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RE: How many languages do you speak??   You are logged in as Guest
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[Poll]

How many languages do you speak??
1
  5% (2)
2
  35% (12)
3
  20% (7)
4
  29% (10)
5
  5% (2)
6
  2% (1)
7
  0% (0)


Total Votes : 34
(last vote on : Oct. 2 2016 9:31:43) 
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Dudnote

Posts: 1805
Joined: Nov. 13 2007
 

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Piwin) 
quote:

ORIGINAL: Piwin
Speaking of the numeral system, here's an interesting theory from Malcolm Gladwell's book "the Outliers":
http://gladwell.com/outliers/rice-paddies-and-math-tests/
I don't know what it's worth but it's an interesting take on the way language can inform other individual abilities.
In French from France (it's not the same in Belgium, where their numbers make a bit more sense), we use Arabic numerals, but the full written (and spoken) form of the numbers can get pretty ridiculous.
If you translate litteraly the parts that make up the word, 60 is sixty; 70 is sixty ten (soixante-dix); 80 is four twenty (quatrevingt); 90 is four twenty ten (quatrevingt-dix)....


You beat me to it Piwin, this is a pet gripe of mine, or any other foreigner here that has to at some point or other write down a simple telephone number. That system is so slow! You have to wait many syllables and perform some arithmetic before you know even roughly what the number is going to be, quatrevingt quinze, like hey just run that past me again s'il tu plait!

The research in the book you cite is quite well known - amongst psychology graduates from Wales at least - from what I remember there are fewer syllables in the basic numbers in Welsh than in English, giving rise to more than a little Welsh pride in that their language made them naturally more adept at math than their English cousins.

In his book l'aventure des nombres Gilles Godefroy gives a historical reason for the linguistic craziness that is soixante dix huit and quatre vingt dix neuf. It comes from France's Celtic heritage. The Gauls aparently counted with a base 20 system which later got replaced by today's base 10 system. This is also where eleven and twelve come from in English and German before we hit the teens in the modern number system.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 5 2016 22:52:44
 
Paul Magnussen

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From: London (living in the Bay Area)

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Escribano) 
quote:

Good to see you didn't use rationalize there


I thought about it (although I was educated to use -ise), because

• It's more phonetic and more etymologically correct (the ultimate source being the greek -izo, it says here).

• It would bring my spelling into line with the OUP, CUP and Times, and also make it less strange to Americans.

But, according to Fowler:

“It must be noticed, however, that a small number of verbs, some of them in very frequent use, like advertise, devise, and surprise, do not get their -ize even remotely from the Greek -izo, and must be spelt with -s-. the diffiiculty of remembering which these -ise verbs are is in fact the only reason for making -ise universal, and the sacrifice of significance to ease does not seem justified.

The more important of these exceptions are here given: advertise, advise, apprise, chastise, circumcise, comprise, compromise, demise, despise, devise, disenfranchise, enfranchise, enterprise, excise, exercise, improvise, incise, premise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise, televise.”

I couldn’t be bothered to memorise all these. So in the end I said Sod it.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 1:29:45
 
estebanana

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Dudnote) 
The norm is that Chinese has three infected tones, an upward inflection where pith emphasis rises, one in the middle where it neither rises nor falls and one the does fall.

Standard Japanese by contrast almost always is a straight pitch that does not rise of fall to change the meaning of the word. Any dialect or regionalism that resembles Chinese in that a word meaning is changed by rising or falling pitch inflection are not the rule.

There is a distinct difference between the basic concept behind each languages approach to inflection. Most languages have some words or exclamations that undergo a meaning change if the pitch is changed, but when we talk about inflected in contrast to uninfected language it generally means that inflection is an intrinsic part of the main way a language operates. Right?

The way I hear it that certain people speak with infection to add emotional information to a word or sentence, but if the word was pronounced without an up or down stress it would still be the same word. In Chinese the opposite happens , a change in stress up or down includes a meaning change.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 2:49:30
 
Dudnote

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to estebanana) 
quote:

ORIGINAL: estebanana
The norm is that Chinese has three infected tones, an upward inflection where pith emphasis rises, one in the middle where it neither rises nor falls and one the does fall.

