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Post by Jelly Jellybean on Jul 20, 2020 17:29:43 GMT
This thread makes me wonder what the various posters around here's native languages are. Grunts and farts. It has taken me years of schooling to achieve passable English. |
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Jul 20, 2020 17:58:11 GMT
I'm still trying to master English.
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Post by fia on Jul 20, 2020 18:42:00 GMT
This thread is why I joined this forum. Thank you all for your excellent store of knowledge and humor!  |
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Post by speedwell on Jul 20, 2020 19:12:56 GMT
This thread makes me wonder what the various posters around here's native languages are. Me too! Do you want to make a thread for asking, or can I? English. American English. But my father's native language is Hungarian, and I currently have a good deal of exposure to Spanish, German, Latin, modern Irish, culinary French, and musician's Italian. I know the usual clueless-Westerner-trying-to-be-multicultural amount of Sanskrit, and I can say some offensive things in Arabic courtesy of some oilfield engineers in Dubai who thought they were making a fool of the American businesswoman (they got fired when the facilities manager walked into the room, and I got told not to encourage their nonsense anymore). |
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Post by bedinsis on Jul 20, 2020 19:43:49 GMT
This thread makes me wonder what the various posters around here's native languages are. Me too! Do you want to make a thread for asking, or can I? Do as you wish, I won't start a thread about it. My native language is Swedish. |
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Post by TBeholder on Jul 20, 2020 19:51:40 GMT
Kat appears to be at last impressed. And even somewhat intimidated. :]
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Post by Gulby on Jul 20, 2020 20:04:29 GMT
Oh no, what did you do, giving me another wonderful webcomic to read all the way through!! Also, having just read the first 10 pages, I had to check the date they were published. Speaking of Iceland going into lockdown due to an infectious illness that is especially dangerous to old people, young people and "apparently fat people?"... prophetic words coming from 2013. BTW, I have no idea how this story continues, so no spoilers! Ah yes. I should have warned folk about that part, which does get eerily close to home at times. Sorry! Ok now. I know I shouldn't have clicked on that link. That IS a good webcomic. Well drawn. Good characters. I'm hooked. Thanks. T_T And I love that we get to see Brinnie again. I can't wait to see what is coming up next! Edit : And I'm french. Speedwell, what is "culinary french"? |
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Post by netherdan on Jul 20, 2020 20:11:32 GMT
Brinnie's just so happy to see Anja, it makes me smile! Deadly serious to excitedly happy in under one second. I wonder what her reaction will be to the fact that Anja has a daughter – did she know? And that Surma had a daughter, meaning that she's gone … or perhaps Surma was kind of reincarnated in a way … or that they're doubled … or that neither of them belongs in this timeline … Anyway, if she's reacting like that to just seeing Anja, I look forward to her reactions to all the rest of this! There's a chance she might just casually pull Surma out of one of the Annies and have them interact while she's visiting, being a valkyrie and all (don't mind me, I'm going by video game lore here). Or point out that although they're split their soul is still a single one (and pull Surma out of said soul, just because) There's also the chance that she goes "what the Hel is that" while assuming an offensive stance towards Kat, because she's seeing Kat's robosoul Edit: also, Brazilian Portuguese is my native language (please don't judge me for my country trying to take this pandemic's leadership for number of infected) |
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Post by saardvark on Jul 20, 2020 21:02:44 GMT
