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Post by vinnyd on Jan 5, 2022 9:39:45 GMT -5
Thanks.
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Post by vinnyd on Jan 5, 2022 9:43:21 GMT -5
In modern Hebrew, the emphatic consonants, equivalent to ص, have collapsed together with the س-type consonants, so that there are a number of pairs of letters that are pronounced the same and the spelling just has to be memorized.
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Post by snowwhite on Jan 5, 2022 9:53:37 GMT -5
We'll see how long this lasts, but I was finding the Duo French course really boring (I was being reminded of things, and learning the odd new word, but mostly just answering questions I knew the answers to), so I thought I'd try something actually NEW to me and started with Danish yesterday, which is actually quite fun and a very different experience, even though I suspect my listening and speaking skills will need a LOT of work. I'm having to guess what new words mean (mostly successfully so far) and work out that articles and plurals are mostly done with suffixes etc. Apparently far better for the brain to learn something actually new. Let me know if you want some help. I did think of you - at the moment I'm trying to get my head around everything at once; I'm not doing too badly remembering what the words when I see them, but saying them properly is hard, especially since the relationship between spelling and sound isn't what I'm used to. It's quite fun how lots of words seem to be vaguely old English. I think I'm right that ikke (?sp) not should normally come after the verb? But of course one of the first phrases they put it in was 'no, maybe not' I do have a teach yourself Danish book or phrasebook around somewhere, which I gave to MrSnow some years back since I thought he might want to learn more than 'tak' (thank you) for his work trips to Copenhagen, but it turned out he wasn't very motivated. And now he's not going anywhere for work anyway (Covid).
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 5, 2022 11:06:48 GMT -5
That’s why I added Duo German, because while French & Spanish were useful for grammar review, I was getting bored.
I liked Teach Yourself Hindi - it came in handy when I was in India.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 5, 2022 12:25:43 GMT -5
I learned, from an Arabic speaker whose sister-in-law is Iranian, that Persians and Arabic speakers can read each other's writing, but not understand when speaking it--bit like Mandarin and Cantonese? My language skills are absolute toilet right now. Incidentally, my partner learned some Arabic at school in Iran, but I think the focus was basically on reading the Koran, not speaking. That doesn't stop him trying it out on Arabic speakers though, who seem to find it hilarious - dunno if that's the effect he's going for! Of course, he's quite happy to give the Russian and Turkish he's picked up along the way a go as well ;-) If you combined his extroverted nature and willingness to make mistakes with my focus on accuracy and grammar, you'd probably have the ideal language learner! But as it is, we just carry on in our own ways!
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 5, 2022 12:29:34 GMT -5
He sounds like a wonderful person, lillie.
That story sorta reminds me of a former colleague whose family had emigrated from Poland just before she was born. So she did learn Polish, but it was from her mother and grandmother, so when she went back to Poland and talked to other young people, she didn't know any cool slang and sounded like a grandma (much to their amusement).
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Post by scicaro on Jan 5, 2022 13:03:02 GMT -5
snowwhite lots of people say spoken and written Danish are almost 2 different languages as the words aren't pronounced how you expect them to be.
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Post by sprite on Jan 5, 2022 16:03:50 GMT -5
I learned, from an Arabic speaker whose sister-in-law is Iranian, that Persians and Arabic speakers can read each other's writing, but not understand when speaking it--bit like Mandarin and Cantonese? My language skills are absolute toilet right now. Incidentally, my partner learned some Arabic at school in Iran, but I think the focus was basically on reading the Koran, not speaking. That doesn't stop him trying it out on Arabic speakers though, who seem to find it hilarious - dunno if that's the effect he's going for! Of course, he's quite happy to give the Russian and Turkish he's picked up along the way a go as well ;-) If you combined his extroverted nature and willingness to make mistakes with my focus on accuracy and grammar, you'd probably have the ideal language learner! But as it is, we just carry on in our own ways! It makes me imagine someone learning English out of the King James' Old Testament.
