Markku Ilmanen

Deep Frayed Morgues wrote:
    > On 24 Nov 2004 06:01:43 -0800, [email protected] (David)
    > wrote:
    >
    >
    >>I am interested to know what languages is used in Europe, and how
    >>close these languages are to each other in terms of being understood.
    >>I'm thinking (High German) can usually be understood by most Swiss
    >>(East of Fribourg anyway), and Austrians. Certainly many Dutch people
    >>seem to have no problem with German.
    >>Is this info described on a map somewhere ?
    >>Any help appreciated
    >
    >
    > I believe Estonian is considered the most difficult, but that is just
    > from what I have read. It has a spectacular 14 cases (Latin has 5, and
    > German has 4)

Finnish has 15!

, no articles, no future tense, double infinitives
    > (however that works), and no gender.
    >
    > Apparently it's related to Finnish, although the two are a long way
    > from being interchangeable.

Reading Estonian is not so difficult for a finn (although some words
have a totally different meaning in the two languages), but
understanding spoken language may be. Dunno how it is the other way?

    > It also sounds quite interesting too, with
    > quite a few 'muted' tones, and the 'L' sound is kind of rolls around
    > in the mouth.
    >
    > Here's more info:
    > http://muhu.www.ee/By_Subject/Language/lang-faq.html
    > ---
    > DFM

ItalianJob17

There are 5 latin derivated idioms in this world... hehehe
italian
french
spanish
poruguese
romanian

Obviously any people speaking one of these idioms can undersand a lots of
written words in other languages, because of common etimology in most of
cases.
The clever the person is, the most is understood, italians in my example,
can (if not too dumb, obviously!!) understand the majority of written
spanish, a bit less in portuguese, french and romanian.
Most of these idioms, have words that thus not similar to common spoken
italian, resemble a lot the italian that was spoken, maybe at the beginning
of the century form our grandparents, or even before.

Lots of spanish words are very similar to regional dialects, spanish is easy
for a italian to learn, but is easier if you live in center-south italy than
in north, mostly because of the "closed" pronunciation of some vowels in
northern italy.
I live in Rome and loads of spanish sentences are incredibly similar to Rome
dialect! Really a lot!!
My first school lesson of spanish was a complete disaster, because we were
laughing all the time, telling to the teacher that we always spoke spanish
even if we didnt know!!! hehehehe

Talking with spanish people abroad, they said me that they understood most
of italian, like we do with their idiom, expecially if spoken slowly. And
spanish, like italians are good at gestures communication, which helps a
lot!

A romanian friend of mine made me read stuff in romanian, and it was
incredibly similar to italian, he learnt italian in 1 year of work here, and
wasn't too difficult for him. For this reason more and more romanians come
to work here, because for them italian is the easier idiom to learn.

The most "partucular" of latin idioms is french, mostly because of its
pronunciation, there's one more thing to say, almost all the french i met
didn't make any effort to understand italian, not because they're not smart,
(i would never say that, i got lots of good french friends in Sud Ouest) but
simply because they don't care understanding you! They love their idiom,
they have a strong nationalism feeling, and this is good in some cases and
bad in others...
From my experience (and maybe i was particularly unlucky!) if you go to
France and speak french, everybody "loves you", if not... they look you like
an alien just landed on earth, and people you try to communicate with, won't
do the minimal effort to understand you, even the simplest gestures (my
parents only speak italian and always managed to travel europe and survive
to foreing cultures, except for france!!! :-) )

I don't know much about portuguese, in my Lisbon experience it was quite
easy to understand written words, but i speak 4 languages (italian, spanish,
english, french) and maybe this helped me a lot, if spoken i could
understand only a few, and only if it was spoken VERY VERY SLOWLY.

Well this is my opinion, according to my traveling/study experiences!
I hope it helped!
BYE

LAURA


"David" <[email protected]> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:[email protected] m...
    > I am interested to know what languages is used in Europe, and how
    > close these languages are to each other in terms of being understood.
    > I'm thinking (High German) can usually be understood by most Swiss
    > (East of Fribourg anyway), and Austrians. Certainly many Dutch people
    > seem to have no problem with German.
    > Is this info described on a map somewhere ?
    > Any help appreciated
    > Dave

S Viemeister

[email protected] wrote:
    >
    > If you know English and a little German (or maybe also German and a little
    > English), you can get a surprising amount of sense out of a Dutch
    > newspaper without knowing a word of Dutch!
Knowing German and Scots made it possible for me to understand a fair
amount of Dutch.

