General Languages and Linguistics Discussion

[Avaerilon]

In light of the considerable interest and background some members of the region have with regards to languages, it makes sense that we should have a general thread on the forum to talk about our skills, interests and just be able to discuss different languages in general, along with any interesting linguistic aspects we might come across. So, here's the place to chat about languages  (rofl)

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I'm a native speaker of (British) English, but over the last few years I've learned enough Welsh (Cymraeg) at university to be fairly competent. I'm also lucky enough to have learned a fair bit basic Dutch (Nederlands) through a language course in Tilburg, and I speak a little bit of Irish (Gaeilge), French (Français) and  a tiny bit of German (Deutsch). My main interest and expertise is in the Celtic languages, but I'm also interested in languages in general ^_^ Hoping to learn Italian at some point soon, too. 

[Mons Garle]

Excellent! I'm so pleased we've got on a thread on this!!

**Tries and fails to drag self away**

I have to say Welsh fascinates me no end - but the whole mutations thing was my stumbling block. Caerdydd... Nghaerdydd?! Ermm... :S

However as with Ava my first language is British English (or more correctly a bizarre Northern variety), and at the moment I'm studying Spanish with German at uni (hopefully picking up Italian next year). I could have chosen Catalan, but to be honest I feel it's too similar to Spanish and to French, which I did at A-level.

I can't believe you've also done Irish - so cool! I feel I should learn that as some of my ancestry is Northern and Southern Irish, I'm worried I might be getting told off in the after-world for not carrying it on :D

[Northern Inertia]

As someone who's had a Welsh English teacher (who was a pioneer in spreading awareness of Welsh in the 60s and 70s) I certainly share some interest in that language - can't pretend I know any, unfortunately.

I speak Swedish, Finnish and English fluently, and am lucky enough to get to use all three every day - both in speech and in writing. I also know enough Spanish to perhaps check in at a hotel or order at a restaurant, but certainly not enough to participate in proper conversation. I haven't studied or used that language for a while, so it's become rather rusty.

[Chameliya]

Hi, my name's Jas and I'm a linguaholic.

I'm a native speaker of British English and Nepali (नेपाली) although my Nepali (which is actually blend of Nepali and Chamling (चाम्लिङ), my ethnic group's language) is nowhere near as good as my English - it is improving though.  I'm currently doing a German (Deutsch) GCSE so I've got some basic knowledge of it (good enough that I can get the gist of most German on NS) and I did do French (Français) a couple of years ago and Spanish (Español) in primary school but I've pretty much lost of all it except a few words and phrases.  I can also understand very basic Hindi (हिंदी) but I can only count to ten in it.  I'm going to Iceland in October and I plan to learn a bit of Icelandic (Íslenska) for that so hopefully I can add that to my list as well.

[Mons Garle]

Swedish and Icelandic have been mentioned, I absolutely love them both - just haven't the chance to study them in any detail as yet!

Swedish I love for the way it sounds, and Icelandic the fact that people can read the sagas without much difficulty. Interestingly the Danish/Norwegian/Swedish influence is definitely apparent in the way North-Eastern/Yorkshire people speak. When younger I was never a 'child' to my family, but rather a 'bairn'... Which has exactly the same meaning as child but is related to the corresponding Scandinavian word 'barn'. Indeed many Newcastle people, generally older, still say 'hoos' for 'house', or that they're 'garn yem' rather than 'going home'. The phonology of which can be attributed to our Nordic neighbours!

[Chameliya]

I love Swedish and Icelandic. I find the way Swedish speakers accentuate different sounds so fascinating. And with Icelandic, I just really love the sounds of þ and ð. Also, I really like the diacritics they use, rings, diaereses and acute accents just look so cool.

[Avaerilon]

Apr 10, 2015 11:23:20 GMT Mons Garle said:

I have to say Welsh fascinates me no end - but the whole mutations thing was my stumbling block. Caerdydd... Nghaerdydd?! Ermm... :S

It's odd compared to other languages, or rather language families, since Insular Celtic languages all have initial constant mutation, but it makes sense in the context of speaking and hearing; a mutation keeps the flow and rhythm when speaking going. For instance, saying "y Cymraeg", 'uh cum-rye-g,', means you have to make a little more effort to say that hard 'c' after the 'y'. Swapping that 'c' to a 'g' and saying "y Gymraeg," 'uh gum-rye-g,' is easier and more efficient in terms of muscular movement to say. Although it perplexes everyone (and I do mean everyone) at first, you eventually get used to which prepositions cause which kind of mutation; there's even a rhyme about it. Thankfully nobody really speaks Welsh and uses all the mutations where grammatically correct, so there's no so much of a worry in spoken Welsh. 

