In some parts of The Netherlands the people have the american R. It's not like French or trilled, but like in English and very rhotic. For me, it's sound absolutly ugly and unpleasnt but those dutch ahve the nasty pronunciation of their language.
Yes that is true. I think that is true for most Dutch dialects, because all the Dutch speakers I've ever heard have a rhotic 'r', which is like American English.
i would like to tell you that your comment is very stupid, but when I told Loic this about soemthing he wrote, I was told off!!! LOL!!
Anyway, no, of course only some people, and only younger ones as well in certain regions, I think in the West but I'm not exactly sure. It seems more a female tendance as well, although not exclsuively.
the 2 standard Rs in Dutch are other ones: the one very similar with German and the trilled one. In Flemish, the R is always trilled. In some part sof the Netherlands also, but the German type R is very often pronounced there.
I think that you mustn't conclude such a thing based on "all the dutch speakers you've ever heard". Maybe they all are from the same region and are all young.Probably as well you havn't heard many -evidently insufficent. I think it's true for most amercians that they're blond, female and thin, because the one who visited us on wednesday was this.
Well it helps to phrase things more delicately. It is only natural for someone to feel insulted when you say that what they've said is stupid.
I know about Dutch 'trilled' 'r's, but by "rhotic" i was referring of course to the 'r' sound at the end of words, which is for instance, pronounced in American English, but not in most British dialects. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
And I myself believe that we're descended from Adam and Eve.
Well there you go.
Not much of an improvement upon believing that that the sun goes round the earth, as far as I'm concerned — especially if you also believe that the earth (or universe) was created in six literal 24-hour days about 6,000 literal years ago, as many people in the United States apparently do.
I've created some more sentences to ilustrate that english-speakers can read Dutch better than Spanish. This sentences are absolutly stupid and boring, but it's for the languages.Sorry for the mistakes, you can correct them if you would like.
Mijn naam is Pauline en ik ben vijftien jaar oud.
My name is Pauline and I am fifteen year old.
Mi nombre es Pauline y tengo quince años.
Soms ga ik naar school met de bus, wat ik goed vind want de bus is comfortabel.
sometimes I go to school with the bus, what I find good because the bus is comfortable.
De vez en cuando voy a la escuela en autobus, y lo encuentro bien porque es cómodo.
Dat is haar kat; zij is wit en vriendelijk. Dit is de puppy van de hond daar; ik vind hem lief.
That is her cat; she is white and friendly. This is the puppy of the dog there; I find him sweet.
Eso es su gato; es blanco y sympático. Eso es el cachorro del perro allí; me parece lindo.
Wat vind je van dit restaurant? Het is te donker, en de koffie is niet warm.
What you find about this restaurant? It is too dark, and the coffee is not warm.
Qué piensas de este restaurante? Es demasiado oscuro, y el café no está caliente.
Location: San Francisco, Noord-Kalifornië, Noord-Amerika
Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 11:02 pm Post subject:
Porthos wrote:
Quote:
C'est inévitable. Beaucoup de gens pensent aussi que le Soleil tourne autour de la Terre ou que l'Homme descend d'Adam & Ève.
With a combination of English and Spanish, along with knowledge of the French words "beaucoup", "aussi", and "homme", I was able to understand this sentence word for word.
Your point? Was this meant to support your contention that English speakers can more easily understand latinate languages than germanic ones? There are only 3 words in that sentence that are recognizable to an English speaker who doesn't know any Spanish, French or Latin: inévitable, tourne and descend.
(Or maybe I'm jumping to the wrong conclusion -- maybe you were simply stating the fact that you understood the sentence and were explaining why.)
"ly" endings in French and Spanish are "mente", "ment", respectively. That looks very similar to me, except the French lacks the final vowel sound, and the first 'e' is pronounced more like a Spanish 'a'.
No, it's the opposite actually : Fr <-ment> & Sp <-mente>. And Fr <-ment> doesn't lack any final vowel for Fr <-ment> is /mÃ/ = /mɑ̃/.
Porthos wrote:
Quote:
C'est inévitable. Beaucoup de gens pensent aussi que le Soleil tourne autour de la Terre ou que l'Homme descend d'Adam & Ève.
