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Germanic language family videos

 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery Post Reply
38 messages over 5 pages: 1 24 5  Next >>
patlajan
Triglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 6909 days ago

59 posts - 65 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Turkish
Studies: German, Mandarin, French

 
 Message 17 of 38
19 April 2008 at 12:40pm | IP Logged 
I finally had time to view the videos you created. I enjoyed them and found them useful to my own efforts. Especially the oppurtunity to take a good look at Frisian. I felt it would be far closer to Dutch than it appears. Even in the text you presented the meaning was fairly clear before you provided the tranlation. Your point that this is an important step in understanding the Germanic family is well taken. In that context, plus some family connections I recently began Lallans, which I'm enjoying, especially the literature of Burns and other revivalists. (many of the words I remember from my childhood in Nova Scotia). It seems to me: Frisian, from your example, isn't to much further afield.

Thanks,
Rolf
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ProfArguelles
Moderator
United States
foreignlanguageexper
Joined 7016 days ago

609 posts - 2102 votes 

 
 Message 18 of 38
20 April 2008 at 8:23pm | IP Logged 
Today I added a video for Icelandic.

I am very happy to hear that my exposition of Frisian was so informative for many. I only hope the same is true of many subsequent videos. No, I have never studied either Luxumbourghish or Lallans. There are obviously many other forms of speech in the West Germanic clan that are equally worthy of attention as linguistic phenomenon…

As for my Dutch, well, what can I say? Apparently in learning it I did not do nearly as much shadowing as I ought to have done. In the main, my abilities in it are merely compound interest studies of older Teutonic languages + living German. I have probably spent a total of 6 weeks in Holland: 3 in 1995, 2 in 1996, and 1 in 1999. During my very first week there, people tended to speak German back to me when I tried to speak to them in Dutch, but that soon stopped, and until now I have never since had any indication that there was anything at all amiss with my accent. In truth, because of its inherent ease, Dutch is actually one of the languages that I feel most comfortable with—I can read it with an ease approaching that of English, I can follow the narrative of Dutch broadcasts or audiobooks without the sensation that I am missing anything, and I sometimes spontaneously find myself thinking in it. Because of this sense of ease, I am “gregariously aggressive” in it, and by this I mean that when I overhear strangers speaking it or observe someone reading it, I am not shy to intrude upon them using it myself. I suppose I feel comfortable doing this because I know that I can hold up my end of any full-blown conversation. I probably get the opportunity to do this once every year or 6 months, and in none of the resultant 30-minute or so commuter train type conversations has anyone objected to or even commented upon the quality of my accent. For all I know, perhaps they have all thought “he sounds really weird,” but they were too polite to say so, and at any rate, they clearly understood my every nuance. So, I know that it still works, but thank you very much, Bart, for confirming that there is nothing wrong with it.

Actually, it would not surprise me if all of my European languages were starting to melt together in my head: they do honestly seem to me to be mere dialects of each other, and I have been concentrating upon exotic languages for so long now, Korean and Arabic especially. Truly, what does my English sound like on the videos? Since being returned to America going on two years ago now, I have often been mistaken by strangers for some sort of European who has learned English really well, and many of my oldest friends still remark that I “speak funny” now every time I talk with them on the phone. Hazards of being a Polyglot?

At any rate, I hope it is crystal clear that I was not offering my Dutch on this video as an example of my imagined mastery of the tongue?! On all the videos I have made thus far, I thought I was very careful to say, before reading, “it sounds something like this, a little bit like this, not unlike this…” I will stress that kind of thing even more in the future, and, as I am fully aware of my imperfections, I would indeed prefer not to have them pointed out so uncouthly. If, however, you have any specific phonetic suggestions for improvement, I would, of course, be very grateful to receive them.


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Bart
Triglot
Senior Member
Belgium
Joined 6920 days ago

155 posts - 159 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, French, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish

 
 Message 19 of 38
20 April 2008 at 9:13pm | IP Logged 
Professor Arguelles,

Thank you very much for this beautiful introduction to the Icelandic language.
I have always had some superficial interest in it, but now I am completely infatuated by the beauty of this language. Although, sadly, at this point I do not have the time to actively study a new language, I would very much like to learn more about it and start collecting materials for it.

As my preffered method of language study is the Assimil-series and they have not put out a course for Icelandic (yet?), which route would you advise one to take?

I would also be very appreciative of any titles of books you could recommend to someone with a newfound interest in Icelandic and the whole Northern-Germanic branch in general.

Bart
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Raincrowlee
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6462 days ago

621 posts - 808 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French
Studies: Indonesian, Japanese

 
 Message 20 of 38
21 April 2008 at 1:41am | IP Logged 
ProfArguelles wrote:
Truly, what does my English sound like on the videos?


I think you sound like Carl Sagan, though slightly higher-pitched. To whit, you sound like a very well-educated American, and naturally create sentences that don't sound like an American speaking casually. There is nothing in it that I would consider foreign.


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TDC
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6681 days ago

261 posts - 291 votes 
Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French
Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian

 
 Message 21 of 38
21 April 2008 at 2:14am | IP Logged 
Professor Arguelles,

From what I can hear your voice seems to become a little higher when you speak in a foreign language.

This is somewhat interesting to me, because my wife, who's Russian, does this too when she speaks Chinese. Also, her mother, who doesn't speak English, says that when my wife speaks English she sounds higher to her than when she speaks Russian. I haven't really noticed that, but to me her Chinese sounds a lot higher pitched than her English.

I wonder if there's any reason for this or if there's any kind of scientific data about this phenomenon. Have you noticed anything like this before? Any ideas?
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zerothinking
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6132 days ago

528 posts - 772 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 22 of 38
28 April 2008 at 2:49am | IP Logged 
TDC wrote:
Professor Arguelles,

From what I can hear your voice seems to become a little higher when you speak in a foreign language.

This is somewhat interesting to me, because my wife, who's Russian, does this too when she speaks Chinese. Also, her mother, who doesn't speak English, says that when my wife speaks English she sounds higher to her than when she speaks Russian. I haven't really noticed that, but to me her Chinese sounds a lot higher pitched than her English.

I wonder if there's any reason for this or if there's any kind of scientific data about this phenomenon. Have you noticed anything like this before? Any ideas?


I have heard of something like this. I heard they speak more in a whisper-like voice or in a different pitch. This might be neurological, probably is (*since language is all basically in the brain), but im just speculating really. Perhaps the language areas in the brain that control pitch for a native language are more precise or active? the second language running on a different area ends up producing a different pitch. Perhaps.
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Talairan
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Spain
Joined 6352 days ago

194 posts - 258 votes 
Speaks: Afrikaans, English*, Gypsy/Romani, Dutch
Studies: Spanish, Flemish, Galician, Aramaic

 
 Message 23 of 38
29 April 2008 at 4:37am | IP Logged 
Without wanting to hijack this thread, SOAS (the School of Oriental and African Languages at the University of London) has some taster videos of Burmese, Indonesian, Gujarati and Yoruba, the purpose of which is to give you a feel for the language. They can be found here.

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ChristopherB
Triglot
Senior Member
New Zealand
Joined 6076 days ago

851 posts - 1074 votes 
2 sounds
Speaks: English*, German, French

 
 Message 24 of 38
04 May 2008 at 2:12pm | IP Logged 
Professor, for some reason YouTube won't allow my reply to get through, but the Kursus i Færøsk course I mentioned appears to be available at http://www.grantandcutler.com/book/8426 and also with all the required material. I hope that helps.


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