What / how many languages do you speak?

[uber]

18 hours ago, Endless said:

Hey man, I'm also quite interested at learning German as a native Spanish speaker. How did you find it? Any tips?

Sure! I've been learning German at school since kindergarten, these are my general thoughts on it + some things that helped me speak better.

As with any language, the thing that helps me the most to understand general syntax is breaking down sentences and translating each part individually, then making a "diagram" of sorts in my mind to work out how they relate to each other. German is a particularly tricky one, since a major aspect of it is akkusativ (Spanish's objeto directo, also used for when something is going somewhere) + dativ (objeto indirecto, and when you want to say that something is somewhere), plus separable verbs. Take it easy, since you're gonna get confused at first with the positioning of some verbs, which only gets messier when connectors come into play. But that's generally more advanced stuff, so don't worry about it yet. Eventually, you'll start picking up on some general grammatical rules, which leads me into...

...the hardest part of German, all these articles, prepositions and declensions ("Deklinationen"). Depending on how much experience you have with the language, you might already have ran into some of them (nominativ der-> akkusativ den-> dativ dem, and the adjective ending changes that come with them), and they certainly are very intimidating at first. This is an aspect that you're gonna have to memorize, as there's no real way around it. Since there are about 16 combinations, each one with a certain letter at the end, it's better to stick with nominativ + akkusativ at first since it only modifies der (at least some combinations don't alter grammar, and others are shared between articles). Luckily, there's some tricks you can use to make memorizing articles easier: German has a reputation for having lots of super long, unpronounceable words, but most people don't realize that a lot of them are just strings of simpler words (Straßenbahnhaltestelle = roughly "Street train stop place"). Whenever you get one of these, you only have to look at the last one (die Stelle = the place), and you already got the article for it. And since some word endings have fixed articles (-or and -ismus are always der, -chen and -um are always das, and -ung and -ion are always die, etc.), you'll start subconsciously figuring it out as you go. And a cheeky tip for dativ, most of the time you'll notice whether a word is either feminine or masculine/neutral. A lot of the time you can just say "dem" and it will probably be correct, since both share the same declension. Just make sure to learn the actual article afterwards :)

And lastly, pronunciation can be tough especially if you're from a region with very different phonetics. Besides the general pronunciacion rules of the language which are simple, here are some random pointers which were pretty useful for me:

-The umlaut vocals are basically combining the vocalization of one with the "mouth shape" of another, except for ä. They're tough to describe, but I'll try.
ä = pretty much just an E, but with your mouth a bit more closed
ö = pucker your lips as if you were going to say "O", but say "E"

ü = pucker your lips tighter, as if you were going to say "U" or whistle, but say "I"

-You don't need to "gurgle" Rs, but you do need to roll them. Since you speak Spanish, this shouldn't be an issue, but it's VERY important to learn for English speakers.

-Words that end with "-r" are usually said with a sort of slightly nasal "-a". Dir (dativ declension of du, "you") is Dia, Bruder is Bruda, Teilnehmer is Teilnehma, etc. This also applies to -er in the middle of a word, most of the time at least: (ich habe) gelernt is geleant, entfernt is entfeant...

 

-In a similar vein, -en is usually said with a kinda nasal "-n" sound, with a really slight e sound. For example, Haben turns into Habn, Fahren turns into Fahrn...

-I learned it fairly recently, but when a word starts with S you should try to "vibrate" it. Hard to describe, but it's as if you were mixing a bit of an "N" sound while you say it. If the S is in the middle of a word, you just say it normally.

-Like in English, you can also contract some words, like "es" into "s". "Wie geht es dir?" (How are you/How's it going?) turns into "Wie gehts dir?"

Hope this helps you! As intimidating as it may be, German is a beautiful language, and I'm really glad I had the opportunity to learn it.

Edited August 14, 2020 by uber

[Doomkid]

English (Fluent)

Music (Intermediate)

ASL American Sign Language (Basic)

13375P34K (F1U3N7)

[Austinado]

- Portuguese (native)

- English  (I speak..i understand)

- Spanish (well...its very similar with portuguese in most of the words)

- French ( un petit peu)

 

[elend]

Uber: Well written and accurate! Good job.