well, Finnish isn't Indo-European - it isn't even in the same language family as the others. Very different structurally. I lived there a few summers, and tried to learn a bit, but found it very difficult ... Example: English: 3 = three, German: drei, Spanish: tres.... kinda similar, all Indo-European. Finnish: kolmi. Really unrelated.... Yes, AFAIK the only living language Finnish is related to is Hungarian (and Klingon, probably). Its quite close to Estonian. Beyond that, its related to a bunch of smaller languages which don't have their own countries... Sami, spoken by the Lapps (mostly N. Finland & Sweden), Karelian (spoken E of Finland), and a bunch of native languages spoken in N Russia. Finnish and Hungarian are the biggest in the language group (Uralic) tho, you're quite right. ... and Hungarian and Finnish are rather distantly related; only a handful of simple words in common (including the word for "hand" itself, I think...) (EDIT: Hungarian likely evolved a lot during the long migration of its speakers from near the Ural mountains behind Moscow to their present location....) |
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Post by Eversist on Jul 20, 2020 21:13:14 GMT
Anyone else find the background in panel 2 reminiscent of the inside of a traditional mead/banquet hall or similar structure? Could just be some other symbology or abstract lines tying back to Brinnie's knot symbol like in the last page, but it's kinda nifty. -- www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=102Funny how Brinnie doesn't get mentioned at all on these pages. I was wondering if Annie/Kat could even have the slightest possibility of recognizing her from that photo; doesn't seem so. www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1010And I doubt this needs to come up, hah. |
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Post by speedwell on Jul 20, 2020 21:59:20 GMT
Ah yes. I should have warned folk about that part, which does get eerily close to home at times. Sorry! Ok now. I know I shouldn't have clicked on that link. That IS a good webcomic. Well drawn. Good characters. I'm hooked. Thanks. T_T And I love that we get to see Brinnie again. I can't wait to see what is coming up next! Edit : And I'm french. Speedwell, what is "culinary french"? It's the point of proficiency you are at when your husband is a trained chef and you read cookbooks cover to cover  I don't speak much more actual French than what it takes to sing "Lady Marmalade" and get around in Southern Louisiana. But I can rattle off "Poêlée de légumes d’été et suprême de poulet grillé" as easily as I can say "Jesus, it's hot, let's throw some chicken and seasonal veg into a pan". Speaking of that recipe, I could make it without bothering to translate it in my head. www.cuisineaz.com/recettes/poelee-de-legumes-d-ete-et-supreme-de-poulet-grille-87306.aspx And it looks good; I might do it this week, using a Irish seaweed salt blend in place of that overpriced salt mix they recommend  |
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Post by speedwell on Jul 20, 2020 22:08:00 GMT
Edit: also, Brazilian Portuguese is my native language (please don't judge me for my country trying to take this pandemic's leadership for number of infected) If you don't blame me for all the crap being pulled by the pimple on the butt of unwashed America that we call our president, it's a deal |
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Post by Runningflame on Jul 21, 2020 1:28:22 GMT
Oh man, I love that poetry. It really reminds me of Anglo-Saxon / Old English--no coincidence, since they're related languages that used similar types of verse. In another non-coincidence, it reminds me of Tolkien. I'm an American English speaker. My linguistic proclivities tend toward the dead languages--or maybe I should say toward learning about languages rather than using them; I really admire people who are fluent in multiple languages. I do know enough German to guess the punchline of "Sandra und Woo" maybe 20% of the time before turning to the English version. (Thanks to that comic I've picked up words like "nett," "Kunst," and "Flammenwerfer.") Edit: also, Brazilian Portuguese is my native language (please don't judge me for my country trying to take this pandemic's leadership for number of infected) If you don't blame me for all the crap being pulled by the pimple on the butt of unwashed America that we call our president, it's a deal I, uh, wouldn't have put it that way, but yeah... pot/kettle... similar sentiment. |
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Post by wies on Jul 21, 2020 5:15:12 GMT
My native language is Dutch, which shares some words with Brinnie's opening poem. Like "dag" or "heil". Finding the resemblances in families of languages is fun.
