International Party! (a thread for lovers of languages)

[LCF]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

here is my contribution. i think the czech language (which i don't actually speak...) is very elegant. one reason why :

to make certain sounds, most languages must use more than one letter. for instance,
english : ch sh
french : tch ch
polish : cz sz
german : tsch sch

but in czech they simply add a little crown to the letter :
czech : č š
what a lovely solution.

The Czech are not alone, in Bulgaria we have ч and ш for the two above and also щ (sht in english ) я (ja if pronounced in german).

And there is this word тояга [toiaga]. It's basically a big stick with multiple purposes. Most laguages have 3-10 words for the different uses, we are happy with one

[TGS]

Originally Posted by Laz116

What's with the whining? Just because we have around 30 different vocal sounds that contribute to the meaning of the word as opposed to the 8 that most languages have?

I'm not whining just acknowledging the physical limitations of my own vocal tract. Three years here and I still can't make the right "kr" sound in "krus", the "dd" sound in "Odder", and as for "rødgrød med fløde" - I think I would need surgery to get anywhere near it

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by omk3

Aahh, the things that get lost in translation!

It's not pronounced the same in French though, is it? Both Greeks and Turks pronounce all the letters: pah-tah-tes. (πατάτες, in case anyone was wondering. plural of πατάτα - patata.

no you're right, in french it's pronounced "pah-taht" and "toh-maht". the s of the plural is silent.

Originally Posted by LCF

The Czech are not alone, in Bulgaria we have ч and ш for the two above and also щ (sht in english ) я (ja if pronounced in german).

ha very interesting ! thanks ! maybe your я is similar to the czech ř (pronounced sort of like rzh) like in "Dvořák" ? or is it only ja, no r at all ?

And there is this word тояга [toiaga]. It's basically a big stick with multiple purposes. Most laguages have 3-10 words for the different uses, we are happy with one

so what kinds of uses are there for this big тояга stick ? is it this kind of stick : ?

Originally Posted by TGS

I'm not whining just acknowledging the physical limitations of my own vocal tract. Three years here and I still can't make the right "kr" sound in "krus", the "dd" sound in "Odder", and as for "rødgrød med fløde" - I think I would need surgery to get anywhere near it

[omk3]

For anyone who doesn't know it yet, there is this really fun site http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to...tive-demo.html where you can enter any word or sentence and have native speakers of several languages pronounce it. It is actually a demo for a speech recognition software.

Unfortunately there's no Bulgarian choice, so I could not hear the тояга pronounced, though it sounds like a very useful word indeed!

I did listen to the Danish words though, and if the software works as it should, I am shocked and fascinated by "rødgrød med fløde" and whoever manages to pronounce it! Wow!

This made me remember an interesting study that I had watched in a documentary, and I managed to find a relevant article. Experiments have shown that as babies we can recognise all the little nuances in sound and differentiate between them. We lose however this ability very early on: As we are getting better and better in our native language's sounds, we start ignoring the rest.

At 6 months of age, babies notice when the sounds change most of the time, no matter what language the syllables are from. But over the next six months of life, the babies get even better at perceiving the changes in sounds from their "own" language, the one their parents speak -- yet they gradually lose the ability to recognize changes in sounds that don't exist in their native tongue.

and

"They are citizens of the world at 6 months, and then by 12 months, they are these language-specific listeners," Kuhl said. "Even in the first year of life, before you get any sound out of them, language is being mapped by the brain."

Have a read, it's really interesting stuff. http://www.seattlepi.com/local/39928_learn22.shtml

So when two foreign words sound exactly the same to you, while a native speaker insists that they are totally different, you now know why. This doesn't explain why some people manage to have very convincing accents in foreign languages later in life, while others never can, though. A (musical) friend suggested once to me that it has to do something with having a musical ear, but I'm not sure. I'm rubbish at music, myself, but probably better than average in accents.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by omk3

For anyone who doesn't know it yet, there is this really fun site http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to...tive-demo.html where you can enter any word or sentence and have native speakers of several languages pronounce it. It is actually a demo for a speech recognition software.