Many references say there are four when actually there are five.
1 high constant pitch
2 rising
3 low falling & rising
4 falling
5 (the often forgotten tone) a short rapid stacato normally reseved for grammatical words

I get them wrong all the time which my kids find wonderfully funny.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 3:09:48
 
estebanana

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Dudnote) 
There are three main inflections to make words understood. When I was in China they let us gringos off easy by suggesting only three. I finally mastered "I will eat eggplant for lunch."

The high maintained pitch is an Asian wife screaming at you, many have confused this inflection with normal pitch after a few years of exposure.

The staccato inflection is often caused by the listener kicking himself in the butt.

Badum tshhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

You are right I have not thought about the exact pitch inflection for a long time. I remember the down and up pitch now. But I maintain the staccato is from kicking or being or being kicked. The down-up pitch can also be created a swift kick to the nuts.

I'll be here all week, two shows on Sunday....don't forget to tip your waiter.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 4:29:47
 
El Kiko

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From: The South Ireland

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Piwin) 
quote:


but Japanese is not related to other languages or language groups.


Sounds like Basque here in Europe. It bears no relationship to any other language in Europe and nobody really knows how it got there.


i thought that Japanese was in some way connected to Korean and some other Altaic language.....but maybe not ...

Piwin ...its not so much that Basque got there .. it was already there ....all the original languages that were in the Iberian Peninsular were wiped out , by the long occupation of Rome for one thing .. hence Latin being there .. before all that lot turned up ..it was all different ...Basque seemed to have survived , but not in its original form ...


I see from the first page the spread of votes , however I would not put much trust in it ,,there are only 26 votes in total ...and 30 % speak 4 languages .. it makes you wonder at what level some people can say ''speak''

Fluency is generally thought of the ability to speak about a whole range of topics without pausing to thing of words and vocabulary ...as a guide . there ..
I read some of the arguments that start on here from time to time and people misinterpreting , misunderstanding and using falsely over complicated terminology , etc and wonder about the fluency level of English here , alone ...


start another thread .... how many people actually understand English correctly? ...vote ....

thats me out anyway........

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 9:30:58
 
Piwin

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to El Kiko) 
quote:

Piwin ...its not so much that Basque got there .. it was already there ....all the original languages that were in the Iberian Peninsular were wiped out , by the long occupation of Rome for one thing .. hence Latin being there .. before all that lot turned up ..it was all different ...Basque seemed to have survived , but not in its original form ...


Well, yes and no. The prevailing theory today is that Basque is a pre-Romance language which as you said survived the Roman occupation. However, even this doesn't suggest that Basque is native to the area, only that it got there before the Romance languages. Some have suggested Basque is related to Caucasian languages, others to Celtic lines. At one point, some thought it may be related to some subsaharan languages such as Peul (go figure...).
The most widely accepted alternative is that Basque is a non Indo-European language (as opposed to all of the Romance languages) that must have developed in close contact to Indo-European, possibly millenia before the Roman invasion of Europe. This alternative theory tries to address one of the major questions that the main theory has left unanswered. If Basque was a non Indo-European and pre-Romance language, how come most of its lexicon is derived from Indo-European languages? (if I remember correctly, all of its verbs are Indo-European in origin...).
I know much less about Japanese. The little I've read suggests that the state of affairs is fairly similar to that of Basque, with various theories positing a relationship to other languages, but with not enough confidence at this point to be able to say for sure. This part of linguistics is very similar to taxonomy. Scientists don't like these one-off exceptions (since they really don't make sense evolutionarily speaking) and will keep on trying to lump them into a known group until they find something satisfactory.


quote:

I see from the first page the spread of votes , however I would not put much trust in it ,,there are only 26 votes in total ...and 30 % speak 4 languages .. it makes you wonder at what level some people can say ''speak''


