Lets talk about languages

[Mogensthegreat]

Since I've been studying Latin in school and also Russian in my free time, I've been noticing some curious patterns regarding the inflections of each. The verb conjugation endings are nearly identical between the two, but noun declension is way, way different. 

 

To show:

 

Russian 1st conjugation verb endings:                                                       Latin:

                              Singular                        Plural                                               Singular        Plural

                                     -yu                                 -yem                                               -o                    -amus

                                     -yesh                             -yetye                                             -as                   -atis

                                     -yet                                -yut                                                 -at                    -ant

 

But if we look at nouns, it's totally different.

 

For starters, Russian has an extra case compared to Latin, the instrumental, used when something is an instrument in an action. In Latin this would just be another use for the accusative. 

 

                           Russian 1st declension noun endings:                                Latin:

                                    Singular                        Plural                                               Singular     Plural

                  Nominative                        -a               -i                                                      -a                 -ae

                  Genitive                              -i                (noun stem)                                   -ae              -arum

                  Dative                                 -ye             -am                                                  -ae              -is

                  Accusative                         -u              -i                                                       -am             -as

                  Prepositional                     -ye            -akh                                                  -a                 -is

                  Instrumental                      -oi             -ami

 

I can see how they would be somewhat similar, both being Indo-European languages, but why one part of speech would be inflected so similarly, but the other so differently. 

 

Also, question for better Russian-speakers than me: How, in speech, are Й and И distinguished?

[EnsignExpendable]

Й  is like the y in "yogurt" or "yogi" (it helps that these are loanwords in Russian). И is like the "ee" in "spleen". They are not at all the same letter in the way that they are pronounced, but I guess the shape your mouth forms is the same for both.

[Xoon]

On 21.1.2016 at 5:19 AM, Vanagandr said:

Fun ancedote; I had some very specific problems when I tried to learn Spanish. I know German well, and I know some Swedish, and there are a surprising number of false friends. 'Es' means 'it' in German, and 'it is' in Spanish. 'En' means 'the' in Swedish or 'in' in Spanish. 'Og', pronounced 'oh, means 'and' in Swedish, while 'o' in Spanish, pronounced the same, means 'or'. 'Y', in Spanish is pronounced the same as 'i' in Swedish; the former means 'and', the latter means 'in'. 'De' means 'of', in Spanish, and means 'they' in Swedish, but it is pronounced 'dome'. It took several weeks before I could reliably keep myself from pronouncing 'de' Swedishly. I still use 'es' in Spanish as the German 'es', which fortunately is fairly interchangeable, at least to the point that I'm understood.

 

Another interesting thing is that whenever I learn languages now, I tend to relate them to German. IE Spanish first person's -o conjugation to German -e, second person -as to -st, third person plural -en to -en, etc.

Not to discredit you or anything, but "the" does not exist in Scandinavian languages. 

 

"En" means specifically one, singular, only one.  In Swedish/Norwegian/Danish  "En bil" translates to "One car" or "A car" in English.  

However, "The car" translates to "Bilen".

And because we Scandinavians hate consistency, this does not even necessarily carry over to other words. Example: "Bilen, døra, huset, dama, og hode" translates into "The car, the house, the lady (or girlfriend), and the head"

 

And to make matters worse, we have loads and loads of dialects. Oslo-, Østlendings-, Telemarks-, Agders-, Stavangers-, Sørlendings-, Bergens-, Sogner-, Sogn og Fjordanenes-, Sunnmørs-, Ålesunders-, Moldensers-, Nordals-, Trønders-, midtlendings-, Nordlendings-, and immigrant speak dialects. 

 

And this is only the few most commonly known ones. I could probably write a page or two. 

 

Most likely, if you learn Norwegian, you will learn the Eastener dialect and bokmål, the governments most used written language. You might learn nynorsk, which is more akin to a compound of the dialects of Norway, and if you are a hipster, you could learn blandingnorsk, which is a mix of both. But you might end up with a "foreigner dialect" since many people that try to learn Norwegian without speaking with Norwegians end up with no dialect, making them sound very stale. 

 

I dunno how close Germans and Dutch are, but Norwegians and Danish share basically the same written language, since those bastards only wanted danish to be though at universities and to be used by the government, and since the Black death pretty much killed everyone, wiping out Norse. Our verbal language is closer to Swedish though, so we can easily communicate, though with some errors. Danish is a bit harder, and but we can still understand each other if we have to, but most of the time we prefer English.  Icelandic is a bit harder, which is old Norse. Takes a bit for me to understand, but I still understand them. 

 

The finish sounds like this for us" Hakka paka, pelite mitrta makke", basicly a lot of "akka, pelite", same goes for Sami. 

 

When it comes to German, we can communicate very basically. 

 

And English you may ask? Well, pretty much every kids past primary school speaks and writes English as well as a American. 

 

 

 

 

[EnsignExpendable]

4 hours ago, Xoon said:

speaks and writes English as well as a American. 

 

Quite poorly?

[Xoon]

12 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said:

 

Quite poorly?

Depends on the person, but yes, a 13 year old Norwegian does about as well as a average adult American. 

[Sturgeon]

2 hours ago, Xoon said:

Depends on the person, but yes, a 13 year old Norwegian does about as well as a average adult American. 

 

I've spoken with Norwegians before, and this isn't true.

[EnsignExpendable]

I went to a random fishery north of Bergen and the locals spoke enough English for me to buy some incredibly cheap (at least for Norway) fresh fish. The guy at the gas station also spoke sufficient English, although he didn't feel like explaining how the bottle refund machine worked and glumly watched me get about a dozen receipts of 10 ore each until I figured out how to make it process more than one bottle at a time.