Unfortunately there's no Bulgarian choice, so I could not hear the тояга pronounced, though it sounds like a very useful word indeed!

I did listen to the Danish words though, and if the software works as it should, I am shocked and fascinated by "rødgrød med fløde" and whoever manages to pronounce it! Wow!

This made me remember an interesting study that I had watched in a documentary, and I managed to find a relevant article. Experiments have shown that as babies we can recognise all the little nuances in sound and differentiate between them. We lose however this ability very early on: As we are getting better and better in our native language's sounds, we start ignoring the rest.


and

Have a read, it's really interesting stuff. http://www.seattlepi.com/local/39928_learn22.shtml

Yes, I remember reading about this several years ago and found this fascinating. Among other things, it was interesting to note how researchers decided what babies recognized or not as something they have already heard. If I remember correctly, the idea is that when baby hears something new, he is happy (or maybe just excited, but maybe for baby that's the same thing). We know just how happy baby is because we have put a thing in his mouth that he sucks on. Depending on how happy he is, he sucks more or less (don't remember which).

So the experiment, as I understood it, goes like this:

Take a baby make him hear, for instance, the sound RA. It's new, baby is excited. Then repeat the sound untill baby gets bored.

Then change the sound to LA. If the baby is Japanese, to him RA and LA are the same sound, so he is still bored. If he is French, LA is a new sound, so he gets excited again.

Originally Posted by omk3

So when two foreign words sound exactly the same to you, while a native speaker insists that they are totally different, you now know why. This doesn't explain why some people manage to have very convincing accents in foreign languages later in life, while others never can, though. A (musical) friend suggested once to me that it has to do something with having a musical ear, but I'm not sure. I'm rubbish at music, myself, but probably better than average in accents.

I do think that hearing plays a big part. I am not especially interested in music but I can recognize notes well (for a musically illiterate person). I also have pretty good hearing, and I can hear languages more easily than some.

But I'm sure there are also other factors, both genetic and depending on the environment you grew up in.

[TGS]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

So the experiment, as I understood it, goes like this:

Take a baby make him hear, for instance, the sound RA. It's new, baby is excited. Then repeat the sound untill baby gets bored.

Then change the sound to LA. If the baby is Japanese, to him RA and LA are the same sound, so he is still bored. If he is French, LA is a new sound, so he gets excited again.

I think it would depend on how old the infant is. If it is old enough to have "learned" that the difference between RA and LA is meaningful than it would hear them as different sounds, if it had learned that they were functionally equivalent then it would hear them as the same sound. If it had not been exposed to language at all and thus hadn't learned anything it would hear a difference.

Of course, what "learned" and "meaningful" mean in this context is a moot point.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by omk3

I did listen to the Danish words though, and if the software works as it should, I am shocked and fascinated by "rødgrød med fløde" and whoever manages to pronounce it! Wow!

i just did the same and i have new respect for danish speakers !!

This made me remember an interesting study that I had watched in a documentary, and I managed to find a relevant article. Experiments have shown that as babies we can recognise all the little nuances in sound and differentiate between them. We lose however this ability very early on: As we are getting better and better in our native language's sounds, we start ignoring the rest.

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I do think that hearing plays a big part. I am not especially interested in music but I can recognize notes well (for a musically illiterate person). I also have pretty good hearing, and I can hear languages more easily than some.

But I'm sure there are also other factors, both genetic and depending on the environment you grew up in.

very interesting study, i had never heard about that. however, it does explain perhaps why children who grow up in a bilingual (or more) household tend to learn languages much more easily than children who didn't ; they are exposed to a larger variety of sounds so their brains (and ears) are used to the idea that there are more sounds available in the world than are represented in their native language. i think knowing this is possible (even on a subconscious level) is probably an important first step towards being able to recognise and reproduce the sounds.

i would not personally be surprised if the same parts of the brain responsible for musical aptitude were responsible for aural comprehension of different sounds and languages, although i've also heard that music and math aptitudes tend to go together, and i would think that mathematics and linguistics are somewhat different. but maybe they're not, after all...