 

Everyone wanting to learn german: Do it, it's fun! Hah, just joking! It might be a nightmare for some, but it's not impossible. If you have questions, there are some germans here, who are more than happy to help. Also, don't forget, that with German you can combine an almost infinite amount of words into one, and make fun things like:

 

Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz

Handelsniederlassungen

Telekommunikationsdienstleistungsunternehmen

 

Fun!

[printz]

9 hours ago, Ajora said:

I can read a lot of Japanese, but my ability to speak Japanese is fairly basic. 

That sounds like quite an accomplishment, to be good at reading all that kanji, but having difficulty forming phrases by speaking. Yet I think I understand why it would be hard: you get no kanji in spoken Japanese to help you distinguish homonyms. So when speaking, unlike writing, you really need to setup the context to make clear what you're saying. Maybe that is the challenge, correct?

 

 

5 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

Do you mind explain why tones are difficult for you? I'm just curious since as a native speaker, I didn't think of this in any way.

Well it's because I'm not used to associating individual tones to words. It's an extra layer to remember. I only use tones to emphasize questions or statements.

 

Also, in Mandarin at least, some consonants are too similar. Having three sounds for this range: c / q / ch (pinyin) is already too much for me. Also I have read that the z / j / zh sounds also aren't as voiced as expected, they're only slightly voiced, or lack an emphasized aspirated sound which their hard counterparts use. Am I correct? 

[DooM Bear]

5 hours ago, Joshy said:

I'm fluent in English and Auslan (Australian Sign Language). I also know some ASL and International Sign (which is mostly ASL anyway), so basically I can manage to have a conversation with most deaf people around the world.

 

This might be a really dumb / ignorant question (I know absolutely nothing about sign language :-P) but do you / you guys know if sign languages around the world are as varied as spoken languages?

 

As an example, if an English only speaking person and a Russian only speaking person were to talk, they probably wouldn’t have a clue what the other person is saying.

 

Is sign from region to region the same kinda thing or are they all “built” on the same thing (for instance say more like Italian and Spanish or even a subtle as the difference between Aussie English and American English)?

[andrewj]

6 minutes ago, DooM Bear said:

This might be a really dumb / ignorant question (I know absolutely nothing about sign language :-P) but do you / you guys know if sign languages around the world are as varied as spoken languages?

 

Yes there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of them and most countries have their own variant (or more than one).

 

The Australian one, Auslan, developed from british sign language (BSL) and irish sign language (ISL) and have a big overlap with them, yet it has caused two main dialects of Auslan where some signs, a fairly small percentage I think, are different.

 

I read somewhere than American Sign Language (ASL) only share less than 50% of the words with BSL, since it actually developed fairly independently of the british one.

Quote

Also, in Mandarin at least, some consonants are too similar. Having three sounds for this range: c / q / ch (pinyin) is already too much for me. Also I have read that the z / j / zh sounds also aren't as voiced as expected, they're only slightly voiced, or lack an emphasized aspirated sound which their hard counterparts use. Am I correct? 

Yeah those sounds are a bastard to learn, though there are not fully independent, e.g. words that begin with q and j are always followed by a i/ÿ semivowel (plus real vowel) and the others never have that structure, so that helps a lot.  zh and ch are "retroflex" meaning the tongue is curled backward in the mouth, takes a lot of practice to do it but eventually you can hear the difference in other people's speech.  The aspiration aspect has never been a problem, most English speakers already have less apsiration on b and d compared to p and t and don't notice it -- so I wouldn't worry about that.

Edited August 14, 2020 by andrewj

[taufan99]

4 minutes ago, andrewj said:

Yes there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of them and most countries have their own variant (or more than one).

 

The Australian one, Auslan, developed from british sign language (BSL) and irish sign language (ISL) and have a big overlap with them, yet it has caused two main dialects of Auslan where some signs, a fairly small percentage I think, are different.

 

I read somewhere than American Sign Language (ASL) only share less than 50% of the words with BSL, since it actually developed fairly independently of the british one.

Apparently, sign language isolates exist too, like the Kata Kolok from the village of Bengkala, northern Bali.

[Steve88]

I can speak and write English fluently,

 

我会说中文，可是说的不好。。。

[Joshy]

5 hours ago, DooM Bear said:

 

This might be a really dumb / ignorant question (I know absolutely nothing about sign language :-P) but do you / you guys know if sign languages around the world are as varied as spoken languages?

