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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 25 of 139 09 February 2010 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
This is quite interesting to read. I've never gone to Vojvodina to experience "Lowland Slovak" but even when I'm in Slovakia I've noticed that Highlanders' speech/writing is less uniform or "by the book" than it may seem. For example, I learned to say "ako" (how), "vďaka" (thanks), "veľmi" (very), "nie je" (there is not) or "sestrička" (sister - affectionate form) But then I hear or see my Slovak friends interspersing Czech counterparts to the above in their everyday lives (i.e. "jak" for "ako", "dík" for "vďaka", "moc" for "veľmi", "není" for "nie je" or "segra" (from "ségra") for "sestrička") Other times, I noticed that people throughout Slovakia speak differently. Once in eastern Slovakia (near Poprad) my friend who was hosting me pointed out how the locals (BTW these weren’t Gypsies but just other ethnic Slovaks) at the railroad station were talking. She told me that how they spoke sounded like Slovak with some Polish influence because of the short vowels and different stress pattern from standard Slovak. In Bratislava, I noticed that Czechisms were more common and people there usually said "Čaf" rather than "Čau" (hello, bye). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 26 of 139 09 February 2010 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Young Slovaks are quite influenced by Czech, my brother says that is uncommon to hear "ďakujem" anywhere in Slovakia these days, unlike here in Vojvodina, everyone now is using "diki". That's why I sometimes find it funny how they try so hard to speak flawless Slovak but then butcher it with pop Czech words.
However, words like "jak" instead of "ako" are typical for Western Slovak dialects. Eastern Slovaks speak their own dialects (literary Slovak is based on Central Slovak) which have different accents and personally remind me a bit of Belarusian, rather than Polish. The Rusyns who live in Eastern Slovakia and the Rusyn ethnic minority here in Vojvodina, speak the same dialects as the Eastern Slovaks but they write their language in Cyrillic. Their language is intelligible with Ruthenian across the border in Ukraine. The Eastern Slovaks and Rusyns are far more relaxed when it comes to foreigners speaking Slovak because they themselves don't speak the standard Slovak very well. :-D Edited by Delodephius on 09 February 2010 at 8:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5553 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 27 of 139 09 February 2010 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree that there are morons in every country. You just have to find the people who appreciate your efforts.
When I began learning Finnish (about 2 and a half years ago) I turned to internet communities for practice, and was ridiculed to hell and back by both Finns and Americans. The Americans hated me because I was "going against" America or whatever, and I don't even know what I did to incite such hatred from Finnish people besides speak only very basic Finnish (and that's probably it, because no matter what I said in Finnish they would respond in English and tell me stop using babelfish or something similar). I was told I would never go to Finland, Finns didn't want me in their country and to stay in yankee land where I belong. I had death threats and one girl said, and I quote, "One thing I know for certain is that no matter how hard you try, you will never make it to Finland, and that makes me happy. :)" None of that is exaggerated in the slightest btw, except for the smiley face at the end of the last quote. Even being taunted like this I never gave up and ended up living in Finland for 4 months and now speak it well enough to watch Finnish movies without subtitles and I write, read and speak in the language everyday. Don't let a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch! It's like that other thread where the guy is second-guessing learning Arabic because he met some Arabs online who made nationalistic comments or whatever. Who cares what some idiots have to say? Don't let them spoil your love for a language! Keep your chin up and keep on marching forward. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5832 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 28 of 139 09 February 2010 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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A little off topic but I'm curious to know how the Slovak letter 'ŕ' is pronounced. I believe there is a sizable Hungarian minority in Slovakia. Has Hungarian had much influence on Slovak or vice versa?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 6125 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 29 of 139 09 February 2010 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
Ooh, this hits a nerve for me. Death threats? Owe. Man, I still get ridiculed and laughed at all the time in Japanese, but so far I haven't gotten an actual death threat. I think I've finally gotten used to being humiliated or sounding ridiculous, even though it's not fun. Really, a death threat would throw me off for a week, at least. Who would have thought language learning would require such an attitude. Maybe all these people are 12 years old. I have been quietly reading Finnish channels on ircnet lately, though I haven't really had the nerve to 'jump in the pool' quite yet. I'm still really learning the basics and I spend a lot of time de-conjugating words. I do have another channel on freenode (#finnishlanguagesupport) where Finns have voluntarily subjected themselves to reading bad beginner Finnish, though that channel often falls back into English. Edited by cathrynm on 09 February 2010 at 10:03pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 139 09 February 2010 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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It was strange for me to read this thread. I have a few times had bilingual conversations with local persons because THEY continued to speak English to me. I have of course also met people who had trouble understanding me. But I fail to remember one single case where native speakers have been hostile to me because I spoke (or tried to speak) their language. There are unfriendly people in every society, and they don't need an excuse for being rude, but I have never felt that my attempts to speak their language was the cause. Even though I have made a lot of errors and spoken with an atrocious accent I have mostly just felt some surprise that I bothered to try.
Maybe it is the result of the rule I follow: never to engage in a conversation in any language unless I have a fair chance of understanding any reasonable answer. Or maybe I haven't tried to learn the languages that would bring me in contact with those overprotective and xenophobic guys. However I see forward to learning Finnish and Slovak and maybe even Japanese (if I manage to get as old as Methusalem) - then we'll see.. Edited by Iversen on 09 February 2010 at 10:16pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 31 of 139 09 February 2010 at 10:19pm | IP Logged | ||
Like many of us here on this Forum, I am interested in learning my target language(s) because I find the target country or countries, and their people to be very interesting. Therefore, I have learned and know a lot about these countries and their people, sometimes more than the locals do. And most people you meet seem to be more interested in themselves and their countries, cities, news, etc, than they are in foreign things. So the more you speak to them about themselves and their countries, the more likely they will be interested in talking with you. The same thing happens in your native language. So engage them in conversation about the things they like and know the best. Their stuff. If you are lucky, they will also be interested in your stuff. Then you have found a great situation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5403 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 32 of 139 09 February 2010 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
It is pronounced as [r̩ː] (long vocalic [r]). Hungarian had some influence on Slovak I think. Slovaks and Czechs are the only Slavic speakers whose accent is the same as Hungarian, always on the first syllable. There are certainly lexical borrowings. However, it is my impression that Hungarians adopted far more Slovak words than Slovaks have Hungarian. Terms in agriculture, governance, politics, food, even some days of the week, in Hungarian are taken directly from Slovak. The morphology of both languages is however intact as far as I can say, Slovak being fusional and Hungarian agglutinative. On topic, I want to learn some languages simply because I'm interested in them, I don't have much interests in the unique culture behind the language, for example I like Russian but don't care about anything Russian, I don't even like their literature. I'll still learn it because I want to talk to Russians about subjects I find interesting like philosophy and veganism. I have no interest in discussing Russian history or art with them. Pretty much the same applies to every other language, like when I said I want to learn Arabic everyone was like "you want to become a Muslim" or something like that, but I have no interest in Abrahamic religions. The only exception are the dead languages I want to learn and purely because of what is written in them and to understand the culture and history of the speakers of these languages (mainly however philosophy). One thing good about dead languages is that there are no native speakers to make fun of you :-D 1 person has voted this message useful |
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