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Post by philman on Jul 21, 2020 7:40:31 GMT
My native language is Dutch, which shares some words with Brinnie's opening poem. Like "dag" or "heil". Finding the resemblances in families of languages is fun. I guess you expect a certain amount of similarity between germanic languages especially (Nordics/dutch/english etc), but it's always cool when you can dig them out. My first language is British English but can understand a little basic swedish too as have been living here for a few years now (It is my shame that I cannot speak swedish properly yet, but I don't need it for work and almost everyone I meet switches to english as soon as they hear 2 words out of my mouth!). I find the similarities in swedish and english really interesting, and especially when you get words that look completely different when written down, but sound almost exactly the same when spoken. "Kyrka" is the one I always think of, it looks like nothing in english when written down, but when you realise that the "ky" is pronounced like "sh" or "ch", and you say it out loud, it becomes obvious that it is the same root as "church" (And actually makes even more sense when I remembered that the Scottish word for church is Kirk). |
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Post by Eily on Jul 21, 2020 8:37:15 GMT
My native language is Dutch, which shares some words with Brinnie's opening poem. Like "dag" or "heil". Finding the resemblances in families of languages is fun. I find the similarities in swedish and english really interesting, and especially when you get words that look completely different when written down, but sound almost exactly the same when spoken. "Kyrka" is the one I always think of, it looks like nothing in english when written down, but when you realise that the "ky" is pronounced like "sh" or "ch", and you say it out loud, it becomes obvious that it is the same root as "church" (And actually makes even more sense when I remembered that the Scottish word for church is Kirk). This reminds me of learning that Norwegian languages have words taken from French, like sjåfør, I stared at it for a while, trying not to look at the translation while undersand how the Hel anyone could imagine any ressemblance to French in that word. That is, again, until you look into pronunciation and realize it's actually closer to the French chauffeur than what English could produce. |
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Post by pyradonis on Jul 21, 2020 10:10:55 GMT
You know, when reading quickly through a thread, some post directly following each other form interesting new dialogues... If you don't blame me for all the crap being pulled by the pimple on the butt of unwashed America that we call our president, it's a deal Oh man, I love that poetry. Anyway, since everyone just started saying it here. My native language is German, and Italian is the first one I learned as a child, having a grandfather from Italy. English is, of course, the first one we all learn at school, and my French is...good enough to read and write it, at least. |
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Post by saardvark on Jul 21, 2020 12:05:00 GMT
Kat appears to be at last impressed. And even somewhat intimidated. :] ... and the Annies are chill, "interesting, a new Demi-god". (they may even sort of understand Brin, given their facility with languages) |
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Post by csj on Jul 21, 2020 12:09:38 GMT
well, Finnish isn't Indo-European - it isn't even in the same language family as the others. Very different structurally. I lived there a few summers, and tried to learn a bit, but found it very difficult ... Example: English: 3 = three, German: drei, Spanish: tres.... kinda similar, all Indo-European. Finnish: kolmi. Really unrelated.... Yes, AFAIK the only living language Finnish is related to is Hungarian (and Klingon, probably). The Uralic languages do exist as a group elsewhere, but have been heavily suppressed in their original range across Siberia and the like as a result of policies of the Russian Empire (and subsequent regimes). If you really want an alien language, try Euskara though there are a number of indigenous languages in the New World and Australia that are also very unique. :3 |
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Post by speedwell on Jul 21, 2020 12:13:43 GMT
You know, when reading quickly through a thread, some post directly following each other form interesting new dialogues... If you don't blame me for all the crap being pulled by the pimple on the butt of unwashed America that we call our president, it's a deal Oh man, I love that poetry. Anyway, since everyone just started saying it here. My native language is German, and Italian is the first one I learned as a child, having a grandfather from Italy. English is, of course, the first one we all learn at school, and my French is...good enough to read and write it, at least. Come to think of it, the president here in Ireland, for whom I thankfully do not need to apologise, is a poet. Ireland runs to that sort of thing. You are a real polyglot, not a half-educated linguistic guttersnipe like me, heh. |
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Post by speedwell on Jul 21, 2020 12:25:32 GMT
Yes, AFAIK the only living language Finnish is related to is Hungarian (and Klingon, probably). The Uralic languages do exist as a group elsewhere, but have been heavily suppressed in their original range across Siberia and the like as a result of policies of the Russian Empire (and subsequent regimes). If you really want an alien language, try Euskara though there are a number of indigenous languages in the New World and Australia that are also very unique. :3 Euskara is an "isolate" language, an orphan, not an alien language, heh. It belongs to a language family nearly all of whose members are long-dead languages. It is no more "alien" than Korean, which does not seem to have relatives either, depending on whether you consider one of its dialects a separate language (and don't get me started, I have a language course in Scots English on my shelf I've been meaning to pick up after I'm solid enough in my Ulster Irish to not get it confused with Scottish Gaelic). |