I can't believe you've also done Irish - so cool!

Ugh, modern Irish is the most difficult language I've ever tried to learn. Its grammar is ridiculous and its spelling, unlike Welsh, makes no sense (Welsh is phonetic, Irish needs about a billion glide vowels). Beautiful sounding thing, but it's a real trial learning it xD 

When younger I was never a 'child' to my family, but rather a 'bairn'... Which has exactly the same meaning as child but is related to the corresponding Scandinavian word 'barn'. Indeed many Newcastle people, generally older, still say 'hoos' for 'house', or that they're 'garn yem' rather than 'going home'. The phonology of which can be attributed to our Nordic neighbours!

Yep, that's the Viking influence for you! 'Barn' is still, I think, Norse for 'child.' 

[Avaerilon]

Apr 10, 2015 13:00:57 GMT Chameliya said:

 I'm going to Iceland in October and I plan to learn a bit of Icelandic (Íslenska) for that so hopefully I can add that to my list as well.

Ooh, that sounds fun! Hope you have a lovely time with the language, as well as the landscape  :)

[Chameliya]

Apr 10, 2015 14:16:19 GMT Avaerilon said:

Ugh, modern Irish is the most difficult language I've ever tried to learn. Its grammar is ridiculous and its spelling, unlike Welsh, makes no sense (Welsh is phonetic, Irish needs about a billion glide vowels). Beautiful sounding thing, but it's a real trial learning it xD 

What about Scottish Gaelic? Is that easier or is it worse? I know they're closely related.

[Mons Garle]

Irish is just brilliant XD I mean... Niamh, Siobhan, Saoirse... It says a lot!!!

With Scottish I think there is a degree of mutual intelligibility between the two though, although they are different enough to be considered separate languages. Most noticeably the accents are often grave in Scottish, but acute in Irish.

Manx is the third of the Gaelic group, and the orthography is also pretty odd, albeit in a different way. Spoken wise it's like Irish Gaelic with a bit of a Lancashire accent going on.

[Avaerilon]

Yeah, Manx has got a weird thing going with all those vs, ys and us. Yes, Scots Gaelic is semi mutually intelligible with Irish, as is Manx. I wouldn't say it was any harder than Irish. Manx has such a weird spelling system and is a bit more different to those two, but again it's no worse. The Goidelic languages are all a bit strange, really. Yeah, the Manx accent is more like Northern English than Hiberno-Scottish. The reason they're all so similar is because they only deviated from each other around the 10th Century. They were still mutually intelligible util the 1700s, I think.

The Brythonic languages are not mutually intelligible, though you can pick up context and verbs from places. I'd say Cornish is sort of in the middle between Welsh and Breton; it would be easier for the former to understand it than the latter, and vice versa. The accents are also totally different, especially since Breton sounds like a nasal French one. The Brythonic ones began deviating post 5th Century or thereabouts, due to being split-up among other things, which is why they're not as similar to each other as the Goidelic ones.

[Northern Inertia]

Apr 10, 2015 13:20:06 GMT Mons Garle said:

Swedish and Icelandic have been mentioned, I absolutely love them both - just haven't the chance to study them in any detail as yet!

Swedish I love for the way it sounds, and Icelandic the fact that people can read the sagas without much difficulty. Interestingly the Danish/Norwegian/Swedish influence is definitely apparent in the way North-Eastern/Yorkshire people speak. When younger I was never a 'child' to my family, but rather a 'bairn'... Which has exactly the same meaning as child but is related to the corresponding Scandinavian word 'barn'. Indeed many Newcastle people, generally older, still say 'hoos' for 'house', or that they're 'garn yem' rather than 'going home'. The phonology of which can be attributed to our Nordic neighbours!

Icelandic is a really interesting language for speakers of other Scandinavian languages, because it provides interesting insight into what Swedish and Norwegian could have been without all the loan words - Icelandic practically has none of them. For intance, the quintessentially Icelandic word for volcano, 'eldfjall' looks just like 'fire mountain' in Swedish (the Swedish word would be eldfjäll). However, Swedish, as is often the case, instead uses the boring loan word 'vulkan'.

