|
Post by Queen on Aug 6, 2023 11:07:16 GMT -5
Apparently "ChatGPT" in French sounds like "chat j'ai pété"
This has been making me and a francophone friend giggle for days.
|
|
|
Post by tzarine on Sept 10, 2023 20:08:01 GMT -5
i learned what jebi se means in croatian
|
|
|
Post by sprite on Sept 13, 2023 15:29:37 GMT -5
My trilingual friend was telling me about the French phrase to describe a person who was older and always complainging about aches, " ta ma loo." I dismissed it (mentally) as a Marseilles thing, and much later realised it was, "T'as mal ou?" (you have pain where?)
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Jan 9, 2024 16:38:45 GMT -5
been getting kind of obsessed with the leagues in duolingo lately and managed to get up to the diamond league. and since i got a free three day trial of super, i tried to get as many points as possible - but then they placed me in a group that is just crazy - actually, a. is in diamond league, too, but the points she has put her in second place in her group, but would put her in second to last place in my group. weird how that can be so different ...
as for languages, i continue with arabic there, but also added czech now, as we will go to the czech republic in february, so i want to brush up a bit on my czech ...
|
|
|
Post by tzarine on Jan 27, 2024 23:04:07 GMT -5
i learned cai fora
|
|
|
Post by jimm on Jan 28, 2024 16:53:44 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 28, 2024 22:43:23 GMT -5
Sydney has regional accents. The North Shore where I grew up is posh, the Shire, where ScoMo comes from, is just as educated and well off, but speaks broader and less posh, and there is a distinctive western suburbs accent that I can recognise, but can’t explain.
|
|
|
Post by jimm on Jan 29, 2024 0:43:24 GMT -5
I recall hearing an interview with a linguist (?) who claimed they could tell what Melbourne school a person attended just by listening to them speak. I tend to believe them. My Merton Hall acquaintances sound different to my MLC acquaintances.
PS I'm a Sydney North Shore boy - grew up in the old part of St Ives, before it became posh. The old house is still there in Cowan Rd.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 29, 2024 2:53:03 GMT -5
jimm, we could easily have crossed paths. I spent most of my high school and uni years in East Gordon, and regularly rode my bike to St Ives.
|
|
|
Post by jimm on Jan 29, 2024 5:09:02 GMT -5
It might have been before your bike rides ... We left St Ives for Canberra in 1956, just before the end of my 1st Year at NSBH. Hard to imagine these days a barely 12 yo boy traveling for over an hour to school by public transport (bus then train then tram) by himself in a big city, but we all did then.
Apologies for the tangent ...
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 29, 2024 6:49:19 GMT -5
Yes, we did. I caught 2 buses and a train to high school. At least we had school special buses. We didn’t move to Gordon until 1962.
|
|
|
Post by vinnyd on Jan 29, 2024 14:13:08 GMT -5
I have heard that Australians who went o Catholic schools pronounce the name of the letter haitch, as do the Irish, while other Australians make it aitch like Brits* and North Americans.
*Amol Rajan on the BBC's University Challenge says haitch. I have no knowledge of his schooling.
|
|
|
Post by jimm on Jan 29, 2024 15:57:29 GMT -5
I have heard that Australians who went o Catholic schools pronounce the name of the letter haitch, as do the Irish, while other Australians make it aitch like Brits* and North Americans. Or learnt* it from their Catholic parents. I heard both at my public primary school. (Ages 5 - 11). Later in life I learnt it was a marker of Catholic education. * I had to ask Google whether 'learned' or 'learnt' is correct. Somehow 'learnt' looks wrong, but is the accepted UK English version.
|
|
|
Post by ozziegiraffe on Jan 29, 2024 17:15:23 GMT -5
Yes, in my childhood haitch definitely indicated you were Catholic.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Jan 29, 2024 17:45:50 GMT -5
How interesting! I was brought up Catholic and we didn't pronounce anything differently from the non-papists in town. Of course no one in this country* pronounces the letter H like that.
* well, surely SOMEone does, but I've never met them
|
|
|
Post by sprite on Jan 30, 2024 16:01:47 GMT -5
Newfoundlanders will proudly tell you that they drop their Haitches, but they have a very Irish-type accent.
|
|
|
Post by snowwhite on Jan 31, 2024 17:26:55 GMT -5
It's a marker of religion in Northern Ireland (or was anyway). One way to tell someone's allegiance was to get them to recite the alphabet - pretty awful during the troubles.
|
|
|
Post by jimm on Feb 1, 2024 1:03:58 GMT -5
Interesting conversation at the Tutors Lunch at my U3A yesterday - the group I was with included the French tutor (a native French speaker), the Spanish tutor (an Aussie fluent enough in Spanish who had spent a lot of time in South America and has a smattering of German and French and maybe Portuguese) and a native German speaker. The main part of the conversation was about the variations in dialects, pronunciations, and how the language of isolated pockets of foreign language speakers (eg in German communities in South Africa and South America) became frozen in time compared to their homeland (if that is the right word). The French tutor said that she sometimes had trouble understanding her son who still lives in France, because his language and vocab had evolved, but hers had not.