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Post by saardvark on Jul 21, 2020 12:38:19 GMT
Yes, AFAIK the only living language Finnish is related to is Hungarian (and Klingon, probably). The Uralic languages do exist as a group elsewhere, but have been heavily suppressed in their original range across Siberia and the like as a result of policies of the Russian Empire (and subsequent regimes). If you really want an alien language, try Euskara though there are a number of indigenous languages in the New World and Australia that are also very unique. :3 I hadn't heard the name before and googled it and it's Basque! (The correct name for the language of the Basque people, that is). One of the "language isolates" unrelated to any other known language. Probably a last remnant of the pre-Indo-European peoples that used to occupy Europe, now hanging on in the high Pyrenees. The Georgians in the Caucasus mountains are a another one. The two *might* be related to each other, but its highly debated. |
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Post by wies on Jul 21, 2020 14:54:23 GMT
My native language is Dutch, which shares some words with Brinnie's opening poem. Like "dag" or "heil". Finding the resemblances in families of languages is fun. I guess you expect a certain amount of similarity between germanic languages especially (Nordics/dutch/english etc), but it's always cool when you can dig them out. My first language is British English but can understand a little basic swedish too as have been living here for a few years now (It is my shame that I cannot speak swedish properly yet, but I don't need it for work and almost everyone I meet switches to english as soon as they hear 2 words out of my mouth!). I find the similarities in swedish and english really interesting, and especially when you get words that look completely different when written down, but sound almost exactly the same when spoken. "Kyrka" is the one I always think of, it looks like nothing in english when written down, but when you realise that the "ky" is pronounced like "sh" or "ch", and you say it out loud, it becomes obvious that it is the same root as "church" (And actually makes even more sense when I remembered that the Scottish word for church is Kirk). And in Dutch, "church" is "kerk". Christianity was pretty thorough with the germanic and celtic tribes. |
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Post by bedinsis on Jul 21, 2020 16:07:00 GMT
My first language is British English but can understand a little basic swedish too as have been living here for a few years now [---] Oh? Where in Sweden do you live? (feel free to ignore this question if it is too personal) |
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Post by fia on Jul 21, 2020 18:26:46 GMT
Since we're sharing, my native language is Mexican Spanish*, and also grew up speaking American English, so I'm native-fluency in both.
In high school and college I studied some Japanese, Russian, Ancient Greek, and Coptic (like late Egyptian / early Christian Coptic). I am only middling with all of those, but can do written translation of the latter three with a good dictionary, in descending order, and follow conversations more or less in the first and second, with a little bit of spoken vocabulary that's atrophied somewhat since college.
I do love languages though and am constantly itching to learn more of them. I'd dearly love a year or two to dive into contemporary and ancient Nahua, Latin, ancient Mayan, and maybe Sanskrit. And I'd love not to lose my other languages and improve on them a bit too! There's no feeling like having a little bit more of the world in your sphere of comprehension.
Oh, and, for anyone contemplating learning a new language –– Russian is easier than it seems in some ways, and it helps a loooot with declension-filled languages like Ancient Greek, and other modern languages. I wish I had learned Russian before Greek, but I didn't! It did have retroactive positive effects on my Ancient Greek comprehension though. Suddenly the semantics felt more natural.
Oh and if you're fluent in Spanish you can totally understand Italian, and I suspect vice-versa. I don't speak Italian but I've had full conversations with Italians in my lifetime and we seemed to understand each other well enough. Portuguese and French though, not so much. Tried to learn French once, didn't go so well....
* - I specify because while I understand most Castilian Spaniards and definitely northern South Americans and Central Americans, I find spoken Cuban Spanish and Argentinian Spanish really really hard to comprehend when spoken at natural speed. The spoken phonology and morphology don't get automatically parsed into my dialect when I'm hearing it.
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Post by arf on Jul 22, 2020 2:56:00 GMT
well, Finnish isn't Indo-European - it isn't even in the same language family as the others. Very different structurally. I lived there a few summers, and tried to learn a bit, but found it very difficult ... Example: English: 3 = three, German: drei, Spanish: tres.... kinda similar, all Indo-European. Finnish: kolmi. Really unrelated.... Yes, AFAIK the only living language Finnish is related to is Hungarian (and Klingon, probably). (including Estonian, apparently). They're collectively referred to as 'Uralic', as I'm sure Surma* would know. * 'Surma' also appears in Stand Still. Stay Silent. You wouldn't want to meet her, though. |
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Post by arf on Jul 22, 2020 3:09:21 GMT
My Father once remarked that he worked with two people, a Swede and a 'Geordie' (from the old Danelaw around Newcastle on Tyne). Geordie is a quite marked dialect, and the Swede noted that, while it was gibberish to him as English, he could *just* make it out if he thought of it as a form of Scandinavian.