[Chameliya]

Apr 10, 2015 17:06:12 GMT Northern Inertia said:

Apr 10, 2015 13:20:06 GMT Mons Garle said:

Swedish and Icelandic have been mentioned, I absolutely love them both - just haven't the chance to study them in any detail as yet!

Swedish I love for the way it sounds, and Icelandic the fact that people can read the sagas without much difficulty. Interestingly the Danish/Norwegian/Swedish influence is definitely apparent in the way North-Eastern/Yorkshire people speak. When younger I was never a 'child' to my family, but rather a 'bairn'... Which has exactly the same meaning as child but is related to the corresponding Scandinavian word 'barn'. Indeed many Newcastle people, generally older, still say 'hoos' for 'house', or that they're 'garn yem' rather than 'going home'. The phonology of which can be attributed to our Nordic neighbours!

Icelandic is a really interesting language for speakers of other Scandinavian languages, because it provides interesting insight into what Swedish and Norwegian could have been without all the loan words - Icelandic practically has none of them. For intance, the quintessentially Icelandic word for volcano, 'eldfjall' looks just like 'fire mountain' in Swedish (the Swedish word would be eldfjäll). However, Swedish, as is often the case, instead uses the boring loan word 'vulkan'.

I think they try quite hard in Iceland to keep it 'pure' by coming up with their own forms of words and heavily Icelandifying loanwords. I think there's a body which regulates names in Iceland because first names are passed on as the surname of a child.

[Mons Garle]

Yes I've heard about this!

I think their aim is to try and keep the language as 'pure' as possible - and to an extent I agree with them. With French it's got to the point where you end up saying "Je conduis au parking pour aller manger au snackbar"... UGH.

On the other hand I don't think you can artificially stop a language from evolving, either.

The one from Icelandic I always remember is flugvél - an aircraft. German is very much similar with Flugzeug!

[Chameliya]

Linguistic 'purity' does sound a bit fascistic though.

[Avaerilon]

Indeed. I'm against any form of attempting to regulate one's own language. What the French acadamie do is bad enough (as is their attitude towards languages within France, such as Breton or Occitan, that are not French), but the Icelandics take it far too far. It's not only creepy, but it's lingo-autocratic.

[Mons Garle]

Apr 10, 2015 21:07:19 GMT Chameliya said:

Linguistic 'purity' does sound a bit fascistic though.

^^^ It kinda does :S

But still I understand the desire to resist the sort of avalanche of English jargon that has entered other European languages. Just not to the point where you deliberately end up reviving long-gone words as modern substitutes. That just strikes me as a bit contrived and pointless.

[Kingdom of Grolsch]

My native language is Dutch and I speak a fair bit of a regional language called Frisian. While I do speak a fair number of foreign languages, I have difficulties learning them. It would not be right to say I'm fluent in any foreign language at all. It would be a blatant lie if I told anyone that. My English is upper-intermediate at best (speaking intermediate, writing advanced, reading fluent). In fact, my English speaking is so bad that I'm generally not allowed to speak in official meetings at work. My French is intermediate and my German is advanced. My Spanish is slightly beyond the basics, but definitely not yet at intermediate level. I have working knowledge (mostly speaking) of all other official UN languages: Arabic, Mandarin Chinese and Russian. My Latin is very basic.

All languages I speak I've learned out of necessity. Learning a language takes me so much time and effort that it isn't really enjoyable. Maybe it also has to do with me being a perfectionist and my language self-confidence being impacted severely over the past few years by this policy at work that basically only those who are fluent in a language are allowed to speak and everyone else should just write. That means that the many occasions I would be able to practice a language are being taken away.

[Kanoria]

I love languages but I am very bad at them. I am above average for a native speaker when it comes to English, and like to think that I can manage a moderate passage of writing especially. But aside from that, I only know scattered words from a dozen languages. I can remember a phrase or two of French, can understand, with time some basic written German and Dutch, and know a few words from each to say. I tried to learn Norwegian but never got very far before I quit, so I can, if I really try, manage a couple of very basic phrases with help but that is it.

Otherwise a couple of words of Old Norse in base form, and as I say a smattering of them from elsewhere picked up incidentally. I struggle to think in terms of words, my mind defaulting to pictures, colours, etc., with some sound, that all fight for space with one and other, which may go some way to explaining why linguistic rules are all bar impossible for me to remember.