[Xoon]

18 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

 

I've spoken with Norwegians before, and this isn't true.

 

17 hours ago, EnsignExpendable said:

I went to a random fishery north of Bergen and the locals spoke enough English for me to buy some incredibly cheap (at least for Norway) fresh fish. The guy at the gas station also spoke sufficient English, although he didn't feel like explaining how the bottle refund machine worked and glumly watched me get about a dozen receipts of 10 ore each until I figured out how to make it process more than one bottle at a time.

You two probably ended up speaking with the older generation, which English is very bad honestly. 

 

 

 

[Sturgeon]

58 minutes ago, Xoon said:

 

You two probably ended up speaking with the older generation, which English is very bad honestly. 

 

 

 

 

Nope, these are people my age (Millenials).

[Bronezhilet]

Implying Americans speak English.

[Sturgeon]

3 hours ago, Bronezhilet said:

Implying Americans speak English.

 

We speak the bigliest, yugest English. Americanglish.

[Xoon]

6 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Nope, these are people my age (Millenials).

Alright, Sufficient English* then. 

[Sturgeon]

Their English was/is definitely very good. On par with the level of English Germans speak (which is very good). But it's still not as good as most Americans.

 

People like to joke that Americans can't speak their own language, and while some can't that's really more true of the British.

[SergeantMatt]

The worst English is clearly spoken by chavs in Britain.

[EnsignExpendable]

u wot m8? u havin a laff?

[Xlucine]

6 hours ago, SergeantMatt said:

The worst English is clearly spoken by chavs in Britain.

 

 

[Vanagandr]

On 11/5/2017 at 6:01 PM, Xoon said:

Not to discredit you or anything, but "the" does not exist in Scandinavian languages. 

 

"En" means specifically one, singular, only one.  In Swedish/Norwegian/Danish  "En bil" translates to "One car" or "A car" in English.  

However, "The car" translates to "Bilen".

And because we Scandinavians hate consistency, this does not even necessarily carry over to other words. Example: "Bilen, døra, huset, dama, og hode" translates into "The car, the house, the lady (or girlfriend), and the head"

 

And to make matters worse, we have loads and loads of dialects. Oslo-, Østlendings-, Telemarks-, Agders-, Stavangers-, Sørlendings-, Bergens-, Sogner-, Sogn og Fjordanenes-, Sunnmørs-, Ålesunders-, Moldensers-, Nordals-, Trønders-, midtlendings-, Nordlendings-, and immigrant speak dialects. 

 

And this is only the few most commonly known ones. I could probably write a page or two. 

 

Most likely, if you learn Norwegian, you will learn the Eastener dialect and bokmål, the governments most used written language. You might learn nynorsk, which is more akin to a compound of the dialects of Norway, and if you are a hipster, you could learn blandingnorsk, which is a mix of both. But you might end up with a "foreigner dialect" since many people that try to learn Norwegian without speaking with Norwegians end up with no dialect, making them sound very stale. 

 

I dunno how close Germans and Dutch are, but Norwegians and Danish share basically the same written language, since those bastards only wanted danish to be though at universities and to be used by the government, and since the Black death pretty much killed everyone, wiping out Norse. Our verbal language is closer to Swedish though, so we can easily communicate, though with some errors. Danish is a bit harder, and but we can still understand each other if we have to, but most of the time we prefer English.  Icelandic is a bit harder, which is old Norse. Takes a bit for me to understand, but I still understand them. 

 

The finish sounds like this for us" Hakka paka, pelite mitrta makke", basicly a lot of "akka, pelite", same goes for Sami. 

 

When it comes to German, we can communicate very basically. 

 

And English you may ask? Well, pretty much every kids past primary school speaks and writes English as well as a American. 

 

 

 

 

That's some pretty absurd semantics to claim that 'the' doesn't exist in Scandinavian languages because it appears at the end of a noun instead of as a separate article

"Bilen" translates more or less perfectly to "the car" in English, and the pattern fits for about anything else you "noun-en"/"noun-et", and the exceptions prove the rule; it's the reason that "noun-en" is taught to mean "the noun"

Icelandic distinguishes the indefinite article by context, in which case it almost makes sense to say that it doesn't have a definite article except "maðurinn" still translates to "the man"

Like let's not reinvent Wittgensteinian linguistics because it's pointless, a beetle is a beetle, alright?

[Mogensthegreat]

@EnsignExpendable I've never gotten a solid idea on how the ы letter is pronounced in Russian, is it like a "yi" or the same as и?

[EnsignExpendable]

It's completely different from и or "yi". The best explanation for a foreign speaker I ever heard for ы is the grunt you make when you're punched in the stomach.

[Donward]

An article about the last living speaker of a soon to be extinct language in Peru's Amazon basin.

 

http://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/12/26/nyt/thousands-once-spoke-his-language-in-the-amazon-now-hes-the-only-one/

[Mogensthegreat]

 

[Mogensthegreat]

@LoooSeR My Russian Language course says that it is a saying in St. Petersburg that "the weather changes more often than a woman her opinion".

 

Is this true?

 

 

[LoooSeR]

7 hours ago, Mogensthegreat said:

@LoooSeR My Russian Language course says that it is a saying in St. Petersburg that "the weather changes more often than a woman her opinion".

 

Is this true?

 

 

Not exactly, "X is changing more often than a woman changes her opinion" is right, we're X is anything.

[Mogensthegreat]

https://academiaprisca.org/en/indoeuropean/

 

https://indo-european.info/a-grammar-of-modern-indo-european-third-edition.pdf

 

https://indo-european.info/indo-european-lexicon-6.pdf

[Mogensthegreat]

There is a Mexican village that still speaks Nahuatl.