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Post by netherdan on Jul 22, 2020 3:44:55 GMT
I have a feeling I might stumble upon someone from around here at one the Polyglots facebook groups (although I only count myself as a "polyglot" by the logic of "poly" meaning "more than one"). As an aspiring polyglot procrastinator I'm relieved to know that Russian could not be as hard as I thought it would, as it is one of the languages I pretend to pretend to learn.
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Post by philman on Jul 22, 2020 11:12:30 GMT
My first language is British English but can understand a little basic swedish too as have been living here for a few years now [---] Oh? Where in Sweden do you live? (feel free to ignore this question if it is too personal) Haha, I'm in Stockholm, so whether it's personal or not, living in a city of a million people is hardly a strong identifier! I work at one of the universities though, and as with academia in every country around 50% of my colleagues are foreigners like me, hence the limited opportunities to practice my swedish in day to day life. How about you, where do the other Swedish GC fans live? |
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Post by pyradonis on Jul 22, 2020 12:20:28 GMT
I guess you expect a certain amount of similarity between germanic languages especially (Nordics/dutch/english etc), but it's always cool when you can dig them out. My first language is British English but can understand a little basic swedish too as have been living here for a few years now (It is my shame that I cannot speak swedish properly yet, but I don't need it for work and almost everyone I meet switches to english as soon as they hear 2 words out of my mouth!). I find the similarities in swedish and english really interesting, and especially when you get words that look completely different when written down, but sound almost exactly the same when spoken. "Kyrka" is the one I always think of, it looks like nothing in english when written down, but when you realise that the "ky" is pronounced like "sh" or "ch", and you say it out loud, it becomes obvious that it is the same root as "church" (And actually makes even more sense when I remembered that the Scottish word for church is Kirk). And in Dutch, "church" is "kerk". Christianity was pretty thorough with the germanic and celtic tribes. It's "Kirche" in German, all very similar.
Since we're sharing, my native language is Mexican Spanish*, and also grew up speaking American English, so I'm native-fluency in both. In high school and college I studied some Japanese, Russian, Ancient Greek, and Coptic (like late Egyptian / early Christian Coptic). I am only middling with all of those, but can do written translation of the latter three with a good dictionary, in descending order, and follow conversations more or less in the first and second, with a little bit of spoken vocabulary that's atrophied somewhat since college. I do love languages though and am constantly itching to learn more of them. I'd dearly love a year or two to dive into contemporary and ancient Nahua, Latin, ancient Mayan, and maybe Sanskrit. And I'd love not to lose my other languages and improve on them a bit too! There's no feeling like having a little bit more of the world in your sphere of comprehension. Oh, and, for anyone contemplating learning a new language –– Russian is easier than it seems in some ways, and it helps a loooot with declension-filled languages like Ancient Greek, and other modern languages. I wish I had learned Russian before Greek, but I didn't! It did have retroactive positive effects on my Ancient Greek comprehension though. Suddenly the semantics felt more natural. Oh and if you're fluent in Spanish you can totally understand Italian, and I suspect vice-versa. I don't speak Italian but I've had full conversations with Italians in my lifetime and we seemed to understand each other well enough. Portuguese and French though, not so much. Tried to learn French once, didn't go so well.... [...] Hah, I assume it's hard to get the occasion of following a conversation in Ancient Greek or Ancient Coptic in the first place! Totally second the rest of your post, if I could, I would also learn at least twenty more languages. But for now I'm satisfied if I can add C++ to the list of languages I speak.  And I can confirm that it works in both directions, my knowledge of Italian lets me understand or at least guess a lot of both spoken and written Spanish. The thing with French is that it sounds so different from Italian and Spanish that you can only make out the (many) similarities when reading it. Dutch and German work together just like Italian and Spanish, by the way. For everyday conversation there is no need to learn one language if you speak the other. Just use the one you know and change your pronounciation so that it sound like the other, and everyone will understand. Meh, and after a few days in the Netherlands I understood most everyday Dutch as well, it'll be the same for them when visiting Germany.
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I don't speak much more actual French than what it takes to sing "Lady Marmalade" and get around in Southern Louisiana. But I can rattle off "Poêlée de légumes d’été et suprême de poulet grillé" as easily as I can say "Jesus, it's hot, let's throw some chicken and seasonal veg into a pan".
