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Germanic language family videos | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| patlajan Triglot Groupie United States Joined 7152 days ago 59 posts - 65 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Turkish Studies: German, Mandarin, French | Message 17 of 38 19 April 2008 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I finally had time to view the videos you created. I enjoyed them and found them useful to my own efforts. Especially the oppurtunity to take a good look at Frisian. I felt it would be far closer to Dutch than it appears. Even in the text you presented the meaning was fairly clear before you provided the tranlation. Your point that this is an important step in understanding the Germanic family is well taken. In that context, plus some family connections I recently began Lallans, which I'm enjoying, especially the literature of Burns and other revivalists. (many of the words I remember from my childhood in Nova Scotia). It seems to me: Frisian, from your example, isn't to much further afield.
Thanks, Rolf 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ProfArguelles Moderator United States foreignlanguageexper Joined 7259 days ago 609 posts - 2102 votes | Message 18 of 38 20 April 2008 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today I added a video for Icelandic.
I am very happy to hear that my exposition of Frisian was so informative for many. I only hope the same is true of many subsequent videos. No, I have never studied either Luxumbourghish or Lallans. There are obviously many other forms of speech in the West Germanic clan that are equally worthy of attention as linguistic phenomenon… As for my Dutch, well, what can I say? Apparently in learning it I did not do nearly as much shadowing as I ought to have done. In the main, my abilities in it are merely compound interest studies of older Teutonic languages + living German. I have probably spent a total of 6 weeks in Holland: 3 in 1995, 2 in 1996, and 1 in 1999. During my very first week there, people tended to speak German back to me when I tried to speak to them in Dutch, but that soon stopped, and until now I have never since had any indication that there was anything at all amiss with my accent. In truth, because of its inherent ease, Dutch is actually one of the languages that I feel most comfortable with—I can read it with an ease approaching that of English, I can follow the narrative of Dutch broadcasts or audiobooks without the sensation that I am missing anything, and I sometimes spontaneously find myself thinking in it. Because of this sense of ease, I am “gregariously aggressive” in it, and by this I mean that when I overhear strangers speaking it or observe someone reading it, I am not shy to intrude upon them using it myself. I suppose I feel comfortable doing this because I know that I can hold up my end of any full-blown conversation. I probably get the opportunity to do this once every year or 6 months, and in none of the resultant 30-minute or so commuter train type conversations has anyone objected to or even commented upon the quality of my accent. For all I know, perhaps they have all thought “he sounds really weird,” but they were too polite to say so, and at any rate, they clearly understood my every nuance. So, I know that it still works, but thank you very much, Bart, for confirming that there is nothing wrong with it. Actually, it would not surprise me if all of my European languages were starting to melt together in my head: they do honestly seem to me to be mere dialects of each other, and I have been concentrating upon exotic languages for so long now, Korean and Arabic especially. Truly, what does my English sound like on the videos? Since being returned to America going on two years ago now, I have often been mistaken by strangers for some sort of European who has learned English really well, and many of my oldest friends still remark that I “speak funny” now every time I talk with them on the phone. Hazards of being a Polyglot? At any rate, I hope it is crystal clear that I was not offering my Dutch on this video as an example of my imagined mastery of the tongue?! On all the videos I have made thus far, I thought I was very careful to say, before reading, “it sounds something like this, a little bit like this, not unlike this…” I will stress that kind of thing even more in the future, and, as I am fully aware of my imperfections, I would indeed prefer not to have them pointed out so uncouthly. If, however, you have any specific phonetic suggestions for improvement, I would, of course, be very grateful to receive them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bart Triglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 7163 days ago 155 posts - 159 votes Speaks: Dutch*, French, English Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish | Message 19 of 38 20 April 2008 at 9:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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Professor Arguelles,
Thank you very much for this beautiful introduction to the Icelandic language. I have always had some superficial interest in it, but now I am completely infatuated by the beauty of this language. Although, sadly, at this point I do not have the time to actively study a new language, I would very much like to learn more about it and start collecting materials for it. As my preffered method of language study is the Assimil-series and they have not put out a course for Icelandic (yet?), which route would you advise one to take? I would also be very appreciative of any titles of books you could recommend to someone with a newfound interest in Icelandic and the whole Northern-Germanic branch in general. Bart 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6705 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 20 of 38 21 April 2008 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||
I think you sound like Carl Sagan, though slightly higher-pitched. To whit, you sound like a very well-educated American, and naturally create sentences that don't sound like an American speaking casually. There is nothing in it that I would consider foreign. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6924 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 21 of 38 21 April 2008 at 2:14am | IP Logged | ||
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Professor Arguelles,
From what I can hear your voice seems to become a little higher when you speak in a foreign language. This is somewhat interesting to me, because my wife, who's Russian, does this too when she speaks Chinese. Also, her mother, who doesn't speak English, says that when my wife speaks English she sounds higher to her than when she speaks Russian. I haven't really noticed that, but to me her Chinese sounds a lot higher pitched than her English. I wonder if there's any reason for this or if there's any kind of scientific data about this phenomenon. Have you noticed anything like this before? Any ideas? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6375 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 22 of 38 28 April 2008 at 2:49am | IP Logged | ||
I have heard of something like this. I heard they speak more in a whisper-like voice or in a different pitch. This might be neurological, probably is (*since language is all basically in the brain), but im just speculating really. Perhaps the language areas in the brain that control pitch for a native language are more precise or active? the second language running on a different area ends up producing a different pitch. Perhaps. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Talairan Tetraglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6595 days ago 194 posts - 258 votes Speaks: Afrikaans, English*, Gypsy/Romani, Dutch Studies: Spanish, Flemish, Galician, Aramaic | Message 23 of 38 29 April 2008 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Without wanting to hijack this thread, SOAS (the School of Oriental and African Languages at the University of London) has some taster videos of Burmese, Indonesian, Gujarati and Yoruba, the purpose of which is to give you a feel for the language. They can be found here.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ChristopherB Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 6319 days ago 851 posts - 1074 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, German, French | Message 24 of 38 04 May 2008 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Professor, for some reason YouTube won't allow my reply to get through, but the Kursus i Færøsk course I mentioned appears to be available at http://www.grantandcutler.com/book/8426 and also with all the required material. I hope that helps.
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