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Aurinĭa wrote:vijayjohn wrote:Prowler wrote:I used to think it was impossible to make such confusions unless you didn't speak either language at all or weren't used to them... but there's been times I've mistaken someone speaking Dutch for a German dialect.
Swiss German sometimes sounds like Dutch to me.
That's probably the furthest away you could get from Dutch while still being German!
I once heard a group of teenage girls speak what I thought was Danish. It took me several minutes of careful listening to realise that I wasn't, in fact, trying to comprehend a language with a notorious pronunciation that I had only studied for a few months some years earlier, but my own mother tongue.Prowler wrote:Oh and I tend to confuse written Danish and Norwegian. That's a classic.
That's common even for people who actually know those languages. Depending on the variety of Norwegian used, you could need several sentences, with specific words or types of phrases, to distinguish between them.
Prowler wrote:It seems Danish words are usually shorter, I guess?
Johanna wrote:Prowler wrote:It seems Danish words are usually shorter, I guess?
Danish uses æ a lot more, kj a lot less (if at all), stems frequently end in -d or -g where Nowegian has -t or -k, and it sprinkles its words with that d that denotes the stød. I think Norwegian also doubles its consonants after and between vowels a bit more, even where Danish doesn't have stød. Oh, and Danish ej is usually ei in Norwegian, while øj is øy.
læse vs lese (to read)
kende vs kjenne (to know, as in be familiar or acquainted with)
gade vs gate (street)
sprog vs språk (language)
vej vs vei (road)
tøj vs tøy (clothes)
The preposition af is a tell-tale sign as well, it's av in Norwegian. I also often get the feeling that Danish uses more obvious loan words, and it definitely doesn't respell them according to its own rules as often.
It's only Danish and (conservative) Bokmål that are this similar, native speakers pretty much never mistake any of them for Nynorsk, or vice-versa, even when there's just a short sentence. Nynorsk is too full of diphthongs where those two have monophthongs, like in the indefinite articles, not to mention that most personal pronouns are different instead of only the 2nd person plural.
Radical Bokmål is usually easy to tell apart from Danish too: it, just like Nynorsk, uses three genders while Standard Danish only ever has two, so if you see the indefinite article ei or the definite suffix -a you know it's Norwegian.
Johanna wrote:læse vs lese (to read)
kende vs kjenne (to know, as in be familiar or acquainted with)
gade vs gate (street)
sprog vs språk (language)
vej vs vei (road)
tøj vs tøy (clothes)
vijayjohn wrote:Things like what Aurinĭa described with the two girls must happen to me all the time. They happen in the opposite direction, too, where I assume two people are speaking English, but they aren't. Even Indians speaking English can fool (and have fooled) me very easily sometimes.
dEhiN wrote:Though perhaps if I knew Danish phonology I could've figured it out.
I've had that happen where I assume two people are speaking English, and they aren't. As well I've had it happen where I was listening, thinking it was another language, but it turned out to be English. I found this happened to me more frequently when in the subway going home after a language exchange meeting. I just assumed it was my brain being in the mode of whatever language I was practicing (even though all the exchanges were English + another language, since this is Toronto). But it still always threw me off!
vijayjohn wrote:To me, it's been happening all the time at work. It's complicated slightly by the fact that one of the new hires, who sits just across from me, sometimes forgets that I don't really speak her language and starts speaking to me in it (not that I give a shit; I'm pretty much willing to take whatever I get when it comes to languages ).
dEhiN wrote:what's her language?
And I'm shocked there's a language you don't know even a word in!
Wasn't she the girl that's making him become straight wanderlust for Persian?dEhiN wrote:vijayjohn wrote:To me, it's been happening all the time at work. It's complicated slightly by the fact that one of the new hires, who sits just across from me, sometimes forgets that I don't really speak her language and starts speaking to me in it .
Language whore *coughs* *clears throat* .... what's her language?
linguoboy wrote:vijayjohn wrote:Prowler wrote:I used to think it was impossible to make such confusions unless you didn't speak either language at all or weren't used ot them... but there's been times I've mistaken someone speaking Dutch for a German dialect.
Swiss German sometimes sounds like Dutch to me.
Same. It's all the initial occurrences of /x/.
Osias wrote:Wasn't she the girl that's making him become straight wanderlust for Persian?dEhiN wrote:vijayjohn wrote:To me, it's been happening all the time at work. It's complicated slightly by the fact that one of the new hires, who sits just across from me, sometimes forgets that I don't really speak her language and starts speaking to me in it .
Language whore *coughs* *clears throat* .... what's her language?
Osias wrote:Wasn't she it the girl that's making him become straight wanderlust for Persian?dEhiN wrote:Language whore *coughs* *clears throat* .... what's her language?
dEhiN wrote:Osias wrote:Wasn't she it the girl that's making him become straight wanderlust for Persian?dEhiN wrote:Language whore *coughs* *clears throat* .... what's her language?
As far I can tell, he never mentioned the language was Persian. In fact he said, he's going to assume the information is classified.
Also, knowing Vijay, it's the language that'll drive his interest first, and then possibly the person.
Prowler wrote:Isee .thanks.
vijayjohn wrote:Prowler wrote:It's funny to me how Norwegians consider Swedish to be more similar o their language when Danish seems to have morw similar vocabulary to Norwegian, at least to me. Same for verb conjugations. I guess the phonetics are what set them more apart.
Bokmål is basically Norwegianized Danish, so of course it looks like Danish. IIUC, though, it doesn't really reflect how Norwegians speak their language, and spoken Norwegian is generally(?) much closer to Swedish.
dEhiN wrote:Johanna wrote:læse vs lese (to read)
kende vs kjenne (to know, as in be familiar or acquainted with)
gade vs gate (street)
sprog vs språk (language)
vej vs vei (road)
tøj vs tøy (clothes)
Out of all those pairs, with the exception of the last one, if you showed me them and I had to guess what they meant, I could guess correctly all the Norwegian words, but not the Danish ones. Though perhaps if I knew Danish phonology I could've figured it out.
vijayjohn wrote:dEhiN wrote:Osias wrote:Wasn't she it the girl that's making him become straight wanderlust for Persian?
As far I can tell, he never mentioned the language was Persian. In fact he said, he's going to assume the information is classified.
I think Osias meant "wasn't that girl the girl that's making him wanderlust for Persian?" (in which case I don't find any errors in what he said), which I assume was either a joke or him confusing me with someone else, since I never mentioned any such thing.
vijayjohn wrote:dEhiN wrote:Also, knowing Vijay, it's the language that'll drive his interest first, and then possibly the person.
I'm a language whore (or a language john, as a certain someone once suggested, in which case I guess the languages are my whores ), so obviously, I don't give a shit about the person; just give me the languages!
dEhiN wrote:I actually figured as much, but I was trying to be somewhat nice and not make you sound like such a whore/slut/addict.
By the way I love the language john suggestion since you're last name is...
Osias wrote:I mistook Vijay by for Kenny!
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