I'm sure I don't know what you mean. I speak 15 languages and my picado reaches 14780 bpm easy.
I'm one of those who put 4 languages, but it is true that they are not all at the same level of fluency. I cut out the languages where I can do nothing more than order a cab or have a basic conversation about concrete things. Of the languages I acquired as an adult, my Spanish is much more fluent than my German. Mainly because I live in Spain. When I lived in Germany, the opposite was true. Fluency is a b*tch and comes and goes depending on exposure to the language. Though I still don't have any trouble understanding colloquial German, it is true that I now make much more mistakes speaking than I used to (and my accent has gone down the drain...). Even with my other two languages, both of which are my mother tongues, I'm still much more fluent in one than the other (French).
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 10:49:01
 
Ruphus

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Leñador) 
quote:

ORIGINAL: Leñador

That is pretty interesting, and really absurd. It's like the west is inherently bad at math.


Not inherently, but historically Middle Eastern cultures used to be ahead with math and other subjects.

The depiction of the value zero as a mere dot (which thankfully westerners enlarged to a "0") indicates the understimation of the diggit by the Arabs though, and in the oriental country that I curently am the currency units of 1:10 don´t imply genius either.
It is completely useless. 1:100 yet makes practical sense.

Ruphus
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 11:46:53
 
estebanana

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Dudnote) 
The context we were talking about was that is it easier to learn a language that has things in common with your mother tongue. If you look at Basque or Japanese that way they are not really related to other language groups. If you look at Japanese from a deeper point there are ways linguists associate them with other languages. But these associations are distant and varied,some point to the Pacific islands, Malaysia and some to the Asian mainland.

For practical purposes you are not really close to Japanese with a Western language as your native tongue and not as close to Korean as most people think. So in terms of difficulty in relation to your home tongue nothing is really close to Japanese. Linguists have many theories about origins but most are based on distant connections to a few main groups.

I thin all languages are tough, but I hear more by intuition and association to my first language English when I hear Romanian or Dutch or British language than Japanese.

In fact with three or four years of study and a few thousand hours in the language I bet I could speak British. Maybe with more study even Australian. The mind boggles at what humans can do.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 12:05:54
 
El Kiko

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From: The South Ireland

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Piwin) 
I get what your saying about Basque ok .. it just depends on how far back you wan to go ... your going further back than i was ...

Considering most languages evolve rather than just burst into existence , it may just gradually become what we now know as Japanese or Basque etc ...

like where did English come from ? ... how far back do you want to go ?
and how many influences do you need to put in ?... although its not a Latin language there are over 500 cognates , i've heard , these would have been put there by the french and to some extent the Romans , that were more a force of occupation , never wiping the languages out ,but adding to it and thus transforming.

I would be a 3 , Portuguese , Spanish , and English (and Rubbish) although for me Portuguese and Spanish seem to roll into 1 , its like cheating ...especially when you go to Galicia ...
I often interchange bits of the languages for ease of use when speaking in the house with my wife ..(although she has French as well) sometimes it just seems more direct to say a point in different language ,,

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 12:13:17
 
Piwin

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to El Kiko) 
quote:

like where did English come from ? ... how far back do you want to go ? and how many influences do you need to put in ?... although its not a Latin language there are over 500 cognates , i've heard , these would have been put there by the french and to some extent the Romans , that were more a force of occupation , never wiping the languages out ,but adding to it and thus transforming.


An interesting tidbit is that after the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066 (Hastings 'n all that jazz), the ruling elite spoke French whereas the lower strata of society spoke English. As a result, you now have many doublets and the word of French origin is usually of higher-register than the word of English/Germanic origin. For instance, commence/start, encounter/meet. Another example often mentioned is the names given to animals and their corresponding meat. The names of the animals that were reared by the English peasants are of Germanic descent (ox, sheep, pig) but the names of the corresponding meat eaten by the Norman ruling elite are of French descent (beef, mutton, pork).

Count me in for speaking Rubbish too. I'm pretty fluent at it! I practice by speaking a bit of it every day...

