Quote:
Originally Posted by MacEachaidh
Well, my family language, which is Scottish Gaelic, has no words for yes and no.
In Gaelic, you answer a question by using either the affirmative or negative form in the same tense of the specific verb that was used in the question you were asked. For instance, if someone asks you "Am bi thu an siud a-màireach?" ("Will you be there tomorrow?"), you would either say "Bi" ("will be") to say yes, or "Cha bhi" ("won't be") to say no.
(Irish and Manx Gaelic are both part of the same family of languages, and so used to be the same, though in modern times and with increasing numbers of their speakers being native English speakers first, the languages are mutating, and they now tend to use modified forms of the simple "is" and "isn't" to mean "yes" and "no".)
|
That was really interesting - thanks
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacEachaidh
Perhaps it looks much harder to you than it really is, Freeshadow. But Gaelic (of which Irish is one version) is fairly straightforward once you understand the sounds the letters represent; for English speakers that can be a stumble at the first, because they expect the letters to behave and sound the way they do in English, and they simply don't. (Think "Loch Ness" -- you don't pronounce the "ch" the way you do in an English "church".) But the spelling is quite straightforward, and much much closer to being phonetic than English is, at least!
|
I think this generally applies to all all foreign languages before you've learned the basic pronunciation rules - and the more different the language is from your own, the scarier it appears. Finnish, for example, looks rather daunting to me
And if it wasn't because I've been so heavily exposed to English, I think I'd have found German a good deal easier to speak (well, not learning grammar ...
) English does have a rather unique "sound".