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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sinfonia Senior Member Wales Joined 6745 days ago 255 posts - 261 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 25 of 54 03 August 2006 at 6:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Just as a footnote, Portuguese certainly has at least one mid central vowel phoneme, up to two or three in dialects, and in fact 'slaughters' Romanian in its vowel system, for all the latter's 'differentness': Romanian is generally considered to have 7 vowel and three diphthong phonemes, whereas Portuguese has at least 12 vowel and 15 diphthong phonemes :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 26 of 54 03 August 2006 at 7:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ok, I accept that those Portuguese dialects with several midtongue wowels equal or maybe even beat Romanian on number of midtongue wowels, and Portuguese in general easily beats Romanian on total number of wowels, mostly because standard Daco-Romanian doesn't have nasalized wowels (I don't know if any kind of Romanian has them). Portuguese is just as amazing as Romanian.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that at least the European Portuguese not are famous for opening their mouths widely when they speak, and a midtongue wowel blends in more easily in a language with a certain mumbling quality (this also covers Danish). Maybe that's why I didn't consider Portuguese when I made the remark, - plus the fact that I didn't yet speak Portuguese when I made it. Edited by Iversen on 30 October 2007 at 3:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ryder Diglot Groupie Norway Joined 6594 days ago 67 posts - 70 votes Speaks: Norwegian, Russian* Studies: English, French | Message 27 of 54 13 December 2006 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think Romanian is a beautiful language!
Very sexy... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| arsene Hexaglot Newbie Netherlands liviuandrei.com Joined 6238 days ago 17 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew, Romanian*, English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian | Message 28 of 54 28 October 2007 at 5:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Romanian is a strange language in that it is similar to Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese (indeed, the pronounciation is some crazy form of Italian-Slavic-Portuguese) and native Romanians can probably understand much of these languages without having studied them... but this doesn't (always) go vice versa...
For some strange reason, learning Italian for Romanians is extremely easy, but learning Romanian for Italians is way harder. I think one of the explanations for this is that Romanian is quite irregular and mixes Latin and Slavic in the most weird and irregular ways. Some examples: like most Romance languages, "un" is the masculine form of one, or 'a'. You would naturally expect 'una' to be the feminine form - but no! the fem. form is 'o'! eg.: un telefon (a telephone) and 'o casa' (a house). To confuse you even more, you say 'una' when counting or emphasizing something (for example, on money bills you'll see 'una mie' (one thousand) or 'una suta' (one hundred). [note: another interesting thing here, while Romanian is a centum language, it uses the word 'suta' (derived from slavic) for 'hundred'!] Another thing is the singular/plural forms of words. While the rules for Italian singular/plural apply for Romanian as well in general, there are some weird irregularities here. for example, like Italian, masc. plural is '-i" (un pantalon - doi pantaloni) BUT: un bãiat - doi bãietzi (a boy; it's actually written bãieti, with a cedilla under the t). Also: un bãrbat - doi bãrbatzi (a man) and the feminine plural is '-e' (o bicicletã / douã biciclete) But: o lacrimã - douã lacrimi; o femeie - douã femei, and the list goes on. How about: o fatã - douã fete (girl)... the whole word changes! And then there's the neutrals: timp - timpuri (time, compare Latin tempus - tempora) and om - oameni (man-people, compare Italian uomo - uomini). Furthermore, Romanian has loanwords and influences from Slavic languages, Turkish, Greek, and last but not least, the ancient Thracian/Dacian/Illyric languages. Somehow, it is indeed quite sexy. Edited by arsene on 28 October 2007 at 5:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6387 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 29 of 54 29 October 2007 at 9:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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[QUOTE=administrator] Romanian is the only major Romance language that I would have no real reason to learn. It
is a pity since it looks quite interesting with its Balkan sprachbund features and a large country. I sure like Vlad Dracul but the sound of the language is not immediately appealing to me. I wonder if the Romanian speakers on this forum or anybody else could suggest reasons to learn Romanian?[/ QUOTE] Get yourself a Romanian special friend of the opposite sex. While it's not a reason to learn a language in itself, being around one - for a person who easily picks up languages - surely is a great stimulus. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6944 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 30 of 54 29 October 2007 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I am afraid this is a circular argument. Granted, a "special friend" can make a language more appealing, but with 3,000 languages to choose from, one still has to make the case that either the particular language is in itself worth going to the trouble of seeking a special friend who speaks it, or the prospective special friends who happen to speak that language are so special as to trump other ethno-linguistic possibilities, which, even if one's outlook on life condones multi-tasking in this area, are too numerous to multi-task indiscriminately. Unfortunately, neither of the two possibilities has really been articulated. Edited by frenkeld on 29 October 2007 at 11:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 31 of 54 29 October 2007 at 11:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For me the strangely isolated position of Romanian within the Romance language family is reason enough to learn it, and even though the number of dictionaries and grammars and textbooks is not nearly as high as with Italian, Spanish or French it is sufficient to make it possible to learn it from outside the country (or rather countries, - we tend to forget that it is also spoken in Moldova and in the neighbouring part of Serbia).
The history of modern written Romanian is not very long, and apart from Creangă I don't remember any Romanian author by name. But for me non-fiction is more important, and I have so far found enough stuff on the internet to keep me occupied (though with an atrocious spelling in most texts). When I visited the area last year I did visit a fine bookstore in Bucureşti, but only to buy a new guidebook instead of the one that I had lost, - I simply didn't think of buying other kinds of books, and that glitch still nags me. I have had to order a decent Romanian-English directly from Romania, but somewhat unexpectedly I did find a Danish-Romanian in an ordinary Danish bookstore. My only grammar is the old one by Alf Lombard (in Swedish). It is good and very thorough, but copied from a manuscript written on an oldfashioned typewriter, and it is very unpleasant to read. Besides, it was written before the last spelling reform. So right now I am searching for a good up-to-date grammar, but I will probably have to order it from abroad. From a purely practical point of view I have probably spent too much time on Romanian, but I don't learn languages for practical purposes. If you want to have a comprehensive knowledge of the Romance languages you have to include the 'prodigal son' of the family. Edited by Iversen on 30 October 2007 at 3:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6387 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 32 of 54 30 October 2007 at 8:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
All very good points. :-) But hey, I was just trying to help... Back to the subject: from the practical point of view there isn't much use for Romanian. Italian will be a great help in Romania and Russian still goes all the way in Moldova. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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