Printable View
Portuguese, French, and studying Russian. I have little Latin and German left because I have no need, and you know, it kinda depends on the medium and listener. I want to include Irish and NewYork, because I can be fluent with two fingers, and totally dumb in bar conversation. hehe
Scher, Isn't your mother tongue English? You live in England, right?
Hehe, my grandpa said that he would teach me Persian one day. I can understand a very few Persian words. You know that Urdu and Persian are quite alike?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mililalil XXIV
That doesn't mean 'good friend', I hope?
(if it did, most theories about the world would be screwed ;))
Dutch is native, and English is fluent. I can get by in 5 or so languages.
well i speak arabic,english,french,turkish and turkmenian
Referring to "jo bharat":
Actually, Koa, I used "bharat" here as in the meaning one would find in looking up "Bhaarat" - a name, it would seem, culled from a reference to a certain family line, which came to be applied more generally to the whole country wherein that family resided traditionally. Any idea what the country is?Quote:
Originally Posted by Koa
I think Scheherazade took the "bharat" as the proper name of the individual whose name extends to that house after whom the country in question has been often named. I think she may also have taken the two opening words - "My `isshah" - as if in the same tongue as all the rest of the sentence to follow. These two words are not only in a different tongue than all the rest (which from the third word to the end are of one language), but are not even of the same language as each other. Taken for what she may have naturally saw them to be, presuming they were of one tongue with all that followed, they might still have made much sense to the sentence even without a proper understanding - but in such a way, in fact, as to reinforce the course she seems to have taken with interpretting "bharat".
I hope I have made myself perfectly clear!
[`Im qara` ha`ish ha'aravah, yada' mah `amarti baderekh "My `isshah".]
Well Mil (sorry I can't seem to be able to spell all the rest of your name ;)), I atcually have just a vague clue of what language is that, but those two words resembled a lot to some Hungarian words, and since Hungarian is not really related to other languages, I was wondering if it could have this striking similarity with this language - though I perefectly know that some words are identical to words that in other language mean something completely different, and there are plenty of examples.
Unfortunately, no.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mililalil XXIV
I am aware that you have used word from different languages but I assumed it was merely because you were not very fluent in the main language you used in that sentence.
'My Issah' = 'My Jesus', I should think.
And the rest of the sentence vaguely makes sense as there are run-on words because you don't seem to have a clear idea of words in that language (where one ends and next one starts) when written.
Well, my native English aside, I'm almost fluent in Spanish and Japanese. I can carry on a conversation in Japanese, but my Spanish is rusty from lack of use. Which is unfortunate, because I was very fluent in Spanish when I was using it, what with living in Florida and having relatives in south Texas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taliesin
hum... I never learnt a single word of French and can't even say the simplest things in French but i can read and translate it well enough (as long as it's high-brow enough), because I did 7 years of Latin at school... academic French is just like Latin, only it's spelled differently and they pronounce it in a funny way....
alrite, i admit i've never tried to read a whole book in French, so I probably wouldn't pass Taliesin's test....
I only speak 2 languages fluently: English and German... oops, I've just spelled fluently "fluentyl", well,.. just because you're a linguist doesn't mean you know how to spell words and just because you can speak a language FLUENTYL doesn't mean you know how to spell it FLUENTYL either :)
I'm studying Russian right now.. the bits i already know i can say fluentyl enough, does that count? hehe, mathematically speaking, if I know 0.01% of the Russian language but can use these without tripping myself over 100%, I'm 100% fluent.
:rolleyes: SleepyWitch has gone bonkers due to too much caffeine. I'd better get back to my term paper
i can talk very fluent arabic (at home) and very fluent english (in school) so i guess thats two, but i talk a bit of french as well, not fluently
Actually, you are right about the first word - English "my" - but the second word is Hebrew for "woman". I, however, foresaw the possibility of this substitute for a proper name as multiplying the possibilities for what one might consider the words to say and, therefore, to contribute to the sentence.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
What does Pensive get out of giving it a try? It would be interesting to see how her interpretation compares with yours.
This sentence is in a new language, with certain punctuation marks in place of full characters.Quote:
[`Im qara` ha`ish ha'aravah, yada' mah `amarti baderekh "My `isshah".]
I think that I got it a little. Does it mean "You are more beautiful than that flower vase which is formed by combining all the women from India"??Quote:
Originally Posted by Mililalil XXIV
I have not understood what you mean by issah? Maybe its Jesus Christ?
Dear Koa,
since bhaarat can refer to a certain country, and bhaaratiiy to one from that place, and since in ancient times there were precedents for country men denoting their close kinship by calling one another by their common ethnic origin, using this to express equality and familiarity, you may be onto something in what you thought you noticed. The socalled "Welsh" used their older ethnic name as synonymous with "country-man". Different nations used their own ethnic names as their common word for what we use the word "man" for - but used "foriegner" type references for outsiders, who were nationally outside of their society in general. Perhaps the Huns carried a term over to Europe with them that retains a clue to their origins, and, away from their original habitat, served to remind them of old ties with kin they encountered in their new country.
Interestingly, the Huns came from further East in two waves, one wave being black, the other white - but all from one common land.
Very good, Pensive!Quote:
Originally Posted by Pensive
As I commented to Scheherazade, I put in "My `isshah" at the beginning as a name substitute (to not publicly give a loved one's name out). It is just really, "My woman/wife/[female] beloved", followed by virtually what you interpretted! Very good!
As Mililalil suggested I'd figure I'd chime in here.
As for fluency I would say I only speak three languages English (my mother tongue) Persian (Both Farsi from Iran which I am better at and the dialect of Afghanistan Dari because I worked as an interpreter in that country, but I am not nearly as good at it. The relationship between them is kind of like mainstream English to Cockney) and Spanish.
I think it is hard to define fluency anyway because I would say that I am conversational but not fluent in French, meaning it is still somewhat difficult for me to converse in it, I am usually lost when it is used in media, and I still need a dictionary to read it. I have studied at various times Italian and Japanese (so long ago most of it is lost), and am studying Arabic and Classical Greek (Attic) now, which brings up another point; Can you be fluent in a dead language, even if you can read it without a dictionary and speak it, not that I can do either yet in Greek. As for the future I want to study Swahili and one of the click Bantu languages, Berber, one of the Nuristani languages, and maybe Pashto, just for starters ;) .