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Popular misconceptions about languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Aleksey Groz Tetraglot Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 5163 days ago 14 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian*, English, Czech, FrenchB2 | Message 81 of 100 29 April 2010 at 11:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well, yes. Romanian has a lot of Slavic words (more then 1/3 and they are all surrounded by Slavic nations). And that is enough for one superficial impression. But Romanian grammar is completely Romance. Only difference between Romanian and other Romance languages is fact that Romanian also belong and to Balkan Language Union. But, however, that dose not impact on that how Romanian sounds. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6162 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 82 of 100 02 May 2010 at 4:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I guess it's kinda like English has a lot of Romance words and people often assume it's a Romance language, but its grammar is definitely Germanic. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Al-Irelandi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5329 days ago 111 posts - 177 votes Speaks: English* | Message 83 of 100 02 May 2010 at 9:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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There has been some strange, not too smart types repeating ad-nauseam fabrications about Arabic, such as:
-Rejection of Arabic speakers doing anything creative with the knowledge they inherited and rejection of any original thought or knowledge taking place in the language. -That Arabic has no culture and/or has not aided in transmitting any or creating any. -Arabic has only left us with dialects (despite its classical/literary form still being used) and likewise claiming it destroys cultures. -What reached pre-Renaissance Europe in terms of higher learning by way of learning in places such as Al-Andalus, Sicily and North Africa would have eventually reached them via old-Persian etc (even though many concepts that were invented or expanded took place within the sphere of higher learning in Arabic universities, that were not available beforehand in the form they reached Western Christendom and only resulted due to the cross-pollination of Persian, Greek, Indian and Chinese knowledge). This is sometimes spewed out by certain lying hardcore evanglecists and orientalists whos opposition to Islam has also made incursions into their own views towards the language that its revelation was revealed in. Maybe the culminatation of jealousy and doubt in their own beliefs causes one to attack anything related to anothers and to lie. Edited by Al-Irelandi on 03 May 2010 at 10:08am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5936 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 84 of 100 06 May 2010 at 7:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
One of my classmates and I were talking about Greece a couple years ago and he was immensely surprised to find, upon his asking, that Greek is in fact the language spoken in Greece. He was under the impression that Italian or English is spoken there. He apparently was also very surprised to learn that Greek is spoken at all (I guess he had never heard of 'Modern Greek'). Similarly, while watching a movie in 7th grade geography, my teacher announced to the class that in a moment there would be a man coming onto the screen speaking Greek (I guess he assumed this because the guy was in Greece speaking about Ancient Greece). When the man appeared and was quite obviously to my ears (since I spoke Spanish and Greek already) not speaking Greek, but Italian, I informed him and he was rather embarrassed. Even several of my classmates noticed that it "strangely" sounded very similar to Spanish. Finally, just this year I was showing a classmate something I had written in Greek and explaining how different letters were pronounced, and she thought it was "funny" that the Greeks had "adopted" the mathematical pi (π) to represent the 'p' sound!!! 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Polyglot_gr Super Polyglot Newbie Greece Joined 4889 days ago 29 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Greek*, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, SpanishC2, DutchC1, Swedish, PortugueseC1, Romanian, Polish, Catalan, Russian, Hungarian | Message 85 of 100 14 December 2010 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The most common misconception about languages in my country is that language borders roughly correspond to state borders. That’s why sometimes people say that Indians speak “Indian”, Pakistanis “Pakistani” and Brazilians “Brazilian”.
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| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4860 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 86 of 100 03 March 2011 at 4:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I've heard Indians who speak a couple different languages from northern India refer to it all as Indian. I don't get how Bulgarian has been unanimously declared the "easiest" of all Slavic languages since it has almost no cases. With mobile stress and 3000 possible conjugations per verb, I'd say it's at least medium difficulty. In the beginning, it may be easier for an English speaker to get used to the lack of cases and some conjugations but the variety of possible verbs builds up quickly and I even struggle to use the correct conjugation occasionally. However, the "strangeness" of Cyrillic is also a misconception since in Bulgarian each letter corresponds to one sound (except for when you take into account the dynamic stress which can make some sounds sound like a different letter should be used). Either way, Bulgarian writing is much easier than its English counterpart. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| TheMatthias Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6040 days ago 105 posts - 124 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin | Message 87 of 100 03 March 2011 at 7:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have been told vehemently that English is derived from Latin. And the best part is this person claimed to know a
lot about linguistics. Also he was a native Spanish speaker...(A romance language) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| RogerK Triglot Groupie Austria Joined 4869 days ago 92 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian Studies: Portuguese | Message 88 of 100 03 March 2011 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree Matthias. As a native English speaker my guess is that English come from Latin. Roughly 60% of the words derive from Latin and are therefore very similar to Italian and French, whereas approximately 30% are Germanic. Also French and Italian grammar are more similar to English grammar than German. The verb order in German is very precise and sentence structure in French/Italian is closer to English than German. It would be interesting if someone knew some cold hard facts and could fill us in. There is some info on this website I will have to re-read it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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