16 messages over 2 pages: 1 2 Next >>
Haldor Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5616 days ago 103 posts - 122 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Swedish Studies: French, Spanish
| Message 1 of 16 05 June 2011 at 10:47pm | IP Logged |
I'm going to Corsica soon. Is there actually a local language called Corsican in use? Is it mutually intelligible with French or with Italian? Is it a French dialect or a language of its own?
1 person has voted this message useful
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 2 of 16 06 June 2011 at 1:30am | IP Logged |
Corsican is more closely related to Italian than French. The island spent a long time in the possession of various Italian city-states, but has been in French hands for over 250 years, so it has diverged somewhat.
It seems like it shouldn't be too hard for a Corsican and an Italian to have a conversation as there seems to be a fairly high degree of mutual intelligibility.
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| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6585 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese
| Message 3 of 16 06 June 2011 at 4:15am | IP Logged |
Corsica is an amazing place with incredible sunsets, beautiful beaches and crystal
clear waters that just blew me away. You can surf on the west coast. There are wild
horses, wild cows.. everything possible running around the island. Just like there are
dogs in the west, I saw a wild cow on a junkyard in Bastia.
When it comes to Italian, some Corsicans understand it better some not so well. I spoke
maybe to 4 Corsicans in Italian, so that sample might not be very representative, but
there were some who could hold a rusty but very fluent conversation on technical topics
in Italian. Some understood Italian perfectly, but were replying in French.
I listened to some Corsican radio, the language to me seemed like a 50/50 mixture of
French and Italian vocabularies, but that was just my impression.
Wish you a good trip.
Edited by Vlad on 07 June 2011 at 4:12am
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| Dragomanno Triglot Groupie Zimbabwe Joined 5004 days ago 80 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Lithuanian, Albanian, Ancient Greek
| Message 4 of 16 06 June 2011 at 9:16am | IP Logged |
Being Italian, I can understand most of Corsican without any effort.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 5 of 16 06 June 2011 at 9:45am | IP Logged |
Dragomanno wrote:
Being an Italian polyglot, I can understand most of Corsican without any effort. |
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Corrected that for you. Don't underestimate the difference knowing other languages makes.
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| Dragomanno Triglot Groupie Zimbabwe Joined 5004 days ago 80 posts - 98 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Lithuanian, Albanian, Ancient Greek
| Message 6 of 16 06 June 2011 at 10:54pm | IP Logged |
Cainntear wrote:
Dragomanno wrote:
Being an Italian polyglot, I can understand most of Corsican without any effort. |
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Corrected that for you. Don't underestimate the difference knowing other languages makes. |
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Ah ah thanks Cainntear, but I wouldn't dare to call myself a polyglot...yet ;-)
Anyway, to understand Corsican is really possible for the average Italian. Corsican was regarded just as an Italian dialect until not so much time ago.
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog
| Message 7 of 16 09 June 2011 at 3:04am | IP Logged |
Vlad wrote:
You can surf on the west coast. There are wild
horses, wild cows.. everything possible running around the island. Just like there are
dogs in the west, I saw a wild cow on a junkyard in Bastia. |
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I would like to go there some day, because I heard a lot about it when I was in Nice. Were you able to milk any of
those wild junkyard cows while surfing? Now that would make the trip!
1 person has voted this message useful
| Vlad Trilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member Czechoslovakia foreverastudent.com Joined 6585 days ago 443 posts - 576 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Czech*, Slovak*, Hungarian*, Mandarin, EnglishC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Serbian, French Studies: Persian, Taiwanese, Romanian, Portuguese
| Message 8 of 16 09 June 2011 at 3:19am | IP Logged |
No I didn't :) But I took this little old school train from Bastia to Calvi. The scenery
was very nice. Beautiful views of the arid landscape with occasional water streams and
all that good stuff. It was a very very very very rough four hour ride though. I remember
that in the evening when I was laying in my bed it still felt like I was bouncing.
Try to make it to the south of the island. I hear the water is even clearer there and you
should be able to see the lights from Sardinia during the night.
1 person has voted this message useful
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