The languages of our dreams

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Vlürch
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Vlürch » 2015-05-12, 18:14

Massimiliano B wrote:I know, but loanwords don't matter.

I guess, but I just realised that in some eastern dialect(s?), š is used in some words in place of s, šš in place of ss; at least some of my relatives do that, although I'm not sure what determines it... but it would feel a lot more natural for me to use š instead of s in some words, probably because that's how I heard them as a kid... maybe that explains my obsession with š. :P

Unrelated, but I feel like it still fits this thread's current slight derailment well enough: there's this Finnish dude who has recorded loads of stuff on Librivox and Forvo (pretty sure it's the same guy on both sites), and he has that speech impediment where he says ğ/French r instead of r. As much as I love ğ/French r, it rides me down the stairs when I imagine someone trying to learn Finnish by listening to his recordings. I mean, I know it isn't his fault and he has every right to do whatever he wants, but it's a bit like if he was putting out an unusual accent; it won't hurt you outright but it might hinder your progress. It wouldn't bother me if it was an actual accent, you know, because that'd make me a hypocrite because of the occasional š thing, but since it's officially considered a medical condition that loads of people reportedly suffer throughout their lives from... I mean, it's like, isn't he kind of involuntarily second-hand handicapping people who're learning Finnish, or rather their learning process?

Sorry if this isn't related enough. Mods can split threads and stuff, though, right, if it isn't?

...actually on topic, I don't remember anything else of a dream I had a couple nights ago except that I was in Mongolia and there was some old dude who kept rhythmically repeating "Бурхан уруул мах, Бурхан мулут хан, өргө өргө өргө" and something like that. Makes zero sense grammatically, and "mulut" isn't even Mongolian but Indonesian/Malay, and "örgö" doesn't even mean anything (and how does God relate to mouths/lips and/or eating...?), but it was pretty funny.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Massimiliano B » 2015-05-13, 8:55

Vlürch wrote:
Massimiliano B wrote:I know, but loanwords don't matter.

I guess, but I just realised that in some eastern dialect(s?), š is used in some words in place of s, šš in place of ss; at least some of my relatives do that, although I'm not sure what determines it... but it would feel a lot more natural for me to use š instead of s in some words, probably because that's how I heard them as a kid... maybe that explains my obsession with š. :P



The dialects of Eastern Finland are affected by the Karelian language, which has [ʃ]. I think this is the reason for the presence of this phoneme in those parts of the country.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Meera » 2015-05-29, 5:51

This isn't about a language but I thought it was funny so I will share it here. Last night I had a super long dream actually about Unilang! I had a dream that something had happened and it was going to be shut down. So everyone was fighting over it. It was so weird and it spooked me so much that as soon as I woke up I checked Unilang to make sure everything was normal. :P
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-05-29, 6:31

:lol: That would be a good April Fool's Day joke. Or at least as good as the time I was in grad school and one of the staff in our department tried fooling me into believing the university was being shut down. :P

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Iparxi_Zoi » 2015-05-29, 12:38

I dream in mostly in English & Spanish. Those are the two dominant languages in my life.
Native/Mis lenguas maternas: [flag=español mexicano (Mexican Spanish)]es-MX[/flag] [flag=español (Spanish)]es[/flag] American English (en-US) English (en)
Advanced (I hope)/Espero que no se me olvide: [flag=français (French)]fr[/flag]
In love with/Me encantan: [flag=ελληνικά (Greek)]el[/flag] [flag=português (Portuguese)]pt[/flag]
Also intested in/También me interesarían: [flag=العربية (Arabic)]ar[/flag] [flag=italiano (Italian)]it[/flag] [flag=Türkçe (Turkish)]tr[/flag]

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-10-28, 8:05

I'm pretty sure I recently had a dream in Malayalam. That's highly unusual; if there's any speaking in my dreams, it's pretty much always in English AFAIR.

Of course, I've completely forgotten everything else about the actual dream by now! :P

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby Meera » 2015-10-28, 16:20

I have been having recurring dreams in Hindi and Japanese like every night.
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-10-28, 18:04

I rarely have (or at least notice myself having) dreams, although I did try to formulate a sentence in German soon after I woke up today (but before I actually got out of bed). I don't think the sentence that came out of my brain at that point made any sense whatsoever. :lol:

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-05-13, 14:35

I just woke up from a dream that was probably in English but was all about Chinese characters. My mom was throwing a party, so as usual, the adults were downstairs, and I was entertaining a few kids upstairs, except I think most of the kids were girls - one of them certainly was, at least - and for some reason, there was a chalkboard on the wall, and this girl and a few other kids were talking about Traditional Chinese characters (or at least mostly TC) with me as she wrote them nice and big on the chalkboard. I correctly guessed (the pronunciation of) each of the characters she was writing pretty much as she was writing them until suddenly, she wrote this one character that ended with a 欠 to the right.

