Posted on 10/02/2018 4:15:16 AM PDT by Thistooshallpass9
German speakers notice English speakers haver trouble with Der, Die, Das, A ship is Der, but a boat is Die? What's a wrench?
I’ve studied Chinese. but found that when I say anything in Chinese to a Chinese person, he is puzzled as he doesn’t get it, coming from this Caucasian face!! LOL!
As far as languages and your brain— Chinese is exercise, as it is 3 languages in one -— The Chinese characters, the written Chinese language (pinyin) and then the spoken language, Absolutely fascinating language!!
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Any Loglan speakers on FR?
It’s the tones. Among people who did not learn tones with their learning of their native language, some people will never be able to deal with them. Some take to it naturally. In my experience which does not rise to the level of a scientific study, people with perfect pitch who sing automatically on key, have a much harder time with tones than some people who can’t carry a tune even with yeas of practice. I am one of the latter group and those English speakers I know who take easily to tones in Vietnamese, are awful with music. I will sing Karaoke in Vietnamese but not in English. I am still off key but I know when the notes go up and go down because in a tonal language the music must follow the lyric or vice versa or the song is nonsense.
That is, of course, the essence of Newspeak. Orwell was ahead of his time.
That is how it was a while ago. Now racist being non socialist and white.
In Vietnamese, at least, there is no gender. If gender is required it must be added.
Vietnamese has exclusive or inclusive "we" i.e. we including you and we excluding you. There is no word for "you," If generic is intended then it is "friend." Otherwise it is the designation that corresponds to relative status.Actually, there are no pronouns in Vietnamese and probably not in some other languages.
The Chinese word for “miss”, as in young lady (Xiao jie) -— if said in a different tone, is not a nice word.
There is a classic set of phrases using the word “ma”. “Ma ma qui ma, ma man, ma ma ma”, When translated it reads -— “Mother rides the horse. Horse slow. Mother scolds horse”.
Fascinating language!!
I once read a little book, either by or with Jerry Rubin in it. It was about how they went to Cuba and learned how to undermine our nation. One thing in particular I remember from reading it, about thirty five years ago, was that the Cubans taught them how important it was to destroy our language, as much as possible. They felt it one very effective way to undermine us. They are definitely still at it today.
Yep - you can see the attempts with the way once common words/phrases have been deemed to mean something totally else and also be criminally offensive...
And verbs, and adjectives.
None of them ever sent men to the moon, and most of them never had a functioning economy, or a functioning society.
A ship ( Schiff) is Das.
A boat ( Boot) is Das.
A wrench ( Schraubenschlüssel- the tool) is Der.
very true
Does the Language You Speak Change Your Brain?
I does. Most Arabic speakers are lunatics....................
I’ve heard samples of this one:
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/story-of-human-language.html
I’ve got this one, it’s newer, and he’s much easier to listen to because he doesn’t have those long “uhhhh” pauses as found in the earlier audiobook:
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/language-a-to-z.html
Yes. Chinese is today - especially in Chinese writing, very complex in how it has developed over centuries, and more so than in English it is complex and vaired in how words got and have the Chinese script for writing them.
To write excellent Chinese very fluently can require knowledge of up to 3,000 Chinese characters.
I think written Chinese will remain a “classical” written language, like Latin remains today, but in time, I think the practicalities and international intercourse of the advancing modern world, will cause English to be the adopted primary spoken language in China, just as Chinese script was once the official form of writing in many nations around China, and remains so (though modified) in Japan today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters
Your Wiki link is a good explanation of the Chinese characters. Yes — I believe China will go to English but the country may be bi-lingual for a time.
I’ve studies the language, but have no one to practice with, so have forgotten a lot. When I pick up a practice book, I find myself always going to an etymology book to see an explanation of the character. always so fascinating.
One interesting fact about the Character language is that the persons speaking the different dialects around the country may not understand each other, but they all under stand the characters.
It is like the word “SQUARE”. In English we have a word for it and say — the French — have their own word for it. we may not understand each other, but we both recognize the picture of a square.
Languages! So interesting! Brain work!!
Ah, languages, one of my favorite topics. For the moment I will talk about Spanish. Spanish has 4 forms of you—tu and vosotros (seldom used) for thee singular and plural; Usted formal singular, Ustedes formal plural. It has two verbs for “to be”—ser and estar. Ser for permanent states—I am a man, estar for temporary states—I am tired. More difficult are the two categories of verb forms—Indicative and Subjunctive. Indicative is something which actually is—I came to school (I actually did that). Subjunctive—Come to school (this may or may not happen and takes a different verb form. In Spanish almost half of the sentences with verbs are subjunctive—that is, things might or might not happen. Germans don’t have that problem, most things are very certain. The Romance languages, and it seems often the people have the more uncertain quality based on the subjunctive. A rare English form can be seen in “If I were king.” versus “When I am king.”
I took a linguistics class in Mexico and we studied a little Aztec (Nahuatl). They have a form called an “infix” while we only have prefix and suffix. I want to eat tortillas can be written: Nicnequi nicua tlaxcalli or Nicnequi nitlaxcalcua, or something like that. I took the course 50 years ago. But I have not seen that in germanic or romance language forms.
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