Random thoughts

[Gribba]

When I am around people speaking Dutch I get confused, as it sounds a little like German and yet like Danish/Norwegian and Icelandic and something I can not put my finger on... So I understand some of it and then get lost...

 

[Gribba]

So, I start my career in earnest tomorrow. I'm a full fledged adult now. Terminal degree, career in that field, family. It's strange to be at this point in my life.

ohh... welcome to the world of adulthood... it is all down hill from that point on... It was a trap and you stept right into it, just like the rest of us...

 

[La Volpe]

Yeah, I have the same problem! I can read (not speak) other Germanic languages, but when I do I'm going "Okay, so that means this...maybe...and this word sounds like that one but might not mean the same thing..." the entire time. It's especially frustrating when you realize that word you thought was a cognate actually has a completely different root, and that sentence you thought you had a handle on suddenly doesn't make any sense.

My family on my mother's side is German, and on my father's side Dutch. So I have a little exposure to both of them. And I was half in the process of learning German, but I got a little sidetracked (though I can probably do a basic conversation in German, as long as the German speaker is extremely patient with me).

Anyway, interestingly, I've found that German grammar is quite similar to Afrikaans grammar, while I have the same issue as you with vocabulary, where words sound the same but mean something completely different. E.g. one that threw me specifically: The German "will" which, as I understand it, means the same as the English "will". But the Afrikaans "wil", which (mostly) shares a pronunciation with the German "will" means the same as the English "want to" or (if I'm right) the German "möchte".

And now I wonder if you, Tom, would also find it easier to understand Dutch and/or Afrikaans if you heard it rather than read it?

 

[Banten]

When I am around people speaking Dutch I get confused, as it sounds a little like German and yet like Danish/Norwegian and Icelandic and something I can not put my finger on... So I understand some of it and then get lost...

Haha I understand. Someone once told me something along the lines of: "Dutch sounds like a Dane pretending to be an Englishman impersonating a German.". I'm sure you can tell me if that's true

I've also found that non-Dutch people get a totally different impression of Dutch depending on the accent it is spoken in. Dutch spoken above the Rhine river is more rough and clear than the softer, mumblier Dutch I and my Belgian brethren speak. If you have the time you could search some videos of a Flemish and a Dutch person speaking. The difference is pretty big despite the only change being the accent.

 

[Ireth]

I'll just leave this here:

Happy Halloween!

 

[Gribba]

Haha I understand. Someone once told me something along the lines of: "Dutch sounds like a Dane pretending to be an Englishman impersonating a German.". I'm sure you can tell me if that's true

HAHAHAHA!!! that is so true... a Dane pretending to be an Englishman impersonating a German and when missing some words, just makes sounds to make it look like a word was being said...

Danish is a soft language and the Icelandic/Norwegian language is harsh, so when I listen to Dutch, I notice the difference.
Few years back I traveled in a car from Denmark to Germany, France, Luxembourg, Belgium (Brussels) to the Netherlands (Rotterdam, Harlem and all the way to Den Helder) and back to Denmark. It was crazy to hear the difference, I felt as the language changed from one town to the other.

 

[Chessie]

The only European language I speak is French, but totally wish I also spoke German. My husband speaks some German and he occasionally tries to teach me phrases/words but they're very hard for me to pronounce. Spanish is my native tongue so I do teach him a lot and he's gotten good over the last several years...enough to converse with my family members in Spanish. Studying languages is fun. In college I took 3 years of Japanese. It was so hard...SO hard. All I remember is "ni-hongo-no" and "neko".

 

[Banten]

...Preeetty sure that Spanish and English are European languages as well. Sorry to be pedantic


I had French for 6 years in high school and I can still only read it. I can't even have a simple talk about the weather. So don't feel bad about your Japanese haha

 

[Chessie]

You're right about Spanish and English being European. But as an American, English and Spanish are on this side of the world. So outside of that...

 

[Banten]

Understood. Those two are the dominant languages over there. But don't forget about the pockets of dutch, french and portuguese scattered around the Americas.

 

[Chessie]

Understood. Those two are the dominant languages over there. But don't forget about the pockets of dutch, french and portuguese scattered around the Americas.

Uh...and let's not forget the Native Americans either. They also have their own languages. In my state we just had one village change its name back to the original Inupiaq name.

 

[Banten]

Uh...and let's not forget the Native Americans either. They also have their own languages. In my state we just had one village change its name back to the original Inupiaq name.

Oh yeah, I was just talking about the European languages used over there.

I sadly know barely anything about native american languages. The only native language group I know anything about is the Sioux language, and even there I doubt I could distinguish it from any other Native language. I wonder how related their languages are though. Something to look up.