I was puzzled. This was a simple character I knew I should have known, and yet I just could not remember for the life of me how it was pronounced, what it meant, or what its etymology was. I volunteered to look up the etymology really quick, then went (I think I ran?) back to my room to get out this book because I was sure it was in it. Then, for some other reason, I apparently felt like I had to ask my dad something in order to successfully look this character up. :? So I went downstairs and looked for him, only to realize by the time I found him that I didn't need his help after all, so the ensuing conversation went something like "Appa?" "Yeah?" "Never mind." :P Then I went back upstairs and apologized for taking so long, and then when I woke up, I wondered what that character was. I couldn't even remember what 欠 meant (I always forget. It's translated in that book as 'lacking'). I think I sort of remembered its pronunciation, though (qiàn).

So I tried looking it up in that book, but the only characters they seem to have with 欠 in it are (and these are all in Simplified Chinese) 吹, 欢 (huān), and what was the other one? Oh right, 次 (), as well as 欠 itself. But then I knew it wasn't any of those, so I was like "then what the hell was it? Maybe 软? How do you pronounce 软 anyway?" I got out my Lonely Planet Mandarin Chinese phrasebook to check, because I knew it was in there somewhere, and just kept flipping through it aimlessly until I went "okay, focus! Which section is that character in? Probably 'Getting Around' or 'Around Town', one of the two." I looked in the first one and couldn't seem to find it, then in the other one with the same result, but I kept looking and eventually found it somewhere. "It's ruǎn ('soft'), isn't it?" I thought as I looked for it. "Yep, it is. But was that the character I was looking for? I better look it up on zhongwen.com. Wait, what the hell is 吹?! It's chūi. Wuut, I totally forgot that character! :shock: I really should use this book more. :? So what the fuck is the etymology of 软? Car + lacking = soft? :? And what does 吹 mean anyway? Lacking?" [I just looked it up on zhongwen.com. It says it means 'to play (a wind instrument)' or, colloquially, 'to boast, brag'. The book says 'puff'].

Now let's see whether I can find that character on zhongwen.com...Hmm, maybe it was 软 after all. Or it could have been any of various other characters with a lot of strokes. Dunno!

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby OldBoring » 2016-05-15, 8:13

I'm surprised you don't know all those characters! :shock:

欠 means lack in compounds and formal language. In colloquial language the most common meaning is "to owe, to be in debt".

The primary meaning of 吹 is "to blow". So you play a wind instrument by blowing. I'm surprised "blow" is not mentioned in your dictionary*.

Chinese often prefers concrete verbs that accurately describes the kind of movement. So you blow a flute (吹笛), pinch a chord instrument like guitar or piano (弹钢琴、弹吉他), but pull a violin (拉小提琴) and knock a drum (敲鼓). You also kick soccer (踢足球) and aspirate a cigarette (吸烟).

*I don't know of any good online Chinese-English dictionary. As a monolingual Chinese dictionary, I advise 汉典 http://zdic.net

I can't help you with etymology as I don't know the etymology of most characters. But it seems that in 软: 车 is the radical, and 欠 the phonetic part, so they were probably pronounced similarly in Old Chinese.
Another websites explains that originally meant a not strong, not resistant cart, and thus "soft". And that 欠 means that if something lacks stuff inside, it will be soft.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-05-15, 12:29

OldBoring wrote:I'm surprised you don't know all those characters! :shock:

I do know all of them except that I forgot 吹 (and sort of 欠, I guess - and it took me a while to remember 软 :D). I don't remember ever having seen 吹 in anything I've ever read or watched or anything. :P
The primary meaning of 吹 is "to blow". So you play a wind instrument by blowing. I'm surprised "blow" is not mentioned in your dictionary*.

Well, it isn't really a dictionary, or at least it's a pretty crappy dictionary if it can be called one. :lol:
Chinese often prefers concrete verbs that accurately describes the kind of movement. So you blow a flute (吹笛), pinch a chord instrument like guitar or piano (弹钢琴、弹吉他), but pull a violin (拉小提琴) and knock a drum (敲鼓). You also kick soccer (踢足球) and aspirate a cigarette (吸烟).

