What language ... ?

[MightyKhan]

johannhowitzer said:

Ah. That makes more sense now. There are a LOT of vowel sounds, and rather than being a few fixed sounds, they are a spectrum, almost infinitely varied if you keep shortening the measurement used. It's more like a rainbow than a series of blocks of one color each, in other words; this is of course because the mouth muscles can move in very gradually different ways, and it's also why different people pronounce things differently. Thankfully, our brain can approximate... computer voice recognition software has to be trained to generalize, to learn where exactly the boundaries between the vowels are.

Aye, very true. But even though the human body is capable of producing an unlimited array of sounds, not every human can actually produce them, somehow.
You know, I think that's why I like chinese so much. They make full use of the capabilties to pronounce similar, but still entirely different sounds.

Thanx for clarifying pidgin/ebonics. Belgian dutch is essentially dutch, with more "french-like" pronounciation as well as some words being used differently.
For example:
Zet dat schilderij weer recht. (dutch)
Zet dat schilderij terug recht. (belgian)
The belgian sentence is incorrect dutch. Even though terug means back, it may not be used to replace weer, which means again in this sentence.
If I were to translate both, I would say: Put that painting straight again. Somewhat similar to: Put that painting back straight. (which is not entirely correct english, right?)

(Put that painting back again... -> Zet dat schilderij terug terug... :-\)

[Trazik]

I am a Canadian, living in Europe for almost five years now. I have travelled a bit and heard many languages (at least from a sheltered, North American perspective).

In my opinion:
- French is the most elegante language I have heard. I studied it in school, as required in Canada. One of the "funny" things about French is you can say the rudest thing in the world, insult someone's poor ass off, and make it sound as though you are trying to seduce them. It's funny cuz it's true.
- I am learning German, slowly (mein Deutsche ist sehr schlecht!). One of the odd things I have noticed is that my typing and spelling skills have drastically deteriorated as a result (note that I spell check alot though).
- I am told that Russian is extremely difficult to learn.
- One of the oddities that strikes me is that languages like Hebrew and Arabic are read and written "backwards" to most languages (right-to-left, for example). And yet plenty of languages evolved around (and after !!) them which read and write left-to-right.

So many interesting tidbits ...

Trazik

[nicnik]

I think this really does depend on how many languages you've heard, or know and then who speaks it...

Being partial japanese myself i'd say it's my favourite language despite not able to speak alot (if any) of it >.<

French can be the most beuatiful and ugly language... but I have heard worse; many variations of accents to some languages I jus cant stand.... (vietnamese being one of them)

[bhao]

cathedralmaster said:

your not really hearing german unless your hearing somebody yell it.

fierceillusions said:

Ugly Language: German

i think part of the reason is, that some people have a rather limited exposure to german. it might be a little rough sometimes, but i know worse languages. i am not saying that you people base your observations on this, but when talking to americans, and please forgive the stereotypicalization (is that a word?), i sometimes have the impression, that they base it on things like what conan obrien thinks german sounds like (not that this isn't funny), or how arnold schwarzenegger refuses to get rid of his accent.

ps: yes, i realize my own post on page 1 wasn't helping either

EDIT: this is really only meant as an observation and not to suggest, that people here base their impressions on pop culture references. it is just something that i have encountered more than i thought i would. your mileage may vary.

[MightyKhan]

It depends on what you are customed to hear around you and who's talking to you...
But I agree to german being a generally "rough" language compared to, say, french, but I've heard quite some pleasant german as well. Bach's Matheus Passion when sung by a group of classical singers sounds a whole lot different from Rammstein.
I must say, German being a slightly harsh language adds some flavour in the sense of the old germanic times to it. And I like that. Some don't.

[johannhowitzer]

Belgian dutch is essentially dutch, with more "french-like" pronounciation as well as some words being used differently.
For example:
Zet dat schilderij weer recht. (dutch)
Zet dat schilderij terug recht. (belgian)
The belgian sentence is incorrect dutch. Even though terug means back, it may not be used to replace weer, which means again in this sentence.
If I were to translate both, I would say: Put that painting straight again. Somewhat similar to: Put that painting back straight. (which is not entirely correct english, right?)

Then the difference is much more similar to American slang. Ebonics and pidgin English are wildly different from "standard" English... slang often ignores the prescribed uses of words as taught in schools, and often uses workarounds in grammar rather than following the rules, which is similar to your example.

[MightyKhan]

Aye, but I'm sure any american would know it's incorrect. This is not so with most belgian folk... then again, where I live, people talk "perverted" dutch as well. I think I'm just too purist. XD

[dodrudon]

I don't like (written) Chinese but spoken is fine, no "modify the word this way or maybe this way but follow exception #32 for this list of words" or whatnot. Just tag on a word and it's past tense, don't hafta do any fiddling. A lot more words also fit on one page (there's a thought, language affects economy? less paper used, less trees chopped down, better air?), not that I can read it.

That applies to all forms of Chinese, though I must say Cantonese is like the German of Chinese , and I hear Shanghainese is the French of Chinese (though I've yet to hear it).

[MightyKhan]

Heh, the only chinese I've heard so far was uttered in various Martial Arts movies. I believe it was Mandarin most of the time. I did not know Chinese had "no exeptions" if so, I like the language even more.
The Chinese character system of writing is awesome, imo, because of the many ways you can put down one single word... Sure, it's difficult, but I like a challenge. (not that I'm trying to read them all, I've notthe time for that!) It's not like chinese kids have lots of troubles with it (I think...).

[dodrudon]

I quit Chinese school (for writing) when I was little cuz I got fed up with all the different characters. Rote memorization was never my favorite. The variety of characters is just... absurd to me.... I've never understood the rationale behind it. The Roman alphabet system just makes so much more sense to me (or the phonetic alphabet system on which Asian languages are based).

I wouldn't quite say there are NO exceptions... just none that come to mind (and I only speak conversational Chinese). Not that I think very well/efficiently in Chinese =P (plus, I can't say METEOR SWARRRRRRRRRRRRM BWAHWHAHAHAHAHAHA in Chinese either)