I don't know very many people who believe that the sun revolves around the earth. And I myself believe that we're descended from Adam and Eve.
Je connais davantage de personnes influencées par un géocentrisme innocent que de personnes qui se croient issues d'Adam & Ève.
No, it's the opposite actually : Fr <-ment> & Sp <-mente>. And Fr <-ment> doesn't lack any final vowel for Fr <-ment> is /mÃ/ = /mɑ̃/.
When I said "respectively", I didn't put the words in any particular order. I think I would know something as simple as "-mente".
Quote:
(Or maybe I'm jumping to the wrong conclusion -- maybe you were simply stating the fact that you understood the sentence and were explaining why.)
Yep, that's all I was saying.
Quote:
Je connais davantage de personnes influencées par un géocentrisme innocent que de personnes qui se croient issues d'Adam & Ève.
So essentially, most of your associates are completely ignorant, and non-religious at the same time?
Quote:
Mijn naam is Pauline en ik ben vijftien jaar oud.
This is an instance when spoken Dutch would be much easier to understand than written Dutch, although I usually find written Dutch to much easier to understand than spoken. Granted, this is because I know about the basic differences in Dutch orthography, but most people wouldn't know that, and would instead read that sentence like this:
Mij-in nom is Pauline en ik ben vij-f-tee-en gar ow-d.
Likewise, I understand far more written Dutch than written German, but in spoken form, they are equally incromprehensible.
Quote:
Mijn naam is Pauline en ik ben vijftien jaar oud.
My name is Pauline and I am fifteen year old.
Mi nombre es Pauline y tengo quince años.
Soms ga ik naar school met de bus, wat ik goed vind want de bus is comfortabel.
sometimes I go to school with the bus, what I find good because the bus is comfortable.
De vez en cuando voy a la escuela en autobus, y lo encuentro bien porque es cómodo.
Dat is haar kat; zij is wit en vriendelijk. Dit is de puppy van de hond daar; ik vind hem lief.
That is her cat; she is white and friendly. This is the puppy of the dog there; I find him sweet.
Eso es su gato; es blanco y sympático. Eso es el cachorro del perro allí; me parece lindo.
Wat vind je van dit restaurant? Het is te donker, en de koffie is niet warm.
What you find about this restaurant? It is too dark, and the coffee is not warm.
Qué piensas de este restaurante? Es demasiado oscuro, y el café no está caliente.
It's hard for me to erase my knowledge of the Spanish, so obviously I find the Spanish sentences many times easier to understand as they are 100% intelligable. But for a mono-lingual English speaker, there is no question that the Dutch would be easier to understand, given they knew a few orthographic differences between English and Dutch.
Luckily, I've been teaching myself Dutch from sources on the Internet latetly somewhat, so the only words I'm not familiar with in these sentences are the following:
Sams ga, lief, wit
Quote:
Well there you go.
Not much of an improvement upon believing that that the sun goes round the earth, as far as I'm concerned — especially if you also believe that the earth (or universe) was created in six literal 24-hour days about 6,000 literal years ago, as many people in the United States apparently do.
That's a blatant disprespect of my religious beliefs. And no, I don't believe that the earth was created in 6 literal 24 hour time periods. The bible often uses numbers in symbolic terms, and one scripture in Psalms says that 1,000 years is but one day in the eyes of God.
So when Genesis speaks of 6 creative days, it's most likely referring to thousands or millions of years, according to my interpretation. And being that I believe in an omnipotent divine being, there is no reason why we should dismiss the possiblity of him creating one small planet by universal standards in 6 days, if that were true. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
So essentially, most of your associates are completely ignorant, and non-religious at the same time?
Your second statement may be correct, yes. Most people in France are essentially non-religious. In the same way that most people in Britain, and in most other Western European countries, are essentially non-religious.
However, the way you have reached that conclusion is flawed. You seem to associate being 'religious' with believing that humanity is literally descended from Adam and Eve. This is simply not the case. I am 'religious' — I'm a Unitarian — but I certainly don't believe that two people called Adam and Eve are my oldest ancestors.
Porthos wrote:
That's a blatant disprespect of my religious beliefs.
I don't really see believing in a literal Adam and Eve as 'religious beliefs'; I think it's more like believing in ancient mythology.