My U3A is such an interesting community.
|
|
|
Post by lillielangtry on Feb 1, 2024 1:21:50 GMT -5
Wow, I did not know that about the pronunciation of h.
Yes, jimm, someone was asking me last week about the ways to keep up with an evolving language and the fact is, outside the country it's hard. Of course watching TV shows and being on social media help a lot but even so.
|
|
|
Post by Queen on Feb 1, 2024 4:22:48 GMT -5
Yes, jimm, someone was asking me last week about the ways to keep up with an evolving language and the fact is, outside the country it's hard. Of course watching TV shows and being on social media help a lot but even so. Yep, true - NZ English includes more Maori terms than I grew up knowing and for sure I won't know the slang.
|
|
|
Post by snowwhite on Feb 1, 2024 4:27:46 GMT -5
This is the 'problem' children of migrants can have. Go to visit their parents' 'home' country and they can have conversations, but they sound like the wrong generation. Also, sometimes, they'll have the language they need for stuff around the house / home, but not necessarily for other contexts.
|
|
|
Post by lillielangtry on Feb 1, 2024 5:26:08 GMT -5
Yes. Very often people don't understand that bilingualism is a spectrum. Just because your parents spoke a language at home, for example, doesn't mean you could automatically start a university course in that language and be fine. You might have deficits in spelling, writing, academic terminology, etc. All completely normal and understandably if you haven't been educated in the language, but people often think if your parents, or one parent, comes from a particular language background you just "are" this magic thing called bilingual in which both languages are equal.
|
|
|
Post by Liiisa on Feb 1, 2024 6:39:33 GMT -5
Yes, I once worked with a woman who was a daughter of Polish immigrants, and she said when she went to stay with relatives in Poland the young people her age said her Polish made her sound like an old woman!
|
|
|
Post by snowwhite on Feb 1, 2024 7:34:00 GMT -5
Let alone being properly competent in more than two languages...
|
|
|
Post by Queen on Feb 1, 2024 8:40:53 GMT -5
The ex ex company I worked for used to provide information in Turkish for Turkish speaking clients, but they'd also provide it in phonetic Turkish - lots of first generation kids would grow up speaking Turkish, and translating for parents, but having low reading/writing skills.
This way they'd be able to read and understand the Dutch, and use the phonetic Turkish to help explain things to their parents who could read the Turkish.
Pretty much everyone I work with is properly competent in two languages (or more) but almost none would say they're equally proficient in all.
|
|
|
Post by tzarine on Feb 1, 2024 14:38:03 GMT -5
Yes. Very often people don't understand that bilingualism is a spectrum. Just because your parents spoke a language at home, for example, doesn't mean you could automatically start a university course in that language and be fine. You might have deficits in spelling, writing, academic terminology, etc. All completely normal and understandably if you haven't been educated in the language, but people often think if your parents, or one parent, comes from a particular language background you just "are" this magic thing called bilingual in which both languages are equal. so true when my parents died, i totally lost the dialect they spoke. i studied mandarin @ uni. it was not magic.
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Feb 1, 2024 17:20:03 GMT -5
apart from that, also met quite a few people who went through a phase of refusing to speak their parents' language, especially if they lived in an area where there weren't that many kids speaking other languages, so they spoke the parents' language well when they were little kids, but then when they were older mainly understood it but didn't speak it, until as adults they started learning it again ...
|
|
|
Post by rikita on Feb 1, 2024 17:21:11 GMT -5
haven't managed to brush up my czech as much as i planned, and will go to the czech republic saturday - so i will see how much i remember (though it is a very touristy place, so it's possible everyone will just speak german or english to me, anyway) ...
|
|
|
Post by lillielangtry on Feb 2, 2024 0:31:20 GMT -5
That's very interesting about the Turkish Q. I wonder if that happens here too, as we also, of course, have a large Turkish population. I know they also have an identifiable accent when they speak Turkish.
My partner tells me it's the same with Persians. Of course if you watch a TV series or film with a scene in "Iran", for practical reasons these actors are often Iranian-American or whatever, and he can tell.
|
|
|
Post by sophie on Feb 2, 2024 12:00:49 GMT -5
My polish language skills are a perfect example of this.. first of all, my parents spoke the language as it was pre-WW2. After the war, Poland went through a stage where Germanic words were replaced by Slavic words.. for example… potatoes were ‘kartofle’… changed to ‘zemniaki’ (of the earth).. and using the old vocabulary dated the speaker. I also am weak in the written aspect of the language.. limited exposure. I find after a few days in the environment, I improve immensely. I also never learned the curse / swear words .. definitely showed up when I was in my 20’s trying to fit in with folks my age in Poland!!
|
|