International Party! (a thread for lovers of languages)

[Falcao]

I will try to answer the OP questions about Spanish.

Originally Posted by omk3

Want to show off your alphabet?

Spanish has 29 letters. They are the 26 of the English alphabet plus CH, LL, and Ñ.

A, B, C, CH, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, LL, M, N, Ñ, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y y Z

Before 1994, words starting with CH (LL) would be sorted between words starting with C (L) and D (M). After a reform, those words are sorted like if CH and LL were not separated letters.

For example, the list of the states of Mexico before 1994 was: ..., Campeche, Coahuila, Colima, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Durango, ..., etc. Now the list goes: ..., Campeche, Chiapas, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Colima, Durango, ..., etc.

Originally Posted by omk3

Does your language have a word that has no equivalent in (most) other languages?

Paraphrasing Bruce Willis, I only speak two languages: Spanish and bad Spanish, so I can't really answer this.

One candidate I can think is "tortilla".

Originally Posted by omk3

Does your language have a word, or words, that the whole world is using?

There are some words, like "chocolate", that they were borrowed by the first Spanish colonizers and then spread to the world. However, one can argue that these words are not strictly Spanish words but Aztec words.

I have seen the word "gratis" (free as in "no cost") used a lot in the software world.

I don't know if words like tortilla, tacos, burrito, etc. are known in the world or only in North America.

Originally Posted by omk3

Want to share common blunders learners of your language are making

In Spanish we pronounce all non-mute letters in words and we have full vowels. Thus I have seen that English speakers have problem with that, but maybe that's not a problem for speakers of other languages.

I once met a Chinese guy who told me he couldn't pronounce the "rr" (hard r) sound.

Originally Posted by omk3

Do you have an expression in your language that you find unique, or maybe surprisingly common?

In Mexico we say "el que no tranza no avanza" [lit. those who don't cheat don't advance], and this speaks a lot of our national character.

Originally Posted by omk3

Do you have words that sound the same as in other languages, but mean something completely different?

Yes a lot, they are call false-friends.

One quick example with English is "carpeta/carpet". "Carpeta" means "binder" in English, while "carpet" in Spanish is "alfombra".

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by omk3

About embarazada... I wonder about the history of this peculiar meaning in Spanish. Maybe pregnancy is (or was) in some cases considered embarrassing? (Like out of wedlock?) It is interesting that it's not used for (other) animals.

I think it's simply due to the fact that anything connected with reproduction was considered dirty, and could not be mentioned directly. My mother told me that when she was young, she was once taken to visit a friend of her mother. She was told this lady had broken her leg (presumably she was at the hospital or in bed at home), but when the visitors arrived there just happened to be a newborn baby.

Jane Austen calls childbirth "confinement".

When I was a teenager myself, I remember one of my classmates asking me with a silly girly giggle whether I was "indisposed" (incommodée). I looked at her stupidly and said "No, I'm fine". In fact she wanted to know whether I had started having my periods.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by omk3

I wouldn't call the German grammar "crappy" - in fact it has a kind of internal logic that makes sense. It's, erm, organised. It's also rather hard to learn, and complicated. I'm very glad I learned German at school, because I would probably never have attempted it later in life, voluntarily. That said, there must be even more complicated grammars out there - a Lithuanian friend told me they have no less than seven cases, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. It does sound discouraging for a potential student of the language...

Extract from Wiki:

Finnish has fifteen noun cases: four grammatical cases, six locative cases, two essive cases (three in some Eastern dialects) and three marginal cases...

Now we know why so few people learn Finnish .

[omk3]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I think it's simply due to the fact that anything connected with reproduction was considered dirty, and could not be mentioned directly. My mother told me that when she was young, she was once taken to visit a friend of her mother. She was told this lady had broken her leg (presumably she was at the hospital or in bed at home), but when the visitors arrived there just happened to be a newborn baby.

Jane Austen calls childbirth "confinement".

When I was a teenager myself, I remember one of my classmates asking me with a silly girly giggle whether I was "indisposed" (incommodée). I looked at her stupidly and said "No, I'm fine". In fact she wanted to know whether I had started having my periods.

Bodily functions are still often "taboo", and the period is certainly among them. But I'd never think of childbirth that way! Now that you mention it though, there was one acquaintance (of an acquaintance),who took a lot of time off work because his wife was having some "health problems", only to later reveal that she was actually just simply pregnant. That was one or two years ago too, not in the previous century... Embarrassing indeed!

Originally Posted by HarryT

Extract from Wiki:



Now we know why so few people learn Finnish .

Fifteen!

That's the joy of languages like japanese, the problems you encounter when learning their grammar are so refreshingly different. Not that english has any cases to speak of, either, now that I think about it. (well, traces like I-me, but they don't really count)

[kacir]

Originally Posted by omk3

That said, there must be even more complicated grammars out there - a Lithuanian friend told me they have no less than seven cases, nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative. It does sound discouraging for a potential student of the language...

All slavonic languages have those. Plus grammatical genders, plus verbs, adjectives have inflections depending on the gender of the object you are describing ...

[Latinandgreek]

Originally Posted by kacir

All slavonic languages have those. Plus grammatical genders, plus verbs, adjectives have inflections depending on the gender of the object you are describing ...

Well, not quite all. Macedonian and Bulgarian have lost inflections (except for the Vocative and maybe some traces of inflections).

Also, masculine nouns have an animate / inanimate distinction, Slovenian has a dual, Croatian has traces of a dual that has spread by analogy to cases of 3 and four items as well, there is aspect to keep in mind... shudder...

[Freeshadow]

@HarryT AFAIR I've read that Tolkiens work on his elven languages was done with an eye on finnish grammar and the other on celtic vocabulary.

An example given to show the grammar complexity was, that wanting to express "I'm travelling from foo to bar" would be just by saying (travelprefix_departure_places_name) (arrival_places_name_arrivalsuffix)

[Ea]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

@HarryT AFAIR I've read that Tolkiens work on his elven languages was done with an eye on finnish grammar and the other on celtic vocabulary.

An example given to show the grammar complexity was, that wanting to express "I'm travelling from foo to bar" would be just by saying (travelprefix_departure_places_name) (arrival_places_name_arrivalsuffix)

It's Sindarin that's based in Finnish grammar - and Quenya in Welsh grammar.

[GraceKrispy]

Jumping on this thread late... just to comment on how similar Maori is to Hawaiian in many ways (or has that been discussed? I just read the last page ) I put the Hawaiian words in RED so we can see the similarities:

Originally Posted by Shayne Parkinson

Some kinship words in Maori, conveying birth order as well as sibling relationships:-

A man's older brother, or a woman's older sister: tuakana. kaikua'ana or kua'ana
A man's younger brother, or a woman's younger sister: teina. Kaikaina
A man's sister: tuahine. kaikuahine or kuahine
A woman's brother: tungāne kaikunane

Originally Posted by Shayne Parkinson

Maori distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive first person. "Mātou" is "we but not you", and "tātou" is "we including you". Very handy for avoiding awkward situations like, "We're going to that new movie tonight". "Great, I've been looking forward to that!" "Um, I didn't mean you..."

And we but not you is mākou, kākou is all inclusive, and oukou is just you guys, not me. If it's just two people in the mix, those words change to maua, kaua, and olua, respectively

Lots of similarities, but differences too. Every time the Maori come to speak to our kids, they (the Hawaiian kids) giggle uncontrollably at the word that sounds like "fokka." I'm not sure what that word is exactly, but it gets used a lot, let me tell you!