Random language thread 6

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-06-12, 3:15

I think you're trying way too hard to find an exact parallel to the situation in East Asian languages, and languages just don't work that way. You're never going to find the exact same situation because you'll never find the exact same set of historical events, relative geographical location, etc. But you do find something very similar even in English.

In other language-related news, it seems that my dad understands Tamil about as well as I do now. I got him to listen to some of the clips on the Tamil Language in Context website. He says he understands Tamil as long as it isn't spoken fast, so he could understand the last two dialogues in Unit 6 (there are twelve units in all), except for the English word "sandwich" in the last dialogue in that unit (which I also struggled with at first, like wtf is "sendichu" or whatever?).

In more general language news...I'm starting to worry that languages aren't all that interesting to me anymore. :para: Like, at this point, I've gotten familiar enough with languages in general that I'm actually having trouble finding a new language to learn - in particular, finding a language that is completely unfamiliar to me at this point (but that I can also learn, I guess?). Maybe it's about time that I started focusing on how to use my languages instead of on how to learn them.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby dEhiN » 2021-06-13, 20:06

vijayjohn wrote:Maybe it's about time that I started focusing on how to use my languages instead of on how to learn them.

Maybe you could shift that focus for the languages you're stronger in (i.e., the ones you're at a C1/C2/fluent level), but for any language you're intermediate in or lower, keep it still more of a fun activity?
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-06-17, 15:47

dEhiN wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Maybe it's about time that I started focusing on how to use my languages instead of on how to learn them.

Maybe you could shift that focus for the languages you're stronger in (i.e., the ones you're at a C1/C2/fluent level), but for any language you're intermediate in or lower, keep it still more of a fun activity?

No, I don't think that's really the issue. I think what's helping me more is to just try to focus more on the things I don't know in each language. For example, lately, I've been transcribing texts from Teach Yourself Vietnamese but with Chinese characters for all the Chinese loanwords I can find. That's been getting me pretty into Vietnamese (not to mention the fact that my next-door neighbors whose house I can see right out the window from here all day every day speak it).

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby OldBoring » 2021-07-16, 10:59

We all know that Vietnamese is a Chinese dialect with many Vietnamese loanwords.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby mōdgethanc » 2021-08-06, 4:57

Based.

No but really, Vietnamese seems to have a lot of Chinese loanwords. Any idea what the rough percentage is?
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Car » 2021-08-08, 13:47

I just came across the spelling Jruschov in a Spanish text right now and at first, I really had no idea who it was referring to (it's Krushchev). It doesn't help that I wasn't expecting that name at all.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-08-08, 14:36

Car wrote:I just came across the spelling Jruschov in a Spanish text right now and at first, I really had no idea who it was referring to (it's Krushchev). It doesn't help that I wasn't expecting that name at all.

Jruschov, Hruštšov, Chruschtschow, Khruixtxov...

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Car » 2021-08-08, 20:08

Linguaphile wrote:
Car wrote:I just came across the spelling Jruschov in a Spanish text right now and at first, I really had no idea who it was referring to (it's Krushchev). It doesn't help that I wasn't expecting that name at all.

Jruschov, Hruštšov, Chruschtschow, Khruixtxov...

Thanks! Of all the ones mentioned there, I still find the Spanish one the least intuitve.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-08-09, 0:01

Car wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:
Car wrote:I just came across the spelling Jruschov in a Spanish text right now and at first, I really had no idea who it was referring to (it's Krushchev). It doesn't help that I wasn't expecting that name at all.

Jruschov, Hruštšov, Chruschtschow, Khruixtxov...

Thanks! Of all the ones mentioned there, I still find the Spanish one the least intuitve.


I just did some googling about the Spanish spelling again and discovered something hilarious... I wonder if the Real Academia Español reads our board? Because I posted this on June 24, 2018:
Linguaphile wrote:
Ser wrote:I've never seen Jrushchov actually being used other than in his Wikipedia article though.

