Languages

We've a lot of people here at EVC and I was just wondering what languages people can speak or have tried their hand at and what they think of these languages and their experiences with them.I only have English and Gaelic, but want to try and learn a Romance language soon.Edited by Son Goku, : Title for post

Holy Fuck, 56 forms for the adjectives! That must be very difficult. How sensitive are native speakers to incorrect case inflection? In Gaelic people getting the genitive plural wrong is barely noticeable, and the genitive singular done incorrectly just seems a bit off, but I know there are languages where people don't have a clue what you are saying when you get them wrong, so what's Czech like?What are the four genders, is it some sort of animate/inanimate thing?Oh, are the sounds as difficult as people say?

What languages can you speak Boulder-dash, I assume Chinese and English? Speaking a tonal language must be quite different. (Or maybe it's your native language)

Wow, very interesting post! Was your German Hochdeutsch or some local flavour?I can read Gidhlig with moderate effort, but it's hard to understand when spoken, even though it's supposed to be similar to Gaelainn. We used to have a single written standard "Gaelainn Chlasaiceach" which the Scots kept up for longer, so if something is written in that it's okay, but pure Scots Gaelic is difficult.I'd like to try Welsh myself, it sounds lovely.

Most Germans I have worked with have some story about the incomprehensible dialect of some region. However on the other hand I've only ever met one German who claims to actually speak Hochdeutsch naturally.
It used to be the same in France except the government heavily pushed Siene Valley French on people over the last two hundred years.
I remember watching a program on Appalachian English, really interesting use of words and apparently the grammar is closer to Elizabethan English than most other dialects (Although this is sometimes over stated to it being identical to Elizabethan English.)
Actually how did you find Old English? I think it sounds incredibly authoritative, something a great warrior would speak, makes me wish English hadn't gone through the great vowel shift.I'm familiar with the Welsh construction as we have it do, e.g.
Tim ag danamh na hoibre = I'm a doing the work
Although the literal translation of this construction and the way I actually hear it is:
I am at the work's performance/doing.
I think it's the same in Welsh, it's due to the Celtic languages being more noun focused, so what's a verbal construction in English is a noun construction in Welsh and Gaelic.
It must have been nice to study Welsh and the old Teach Yourself books are vastly superior to the new ones. The sounds are gorgeous, there's a reason Tolkien based Sindarin on it!I'd love to hear from people who speak Chinese or an Asian language, I think Bluejay once said he did.

Well at least it isn't too bad. I know in Finnish they don't have a clue what you're talking about if you get the declensions wrong. Wow!, I was listening to that sound, it seems almost impossible to pronounce. This is something I've noticed, any alveolar consonant (pronounced with the flesh ridge behind your teeth) is difficult if it isn't in your language, basically l and r sounds. For example the near impossible double ll sound of Welsh.

That's an interesting fact, that's my dialect. I don't know if you've read "The Horse, the Wheel and Language" by David Anthony, but he uses migration into the U.S. as an example of the various processes involved in the evolution of Proto-Indo-European.Very interesting post in general!

caffeine, I was wondering, is Czech the first language you've learned? I've been asking around after reading this thread and apparently knowing Czech makes you some kind of language god, apparently it's the hardest Indo-European language to learn. So, if it's your first, that's really impressive.

I remembered this thread when I was browsing through the languages section of a book store. I was reading the introductions to various books in the "Colloquial" series (a really good series I think). For virtually every language the introduction went something like:"X is an exciting language to start learning, whether you live in X-land, have an interest in X-culture or X-literature, there has never been a better time to learn X....."For some of the harder languages it said:"X has a reputation as a hard language. However it also has (list of easy features) and the grammar is quite systematic"Then for Czech:"Czech is a very difficult language, no foolish promises will be made regarding your ability to learn it"It was literally the only text that wasn't "Yay, you can do it!".