Porthos wrote:
The bible often uses numbers in symbolic terms, and one scripture in Psalms says that 1,000 years is but one day in the eyes of God.
I know.
However, there is another problem: which Genesis creation story does one believe in? Because as you may know, there are two. The first is recorded in Genesis 1:1 to 2:4, and is probably from the 'Priestly Source' (source P). The second is recorded in Genesis 2:4-25, and is probably from the 'Yahwist Epic' (source J).
English is not part of the continental West Germanic dialect continuum. English underwent an insular development, being isolated on an island across the English channel, with Norse and French influence setting it on a divergent path. So how can you deny that English is less similar to its continental relatives? To deny that, would be to deny history. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
English is not part of the continental West Germanic dialect continuum. English underwent an insular development, being isolated on an island across the English channel, with Norse and French influence setting it on a divergent path. So how can you deny that English is less similar to its continental relatives? To deny that, would be to deny history.
Who are you replying to there? You need to define what exactly you mean by 'more similar to' and 'less similar to' — and, most importantly in this particular case, what you really mean by 'English'.
No, it's the opposite actually : Fr <-ment> & Sp <-mente>. And Fr <-ment> doesn't lack any final vowel for Fr <-ment> is /mÃ/ = /mɑ̃/.
When I said "respectively", I didn't put the words in any particular order. I think I would know something as simple as "-mente".
Alors c'est que respectivement et respectively ne doivent pas avoir la même signification — ou la même fonction.
Porthos wrote:
Quote:
Je connais davantage de personnes influencées par un géocentrisme innocent que de personnes qui se croient issues d'Adam & Ève.
So essentially, most of your associates are completely ignorant, and non-religious at the same time?
Non, car il ne s'agit pas forcément des mêmes personnes. Les premiers étant peut-être moins ignorants que les seconds... On peut savoir que la Terre tourne autour du soleil mais ressentir l'inverse. D'ailleurs, n'est-ce pas le soleil qui se couche à la nuit tombante, et non la Terre ? La langue est parfois oublieuse des réalités.
Porthos wrote:
Quote:
Well there you go.
Not much of an improvement upon believing that that the sun goes round the earth, as far as I'm concerned — especially if you also believe that the earth (or universe) was created in six literal 24-hour days about 6,000 literal years ago, as many people in the United States apparently do.
That's a blatant disprespect of my religious beliefs. And no, I don't believe that the earth was created in 6 literal 24 hour time periods. The bible often uses numbers in symbolic terms, and one scripture in Psalms says that 1,000 years is but one day in the eyes of God.
So when Genesis speaks of 6 creative days, it's most likely referring to thousands or millions of years, according to my interpretation. And being that I believe in an omnipotent divine being, there is no reason why we should dismiss the possiblity of him creating one small planet by universal standards in 6 days, if that were true.
S'il est aussi aisé d'assouplir la parole dogmatique pour lui faire dire ce qu'on veut, on peut penser que la religion a réellement opéré sa révolution héliocentrique. Mais est-ce vraiment le cas ? Le géocentrisme et l'héliocentrisme sont deux variations sur un même thème, mais le premier n'est plus que l'ombre de ce qu'il fut jadis : une simple périphérie nostalgique. N'est-ce pas cela également le statut de la religion aujourd'hui au regard des connaissances humaines ?
Luckily, I've been teaching myself Dutch from sources on the Internet latetly somewhat, so the only words I'm not familiar with in these sentences are the following: Sams ga, lief, wit
Soms = sometimes
ga = go. This was put ga ik in the sentence, as the words are in this places afetr soms and all words of timeing such as altijd (always) nooit (never) meestal (mostly) etc.... The verb to go is gaan (Ik ga, jij/zij/hij/het gaat, wij/zij gaan). Such inversion occur in English as well, although not after exactly thsoe type of words. This inversions are very often in Du & Ger, and lesser in Eng.
Lief = sweet, lovable (liefde = love, houden van iemand= to love someone)
Well, probably not — but I'm fairly sure that most native English speakers could recognise 'vader' as 'father'
Damn! So we SHOULD have all known that Darth Vader was Luke's father from the beginning!