I have, though. In fact it was spelled Jrushchov in a book I was reading recently, which is probably the only reason I even thought of it posting it. I've also seen it spelled Jruschov (and Kruschev).
By the way, just now while trying to figure out if RAE has a preferred spelling (none that I could find), I came across Khruixtxov in Catalan. No idea how commonly-used that one is though. :D

and couldn't find anything from RAE about it at that time (June 24), but then just three days later on June 27, 2018, RAE apparently posted this to Twitter (seems to be in response to someone's inquiry, though, so no, they probably don't read our board but someone who does asked them about it? Or the timing is just a coincidence, but it's funny!):
De acuerdo con el sistema propuesto por Julio Calonge, la transcripción estricta sería «Jrushchëv». Las formas hispanizadas de uso mayoritario son «Kruschev» y «Jruschov», siendo esta segunda la que más se acercaría a la pronunciación original.

I only discovered this now, since I googled it again today when I saw my old post. Thanks Car! :mrgreen:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-08-10, 0:37

mōdgethanc wrote:Based.

No but really, Vietnamese seems to have a lot of Chinese loanwords. Any idea what the rough percentage is?

Wikipedia says, "Estimates of the proportion of words of Chinese origin in the Vietnamese lexicon vary from one third to half and even to 70%. The proportion tends towards the lower end in speech and towards the higher end in technical writing. In the famous Từ điển tiếng Việt dictionary by Vietnamese linguist Hoang Phe, about 40% percent of vocabulary are of Chinese origin."

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby mōdgethanc » 2021-08-10, 8:44

This is why I didn't look up the Wiki - I thought it would be way too uncertain. But thanks anyway. All I really need to know is "a lot" anyway.
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby vijayjohn » 2021-08-10, 19:47

Yeah, did you see this shit?!

Especially this housing ad from that thread:
總公司湖西 có hai 別墅3層, 矯樣 đẹp 南邊坡湖西, 面積[使]用每別墅248m2; 便 cho 役用 làm nhà ở 或文房 làm 役.
每[組?]織c, 個人 trong, 外 nước có 需求稅 xin 聯繫:
總公司湖西
地址: 107館聖, Ba 亭, 河內

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Car » 2021-08-11, 20:38

Linguaphile wrote:I only discovered this now, since I googled it again today when I saw my old post. Thanks Car! :mrgreen:

No, thanks to you for your detailed replies to it!
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-08-14, 4:49

Car wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:I only discovered this now, since I googled it again today when I saw my old post. Thanks Car! :mrgreen:

No, thanks to you for your detailed replies to it!

I actually really like the way Russian words get transliterated into Spanish. I find the Spanish spellings clearer than the English ones; they show which syllable carries the stress, which is not shown by the English spelling or even the Russian spelling (except when the Russian spelling uses accent marks, such as materials for learners).
For example, to use some more names: Serguéi, Guennadi, Valeri, Vladímir. Of course, you have to be able to read Spanish, but once you do, it provides more clues than the English spellings do. I remember I wasn't sure where to put the stress on the names Gennadi and Valeri (Геннадий and Валерий, but Gennadi and Valeri in English) until I came across them in Spanish as Guennadi and Valeri. The English, Russian and Estonian spellings never told me how to say them because they don't answer the where-do-I-put-the-stress question, but the Spanish spelling did (in Spanish the lack of an accent mark indicates that the stress is on the next-to-last syllable). I think that Jruschov or Jrushchov are better spellings than Krushchev; it's not /kr/ at the beginning, it's /xr/. The Spanish spelling shows this, since /x/ is written as j in Spanish. In English the spelling Khrushchev tries to show this too, but it fails because most people end up ignoring the first h.

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Dormouse559 » 2021-08-14, 5:29

Linguaphile wrote:I actually really like the way Russian words get transliterated into Spanish. I find the Spanish spellings clearer than the English ones; they show which syllable carries the stress, which is not shown by the English spelling or even the Russian spelling (except when the Russian spelling uses accent marks, such as materials for learners).

The obvious solution is to use a language without word-level stress, like French. Any name, if it gets stress at all, gets final stress. Simple :mrgreen:
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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Naava » 2021-08-14, 8:51

Dormouse559 wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:I actually really like the way Russian words get transliterated into Spanish. I find the Spanish spellings clearer than the English ones; they show which syllable carries the stress, which is not shown by the English spelling or even the Russian spelling (except when the Russian spelling uses accent marks, such as materials for learners).