Deep Frayed Morgues

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 19:05:30 +0100, "tim"
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >"_merlinO_" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >news:[email protected]...
    >> "Trish" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >> news:[email protected]...
    >> [...]
    >>> Italians seem to understand Romanian and vice versa.
    >> I'm not so sure ;-) (I'm italian)
    >Have you tried?
    >Been to a couple of web pages and it really does look like
    >it's a page full of italian.
    >CNN recently had a profile of Romanian children being sold to
    >the west. I could understand about 30% of what they said,
    >my Italian colleage in excess of 60%

Romanian is very similar to Italian, that's for sure, but French has
also had a great influence. 'Merci' is perfectly acceptable for thank
you, for example. The sound is somewhere between Italian and Spanish.

I have read that Romanian is closer to classical Latin than anything
else. It's certainly not difficult to learn, coming from a Latin
language background.
---
DFM

Deep Frayed Morgues

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 19:25:47 +0100, "ItalianJob17"
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >There are 5 latin derivated idioms in this world... hehehe
    >italian
    >french
    >spanish
    >poruguese
    >romanian

What about Romansch from Switzerland?

    :o)
---
DFM

Arkadya

    >>There are 5 latin derivated idioms in this world... hehehe
    >>italian
    >>french
    >>spanish
    >>poruguese
    >>romanian

Add Catalan and Corsican
Never Forgive, Never Forget
9-11-01

B Vaughan

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:50:38 +0100, [email protected] wrote:

    >On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:32:58 +0100, B Vaughan<[email protected]> wrote:
    >>On 24 Nov 2004 06:01:43 -0800, [email protected] (David)
    >>wrote:
    >>>I am interested to know what languages is used in Europe, and how
    >>>close these languages are to each other in terms of being understood.
    >>>I'm thinking (High German) can usually be understood by most Swiss
    >>>(East of Fribourg anyway), and Austrians. Certainly many Dutch people
    >>>seem to have no problem with German.
    >>Dutch is an entirely different language from German, and if Dutch
    >>people can understand it a little, it's because they have at least
    >>some understanding of the differences.
    >It's because they have the same roots.

Well, of course, but what I meant is that a Dutch person who had
studied German at least a little would understand which things were
likely to differ and therefore be more likely to understand German.

--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

Chancellor Of The Duchy Of Besses O' Th' Barn

Hatunen <[email protected]> wrote:

    > On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 12:50:37 -0500, Gunter Herrmann
    > <[email protected]> wrote:
    >
    > >Hi!
    > >
    > >Deep Frayed Morgues wrote:
    > >
    > >> I believe Estonian is considered the most difficult
    > >
    > >> Apparently it's related to Finnish, although the two are a long way
    > >> from being interchangeable.
    > >
    > >Hungarian is a third language belonging to the same group, and
    > >there are other similar languages in Western Siberia.
    >
    > While Finn and Estonian are fairly close to mutually intelligible
    > (which made it easy for Estonians to enjoy Finnish TV during the
    > Cold War), Hungarian is not even close to mutually intelligible
    > with Finn or Estonian.

Hungarian and Finnish/Estonian are sometimes lumped together, along with
Basque- not because they are like each other, but that they are
unrelated to any other Indo-european languages. Are there any others in
this category.

--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.net
usenet (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk

B Vaughan

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:58:29 +0000 (UTC), [email protected]
wrote:

    >In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] (B
    >Vaughan) wrote:
    >> Italians can usually understand a bit of Spanish, but the reverse
    >> doesn't seem to be true.
    >I've sometimes fallen back on Italian when I can't recall - or just never
    >knew - a Spanish word, and it's usually worked. That's not the same as
    >understanding the language fully, of course: it may just be a matter of
    >sharing so many roots.

My only experience is that I've known a lot of people in Italy who can
understand Spanish fairly well, and a number of Spanish speakers who
have told me they managed pretty well in Italy speaking only Spanish.
However, when we visited Spain a few years ago, my husband tried a
number of times to communicate in Italian, and no one seemed to
understand a word he was saying.

    >> Dutch is an entirely different language from German, and if Dutch
    >> people can understand it a little, it's because they have at least
    >> some understanding of the differences.
    >If you know English and a little German (or maybe also German and a little
    >English), you can get a surprising amount of sense out of a Dutch
    >newspaper without knowing a word of Dutch!