In Malayalam, you also "blow" a flute, but you "beat" a drum (kind of like in English), "play" ball (even if you're just kicking a ball around, I think), "pull" a cigarette, and "read" any other kind of musical instrument, including both pianos and violins.
*I don't know of any good online Chinese-English dictionary. As a monolingual Chinese dictionary, I advise 汉典 http://zdic.net

ichacha.net! :P
I can't help you with etymology as I don't know the etymology of most characters. But it seems that in 软: 车 is the radical, and 欠 the phonetic part, so they were probably pronounced similarly in Old Chinese.

Yeah, that's right. Apparently, it's supposed to refer to soft wheels on a cart or something.
Another websites explains that originally meant a not strong, not resistant cart, and thus "soft". And that 欠 means that if something lacks stuff inside, it will be soft.

I feel pretty sure that's just a folk etymology. :lol:

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby linguoboy » 2016-05-16, 17:01

I had another German-language dream last night. I was trying to explain my husband's surgery to a friend from Germany but I wasn't sure about terminology. She used a word for a part of the GI tract which was something like "Eingeweidensbot" and I was trying to figure out if that was the equivalent of "colon" or what. I finally decided the only way to be sure was to sketch out the whole gut, but every piece of paper I reached for was covered with writing.
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby mōdgethanc » 2016-05-16, 19:27

linguoboy wrote:I had another German-language dream last night. I was trying to explain my husband's surgery to a friend from Germany but I wasn't sure about terminology. She used a word for a part of the GI tract which was something like "Eingeweidensbot" and I was trying to figure out if that was the equivalent of "colon" or what. I finally decided the only way to be sure was to sketch out the whole gut, but every piece of paper I reached for was covered with writing.
I get that "Eingeweide" means "viscera", but what's "bot" supposed to mean here? Is that even a real word?
[ˈmoːdjeðɑŋk]

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby linguoboy » 2016-05-16, 19:44

mōdgethanc wrote:I get that "Eingeweide" means "viscera", but what's "bot" supposed to mean here? Is that even a real word?

It could either be a German equivalent of "bot" or an apocopated form of Bote.

I'm not sure the first element was, in fact, Eingeweide, but it was multisyllabic and began with E or Ei, so it seems a likely candidate.
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-05-17, 0:10

mōdgethanc wrote:I get that "Eingeweide" means "viscera", but what's "bot" supposed to mean here? Is that even a real word?

Well, there are other words in German that end in -bot! Like Angebot. :) (OK, that's the only one I can think of, lol. But I've seen it a lot!).

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby OldBoring » 2016-05-17, 6:24

vijayjohn wrote:"beat" a drum (kind of like in English)

打鼓 is also OK in Chinese.
"play" ball (even if you're just kicking a ball around, I think)

I think 玩球 or 玩+ball sports is acceptable in Chinese, when playing lightly for fun, especially children. But I wouldn't use 玩 for serious competitive matches.
"pull" a cigarette

I forgot to mention that colloquially 抽烟 is more common. 抽 means both aspirate (air) or pull (a part of something out of it).
"read" any other kind of musical instrument, including both pianos and violins.

Innarestang.
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Sankuh you.

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-05-20, 13:22

OldBoring wrote:
"read" any other kind of musical instrument, including both pianos and violins.

Innarestang.

Innit? I don't know why it's always 'read'. I don't think my dad does, either.
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby linguoboy » 2016-05-26, 17:28

I dreamt of an Indonesian character whose name, "Agiang Ta", meant something like "Monkey Ancestor" or "Monkey Grandpa" in some Austronesian variety.

I also dreamt of some programme which introduced languages through popular texts. For Norwegian, they used the song of a young singer named "Lena". The whole text was transcribed according to her personal pronunciation. I was kind of impressed with the sheer amount of mock Norwegian my brain managed to spit out.
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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-05-27, 5:20

linguoboy wrote:For Norwegian, they used the song of a young singer named "Lena".

You just managed to remind me of the stock characters of Norwegian jokes (in the US?), Ole and Lena. :P

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Re: The languages of our dreams

Postby dkatbena » 2016-06-06, 3:02

In my dreams seldom I speak because I did it telepathically but I remember I speak language I do not know that sounds like ancient german.I remember some words have was/as.
Kapionan ey mangyedi de inoman a manoloson de benal a Makyedyepat! eye a Makyedyepat.


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