[kacir]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

ha very interesting ! thanks ! maybe your я is similar to the czech ř (pronounced sort of like rzh) like in "Dvořák" ? or is it only ja, no r at all ?

Completely different.
я in Czech would be written ja, and is the same sound as in English kayak

ř does not really have an equivalent in English or other language (with possible exception of Polish) that I know of.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%98
Czech language also has letter ž (in Cyrillic written as ж )that the vast majority of foreigners (even those that are fluent in Czech) pronounce the same way as ř - which is how Czechs can recognize if the Czech is your mother language.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_alphabet

[ardeegee]

I have an interest in languages, but lack the discipline to stick with learning them. In high school, I didn't learn French (required foreign language classes). In my college years I didn't learn Russian and Latin (personal interest, no classes.) Now for the past few years I've been not learning Japanese. I've also at times made brief thrusts towards not learning Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan glyphs.

[vivaldirules]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I have an interest in languages, but lack the discipline to stick with learning them. In high school, I didn't learn French (required foreign language classes). In my college years I didn't learn Russian and Latin (personal interest, no classes.) Now for the past few years I've been not learning Japanese. I've also at times made brief thrusts towards not learning Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan glyphs.

Pretty much ditto. Not Spanish in high school. Not Russian in college. More recently, not Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit. By the time I die, I figure I will have not learned many languages - perhaps to the point of being an expert at it.

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

I have an interest in languages, but lack the discipline to stick with learning them. In high school, I didn't learn French (required foreign language classes). In my college years I didn't learn Russian and Latin (personal interest, no classes.) Now for the past few years I've been not learning Japanese. I've also at times made brief thrusts towards not learning Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan glyphs.

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Pretty much ditto. Not Spanish in high school. Not Russian in college. More recently, not Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit. By the time I die, I figure I will have not learned many languages - perhaps to the point of being an expert at it.

The problem with learning a foreign language is that it requires some effort, or some contact with speakers of said language, and preferably both.

When I was at school I learned German, and we had of course yearly exchanges with German students. We kept wondering at how much better they were at languages than we were, and they were, mostly because foreign languages had more hours in the curriculum. But in my, admittedly limited, experience later in life when I had occasion to work with German people, I found that many German adults are just as bad at speaking English as French adults. Learning a language is great, but if you don't practice it it just goes away.

[omk3]

But not learning a language can be fun too! And it's still better than not learning a language at all

Here's the syllabary of a language I'd like to not learn:
Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit.



(I often fall in love with languages just because of their letters. That's mainly why I tried to learn Arabic - well at least I learned how to write some words. And Chinese. And then Japanese, which I'm actually learning much more seriously, even though probably not seriously enough)

[ficbot]

When I was in New Zealand, I learned a smattering of Maori (mostly relating to what my ancestral canoe would be if I were from a certain region) and one of the things I found very curious was how there were different words for 'goodbye' depending on if everybody was leaving, or if some people were leaving but others were staying. I could never figure out that rationale for that.

[omk3]

Intriguing

Just found an interesting link for Maori learners: http://www.maorilanguage.net/phrase_...ubcategoryid=1
This is a list of hellos, not goodbyes. But it seems to have a lot of detail. There's even one "hello to you two boys"!

Anyone from New Zealand care to tell us more?

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by ficbot

one of the things I found very curious was how there were different words for 'goodbye' depending on if everybody was leaving, or if some people were leaving but others were staying. I could never figure out that rationale for that.

That reminds me of something I brought up once before-- I searched it down rather than to try to recreate the sentiment:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...6&postcount=74