mashed in maryland 10:24 Fri Jun 10
Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Looking at the ex-pats mainly.
Not really on about Spanish or German etc but for example anyone who lives in France/Spain speak any Basque?
Know there's a fair few on here in Thailand and the Philippines. Any of you lot manage to get by with the language(s)? Even if it's the equivilent of "una pinto del beer por favore" holiday talk?
Any oil/engineering bods know any Arabic or central Asian languages? Anyone able to hold a conversation in Hungarian? Japanese?
Anyone do a degree in linguistics or whatever and build up a reasonable knowledge of something like Chechen or Navajo?
Furnish me with chitty chatty bollocks coz it's a really slow day at work.
Anyone who says "I can barely speak English ho ho ho" is a worse nonce than Gary Glitter.
TalqÄħlaw.
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Replies - Newest Posts First ( Show In Chronological Order)
mashed in maryland
10:02 Fri Jun 17
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Add Gaelic, Welsh and Cornish to that as well.
I doubt one single person alive speaks Cornish or Gaelic as fluently as they'd like to think.
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mashed in maryland
10:01 Fri Jun 17
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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One language which looks absolutely fucking mental is Georgian.
If you ever hear people speak it it's almost like they're taking the piss.
And seeing it written in English script is like someone's banging a keyboard.
I honestly reckon tonal Chinese/SE Asian languages must be easier to learn for an English speaker than some more obscure European languages (Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish, Basque, the Caucasian languages etc.)
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mashed in maryland
9:57 Fri Jun 17
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Will
I get what you're saying about French but that's a piece of piss compared to languages like Hungarian where every single word in a sentence might have to change coz of a slight change in tense or case etc.
A simple way of putting it would be like, "I am going to the shop". The word "shop" would be a different word if you were using it in the sentence "I am going to A shop". Also "I am at the shop", or "that is a shop" or "in this shop" etc. Not only that but the "going to"/"in the" bit would be changed based on past present or future tense, whether you're on your own or with someone etc.
I've probably described it really badly but this happens in a lot of languages. The way sentences and meanings are put together is just completely alien to anything we know in most European languages (which are usually based on Latin or German)
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Far East Hammer
7:41 Fri Jun 17
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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gph 1:10 Thu Jun 16
The point was that the spelling of the end of both the forename and last name changed as a result, changing rather than simply adding to the end of the name.
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gph
3:08 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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FC: Yes, German has three genders.
Unlike the French, it seems, they often make "mistakes" in speaking their own language - I use inverted commas, because I'm not sure of the split between regional variations (like the Bavarians using the dative instead of the genitive in many situations) and full-blown mistakes.
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BRANDED
2:19 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Ffyc off chi enfawr Saesneg yn gyntaf
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Far Cough
2:14 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Greek has three genders, male female and neutral I think German is the same as well
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ironsofcanada
2:01 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Will
"I think you Canadians use the fairly obvious septante, huitante, neufante for 70, 80 & 90 but not in France where it's soizante-dix, quatre-vingt and quatre-vingt-dix. 60+10, 4x20 or 4x20+10! 99 is quatre-vingt-dix-neuf."
I am not a native Quebecois speaker (my part of is very English) but we always learned the long way.
For some reason I have since forgotten, I have a year burned into my head as a little song.
mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-douze.
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Luisa
1:59 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Siculu
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Willtell
1:50 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Well I speak it because I live in France as you know but I also have been studying it for years and still find where I make mistakes that show I'm not a Frenchman.
Case the other day was me saying "J'etais trop tard pour les magasins." I was too late for the shops.
Wrong because it changes to "J'etais en retard pour les magasins" because "trop tard" is incorrect if it follows the verb etre or avoir...
I think you Canadians use the fairly obvious septante, huitante, neufante for 70, 80 & 90 but not in France where it's soizante-dix, quatre-vingt and quatre-vingt-dix. 60+10, 4x20 or 4x20+10! 99 is quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.
Then why do they have simple words like "the" where there are 3 versions - le la or les depending on whether the subject is masculine feminine or plural. Same with "his/her" - "son sa or ses". "Your" can be "votre, vos, ton, ta or tes and so on.
English gets by with three or four words for all verbs. The verb "to have" for example is - has, had, have, and will have or did have but in French they have over 50 versions of "avoir".
Not like the French to anything the simple way is it?
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ironsofcanada
1:14 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Willtell 1:07 Thu Jun 16
A lot easier than most I think. It follows its rules better than English that is for sure.
I know for me it is a lot easier than Navajo or Arabic.
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J.Riddle
1:10 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Spanglish
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gph
1:10 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Last to FEH
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gph
1:09 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Pronouns change in English, according to grammatical function, right?
HE gave ME the book.
_I_ gave HIM the book.
In Polish, nouns do too.
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Willtell
1:07 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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French must be one of the most difficult languages on this earth. You can easily learn the basics but there are sexes for inanimate objects, plural conjunctions, over 50 conjugations of verbs, formal and informal forms of address, endless exceptions to the rules and numbers without words for them just to name a few.
Its no wonder the French are arrogant and bureaucratic in nature. That describes their language to a tee... It's no wonder English is universally accepted. French is far too complicated to speak properly unless you are totally immersed in speaking it every day.
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Far East Hammer
11:53 Thu Jun 16
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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At work an issue has just come up with translation.
Polish certificates being officially translated into English for Indian bureaucrats (don't ask why!!!!).
A dispute came up as to why the guy in question's name was different on the certificate, i.e. is it really him!?
So we just all received a language lesson regarding the proper Declination of Nouns, including names and reference to "something similar to Saxon Genitive in old English"
Left most of us wondering whether anyone could translate the explanation into understandable English for the rest of us...
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side effect
7:45 Wed Jun 15
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Tried Scottish Gaelic at Holborn but still cannot understand my family on the Isle of Lewis. And the speaking our language on bbc alba is no help either.
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Infidel
6:00 Wed Jun 15
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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I had quite passable Lingala in the 80s when I lived in Zaire.
Mbote, ozali malamo!
That's about all I can remember now.
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Mex Martillo
10:50 Tue Jun 14
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Drunk Glaswegian
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defjam
11:36 Tue Jun 14
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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mashed in maryland 11:26 - Without actually hearing it i couldn't say to be honest, i don't feel like i used those tones.
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ManorParkHammer
11:28 Tue Jun 14
Re: Anyone on here speak a really difficult or obscure second/third language?
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Swahili.
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