Stu
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2002
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I like Spanish but don't like the idea that I almost have to know it due to politics.
I would say more demographics than politics.
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I like Spanish but don't like the idea that I almost have to know it due to politics.
I agree with this, except for the bit about Icelandic, which i find very hard to parse. The scandinavian languages (swedish, norwegian, danish) really are three-for-one because they are so similar, but Danish is ridiculously hard to speak. It seriously hurts my mouth to the point where Copenhagen is the only place in Scandinavia where I welcome and even request people's willingness to speak english. Norwegians say Danes speak as if they have a hot potato in their mouth, because of that weird "choking on consonants" way they talk. It sounds to me like you got punched in the mouth and your tongue is swollen.
I'm Brazilian and I often turn around when I hear Russians speaking. So you're not alone. They say Portuguese sounds like a drunk Italian sailor speaking Spanish with a French accent.
I've decided to pursue a minor dream of mine and take German next semester. I have 5 years of Latin under my belt, but it would pay to have something a bit more useful in my repertoire.
yeah, I have found that portugese, espetially in portogaul, sounds to my ears like russian. a little less in brazil, it seems softer there.
An awful lot of strange comments and observations in this thread. I don't know why people find Portuguese an unattractive language. I certainly didn't find it so in my limited travels in Brazil almost 22 years ago. I picked up a smattering while I was there. If I could learn any language these days, it might be Old Norse, so that I could read the Sagas, which I have always loved, in the original.
Heh...I forgot about Portugal...Brazilians often do. For whatever reason, almost all of us think of the "motherland" as something of a running joke. I guess when the royal family has to flee to YOU from invasion, you lose some of the respect.
The most useful language is no doubt Spanish. Suggesting learning Italian and Spanish is like suggesting learning American English and British English. Italian and Spanish are interchangeable and mutually understood.
Also I was shocked to find out that Finnish and Japanese share a lot of grammar and even words to the exact, phonetically , albeit with different meaning.
To the best of my knowledge, both Japanese and Korean are completely unrelated to any other extant languages in the world, being like Basque in this respect. Japanese and Korean are, respectively, the two most extensively spoken languages of this type (unrelated to any other) in the world as well.
Japanese and Korean share similar grammar and both are derived from Chinese words. They also share some of the same words. A Korean can go to Japan and become fluent pretty quickly, and vice versa.
Historically, the Chinese were the overlords in that region.
Japanese and Korean share similar grammar and both are derived from Chinese words. They also share some of the same words. A Korean can go to Japan and become fluent pretty quickly, and vice versa. NR would be a better judge of this but this is what I have heard from Koreans and I associate with many.