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Cacti from non-native speakers of English | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 42 06 February 2010 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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That's the idea, thanks. Keep it coming, folks
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| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5584 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 10 of 42 06 February 2010 at 6:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you very much Chung.
You saved me a chore! I myself was considering opening the exact thread. However, you did it for me! This thread may go well so long as people keep to the topic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 11 of 42 06 February 2010 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
Native speaker of Norwegian. Almost the same cactus ratings as above. 0.2 cacti: Swedish and Danish 1 cactus: Dutch, Faroese, Icelandic, English, German 2 cacti: French, Italian, Spanish and all the other Latin based languages 3 cacti: Slavic languages, Latin 4 cacti: Greek and all the other European and central Asian languages not mentioned previously 5 cacti: Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic Giving all Germanic languages except Swedish and Danish the same 1 cactus rating is maybe unfair. German and Icelandic have 4 cases. English has unpredictable pronunciation and a lot of words of non-Germanic origin. The 3, 4 and 5 cactus ratings, except for Latin, are wild guesses and assumptions. Edited by tractor on 06 February 2010 at 9:34am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| victor-osorio Diglot Groupie Venezuela Joined 5433 days ago 73 posts - 129 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian | Message 12 of 42 07 February 2010 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Native speaker of Spanish
1 cactus: Portuguese and Italian (easy pronunciation, lexical similarities, easy grammar) 2 cacti: French and English (hard pronunciation, lexical similarities, not so hard grammar) 3 cacti: German and Japonese (hard pronunciation for German, no much lexical similarities, hard grammar) 5 cacti: Arabic, Russian and Mandarin Chinese (very hard pronunciation, no much lexical similarities, very hard grammar, completely different writing systems) This may not seem surprising, since it's almost the same ranking you'll find in the Languages Profiles of this page. Portuguese and Italian are easy for obvious reasons and people who study them are considered either lazy people or people with an heritage from those countries (lots of inmigration here in South America from those two countries). Is common to hear people saying one or two words in English but Spanish speakers have a REALLY hard time with the English pronunciation, at least that's what I've seen. Japonese pronunciation is quite easy. In fact, there's no problem at all trying to pronounce something in Japanese, the problem is that Japanese, as German, has an alien grammar to us. Russian and Mandarin have both problems, hard grammar and hard pronunciation. Anyway, not many people I know try to learn any of these languages, so it may not be fair to rank them the way I did. I can add something interesting. It's a common belief that speakers from Spain have a harder time trying to learn English than speakers from South America. It may have something to do with the big influence US has on Latin America, but I also think it may be related to the protectionist attitude that Spain has with our language. In Spain, they usually don't introduce in their speech words directly from the English, as we do. They prefer to say "CD-ROM" o "DVD", pronouncing those letters as they should be pronounced in our alphabet whereas we pronounce "CD-ROM" and "DVD" like an English speaker would pronounce them. In the news you could hear lots of English names and words pronounced as they're pronounce in English-speaking countries. I'm not sure if that's an advantage, but we certainly have a more open attitude towards English than people from Spain in generally have. I have even read someone from Spain writing "bluyín" instead of blue jean, and I think they prefer to say "vaqueros" (which means cowboys) but I'm not sure about that. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 13 of 42 07 February 2010 at 2:29am | IP Logged | ||
You're welcome. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 14 of 42 07 February 2010 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, they are very often called "vaqueros" or "pantalones vaqueros" in Spain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Muz9 Diglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 5525 days ago 84 posts - 112 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali | Message 15 of 42 07 February 2010 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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For Dutch I forgot to add:
0.2 Cactus: Afrikaans 0.25 Cactus: Frisian But this is kind of cheating, because they are almost the same languages. Even without any training in these languages a Dutch person could understand most of it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 42 13 February 2010 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are there any other thoughts on cacti?
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