Random language thread 6

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Linguaphile
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2023-03-27, 1:44

I think the poor thing is just really insecure about itself and is crying for help now:
Image
I mean, if you ignore the part about not knowing what to do, what's left is a fairly good translation ("Are you at work or in the house? Are the children outside? Are they in the woods? Do you have a dog?"). It's there - if you ignore the repeated babbling about not knowing what to do and about how it thinks it's not going to be able to do it. It just needs more self-confidence, I guess.
:doggy:
:silly:


Edit.... then I tried translating those same four sentences to Estonian, expecting that it would do a bit better, and... oh my. There's a lot to unpack here:
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There's technical stuff about network operators checking electrical transmission systems, stuff about lease agreements, stuff about amending city laws and recalling a mayor, instead of asking if the children are outside it asks if the children are dead, more stuff about electrical transmission systems and network operators and whether or not they follow regulations and whether they are related to each other (who? the networks and the transmission systems? the network operators and the electrical engineers?? the dead children??!), and then, as if mocking the whole thing, after creating all that drama out of nothing, it ends with the punchline accurate translation of the last sentence: ...."do you have a dog?"
I just can't. This is positively hilarious.
:rotfl:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby awrui » 2023-03-27, 17:11

This is fun. I was playing a bit with it, going back and forth between Saami and English. Click to see big image!
Edit: I also tried "Do you have a dog?" and went back and forth a bit, y'all should try it, very fun, and turns weirdly sexual after a while :lol:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby md0 » 2023-04-07, 22:56

Now that some existential needs have been placed under control, I had the mental space to double down on language learning. One of the things in my tasklist that I put into motion was signing up on a local language tandem board.

I've never done that before and I'm only aware of the general principles of it, so if any ULer has done this before (which I can only imagine most did :D), I'm be happy to hear what are the various formats and structures you used, from how to divide the time between languages, to using or not using learning material, how short is too short and how long is too long for an exchange session, formal aspects versus conversation etc
I have asked the person who reached out to me for their preferences, but in the meantime I want to also get a picture of what some possible arrangements are like.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Naava » 2023-04-25, 17:55

A fun video that tests how well Finns and Estonians can understand each other. It's basically Alias except in two different languages... :)

https://youtu.be/U9uWA_8UIBA

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2023-04-26, 2:45

Naava wrote:A fun video that tests how well Finns and Estonians can understand each other. It's basically Alias except in two different languages... :)

https://youtu.be/U9uWA_8UIBA

Thanks! So funny that the first words they chose were about rooms and buildings... so many false cognates in the words to describe them, with meanings that are just close enough to cause extra confusion. Huone/hoone, rakennus/rakendus, asunto/asundus, kaupunki/kauplus, talo/talu, etc.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Naava » 2023-04-27, 13:29

Linguaphile wrote:Thanks! So funny that the first words they chose were about rooms and buildings... so many false cognates in the words to describe them, with meanings that are just close enough to cause extra confusion. Huone/hoone, rakennus/rakendus, asunto/asundus, kaupunki/kauplus, talo/talu, etc.

Yeah, they said so themselves, too! :) But I think some of them also helped to find out what the right category was, like talo/talu and huone/hoone suggests the right word could have something to do with buildings.

I was surprised how well they did though! I had expected them to be much more confused and misunderstand each other, but it looked like they were quite good at picking out words they recognised and guessing how to put them together.

Here's another video, published today:
https://youtu.be/Cwr0aFDWI44
I have no idea where he got "joy" because the Estonian man didn't say anything like that... :lol:

I also love how "noni" is an untranslatable word according to the subtitles because that's so true. :lol: It's used by pretty much everyone everywhere all the time (great example here at 2:38) and it's honestly the only word you'd ever need, but it has so many different meanings that it can be challenging to find the best equivalent in other languages. So, I find it funny and very acceptable that they didn't even try!

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2023-04-28, 3:59

Naava wrote:I have no idea where he got "joy" because the Estonian man didn't say anything like that... :lol:

So when the Estonian man said tundeid nagu häbi või pettumus and the Finnish man understood ilo, pettymys... I think his brain probably took Estonian häbi and subconsciously understood it as English happy. There you go, ilo. :silly:

Something I forgot to mention from the first video.... I don't understand what's happening with the subtitles around 13:40 either. The Finnish man asks Onko se vaate? and the Estonian man is confused and says Vaade? Ei, see ei ole vaade. The subtitles for Estonian say "no, it's not an outfit." But I don't know of any meaning like "outfit" for vaade, it's not a cognate with Finnish vaate at all and it means "outlook" (outlook, not outfit) or view, point of view, scene, etc. Nothing at all about clothes or fabric. So you can imagine why the Estonian guy sounds so confused!

Naava wrote:I also love how "noni" is an untranslatable word according to the subtitles because that's so true. :lol: It's used by pretty much everyone everywhere all the time (great example here at 2:38) and it's honestly the only word you'd ever need, but it has so many different meanings that it can be challenging to find the best equivalent in other languages. So, I find it funny and very acceptable that they didn't even try!

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby md0 » 2023-05-08, 20:23

My neighbour today was helping me plan my move, and I had such a hard time hearing the difference between parken and packen in her non-rhotic dialect (and unfortunately for me, we needed to coordinate both parking and packing).

