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Languages with closely related dialects ? | ||
Tags: Dialect | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 98789 Diglot Groupie Colombia Joined 5043 days ago 48 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English | Message 1 of 35 16 July 2012 at 2:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, thanks for reading.
Ok, I don't know how it came, but I've got the inspiration to learn a new language again and I wouldn't like to let it go. I know I should improve my English too, but I feel good with my current level and I think I could get more fluency just using it (internet seems awesome for that). Continuing with the thing of learning a language, I'd like to ask to every person reading this: What languages are actually an "unique" language ? I don't know if the question is right, but what I mean is a language like Spanish, English (?) or portuguese (?) (A person from a-land can easily understand someone from b-land, being x-language oficial in both a and b). I've heard that languages like arabic or chinese are not really "one language", being totally different from one side to the other. (ok, nowadays almost everybody distincts mandarin from cantonese and other chinese languages, but a few years ago, at least by this part, people used to simply refer to all them as "chinese"). Maybe this question sounds quite stupid (?), but I wouldn't like to waste my time learning a language which I think is spoken by a lot of people and later finding that the variety I learned is not understandable in certain region(s) Also, I didn't know how to search this at google. I tried what I actually used as title and a few more related combinations but just got a lot of unrelated articles. If this was already posted (probably) please excuse me. At least, provide me the link. If so, I promise I'll delete this (as soon as I can). Oh, and I know wikipedia's article about y-language usually have a section for dialects and explain a few things about, but there could be mistakes or something else... Thanks again, 98789. Edited by 98789 on 16 July 2012 at 2:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5066 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 2 of 35 16 July 2012 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Russian is said to have very few dialects as most of them have been leveled over the years. Many smaller
languages come to mind as well as the smaller a language, the less likely it is to have widely varying dialects (except for some exceptions like Slovenian or most unstandardized languages). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 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 3 of 35 16 July 2012 at 5:32am | IP Logged | ||
Which language do you have in mind? By the way, you are right about there being a lack of congruency between a label and the nature of that label. "Chinese" is often used to describe what people in China (or more specifically members of the Han ethnic group) use but as you and everyone else knows, what passes for "Chinese" can be any of "Mandarin", "Cantonese", "Hakka", "Wu", "Min", "Xiang" etc, and these differ to varying degrees and their mutual intelligiblity levels have been compared to what is observed within the Romance languages. The term "Chinese" to refer to any of the languages in question masks or overlooks the fact that there's a serious lack of intelligiblity (especially in speech, writing is generally less of a problem provide everyone uses one of the simplified or traditional characters) within the linguistic community and that the linguistic unity implicit in using the same term is rather misleading. You can have the opposite case where you see two or more terms with each representing a variety of one language or dialect and despite the differing titles, what you use is either a variety of a pluricentric language (e.g. Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, Serbian) or something that's distinct but still highly intelligible to people using a different language (e.g. Czech and Slovak). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4868 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 4 of 35 16 July 2012 at 5:55am | IP Logged | ||
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You've already named Spanish, English, Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique...). Some other languages I can think of which are spoken as first languages in several countries:
French - France, Canada, Switzerland, Luxemburg (second language of Mauritius, Algeria, Senegal...) German - Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Luxemburg Persian - Iran, Afghanistan, (Tajikistan - not sure exactly how similar it is) Mandarin Chinese: China, Taiwan, Singapore Malay - Malaysia, Indonesia Korean - South Korea, North Korea ;) For more info, this list is pretty good: Top 30 languages As far as I'm aware the languages listed (except for Arabic) are mutually understandable in all listed countries If you're going by numbers, Mandarin Chinese still comes out on top... Edited by druckfehler on 16 July 2012 at 6:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 98789 Diglot Groupie Colombia Joined 5043 days ago 48 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English | Message 5 of 35 16 July 2012 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | ||
I was specially wondering how similar are Italian or German dialects. (I've heard that venecian, for example, is quite different to standard Italian) But I'm interested in any language. Just to know (I mean, not learning the whole language, but at least knowing how it works... being dialects an important aspect, at least to me) I ask for languages with low varying degrees. Like Spanish variants. It's not just understandability (for example, I hardly reach A2 level in portuguese but I can understand it "almost perfectly") Let's simplify it: I don't want a language which has a different word for a given verb (specially if it's a basic one like to be or to have) depending of the country/region ... Thanks, 98789 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 35 16 July 2012 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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As for Portuguese, it's all about exposure, just like with related languages. Brazilians don't necessarily understand European Portuguese because they have far less contact with it. Europeans normally understand Brazilian Portuguese. As a learner, I definitely have to make sure I listen to both, though I'm far more interested in Portugal.
