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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| gobbledigook Diglot Groupie Mexico Joined 5967 days ago 80 posts - 83 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Portuguese, French | Message 49 of 52 12 February 2010 at 6:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I've been studying romance languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian) for a couple of years now and let me tell you, mutual intelligibility among these languages is overrated, let me rephrase that: it is extremely overrated.
Sure, when listening to radio or tv you can sort of pick up a few words, but definitely not up to 90% without ever studying the language. Just pronunciation alone makes it harder. These languages have quite different pronunciations after all. One thing is passive understanding of a "similar" language and a totally different thing is actually knowing a language. Which, for me, makes it really difficult when dealing with similar languages. For example, the Spanish for house is "casa", the Portuguese for house is "casa" (and so is for Italian), so when learning you go: "what is the portuguese for 'casa'? 'casa?' nah it would be too easy, it can't be!" But then the Spanish word for pen is "pluma" and "caneta" for Portuguese, you would say: "oh it's one of those easy ones. it must be "pluma" in both languages!" Well, it's NOT! That has confused me many, many, many times. At least with a completely different language you don't make dumb assuptions, things are completely different there is no chance to get into that kind of trouble. Just my opinion. I wuold say the so-called "mutual intelligibility" among these languages is overrated. Edited by gobbledigook on 12 February 2010 at 6:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Impiegato Triglot Senior Member Sweden bsntranslation. Joined 5432 days ago 100 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 50 of 52 12 February 2010 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I agree on what is written above. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are closer than French, Spanish and Italian. On the other hand, I think the connections between German and Swedish or German and Norwegian are weaker than between Romance languages such as Italian and French. Between the last-mentioned languages there is still a huge diefference between the spoken and written language. For example, I think an Italian would quite easily understand a text (non-advanced) written in French without having studied the language all, but understanding spoken French or to express oneself in French is a totally different matter. Edited by Impiegato on 12 February 2010 at 12:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| lukav Tetraglot Newbie Italy Joined 5399 days ago 9 posts - 13 votes Speaks: Italian*, French, English, Dutch Studies: German, Spanish | Message 51 of 52 14 February 2010 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Tractor: >>Written Danish and written Norwegian Bokmål is almost the same. Swedes and Norwegians usually have no difficulties understanding each other. Danish pronunciation can be tricky to Swedes and Norwegians, and Norwegian dialects can be hard to understand for Danes. Just one single off-topic comment: You comfort me in my decision of starting with Norwegian (my goal is to be able to speak Norwegian and Swedish and at least READ Danish, since I have heard trying to speak it might be desperate, and for such a purpose starting with Norwegian looked like the perfect thing to do). My only worry is that I already know German and I don't know (a purely geographic suspicion) whether Danish is more similar to German, in which case I could have started with it. Tractor: >> Don't forget that French spelling is conservative compared to pronunciation. Impiegato: >> I think an Italian would quite easily understand a text (non-advanced) written in French without having studied the language all, but understanding spoken French or to express oneself in French is a totally different matter. You both are absolutely right. I confirm that this is exactly what actually occurs. You seem to know your way around the matter. Gobbledigook: >>romance languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian) - let me tell you, mutual intelligibility among these languages is overrated, let me rephrase that: it is extremely overrated. Of course you are right; to the benefit of our non-native-romance friends, I would stress that the most isolated among these four languages is Portuguese. When talking with a Spanish Erasmus student last year, I felt almost home (almost). When in Lisbon two years ago, I absolutely believed to be on another planet. (Of course, my knowledge of French could lead me to underestimate the peculiarities of French and overestimate those of Portuguese. Still, Portuguese is quite a thing.) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 52 of 52 14 February 2010 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think Danish is significantly closer to German than Norwegian and Swedish. All three languages have plenty of vocabulary of German, especially Low German, origin. When Norwegian Nynorsk was created as a written language in the 19th century (at a time when Danish was the written language in Norway), Ivar Aasen, the main person behind the creation of Norwegian Nynorsk, took care to exclude many words of German or Danish origin used in spoken Norwegian. So, Norwegian Nynorsk has fewer German loanwords than Norwegian Bokmål. Edited by tractor on 14 February 2010 at 6:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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