 

[Chessie]

Some are related. I know that the Athabascan language is related to the Navajo and Apache languages. Athabascans are interior to coastal Alaska all the way to the Yukon. Native American culture and history is one of my favorite topics that I love to research so...don't get me started.

 

[Banten]

Woah that's far more distance between related languages than I would've assumed. Interesting, I should read up on this. Do you by any chance have any good websites you frequent on the subject or nothing specific?

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

Some are related. I know that the Athabascan language is related to the Navajo and Apache languages. Athabascans are interior to coastal Alaska all the way to the Yukon. Native American culture and history is one of my favorite topics that I love to research so...don't get me started.

What do you mean, don't get you started? It sounds super interesting. I've always been interested in it, but haven't done much research of my own, sadly.

 

[DragonOfTheAerie]

3 years of Spanish here, that's it I haven't spoken it in some 2 years and now I hardly remember anything.

And I had a crush on a German guy once. (He ignored me.) I only know swear words in German. Swearing in German is glorious. Everything sounds worse, lol.

That's the extent of my languages knowledge. Pathetic, I know. Having never left my native country doesn't help.

Which is a shame. I'm fascinated by all the languages of the world and all their different sounds and feels are so beautiful to me. It's so hard to learn a language if you're not surrounded by it, though. Speaking it every day. (Case in point, what happened to all my Spanish knowledge. You can only learn so much about it without living with Spanish speakers. Or moving to a Spanish speaking country. I never even learned all the verb tenses.)

 

[Chessie]

Woah that's far more distance between related languages than I would've assumed. Interesting, I should read up on this. Do you by any chance have any good websites you frequent on the subject or nothing specific?

They're also related to the Cree Indians that live in Canada. The reason being these same people came from Alaska/Canada and settled into the Southwest territories, etc. I get a lot of my information from just the internet but especially the tribal websites. Those are the best because they're thorough in educating others about their people. Also, living in Alaska I kind of know where to look and who to talk to. I've had to do a lot of this research for my fantasy world so I can get the indigenous populations as close to Athabascans as possible. By default, I've learned a lot about Inupiaq, Eskimo, Aleut, Tlingit & Haida, etc as well. It's supremely fascinating history.

 

[Tom]

My family on my mother's side is German, and on my father's side Dutch. So I have a little exposure to both of them. And I was half in the process of learning German, but I got a little sidetracked (though I can probably do a basic conversation in German, as long as the German speaker is extremely patient with me).

Anyway, interestingly, I've found that German grammar is quite similar to Afrikaans grammar, while I have the same issue as you with vocabulary, where words sound the same but mean something completely different. E.g. one that threw me specifically: The German "will" which, as I understand it, means the same as the English "will". But the Afrikaans "wil", which (mostly) shares a pronunciation with the German "will" means the same as the English "want to" or (if I'm right) the German "möchte".

And now I wonder if you, Tom, would also find it easier to understand Dutch and/or Afrikaans if you heard it rather than read it?

I'm mostly Irish/Welsh/Scottish on my mom's side, but my father's family is almost 100% German, some of them only second- or third-generation. I learned German early but I only speak it around my dad's side of the family, so I'm not as fluent a speaker as I'd like to be. I can read and write German pretty well, though.

Unfortunately, I'm much, much better in general at reading languages than speaking them. I have auditory processing disorder, so even spoken English sometimes trips me up. German is easier for me because it has distinctive sounds and a strong grammatical structure, but I'm not sure about Afrikaans and Dutch. Even with a language I know well I only catch about 75% of the words people say, and I have to rely on grammar and context to piece together what they're saying to me. So it can be difficult to hold a conversation in a language I'm not very familiar with.

(For some reason, this whole discussion reminds me of the time I held a conversation in broken French with a girl from Quebec while sketching a tank full of manta rays at the Buffalo-Niagara Aquarium, haha.)

 

[Tom]

Oh yeah, I was just talking about the European languages used over there.

I sadly know barely anything about native american languages. The only native language group I know anything about is the Sioux language, and even there I doubt I could distinguish it from any other Native language. I wonder how related their languages are though. Something to look up.

I'm familiar with the Iroquoian language family, especially Seneca, since I live in the area settled by the Iroquois Confederation. At present, Seneca and almost all the other Iroquoian languages are highly endangered and efforts are being made to preserve them before they die out. It's such a unique language family that linguists haven't found any solid links between it and other Native language families.

 

[Heliotrope]

^^ This is similar to the language of my home town. My kid is actually learning to sing traditional songs in kindergarten, which I think is sort of cool.

I live on a pretty major river in BC that connects most of the province, so the first nations people in BC all traded with each other along this same river. It's sort of cool because they all had seperate languages but there was a common trading languate.