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Does anyone read neighboring languages?

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
37 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5  Next >>
Levi
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United States
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 Message 17 of 37
15 March 2010 at 2:51pm | IP Logged 
Johntm wrote:
numerodix wrote:
If you speak English, well do we have any neighbors that would be comprehensible?
As far as I'm aware, there is no language close enough to English to be able for us to pick up a book in another language and understand most of it.

Have you ever tried reading Scots?

Edited by Levi on 15 March 2010 at 2:59pm
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numerodix
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Netherlands
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 Message 18 of 37
15 March 2010 at 5:28pm | IP Logged 
Levi wrote:
Johntm wrote:
numerodix wrote:
If you speak English, well do we have any neighbors that would be comprehensible?
As far as I'm aware, there is no language close enough to English to be able for us to pick up a book in another language and understand most of it.

Have you ever tried reading Scots?

Wow. At the risk of offending everyone, that stuff is a real language? It looks sooo made up.
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Chung
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 Message 19 of 37
15 March 2010 at 5:53pm | IP Logged 
numerodix wrote:
Levi wrote:
Johntm wrote:
numerodix wrote:
If you speak English, well do we have any neighbors that would be comprehensible?
As far as I'm aware, there is no language close enough to English to be able for us to pick up a book in another language and understand most of it.

Have you ever tried reading [URL=http://sco.wikipedia.org/]Scots[/URL]?

Wow. At the risk of offending everyone, that stuff is a real language? It looks sooo made up.


It's understandable to have doubts on whether Scots is a language or not since it lies in an undefined area between "language" and "dialect". Linguists as a whole can't seem to agree either.
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Johntm
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 Message 20 of 37
16 March 2010 at 5:12am | IP Logged 
Levi wrote:
Johntm wrote:
numerodix wrote:
If you speak English, well do we have any neighbors that would be comprehensible?
As far as I'm aware, there is no language close enough to English to be able for us to pick up a book in another language and understand most of it.

Have you ever tried reading Scots?
Not before I clicked that link, but I think I'll read up on it. It looks close enough to be *almost* a dialect, like a previous poster said, I've also heard that some linguists don't agree on if it's a language or a dialect. Whatever, it looks cool :)

Edit: after looking at it, it looks like some form of creole that one could expect from maybe early American slaves or something (what I'm getting at is that it almost looks like some sort of creole between English and...something). I know it's not a creole, it split off of Middle English, I believe. How many people speak it?

Edited by Johntm on 16 March 2010 at 5:18am
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canada38
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 Message 21 of 37
16 March 2010 at 3:09pm | IP Logged 
Sometimes I wish I could see through the eyes of a native Romance speaker. I can learn
Spanish to a near native level, but I am still wired as an English speaker. If I try to
read Portuguese then, without having previous study of it, I have to read through a
Spanish lens. I would be understanding Portuguese by its similarities with Spanish. At
a subconscious level, everything is translated to English through Spanish. This works
fine in terms of comprehension.

But I feel where I am lacking is seeing the language. When I see Portuguese, I see a
deviant and confusing form of Spanish that I have to piece together to understand, but
a Spaniard might perhaps see a funny version of his own tongue. He can see the language
in a different way than I can. Learning Portuguese would not fix this, it would just
add a new lens option. When I see Scots, it reminds me of a funny version of English. I
don't need an English lens to read it, because I already am wired to read it, even if
the text appears funny in a way.

I don't know where I'm going with this post, just thinking out loud.

Note- I don't think Portuguese and Scots are funny "versions" of Spanish and English
respectively, I just used these examples because of their parallel similarities.
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Monox D. I-Fly
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 Message 22 of 37
23 November 2012 at 2:01am | IP Logged 
Why it looks like everyone thinking that neighboring languages only occur around Europe? I'm an Indonesian & have ever tried to read a text in Malay language (Yes, Indonesian & Malayan language are so similar, because they are branches of one mother-language. Do they also count as neighboring languages?) yet I still can't understand it clearly. Also, I've learned Japanese language a bit & able to read a little amount of Kanji. Being same with Mandarin letters, I know some meaning of Mandarin letters based on the meaning of their Kanji counterparts. However, I don't know how they are read/pronounced.
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TixhiiDon
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Japan
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 Message 23 of 37
23 November 2012 at 2:16am | IP Logged 
Monox D. I-Fly wrote:
Also, I've learned Japanese language a bit & able to read a
little amount of Kanji. Being same with Mandarin letters, I know some meaning of
Mandarin letters based on the meaning of their Kanji counterparts. However, I don't
know how they are read/pronounced.


I get a real kick out of being able to understand the gist of written Chinese thanks to
my knowledge of Japanese kanji. It's of course very limited in its usefulness, and I'm
nowhere near picking up a magazine or novel in Chinese and breezing through it, but
understanding even just shop signs and the like gives me a great sense of satisfaction.

On the other hand, just last night I was reading a Wikipedia article in Georgian and
decided to have a peek at the Mingrelian version. Sadly, apart from anglicisms, it was
completely impenetrable.
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Iversen
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 Message 24 of 37
23 November 2012 at 8:56am | IP Logged 
Since this thread first was active I have made a point of learning som Swedish and Norwegian (including elements of nynorsk) so now those languages don't really count as unstudied neighbour languages any more. But I´have never had problems with books in those languages, and our libraries in Denmark have also Swedish and Norwegian books on the shelves, in between those in Danish and... almost a neighbour -.. English. Apart from that I am too curious NOT to try to read stuff in neighbour languages and older stages of the languages I know - like Old Saxon yesterday. Reading stuff in Danish dialects is also fun, but you rarely see it (apart from the magazine(ezine of Synnejysk Forening (Southern Jutlandic association)). Finding new materials in Low German is also a problem, and hearing it is down to one half hour the last Sunday each month - if I don't make something else at that moment.


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