The obvious solution is to use a language without word-level stress, like French. Any name, if it gets stress at all, gets final stress. Simple :mrgreen:

Or Finnish, where the stress is always on the first syllable. :mrgreen:

By the way, does Estonian keep the original stress in foreign names?

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Car » 2021-08-14, 19:35

Linguaphile wrote:I actually really like the way Russian words get transliterated into Spanish. I find the Spanish spellings clearer than the English ones; they show which syllable carries the stress, which is not shown by the English spelling or even the Russian spelling (except when the Russian spelling uses accent marks, such as materials for learners).

I think that Jruschov or Jrushchov are better spellings than Krushchev; it's not /kr/ at the beginning, it's /xr/. The Spanish spelling shows this, since /x/ is written as j in Spanish. In English the spelling Khrushchev tries to show this too, but it fails because most people end up ignoring the first h.


That's a general problem with English or Russian, though.
It's not as if English has /x/, so no spelling in the word will help there. Even though German has /x/ and uses chr to show it, it still gets pronounced /k/ (well, at least that is the pronunciation I've heard here in the West, it might be different in the East where people learnt Russian) since German doesn't pronounce chr as /xr/.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-08-14, 20:09

Car wrote:
Linguaphile wrote:I actually really like the way Russian words get transliterated into Spanish. I find the Spanish spellings clearer than the English ones; they show which syllable carries the stress, which is not shown by the English spelling or even the Russian spelling (except when the Russian spelling uses accent marks, such as materials for learners).

I think that Jruschov or Jrushchov are better spellings than Krushchev; it's not /kr/ at the beginning, it's /xr/. The Spanish spelling shows this, since /x/ is written as j in Spanish. In English the spelling Khrushchev tries to show this too, but it fails because most people end up ignoring the first h.


That's a general problem with English or Russian, though.
It's not as if English has /x/, so no spelling in the word will help there. Even though German has /x/ and uses chr to show it, it still gets pronounced /k/ (well, at least that is the pronunciation I've heard here in the West, it might be different in the East where people learnt Russian) since German doesn't pronounce chr as /xr/.

Yeah. Honestly what I don't get is why some Spanish-language materials would spell it with Kru- with Jru- is available as an option.
Naturally the best way to know how to pronounce Russian words is, well, to know Russian. :mrgreen:

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby h34 » 2021-08-14, 20:27

Naava wrote:By the way, does Estonian keep the original stress in foreign names?

My impression is that Estonian keeps the original stress in foreign names (and generally in words of foreign origin) a bit more often than Finnish does: Itáália, Hispáánia, Euróópa, Améérika, Madríd, Berlíín, hotéll (fi hótelli :?:), politséi (fi póliisi :?:),…

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Re: Random language thread 6

Postby Linguaphile » 2021-08-14, 21:10

h34 wrote:
Naava wrote:By the way, does Estonian keep the original stress in foreign names?

My impression is that Estonian keeps the original stress in foreign names (and generally in words of foreign origin) a bit more often than Finnish does: Itáália, Hispáánia, Euróópa, Améérika, Madríd, Berlíín, hotéll (fi hótelli :?:), politséi (fi póliisi :?:),…

Mine as well! But there are some (mostly older) loans that do put the stress on the first syllable ((et) díplom, (fi) díplomi, (et) sópran, (fi) sóprani, etc. )
But I think that (et) pólitsei is also one of these, isn't it? I'm sure I've heard it as pólitsei. :hmm:
Very often the ones that keep the original stress are given long vowels on the emphasized syllable, just like in the examples h34 listed (Hispáánia, Euróópa, Améérika, etc).
Even on some of these sometimes speakers emphasize the first syllable anyway, such as (et) perióód ((fi) périodi) which should be pronounced with the stress on the last syllable in Estonian: some people will say (et) périood, or especially when case endings are added, i.e. (et) périoodiks, but it's not technically correct that way.


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