Certainly not a dumb question, it's hard to know how language can transcend speech if speech is the only language you know. Language is something people take for granted so easily. And yes, sign languages around the world are as varied as spoken language. Each sign language has their own syntax, lexicon, grammatical rules, and whatnot. You can apply the linguisitic 'Subject Verb Object' principle to all sign languages and not all of them are in the same order. Most sign languages can have similar finger spelling but this depends on their origins. Leading to the next point~

 

5 hours ago, andrewj said:

Yes there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of them and most countries have their own variant (or more than one).

 

The Australian one, Auslan, developed from british sign language (BSL) and irish sign language (ISL) and have a big overlap with them, yet it has caused two main dialects of Auslan where some signs, a fairly small percentage I think, are different.

 

I read somewhere than American Sign Language (ASL) only share less than 50% of the words with BSL, since it actually developed fairly independently of the british one.

I'm impressed with your knowledge! You're nearly right. The origin of Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language does come from British Sign Language, namely from English and Scottish sign language, so you'll actually see dialectical variations between sign language used in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Sydney has more Scottish signs, Melbourne has more English signs. I'm not entirely sure about Brisbane but they're more like Sydney than Melbourne. The difference in Auslan dialect is often a source of humour for Australian deaf people considering that, for example, the sign for 'hungry' in Melbourne is the same sign for 'sex' in Sydney. Just interesting to see how ridiculously different words can share the same sign parameters.

 

Irish Sign Language is actually very different from BSL because the language comes from LSF (French Sign Language) which is also where ASL came from, thus explaining the stark difference between ASL and BSL. BSL/Auslan/NZSL notably have the same two-handed fingerspelling whereas LSF/ASL/Irish Sign Language have similar one handed finger spelling with minor variations. North Ireland use BSL however I think (for obvious historical reasons), I only met one deaf person from North Ireland and he did use BSL. I'm not entirely sure where BSL came from, I'd hazard a guess that it came up on its own naturally.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Joshy

[DooM Bear]

18 minutes ago, Joshy said:

for example, the sign for 'hungry' in Melbourne is the same sign for 'sex' in Sydney. Just interesting to see how ridiculously different words can share the same sign parameters.

 

Bahahahahahahaha oh man this would make dating awkward XD

 

”Errrr... is he asking me out to dinner or is he asking for a root?” XD

 

Anyways, wow I’m really surprised! I honestly expected sign languages around the world to be very similar as guessed it was a “newer” language than spoken languages. Boy was I wrong there!!!

 

Thanks so much guys :-D

[Gez]

5 hours ago, andrewj said:

I read somewhere than American Sign Language (ASL) only share less than 50% of the words with BSL, since it actually developed fairly independently of the british one.

Yes, American Sign Language is actually derived from the French sign language; because it was popularized by someone who had hired a French sign teacher.

 

It's important to keep in mind that sign languages are fully separate languages. It should not be understood as "English (or whatever other language), but with signs"; it's a separate language with its own vocabulary, syntax, and grammar.

[fraggle]

English (native)

Italian (still not completely fluent but strong enough to carry on a conversation)

French, German (studied at school, mostly forgotten now but I can ask some basic questions)

Spanish, Esperanto (only bits)

[Grazza]

17 hours ago, elend said:

Telekommunikationsdienstleistungsunternehmen

You can do similar things in Greenlandic, but there you can pretty much do a whole sentence in one word, verb and all. However, the longest I know off the top of my head is atuarfimmukarniaraluarpunga (apparently a common teaching example), which is still shorter than the word you gave. :(

 

Otherwise I just know a few words, such as ilaa (anyway), immaqa (maybe - so I understand the joke name for Air Greenland), and that usuk and ussuk mean penis and bearded seal, but forget which way round they are (double letters are always pronounced double). But I do know Greenland numbers from 13 onwards, as they just borrow the Danish ones. The first 12 are harder to remember. Well, it's good that most people there also speak Danish. It's useful too that most towns have a Danish name and a Greenlandic name, and normally one of them is easy enough to say even if the other is a bit of a mouthful (e.g. Aasiaat = Egedesminde, while Qeqertarsuatsiaat* = Fiskenæsset).

 

* A wonderful little town where your feet tend to pick up some ruby dust, though you are not meant to take any larger rubies away with you.