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 12:32:20
 
El Kiko

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From: The South Ireland

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Piwin) 
yes i beleive that french was the first language spoken in the court of Henry 8th ...
.
which would come in very handy for him for the invasion he had a little go at with some of the guys .. strolling into Calais in 15oo and whatever, always handy to have a bit more than a phrase book standard when your an invading force ,,,,so im told ....
.
how else could you demand cheese and fine wine ....?

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 13:38:30
 
Leñador

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From: Los Angeles

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Dudnote) 
quote:

I often interchange bits of the languages for ease of use when speaking in the house with my wife ..(although she has French as well) sometimes it just seems more direct to say a point in different language ,,

I work with a guy who was born in Mexico but mostly raised out here and we tend to slip back and forth between English and Spanish even within the sentence. i don't really know if there's a pattern of how we do it, it's just whatever's quicker I think......

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 16:53:18
 
Piwin

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to El Kiko) 
Well, if ever the British want Calais back, I'd be happy to give it to them. Perhaps they would actually recognize there's a humanitarian crisis going on. Our own frog-eating government can't be bothered to notice. Too busy trying to look authoritative...
It's a "jungle" up there...

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 17:18:30
 
Paul Magnussen

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From: London (living in the Bay Area)

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to El Kiko) 
quote:

there are only 26 votes in total ...and 30 % speak 4 languages .. it makes you wonder at what level some people can say ''speak''


The criterion was stated by the OP, surely?

Speaking for myself (as one of those who answered 4 languages): I got four years each of French and German at school, and subsequently worked in both countries. I later tried to teach myself Spanish, and have spent a year or so in Spain, in toto.

The French and German had become rusty, but I found they came back quite quickly when I was Switzerland in 2006.

Does that help to answer your question?
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 18:32:03
 
Leñador

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From: Los Angeles

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Dudnote) 
Yeah I'd say if you can successfully work in that language you speak it.
But I get Kiko, some people may think they can and if they actually tried it would be a rude awakening.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 19:01:04
 
Estevan

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From: Torontolucía

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Paul Magnussen) 
quote:

quote [Leñador]:

Why wouldn't Japan abandon the kanji for the more piratical phonetic system?

[Paul:] Probably for the same reason that the British don’t rationalise their spelling, as the Irish, Germans, Spanish etc. have done?

Because - apart from the cultural considerations explained by estebanana sensei - kanji convey meaning. The range of sounds in Japanese is quite limited and there are a great many homonyms, so reducing everything to phonetic spelling would cause yet more confusion.



Besides, the piratical phonetic system is even more limited and consists largely of the sound Ahrrrrrr!
(There - someone had to say it. I'll get my coat...)

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 20:13:51
 
Leñador

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Dudnote) 
What about Vietnamese? That's a tonal language that managed to adopt a phonetic alphabet......

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 20:51:09
 
estebanana

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Estevan) 
quote:

Besides, the piratical phonetic system is even more limited and consists largely of the sound Ahrrrrrr!
(There - someone had to say it. I'll get my coat...)


And besides the safest treasure maps is written in kanji. Those bastard Western pirate can't read 'em. ARRRRRRRggg.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 21:52:58
 
Leñador

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Dudnote) 
I heard African pirates have bigger bootys than Japanese pirates. (Sorry, low hanging fruit you know.)

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 22:22:14
 
Dudnote

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Leñador) 
quote:

ORIGINAL: Leñador
What about Vietnamese? That's a tonal language that managed to adopt a phonetic alphabet......

Wouldn't work for Chinese, there are so many words that are phonetically identical that if you worked entirly with phonetics you loose a lot of information. Sometimes in spoken Chinese a speaker has to clarify which word they mean since phonetics and context alone are not always enough.