Actually, Porthos, it's true; if you hear "Vader" said, it sounds almost identical to "father".
I think you're barking up the wrong tree in trying to ascribe the syntactical differences between modern English and other Germanic languages to a Celtic influence, Porthos.
A) As many people have pointed out, older Englishes (and some modern dialects) closely approximate the Germanic syntaxes that you and I would now find strange or at least quaint. Our modern usages seems to have developed pretty recently. Check out Shakespeare, even -- and he was around in the 1600's.
Yet the most intensive contact between Celtic speakers and Anglo-Saxons or Jutes or even germanic-speaking Vikings would have been a long frickin' time ago -- we're talking 500 AD! That would be one hell of a delayed reaction, in my book, for those influences to just be cropping up in the last few centuries! I would more realistically have expected them to put their stamp on the language back in the day. Before, say, 1000 AD.
B) Some people have brought up the good point that you may simply have picked the wrong set of languages to compare. Yeah, German's pretty incomprehensible to me -- either on the page or tripping lightly off the tongue. And at one point, I could speak and read it! Now, all those compound words and umlauts send me running for cover. Dutch gets a little closer, but it's still a struggle -- mainly because their spelling is so different.
But the Scandinavian languages at least look a lot closer to what I'm used to, and the word-for-word works a lot better, too. I think our natural bias is to say, if we're looking at germanic languages, we should naturally go to the "source" -- German. And if we look at a language tree, there's English all neatly twigging off the German branch, while Norse, Danish, & Co. are all side twigs that seem like far-off cousins.
BUT, it may be that those cousins capitalized on the same syntactical innovations that English speakers did, sort of as a parallel evolution -- that those changes were available to all germanic speakers -- meaning the language is so structured that it would have been capable of supporting those changes -- but only the Scandinavians and the English ran with that ball, while the Germans and the Dutch kept their more convoluted (to us) style.
C) There actually ARE English dialects that are heavily influenced by Gaelic -- Irish is a perfect example. Daniel also gave us some Scottish examples. And most of those Gaelic inluences sound weird to the rest of us -- "So, it's two pounds of fish you'll be wanting." I will? When? Tomorrow? No -- we get what they mean, I'm just being silly. But if that's what a Celtic substratum does to English, than I don't think you can lay standard modern syntax at its feet -- that's even more convoluted than those crazy Germans![/code] _________________ An apple a day....
But the Scandinavian languages at least look a lot closer to what I'm used to, and the word-for-word works a lot better, too. I think our natural bias is to say, if we're looking at germanic languages, we should naturally go to the "source" -- German. And if we look at a language tree, there's English all neatly twigging off the German branch, while Norse, Danish, & Co. are all side twigs that seem like far-off cousins.
Scandanavian languages look more like English to you than Dutch or German??? Apart from some things which English shares with Scandanavian languages as a result of Old Norse influence, English looks far more like Dutch/German.
German is no more the "source" language than English or Dutch or any other modern Germanic language are. German, or more precisely "High German" is just one among many descendants of Proto-Germanic.
I believe you're confusing Germanic with German.
Quote:
There actually ARE English dialects that are heavily influenced by Gaelic -- Irish is a perfect example. Daniel also gave us some Scottish examples. And most of those Gaelic inluences sound weird to the rest of us -- "So, it's two pounds of fish you'll be wanting." I will? When? Tomorrow? No -- we get what they mean, I'm just being silly. But if that's what a Celtic substratum does to English, than I don't think you can lay standard modern syntax at its feet -- that's even more convoluted than those crazy Germans
Certainly. Celtic languages also had an effect on the phonology of Scottish dialects, Scots, and the English of Wales and Ireland. One example would be the pronounciation of "-ing" words in Scottish-English and Hiberno-English dialects. Celtic languages have no "ng" sound, so "-ing" becomes "-in".
Quote:
the word-for-word works a lot better,
Could you elaborate on that please? Are you saying that our syntax is more similar to Scandanavian languages than Dutch/German? If so, that would be interesting to research. _________________ Operation Northwoods - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Favorite languages = English/Spanish
Followed by Italian/French/Dutch
No, I'm not confusing anything; I'm well aware of the difference between German and germanic. That's why I put "source" in quotation marks.