I think we got it straight in the end but that was quite something. I thought I could hear vowel length better than that.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby OldBoring » 2023-05-17, 16:45

This reminds me that when I pronounced Hut in my Italian accent /hat/, my Australian friend heard it as heart.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby linguoboy » 2023-05-18, 17:19

A friend recently told me that he has trouble making the distinction between Oder and order and I have trouble imagining what he means. Even when I pronounce the first in an anglicised fashion (instead of à l'allemande, as is my default) and the second with a Chicago pronunciation (instead of my native St Louis pronunciation, which shifts the /ɔ/ to /ɑ/), they sound nothing like each other to me.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby md0 » 2023-05-18, 18:13

A Chicago pronunciation would be a rhotic one, right? In that case, I'm intrigued too. Vowel length may give me trouble, but the R-coloured vowels are distinct enough.

Today I also just realised that the way I pronounce the letter E in German (when spelling out something letter by letter) is mostly perceived as an R, which is /ɛɐ/ for the in this side of the country, I guess. Too open, I should keep my mouth shut, in a way.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Dormouse559 » 2023-05-19, 18:34

Today, I'm thinking about "Nigerian" /naɪ̯ˈd͡ʒɪɹiən/ (person from Nigeria) and "Nigerien" /niˈʒɛɹiən/ (person from Niger), and how, at first glance, replacing one letter in the fourth syllable changes the pronunciation of the first two syllables while not affecting the fourth syllable at all.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby kevin » 2023-05-20, 12:49

linguoboy wrote:A friend recently told me that he has trouble making the distinction between Oder and order and I have trouble imagining what he means.

This makes me think of John Bercow, I feel his "Order, order!" is quite close to "Oder": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xJlPO5jqE8

md0 wrote:Today I also just realised that the way I pronounce the letter E in German (when spelling out something letter by letter) is mostly perceived as an R, which is /ɛɐ/ for the in this side of the country, I guess. Too open, I should keep my mouth shut, in a way.

Do you have a diphthong when you pronounce the name of the letter? Because while E is /e:/, if you pronounce it too open, you'd get /ɛ:/, which would likely be interpreted as Ä, not R. But if you have a diphthong, then I can see how you could get too close to /ɛɐ/ and therefore R.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby md0 » 2023-05-20, 13:17

kevin wrote:Do you have a diphthong when you pronounce the name of the letter? Because while E is /e:/, if you pronounce it too open, you'd get /ɛ:/, which would likely be interpreted as Ä, not R. But if you have a diphthong, then I can see how you could get too close to /ɛɐ/ and therefore R.


I realised I didn't write it very clearly, but I wasn't sure how to keep it both clear and concise. My resting "e" sound, when I'm not paying attention, is between an E and an Ä, and not a diphthong. But I think people listening to me do a bit of a top-down processing and find it more likely to have an R as the next letter in that word, and not an Ä.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2023-05-30, 1:20

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7hdYTijrR8
The clips are really short, so you can't actually hear a lot of each song. I clicked on the video expecting to hear some new songs I'd like, instead I ended up just listening for the songs I already knew and could recognize. From the video, the songs I know I have heard before enough to be somewhat familiar with them are the ones in English, Finnish, Korean, Latin, Quechua, Romanian, Ruthenian, Spanish, Uzbek, and from the "Bonus" section the "Vocalize" one.

Coming back to this thread reminded me that we'd been posting examples of translations from NeuroTõlge and I've got another one:
Image
It's entirely my own fault because I had the source languages selected incorrectly (it was my intention to translate from Russian to Veps, but I hadn't yet changed the languages from the last time I'd use it). NeuroTõlge's response to my mistake was... interesting.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby loqu » 2023-05-30, 6:18

I know the ones in Asturian, Breton, English, German, Korean, Latin, Neapolitan, Romanian (of course) and Spanish (I hate it btw).

There are a quite a lot of inaccuracies in the video :para: and people in the comments aren't pointing them out, it's unsettling.
Нека људи уживају у стварима.
Let people enjoy things.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Dormouse559 » 2023-05-31, 22:11

I’m familiar with the ones in English, French, German, Latin, Korean, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish. So mostly what a basic English speaker could be expected to have heard. Frankly, I didn’t know “Dragostea Din Tei” has lyrics :lol:

I was surprised by the French song, “Dernière Danse” by Indila. I knew it was popular, but not that much. This month, it apparently became the first French song to reach 1 billion views on YouTube.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2023-05-31, 22:25

Dormouse559 wrote:Frankly, I didn’t know “Dragostea Din Tei” has lyrics :lol:

Well, the Moldovan/Romanian version(s) do(es). Other singers keep copying/using/stealing it, and some of those don't have lyrics.
:mrgreen:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Osias » 2023-06-03, 18:22

~Skips to Portuguese to see it first~

Vai vai com bumbum tã tã
Vai vai com bumbum


I don't know what I was expecting.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Massimiliano B » 2023-06-20, 13:23

naammagittaalliutiginnissinnaatitaajunnaassaaq

Longest word I've found in a site in Greenlandic language (here: https://uni.gl/uagutsinnut-tunngasut/ni ... asaqaatit/): 46 letters (I know the language is polysynthetic...)


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