused: :)
I love Polish, in fact I love all the languages. :D

and I wanted to tell you that in Serbian hello is "Zdravo"...try to pronounce every letter. but here in Balkans we use "ciao" a lot, like in Italian. but we write it as "qao"... :D

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Originally Posted by Kaltrina

"cześć" is pronounced like [chesh] "ch" as in chat and "sh" as in she. hope I got it right.... :confused: :)
I love Polish, in fact I love all the languages. :D

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you're right but you forgot about "ć" at the end. you need to pronounce that as well. there's no sound like that in English, I guess.

Serbian "zdravo" sounds like Polish "zdrowie" meaning health :)

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Originally Posted by Monica

you're right but you forgot about "ć" at the end. you need to pronounce that as well. there's no sound like that in English, I guess.

Serbian "zdravo" sounds like Polish "zdrowie" meaning health :)

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yes I did. :D . so then I guess we could add "ć" at the end which sounds also as CH in english but we can say that it's a light ch, it is not pronounced like the first one.
health in Serbian is "zdravlje" and it is pronounced as it is written...

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Originally Posted by Kaltrina

health in Serbian is "zdravlje" and it is pronounced as it is written...

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Well, I know that having Spanish as mother tongue is a great disadvantage when learning others, because of the limited number of sounds we have... but I had never been so aware of it until I read that "pronuced as it is written"...

So... for those of us who can see no human way of pronouncing "zd" (or any other pair of consonants together, except for very few combination, for that matter), any hint? :confused: :goof:

Wish you all the best,

Keltic Banshee

Banshee, say z, say d, say zd :p
Try to think about talking quickly and pronouncing two words, one of which ends with the Z sound, the other beginning with D... sorry for the lousy example, think 'is dry'. If you pronounce it 's dry (leaving the I sound out), you'll get [zdrai]... and looky! you got 'zdr' in one word ;)

Anyone got any idea what the heck I'm on about? :D

@Jay: Probably. ;) But I'll just pronounce the letters like I'd do in german and I think I have got it .. more or less.

Just out of curiosity, of so many of us who know second (and/or third, fourth . . .) languages, obviously many of you have shown incredible talents in reading and writing, especially in English as a foreign language. Speaking and comprehending language, from my experience, seems a lot different from reading and writing, and, I wondered, do all of you understand in speech and speak different languages as well as you read and write them?
In French, my conversation abilities I used to judge my skills as quite strong, but with a lack of practice, my conversation skills have declined. In fact, several weeks ago, I spoke briefly with a woman and her young daughter from Quebec; I kept up somewhat in conversation, with several mistakes, while the very adorable young girl laughed. Oddly, my reading and writing abilities have remained almost as strong as while I took courses in French, still practicing now and then.

I can hold my own in a conversation in arabic but my accent gives me away as being a 'foriegner ' my speech is sort of a garble of gulf and egyptirn phrases and accents.
I can understand written well enough to read books without the constant need for dictionaaries but write I am afraid I can not. My written grammer is attrocius. :D

I operate better in reading/writing than in spoken form. No matter what the language is (mostly that is :p). I could probably understand a German written text better than writing in German and I think anyone speaking German who'd happen to hear what I'm doing to the word order would probably shoot me :D. Russian seems to be the odd one as I'm better at speaking it rather than writing/reading it... I suppose it's the azbuka thing ;). Got slight problems with Slovak grammar... spoken much better though. Reading Slovak texts without problems. But then it doesn't count as it's quite similar to Czech, just ... softer.

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Originally Posted by mono

I wondered, do all of you understand in speech and speak different languages as well as you read and write them?

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Absolutely not... while I write in rather good English, I speak with many more insecurities and I happen to make grammar mistakes every now and then (usually not big ones), and most of all my pronounciation is atrocious... And I find it rather hard to understand a native English speaking, at least before I adapt to the single person's accent.
French uhm... I think my written/oral skills are rather even... Though the thing I can do best is reading, I read whole books in French original after not having studied French for 3/4 years! :eek: I still speak better than I thought, but then... I have good basis, 8 years of studying and it's not that different from Italian.
German...my spoken and written German were and are equally bad... Though maybe writing I can think about where the hell to put words...
Russian... I think I have more experience in speaking than in writing, but writing has the huge advantage of giving me the time to think about the case, while speaking I just realise I'm saying it wrong but I cant think of the right one quickly enough...
Spanish... it doesnt really count, but I understand a lot of what I read and quite a lot of what I hear if it's spoken slowly...however, I can barely speak or write cos I have no clue of the grammar, so as soon as I have to use a verb which is not one of those that my mind registered, I get lost. I mostly note in my mind the similarities and differences from Italian and work consequently.

Now, why did you ask this.... why do you want me to babble on for hours? Why did you open a thread were I will end up being more verbose than ever? :D:D:D

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Originally Posted by Jay

Banshee, say z, say d, say zd :p
Try to think about talking quickly and pronouncing two words, one of which ends with the Z sound, the other beginning with D... sorry for the lousy example, think 'is dry'. If you pronounce it 's dry (leaving the I sound out), you'll get [zdrai]... and looky! you got 'zdr' in one word ;)

Anyone got any idea what the heck I'm on about? :D

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Problem is, that explaining things this way we will never get too far... nor we would by doing it in a scientific way cos my brain refuses to learn the international phonetic language or any similar device (including the soft/hard - deaf/sounding(or whatever it's called in Englush) distinction), which anyway would be unknown to non-linguists...

Concretely referring to the quoted post... the Spanish Z is more similar to an English TH than to that zdravje thing... and the Spanish S is more like an Italian double S... I think the best way to describe that Z in zdravje is a /z/ like in English roSe...
*note: I suppose that zdravje sounds like Russian zdorovje...same meaning

One of the main reasons why I love Slavic languages is the amount of consonants that get near and become impossible to prononuce for us Romance-speakers (there is a famous Czech sentence containing no vowels...something about a needle I think...maybe... Jay?) ... I don't like the unions of vowels you find especially in Italian, they sound so bad...(example: the word aiuole)

And well for Spanish that might be even a bigger problem...all the Spanish I've ever met, even if their English was really good, couldnt prononuce /SP/: they invariably say Espanish, Espain, estupid... they dont realise, it's just their way...