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Post by tzarine on Jan 5, 2022 16:33:35 GMT -5
sprite
in chinatown, i've seen mandarin speakers go into a hong kong style joint, be unfamiliar w the menu & end up speaking english to the staff who are native cantonese speakers
don't laugh, ive had students who spoke like they walked out of a jane austen novel
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Post by sprite on Jan 5, 2022 17:02:15 GMT -5
I believe it!
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Post by snowwhite on Jan 5, 2022 18:39:39 GMT -5
snowwhite lots of people say spoken and written Danish are almost 2 different languages as the words aren't pronounced how you expect them to be. I just try to sound Scandinavian and copy what I'm hearing... It also makes me reflect on how different it is learning as a literate adult and how children acquire language (which I know about, obviously, but it really points up the contrast).
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 5, 2022 19:53:56 GMT -5
Dutch is like that!! Hearing it almost sounds understandable and then you see it written and it's like WHAT
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Post by scicaro on Jan 6, 2022 1:03:54 GMT -5
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Post by snowwhite on Jan 6, 2022 5:08:32 GMT -5
Dutch is like that!! Hearing it almost sounds understandable and then you see it written and it's like WHAT The other thing about Dutch (for English speakers) is that the stress pattern / cadence is the same or at least almost the same as English, so until you focus into the actual sounds, or if you just happen to hear someone talking in the background it's easily mistaken for English... And then you listen a little more closely and your brain just goes WHAT?
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Post by tucano on Jan 6, 2022 5:14:28 GMT -5
Since starting to learn Dutch it's amazing how quickly my ear picks up a Dutchie from ten feet, anywhere in the world.
There are a lot of Dutch travellers! Previously I would have probably mistaken them for German.
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Post by sprite on Jan 6, 2022 6:49:17 GMT -5
Since starting to learn Dutch it's amazing how quickly my ear picks up a Dutchie from ten feet, anywhere in the world. There are a lot of Dutch travellers! Previously I would have probably mistaken them for German. I noticed that in South America; we met a variety of nationalities as we travelled, and I think we met more DUtch than anyone else. Maybe they were just more friendly, maybe our guidebook was a big seller there. But for such a tiny country, they seemed to pack a big tourism punch.
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Post by vinnyd on Jan 6, 2022 6:49:56 GMT -5
Scicaro's Danish chart is more or less how I deal with Irish names.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 6, 2022 6:59:58 GMT -5
Scicaro's Danish chart is more or less how I deal with Irish names. Kinda works for French too
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Post by Q-pee on Jan 6, 2022 17:09:41 GMT -5
if you just happen to hear someone talking in the background it's easily mistaken for English... The hell it is. Maybe you've only heard southerners speaking but anyone from north of the rivers will have a hard G sound in every second word. I do occasionally hear something on TV that I think is Dutch but when I tune in to try to understand it I can't and it's usually Danish. Which is interesting because technically German is more closely related but it doesn't sound it.
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Post by Q-pee on Jan 6, 2022 17:21:09 GMT -5
Dutch is like that!! Hearing it almost sounds understandable and then you see it written and it's like WHAT That is because they put lots of consonants in words and push compound words together. Once you can separate the component words it's not as scary. Simple example aardvarkaard = earth vark = pig More tricky example,
meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornis
looks impossible until you know where the breaks are
meervoudigepersoonlijkheidsstoornis Meervoudige = multiple Persoonlijkheids = personalities Stoornis = disorder or disturbance Knowing where the component words end and start helps with pronunciation as well.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 6, 2022 18:29:14 GMT -5
I screamed when I saw that word! But yeah, that makes sense. Kinda like how German just tacks nouns onto nouns onto nouns.
That "stoornis" is interesting for "disorder," since the Spanish word is "trastorno," so if you take the "tra" off that seems similar to me. But that could of course just be a coincidence.