I don't think any of the other germanic languages look much like English. Does Ik look more like I than Ich? And the little o's aren't any weirder than the umlauts. I had to work hard to puzzle out anything Andre and Sander were saying to each other, and the vast majority of it was pure gibberish. Same with Walker and Frerik's offerings. I'm saying that from the translation examples people have given here, the Scandinavian languages seem to parallel our grammar a bit more closely. And the words tend to be shorter -- not those entire-alphabet-and-the-kitchen-sink concoctions Germans seem to delight in.
As far as the word-for-word goes, remember Daniel's translation of his Swedish friend's text message? It was pretty close.
I'm not talking about the pronunciation of Scottish and Irish words, I'm talking about their weird word orders and idioms. _________________ An apple a day....
Certainly. Celtic languages also had an effect on the phonology of Scottish dialects, Scots, and the English of Wales and Ireland. One example would be the pronounciation of "-ing" words in Scottish-English and Hiberno-English dialects. Celtic languages have no "ng" sound, so "-ing" becomes "-in".
What?
Celtic languages actually do have "ng" sound. For example the Scottish Gaelic word for "good morning" is madainn mhath pronounced like 'madding vah'. The word for "tongue" is teanga (sounds like 'tchyenguh'). The sound /ng/ is common in Irish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic, Welsh, Breton and Cornish. In other words, basically all Celtic languages.
Take a dander at this crazy Welsh sentence (with the all the "ng"'s underlined):
Dw i ddim wedi anghofio fy ngwlad - maen nhw'n fy nghlywed i - ond dw i'n byw yngNghymru. I haven't forgotten my country - they hear me - but I live in Wales.
And by the way, what made you say that the "-ing" to "-in" thing in the Scots language is a Celtic influence? Both Scots (Germanic) and Scottish Gaelic (Celtic) have "ng" sound so Scots could have easily written and pronounced it as "-ing" instead.
Perhaps it is a good idea to do some research before stating your facts?
Benjamin wrote:
Porthos wrote:
Daniel wrote:
In colloquial language, British speakers will always use Germanic-based vocabulary for example "begin" and "find" instead of "commence" and "discover". And like Benjamin said, you place too much emphasis on the written language. You need to consider the spoken aspect as well.
Again, this is yet another difference I noticed between working-class English speakers in Britain vs. the U.S. A lot of regional dialect speakers in the U.K. seem to use far less Romance vocabulary than I would, being a working-class American.
This is not a phenomenon which affects only working-class people in Britain. I'm not working-class, but in everyday language, I will almost never use Romance-based vocabulary when a Germanic-based alternative exists. Like Daniel, I will always say 'begin' or 'start', instead of 'commence'.
Exactly. I'm not working class either and yet I always use "begin/start" instead of "commence".
But even my non-working class relatives in the USA use those words in place of "commence". _________________ Zoriona tximelata bat bezalakoa da: bilatzen baduzu, hegaldatuko besterik ez da, baina gelditzen bazara, dator eta zure sorbaldan jartzen da.
This is an interesting link, particularly part 2: "The grammatical influence of Brittonic". When reading the article, you must understand that by "German", the author means "Germanic". He's a PHD of Germanic languages - Theo Vennemann
Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:44 pm Post subject: Re: Possible *Celtic substratum* in Anglic languages????
Porthos wrote:
The many peculiarities of English among the West Germanic languages has many wondering if there is perhaps, a Celtic substratum in the English language. According to many modern theories, there was no large scale displacement of Celtic peoples in Britain by the Anglo-Saxons, but merely a conquest and a cultural and linguistic Anglicization of the native peoples. If that were the case, it would be rather illogical to assume that a small minority of settlers' speech was not at all affected by the far larger population of natives, and even more illogical to assume that the millions of natives who adopted the Anglo-Saxon language did not adapt the language according to their mother tounge, or did not leave any trace of their original language on the new language they adopted.
This guy reckons that the Anglo-Saxons invaded the most Romanized part of Britain so it stands to reason that the Britons would have communicated with the Anglo-Saxons in Latin rather than their own tongue. The reasons for this are explained in more depth.
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Apart from some things which English shares with Scandanavian languages as a result of Old Norse influence, English looks far more like Dutch/German.