However, I don't think you'd understand much of the spoken language. I
studied German in school and I lived in the Netherlands for a year,
and I was able to read Dutch passably well, but I had much less
success speaking and understanding.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

B Vaughan

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 18:15:18 GMT, Deep Frayed Morgues
<deepfreudmoors@eITmISaACTUALLYiREAL!l.nu> wrote:

    >On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:32:58 +0100, B Vaughan<[email protected]> wrote:
    >>The Scandanavian languages (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian) can be
    >>mutually understood to a certain extent.
    >I think Danish differs quite markedly from the other two in a spoken
    >sense, even if it's similar when written.

A good friend of mine who is Danish taught at Lund University in
Sweden for a few years, and lived in Sweden at the time. She told me
the two languages were mutually comprehensible to a certain extent, at
least to educated speakers, who were most likely to understand the
various ways in which the languages differed. (This is the point I was
trying to make about Dutch and German.)

As for Norwegian, it was greatly influenced by Danish during the
period of Danish rule. However, there was a deliberate attempt to
remove Danish influences at the beginning of the 20th century. I don't
know for sure what the actual degree of mutual comprehension is, but I
think there's some.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

B Vaughan

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:44:02 +0100, "_merlinO_"
<[email protected]> wrote:

    > ... Portuguese is similar
    >to Brazilian, not Italian or Spanish.s

Portuguese is the official language of Brazil.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

Pmlt

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:44:02 +0100, "_merlinO_"
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >"Trish" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >news:[email protected]...
    >[...]
    >> Italians seem to understand Romanian and vice versa.
    >I'm not so sure ;-) (I'm italian)
    >Italians can understand a bit of Spanish, and maybe the reverse is true (are
    >similar languages but many words are very different). Portuguese is similar
    >to Brazilian, not Italian or Spanish.s


Brazilian vs Portuguese, is the same as Argentinian vs Spanish,
Quebequois vs French, American vs English. I believe you get the
point.

B Vaughan

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 13:13:35 -0800, Hatunen <[email protected]> wrote:

    >>The Brazilian language DOES NOT exist. It's called Portuguese over there.
    >It's not a question of what it's *called". It's a question of
    >whether it's a separate language, and that raises whole cans of
    >worms about what a language is; and that brings up the old quip
    > that a language is a dialect with an army and navy.

I can falsify that quip easily. What language is spoken in the USA?

The language taught in school in Brazil is Portuguese. The newspapers
are written in Portuguese. There may be people in Brazil who speak
minority languages or who speak Portuguese badly, but the language of
the country is not "Brazilian".

    >Is Haitian French? Is Quebecoise? Usw.

Educated people in Haiti generally have a good knowledge of French, at
least they read and write it quite well. There is also Creole, which
is a mixture of French and other languages. Most Haitians who speak
French also speak Creole, which is really not French but a patois, if
that's not pejorative. Again, there is no language called Haitian.

The French spoken in Quebec is no more different from the European
version than American English and British English. The accent is
different and there are some vocabulary differences.


--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

B Vaughan

On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:25:35 -0000, "Trish" <[email protected]>
wrote:

    >"_merlinO_" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >news:[email protected]...
    >> "Trish" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >> news:[email protected]...
    >> [...]
    >>> Italians seem to understand Romanian and vice versa.
    >> I'm not so sure ;-) (I'm italian)

[snip]

    >Perhaps I am wrong. I can only go on what I see in our school.
    >The Romanian children can easily make themselves understood to our Italian
    >classroom assistants, even before they start classes in Italian.

Children pick up a language very quickly, especially if they have been
playing with other children who speak the language.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup

Trish

"B Vaughan" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:25:35 -0000, "Trish" <[email protected]>
    > wrote:
    >>"_merlinO_" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >>news:[email protected]...
    >>> "Trish" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >>> news:[email protected]...
    >>> [...]
    >>>> Italians seem to understand Romanian and vice versa.
    >>> I'm not so sure ;-) (I'm italian)
    > [snip]
    >>Perhaps I am wrong. I can only go on what I see in our school.
    >>The Romanian children can easily make themselves understood to our Italian
    >>classroom assistants, even before they start classes in Italian.
    > Children pick up a language very quickly, especially if they have been
    > playing with other children who speak the language.

Perhaps I did not make it clear. I mean 13 year olds, from Romania, in an
English speaking school, encountering our (native) Italian-speaking
classroom assistants for the first time.
They seem to understand each other.

--
Trish
Dublin, Ireland