 

Regarding Russian, the Cyrillic alphabet is no barrier at all, and worth learning just because so many of the words are then guessable (unlike, say, Finnish or Hungarian words). The problem with learning Russian beyond that point is the grammar, which is like a hellish mix of Latin and German, sort of.

Edited August 14, 2020 by Grazza

[Eurisko]

English (native)

Bad English (fluent)

German (kleine)

[ckejo]

Serbian, English and somewhat Russian.

[erzboesewicht]

Spanish & German (native, grew up bilingual)

English (average to good)

French (bad)

Can read a bit of Portuguese due to similarities with Spanish.

 

[Demion]

Spanish (native, i'm from argentina)

English

[D4NUK1]

Spanish and broken English 

[dmslr]

Karakalpak (native)

Uzbek

Russian

Basic English

Very basic Italian

[kalaeth]

native (from Portugal) Portuguese

which gives me access to:

French (basic level reading/comprehension);

Italian (at a conversational level but my vocabulary sucks)

Spanish (I can read almost fluently but I can't say much more than 2 or 3 words on it without starting to speak "portunhol" (a mix of pt and spanish)

other than that I am fluent in English (certified but I don't want to go look for it and check at what level) and I can understand some very basic japonese (yey for anime?).

Would love to learn Russian because of the way it sounds but I'm such a lazy person that it won't happen xD

[Hellektronic]

I know two languages: American English and advanced American English, haha. I guess you could say my specialization with English includes modern British and older dialects... and I'm surprisingly convincing when it comes to matching accents.

 

I know a lot of Spanish, I know a lot of German, but not enough to speak fluently... although I'm remarkably good at deciphering sloppier English written by non-native speakers just for the sake of conversation, lol. I don't criticize people for being bad at English, it's just nice to have some means of communication without having to learn every obscure language on the planet or play charades through internet pictures or something, hah.

 

I'd love to learn to read the cyrillic alphabet, and thus Russian writing. I deal with a lot of Russian music, and it becomes very hard for me to differentiate songs when they're all written in cyrillics and I can't read them. Obviously some Russian musicians I've met speak fluent English and do so deliberately in their music (even if imperfect) to cater to a more international audience, but that's a pretty small window.

[MrFlibble]

43 minutes ago, Hellektronic said:

I'd love to learn to read the cyrillic alphabet, and thus Russian writing.

The alphabet itself shouldn't be too hard, although I heard some people who are used to the Latin script find it a bit confusing that so many upper- and lowercase letter pairs in Cyrillic are too similar in appearance between each other when compared with Latin. E.g. T/t but Т/т in Cyrillic.

 

But there's a whole different layer to this because Russian orthography (like many others actually) does not reflect positional changes of sounds, including vowel reduction, consonant devoicing (this one could be unusual for English speakers) and regressive assimilation, so you might still find it not easy to match what you hear in the lyrics with their written representation.

[LordSas]

Spanish (native)

English

 

I have some problems speaking english tho, i can read it and understand it perfectly, but when i have to write something on english i have this constant fear of picking wierd words or looking too formal, also my pronunctiation sucks to the point that when i use voice chat in games everyone inmmidiatly notices that i'm not a native speaker.

 

[MrFlibble]

Practice makes perfect. No one will ever reproach you for imperfect command of a second language, and as long as your message is clear and the slips don't obscruct understanding, it's perfectly fine. The more you chat (ain't much difference if this is spoken or written in forums or the like), the better you'll get at it. What's important that once communication goes both ways (so address others and get replies) the brain starts auto-adjusting to feedback and accelerates learning of how to use the language as a means of communication (as opposed to, a set of rules that must be followed).

Also the written medium (such as forum posts) has the advantage of time being on your side, i.e. you can re-read before posting and polish it a bit.

[Hitboi]

Other Languages i can speak:

-Nodes.

-Deep Nodes.

-GL Nodes.

-SECTORS.

-LINEDEFS.

-SEGS.

-THINGS.

-NODES.

-REJECT.

-BLOCKMAP.

-TEXTMAP.

-And a few other things i cannot mention.

Edited September 1, 2020 by HitBoi64

[fufu]

Spanish (native)

English (that i learned by spending way too much time in the internet as a kid) 

 

Aside from that i have been trying to learn basic Italian using duolingo but i'm too lazy to do it and duolingo is boring as hell anyway.