Great thread by the way, made me realise my Chinese is advancing even less convincingly than my guitar playing.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 6 2016 22:54:14
 
Piwin

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Leñador) 
quote:

(Sorry, low hanging fruit you know.)


hmmm.... Low hanging fruit and dwarf pirates. There's a joke in there somewhere. If only I could figure out what.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 7 2016 5:56:20
 
Estevan

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From: Torontolucía

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Dudnote) 
quote:

[Leñador:]
What about Vietnamese? That's a tonal language that managed to adopt a phonetic alphabet......

And you can see how difficult it was by the piles of diacritical marks all over the place!

quote:

[Dudnote:]
Wouldn't work for Chinese, there are so many words that are phonetically identical that if you worked entirely with phonetics you lose a lot of information.

Yes, that's what I was saying about Japanese, above. Perhaps even moreso in Japanese (?) because there is not the complex system of tones (although it does have a "pitch accent" so that you can tell the difference between a persimmon and an oyster, or between chopsticks and a bridge, for example).

quote:

Sometimes in spoken Chinese a speaker has to clarify which word they mean since phonetics and context alone are not always enough.

And they do this by writing kanji with a finger on the palm of the other hand - it can be quite entertaining.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 7 2016 14:36:01
 
Estevan

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From: Torontolucía

RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to estebanana) 
quote:

And besides the safest treasure maps is written in kanji. Those bastard Western pirate can't read 'em. ARRRRRRRggg.

With their big noses and round eyes. Sapristi! It's all a fiendish cunning plot!

Here's something that's happened to people I know, both in Japan and China:




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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 7 2016 14:52:12

El Frijolito

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to estebanana) 
quote:

The norm is that Chinese has three infected tones, an upward inflection where pith emphasis rises,


I'll have to remember that - it really says it all.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 7 2016 17:09:59
 
Piwin

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to El Frijolito) 
quote:

quote:The norm is that Chinese has three infected tones


I'd suggest that if we add zombies to the mix we could make a bestselling movie.

Zombies vs Minipirates

coming soon in a theater near you.

It wouldn't be any good, but it would sell, enough for the entire foro to live out the rest of their lives on a tropical island somewhere.
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 7 2016 18:19:35

El Frijolito

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Piwin) 
Now for some reason I'm thinking about "Time Bandits."
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 7 2016 20:01:24
 
estebanana

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to El Frijolito) 
quote:

Now for some reason I'm thinking about "Time Bandits."


Do you carry a 9mm around in a in nondescript beige canvas bag with shoulder strap?

If so I know who you are.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 8 2016 2:12:17
 
estebanana

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to Estevan) 
quote:

Yes, that's what I was saying about Japanese, above. Perhaps even moreso in Japanese (?) because there is not the complex system of tones (although it does have a "pitch accent" so that you can tell the difference between a persimmon and an oyster, or between chopsticks and a bridge, for example).


This very interesting, Hashi or bridge and Chopstick sound the same to me in this area and so does Kaki - oyster or Persimmon.

My experience has been that you tell which is which by context and when in doubt ask or ask for a kanji to explain which. Hashi and kaki are both homonyms and sound the same but have different kanji. But in some other regions they could have a pitch variance, they just don't do that here in Kagoshima ken.

Japanese is crazy too because even though there is a standard for business and schooling the locals in regions go crazy with slang and dialect mixtures that are highly locally flavored. Dialect can change in ten miles and from end to end of the country some people in the south don't understand some dialects from the north and vise versa. Around here the dialect can get thick and Japanese seem to delight in making fun of dialects of other areas.

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  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 8 2016 2:25:30

El Frijolito

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RE: How many languages do you speak?? (in reply to estebanana) 
quote:

Do you carry a 9mm around in a in nondescript beige canvas bag with shoulder strap?

If so I know who you are.


What an odd question! There must be many people, though, that fit that description in the grand scheme of things. However, I am not one of them.

On Japanese "pitch accent" see:

高低アクセント

Apparently it exists in Kagoshima as well. See: "Handbook of Japanese Phonetics and Phonology," ed. Haruo Kubozono, section 4.4., "Dialectal Differences."
  REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |  Date Mar. 8 2016 16:21:23
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