The situation in Italian and German is actually called diglossia. You can certainly go very far by just learning the standard language in this case, as most native speakers will use it if they see that you don't understand their dialect. Also in Italy, in many cases it's not considered just a dialect but a local language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4638 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 7 of 35 16 July 2012 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Persian is a pretty uniform language, though like all other languages, it does have some dialects. If you learn the Iranian (Farsi) dialect, however, you'll basically understand Dari Persian, as well as Tajiki (I have two friends from Tajikistan or from Tajiki backgrounds, and I understand their dialects just fine). Tajiki just has more Russian influence and uses the Cyrillic alphabet but is still pretty intelligible.
French also has dialects but I've found that I could understand most of them anyways. Arabic's dialect situation is not as drastic as people usually assume it to be. If you study one Middle Eastern dialect, the others are very accessible. The main division is between Western/Maghrebi dialects (Morocco to Libya), and the Middle Eastern dialects (Egypt and Sudan to Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula). The differences between these two variety families can be considered (roughly) as distinct as Spanish and Portuguese are from one another, though in some areas the Arabic dialects are closer to each other, and in others just as different. Even then, they're not "totally different" from one side to another. Furthermore, going from Egyptian to Levantine or Saudi is not like learning separate Romance languages. Basically, I wouldn't scratch out Arabic because of the diglossia alone. I would recommend Guarani, but there are nearly no resources for studying it. I plan to collect some during my visit to Paraguay next summer. In all, out of the languages I've learned, I'd recommend Persian. :) EDIT: You may take into consideration Portuguese. However, since I'd only out myself at a low B1 level, I'd rather someone with more experience explain that language. Edited by Jappy58 on 16 July 2012 at 5:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4668 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 8 of 35 16 July 2012 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
Continental Portuguese pronunciation is very consonantal, too many vowels are reduced to a schwa or are clipped. That's why Brazilians have trouble understanding Lisbon Portuguese people when Portuguese people talk between themselves (or in Portuguese movies). In real life, the understanding is better since Brazilian restore to questions like: Por favor fale mais devagar, and Dá pra você repetir? So, Brazilians can understand the Portuguese when they talk directly, but when Brazilians listen to 2 Portuguese people speaking between themselves, the thing gets problematic again, in no way they can control the speech between two Portuguese persons, nor they can ask to repeat the conversation. The Lisbon accent can be tricky even for people from Northern Portugal, to understand,which do have exposure to it (through Portuguese TV), So, we can't blame it on all exposure. ''Bad'' diction or unexpected pronunciation (clipped vowels, SHLENT instead of excelente) are to blame too. Norwegian vs Swedish...The exposure is important, and helps the understanding a lot. Danish vs Norwegian. The exposure does not mean a lot because the Danish pronunciation is difficult, I'd say the Danish language sounds to Norwegians the same way Continental Portuguese sounds to Brazilians...Even with 1 year of more of exposure, the Continental Portuguese / and Danish pronunciation can be difficult to decipher, because it's so muffled and slurred. When Norwegian speak to Danish, they ask them to speak slowly and many times they ask them to repeat. ;) Edited by Medulin on 16 July 2012 at 6:58pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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