My phone can operate in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
I often set it to other languages so others may not access certain private things of my phone and be able to read them, such as certain text messages and the like. I will give you an example of how easy it is for an English speaker to understand much of written French in this type of situation. An English speaker trying to access his bank account on a kiosk or administer his cell phone in French, will not have much of a problem, while I think he would in a language like Dutch or German, or especially, Danish or Swedish. Here are examples of common options on my cell phone, and my i-pod:
French:
Camera
Message Instant
Quitter
Voir
Precedent
Modifier
Envoyer une message
Selection
Images
Themes
Annuler
Inserer
Centre de messages
Heure et date
Charge
Config. Initiale
Luminosite
Changer
Now, for the French words in English. The English word and the French word for the same situation might differ, but the French word usually has an identical word in English, although it is usually a synonym of the more basic level word in English. These are some examples that just go to show how easy it is for an English speaker to navigate thru a technological device such as a cell phone.
Camera - Camera
Message Instant - Instant Message
Quitter - Quit (exit, cancel, go back)
Voir - Ver (easy for Spanish speaker)
Precedent (Preceding, as in 'previous page')
Modifier (Modify, as in "edit" or "change")
Envoyer une message - (an envoy, so send a message: also like Spanish "enviar")
Selection - (selection, to select)
Images - Images
Themes - Themes
Annuler - (to annul, as in to "cancel")
Inserer - (to insert)
Centre de messages (Message center)
Heure et date (hour and date)
Charge - Charge
Config. Initiale (Initial configurement, "initial setup)
Luminosite - (like "luminate", as in "brighten", or "brightness"
Changer - (to change)
Also, although there has been some borrowing of Romance vocabulary among other Germanic languages like German and Dutch, the degree of similarity between the German/Dutch cognates and French cognates is not nearly as close as that shared between French and English cognates. English has preserved much of the original French orthography, such as the "c" or "ch" or "th" while German and Dutch have not.
Examples:
Eng - Contact
French - Contact
German - Kontakte
Eng - Contrast
French - Contrast
German - Kontrast
Pauline
My phone (Sony Ericsson ) has :
french
german
english
italian
hungarian
turkish
arabic
Porthos
That is probably because you purchased your phone in Europe. My phone is for those from the Western Hemisphere in the Americas, so it applies to the main languages spoken in the Americas, which are English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
Deborah
My phone has
English
Spanish
French
Portuguese
Russian
Ukrainian(!)
Hebrew
Arabic
Chinese
I can't figure out this selection -- in some ways it's very suitable for San Francisco, but if it were aimed at San Franciscans, it should have Vietnamese and Tagalog before Hebrew and Arabic (and probably Russian and Ukrainian, too). I think this would be a good selection for New York.
Elaine
God, I need to get a new phone b/c mine only has English and Espańol.
Joanne
Deborah wrote:
My phone has
English
Spanish
French
Portuguese
Russian
Ukrainian(!)
Hebrew
Arabic
Chinese
Ukrainian? Nifty! My Samsung phone only has English, Français and Espańol.
Deborah wrote:
I can't figure out this selection -- in some ways it's very suitable for San Francisco, but if it were aimed at San Franciscans, it should have Vietnamese and Tagalog before Hebrew and Arabic (and probably Russian and Ukrainian, too). I think this would be a good selection for New York.
I've never seen Tagalog in cell phones, not even in the Philippines. English is one of their official languages, so I suppose it's unnecessary.
Loic
My mobile is only trilingual in English, Chinese and Malay.
I don't think it is necessary to configure the phone in another language in order to discourage trespassers. Other people have no business using your phone without permission anyway. It is a gross invasion of privacy.
Elaine
loic wrote:
I don't think it is necessary to configure the phone in another language in order to discourage trespassers. Other people have no business using your phone without permission anyway. It is a gross invasion of privacy.
LOL. But he does still live at home (I think), and if I know Mexican families...
But then again, setting it to Spanish or Portuguese or French for that matter wouldn't make it any more secure b/c I'm sure they can figure it out as well.
greg in noord-frankrijk
Deutsch
English
Espańol
Français
Italiano
Automatique
It's funny because I recall having once set the phone on Greek accidentally. It took me a while to return to French...
Pauline
greg in noord-frankrijk wrote:
It's funny because I recall having once set the phone on Greek accidentally. It took me a while to return to French...
LOL !!!! But greek it's easier that it would be in arabic !!!
I put mine to hungarian to discover the words. It's completely impossible understand it !!
üzenetek
választás
képek és hangok
játékok
beállitások
this are possible understand :
vodafone live
favoriten
kamera
Deborah
Pauline, maybe this will help (yeah, right!):
és = and
Loic
Well then, I suppose text messages of a compromising nature must be deleted pronto in order to evade detection by nosey family members.
Speaking of texts, do all of you keep certain texts from a special someone or do you treat each text message without prejudice?
Daniel
My phone operates in English, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Zulu, and Sisotho.
Pauline
Daniel wrote:
My phone operates in English, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Zulu, and Sisotho.
Where you bought your phone ? It's a weird selection !!! Sometimes i need dutch in my phone for write a sms, but it hasn't this language. Your phone has it but probably you don't want dutch
How zulu and sisotho does look like ? Can you put some words of those langauges on a message here ?
Daniel
Pauline wrote:
Daniel wrote:
My phone operates in English, French, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Zulu, and Sisotho.
Where you bought your phone ? It's a weird selection !!! Sometimes i need dutch in my phone for write a sms, but it hasn't this language. Your phone has it but probably you don't want dutch
How zulu and sisotho does look like ? Can you put some words of those langauges on a message here ?
My Sony Ericsson K750i broke yesterday by freezing up every time I tried to use it. I've got a spare one Samsung D600 and this phone has English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and Turkish.
Daniel
Joanne wrote:
Deborah wrote:
I can't figure out this selection -- in some ways it's very suitable for San Francisco, but if it were aimed at San Franciscans, it should have Vietnamese and Tagalog before Hebrew and Arabic (and probably Russian and Ukrainian, too). I think this would be a good selection for New York.
I've never seen Tagalog in cell phones, not even in the Philippines. English is one of their official languages, so I suppose it's unnecessary.
Yeah, all mobile phones in the Philippines don't have Tagalog (Filipino) version. Only English. I know because all my Tagalog-speaking relatives there who have mobile phones have them in English. The odd thing is that they seem to get around it OK even though they don't speak a single word of English.
Benjamin [inactive]
Daniel wrote:
The odd thing is that they seem to get around it OK even though they don't speak a single word of English.
So are there many people in the Philippines who don't speak any English at all?
Joanne
Benjamin wrote:
Daniel wrote:
The odd thing is that they seem to get around it OK even though they don't speak a single word of English.
So are there many people in the Philippines who don't speak any English at all?
Well, in the provinces there are less, but in Manila, maybe 80% of the billboards, and TV and radio advertisements are in English, or have some English in them. However, there are a lot of impoverished people in the Philippines who can't read and don't own radios and TVs. They don't know much English, other than a few words here and there. There are many English loan words in Tagalog.
Unfortunately, English proficiency is a sort of class and wealth indicator over there. My cousin, a doctor in Manila, sometimes tells me about her snotty colleagues in the hospital she works in. They'd deliberately speak rapidly in English whenever they spoke to any middle class or nouveaux riches patients they didn't want to deal with. Charming, isn't it?
My Samsung phone only has English, Français and Espańol.