However, the length of Dutch isn't what really gets me, it's the fact that they decided that the long "I" sound should be spelled "IJ." What?
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Post by vinnyd on Jan 6, 2022 18:38:51 GMT -5
I looked it up. Just a coincidence. Trastorno is trans-turn, from Latin. The -nis in stoornis is the same suffix as German -niß; the stor- part might be related to English stir.
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 6, 2022 23:48:29 GMT -5
The German for disorder is Störung, which is also the word for a disturbance, fault in the sense of a technical problem, that kind of thing.
With massive compound nouns, newer learners have difficulty seeing where the different elements break down, but at some point that almost stops and you can nearly always see the individual parts immediately (and the few exceptions are just funny).
It often helps to start with the end and work forward, which I wish someone had said to me when I was learning.
For example Kohleverstromungsbeendigungsgesetz Kohle-Verstromung-Beendigungs-Gesetz
Gesetz is a law. Beendigung- ending Verstromung- production of electricity (Strom = electricity). Kohle - coal. So, the law for the end of electricity from coal. ;-)
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Post by lillielangtry on Jan 6, 2022 23:55:29 GMT -5
if you just happen to hear someone talking in the background it's easily mistaken for English... The hell it is. Maybe you've only heard southerners speaking but anyone from north of the rivers will have a hard G sound in every second word. I do occasionally hear something on TV that I think is Dutch but when I tune in to try to understand it I can't and it's usually Danish. Which is interesting because technically German is more closely related but it doesn't sound it. I'm glad you say this because I can't hear the difference between Dutch and Danish very well, not speaking either. The Germans always can and find it odd.
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Post by psw on Jan 7, 2022 0:05:23 GMT -5
I learned about starting backwards to break down words when I was working on both speech synthesis and machine translation with two different computer teams at MIT in the 1960s. The object of the game was finding morph boundaries, and indeed some of the exceptions were amusing.
I didn't know much about computers, which I found terrifying and not at all user-friendly back then, but the computer guys knew next to nothing about linguistics, so I was useful to have around.
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Post by Q-pee on Jan 7, 2022 2:27:48 GMT -5
The German for disorder is Störung, which is also the word for a disturbance, fault in the sense of a technical problem, that kind of thing. That’s storing in Dutch, which you learn pretty quickly because it applies to trains, busses, electricity, WiFi connections. I think stornis is more often used for people either as “disorder” in the medical sense or a public disturbance.
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Post by Q-pee on Jan 7, 2022 2:34:19 GMT -5
I screamed when I saw that word! But yeah, that makes sense. Kinda like how German just tacks nouns onto nouns onto nouns.. However, the length of Dutch isn't what really gets me, it's the fact that they decided that the long "I" sound should be spelled "IJ." What? The nouns on to nouns thing is the same as German, although I think the Germans will line up more in a single word. And as others have said it’s best to start with the last bit (and that’s the bit that tells you something about the gender as well) The IJ is easy, just think of it as a y. To the Dutch it’s pronounced the same to the point that if you spell out a word you specify “long Ij “ or “Greek y”
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Post by scicaro on Jan 7, 2022 2:42:52 GMT -5
The hell it is. Maybe you've only heard southerners speaking but anyone from north of the rivers will have a hard G sound in every second word. I do occasionally hear something on TV that I think is Dutch but when I tune in to try to understand it I can't and it's usually Danish. Which is interesting because technically German is more closely related but it doesn't sound it. I'm glad you say this because I can't hear the difference between Dutch and Danish very well, not speaking either. The Germans always can and find it odd. In my experience folk from the Netherlands are the fastest to learn Danish. There are a lot of similarities. My cousin's wife commented that it's similar to Afrikaans which she grew up with.
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Post by Liiisa on Jan 7, 2022 7:07:54 GMT -5
The ij is easy but it's WEIRD
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Post by Q-pee on Jan 7, 2022 7:37:41 GMT -5
The ij is easy but it's WEIRD You think that's weird, wait until you learn English.
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