[OFF TOPIC] Language Thread

[heywoodu 16,465]

1 hour ago, thiago_simoes said:

As a native Brazilian Portuguese speaker, I can hardly understand anything Portuguese people say. Whenever there's someone speaking Portuguese on TV with the European Portuguese accent, the shows use captions for us to read. It's hilarious. 

Now, about Latin American Spanish, I believe it's fairly easy for us Brazilians to understand the accents from Peru and Mexico, and not too hard to understand accents from Paraguay and Bolivia. Argentinian Spanish in theory should not be too hard if they speak slowly and don't use slangs. Chilean Spanish is damn near impossible to understand, though, and Uruguayan Spanish is not so far behind. 

 

European Portuguese sounds so incredibly weird and 'flat' to me, it might be because I've grown so used to Brazilian Portuguese  

 

I can't really distinguish Latin American Spanish versions, although I can definitely hear the difference with European Spanish, which to me sounds like the person talking has some sort of speech deficiency (no offense meant, it's just how it sounds to me)  

[phelps 8,727]

personally, I can only distinguish true Spanish from Latin American Spanish spoken above the Equatorial line and those things spoken in Chile on one side and Argentina on the other (can't really understand all they say in Rioplatense, but I can definitely recognize it among the other versions of the Spanish language, as the accent is completely different...or, at least, to me, as an Italian, it sounds completely different)...

[phelps 8,727]

1 hour ago, Olympian1010 said:

While doing research on Switzerland for the 2020 YOG, I came across Romansch. This has to be one of the most unique European languages I’ve seen. It’s really weird. It looks semi-German, but it also has a lot in common with the Romance languages. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll need to use any of it in our coverage since Lausanne is in the French speaking part of Switzerland. Maybe @Ustatsch can give me some more background on Romansch? (I already notice a similarity there )

 

Romance is a true Romance language, one of the 2/3 still strongly connected to the old original Romance language (the others are "Ladino", spoken in part of the Trento province and lower part of South Tyrol, and "Friulano", which is wrongly considered only a dialect spoken in the extreme north-east of Italy, meanwhile it's actually a true original language of the Romance family)...

 

It derives (as all the Romance languages) from the spoken Latin language of the late years of the Roman Empire (which it was quite different from the official language you can normally study at school and it's still the official language of the Vatican State) and it's spoken basically only in part of the Grisuns and it's been also strongly influenced by the ancient German and the Celtic languages, which were normally spoken in that area before the Romans came there...

 

if you want a lot more details, I guess you need to spend a few minutes reading Wikipedia or some other encyclopedia...

[heywoodu 16,465]

2 minutes ago, phelps said:

(the others are "Ladino", spoken in part of the Trento province and lower part of South Tyrol,

 

Although Italy is not one of the four countries recognizing it as an official minority language, apparently  It's quite widespread (small numbers, but a good spread)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish

[heywoodu 16,465]

Good day being 'Bun di' in Romansh makes it already clear enough it's a Romance language by the way  

[phelps 8,727]

23 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

 

Although Italy is not one of the four countries recognizing it as an official minority language, apparently  It's quite widespread (small numbers, but a good spread)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish

 

fixed by the following posts...

we were just going the wrong direction because of my mistake, writing the name of Ladin in the wrong language....

 

23 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Good day being 'Bun di' in Romansh makes it already clear enough it's a Romance language by the way  

 

actually, Bun di sounds very much like Buondì, which is a regular way to say "Good day" here in the northern part of Italy (and it's easily understandable everywhere through the Country, even if it's not generally used in the south)...

Edited December 28, 2019 by phelps

[heywoodu 16,465]

3 minutes ago, phelps said:

 

yes, Ladin is not officially recognized as a language here in Italy (It's only considered a local dialect, because of the very small community still using it)...

 

unfortunately, we only recognize communities speaking modern languages (like French in Val d'Aosta, German in South Tyrol or Slovenian and Croatian in the Triest area), otherwise we should do it with basically every local dialect (and here there are at least 2000 of them), as they all in one way or another descend from ancient languages like Greek, Latin, even Arabic or those spoken by all the invaders that came here during the Middle Age...

 

 

actually, Bun di sounds very much like Buondì, which is a regular way to say "Good day" here in the northern part of Italy (and it's easily understandable everywhere through the Country, even if it's not generally used in the south)...

When I'm in the northern and best part of Italy I just say Guten Morgen/Tag or something similar  

[Dunadan 1,103]

What a mess you guys are making...

Ladin is official only in Trentino-South Tyrol and is certainly not Judaeo-Spanish/Ladino:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish

[heywoodu 16,465]

2 minutes ago, Dunadan said:

What a mess you guys are making...

Ladin is official only in Trentino-South Tyrol and is certainly not Judaeo-Spanish/Ladino:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish

Woah hold on, our Jurassic Italian friend said 'Ladino' so I googled that one  (and that one is Judaeo-Spanish)

 

Didn't know there's also Ladin.

Edited December 28, 2019 by heywoodu

[phelps 8,727]

1 minute ago, Dunadan said:

What a mess you guys are making...

Ladin is official only in Trentino-South Tyrol and is certainly not Judaeo-Spanish/Ladino:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish

 

oh, you're right...

 

we were really m,aking a mess with the other version...