I do enjoy playing word and language games and making up sillinesess though.

P.s. I have always struggled with spelling too, so don't ask me to do that. Might come from the fact I was born with a minor speech impediment that I had to have lessons out of school to try to correct. I still struggle with saying some words, even those I can spell.

[Lombardy und Venetien]

I've always been a keen linguist and to this day I still lament the fact I wasn't given an opportunity to do French at school, otherwise I'd probably taken both French/German at A-level and then applied for that at uni.
My German is pretty good for the level I've studied it to, and I'd say that my spoken and read German is marginally better than my written German. I have a bit of Spanish too, but I've mostly forgotten that unfortunately.
From watching various foreign films I've found I can partially understand other Germanic languages, most of all Yiddish interestingly, but I can pick up some Dutch, and to a less extent Danish.
At uni I'll probably pick up Norwegian, as I've always wanted to learn a North Germanic/Scandinavian languages. Also, said languages are among the most mutually intelligible, and apparently Norwegian speakers can understand Swedish/Danish better than the Swedes and Danes can understand Norwegian, so that gives it one over the two...

[Kingdom of Grolsch]

Norwegian? Great! One of my best friends is Norwegian and we are trying to teach each other our native language. I have found North Germanic/Scandiniavian languages among the most easy to pick up for me. Except Finnish.

[Mons Garle]

Apr 11, 2015 9:57:45 GMT Lombardy und Venetien said:

I've always been a keen linguist and to this day I still lament the fact I wasn't given an opportunity to do French at school, otherwise I'd probably taken both French/German at A-level and then applied for that at uni.
My German is pretty good for the level I've studied it to, and I'd say that my spoken and read German is marginally better than my written German. I have a bit of Spanish too, but I've mostly forgotten that unfortunately.
From watching various foreign films I've found I can partially understand other Germanic languages, most of all Yiddish interestingly, but I can pick up some Dutch, and to a less extent Danish.
At uni I'll probably pick up Norwegian, as I've always wanted to learn a North Germanic/Scandinavian languages. Also, said languages are among the most mutually intelligible, and apparently Norwegian speakers can understand Swedish/Danish better than the Swedes and Danes can understand Norwegian, so that gives it one over the two...

It's always a shame when schools don't offer a variety of languages to their students. The UK is by far the worst country in Europe on that count. By the time I got to my subject choices in upper seniors, the school had stopped offering Latin, Spanish and German, which it had done when I went into lower seniors. So I did French GCSE, and with the help of my language teacher convinced the school to allow me to do Spanish after school. I did the whole GCSE in 8 months, difficult doesn't even come close!! The moral of the story being, if you have the chance to pick up another language, ALWAYS take it! You never know where it might come in handy!

Interestingly If I'd gone to UCL, I was actually going to do Spanish with Norwegian. From what I've heard it's kind of a bridge between Swedish and Danish, because it has mostly Danish vocabulary but a more Swedish 'melodic' phonology and pitch.

And Finnish... I mean where do you even start?!?! XD

[Chameliya]

My school alternates the language you do every year so my year did German whilst the years straight before and after me did French (with the option to take the other language for GCSE after a year of it in Year 9). At first I was kind of annoyed because I thought French was a prettier language. However I realised that German was far easier to learn than French and that it opened up learning Dutch, Swedish, Icelandic, all languages of countries I am fascinated by and would love to discover.

[Kingdom of Grolsch]

English is compulsory here, starting the last two years of primary school and ending at age 16/17/18. Language education in the Netherlands very much depends on the level of secondary education one attends.

At age 12, primary school teachers will basically decide the future of the kids by deciding which level of secondary education they send a kid to - directly affecting what type of tertiary education a kid can go to: Basic Technical Education (cleaner, construction assistant, etc.), Technical Schools (MBO, courses on everything from culinary studies to web design to automotive maintenance), Universities of Applies Sciences (HBO, courses like small and mid-sized business accounting, industrial engineering and primary school teaching) or research universities (WO/scientific education, everything that involves lots of science and research, such as medicine, law, research-based engineering degrees, languages, etc.). It is very, very hard to get into a higher level of education, sadly. Those who attend the two more theory-oriented levels of secondary school (Higher General Secondary Education (HAVO) and Preparatory Scientific Education (VWO), about 45% of students nowadays), will have to take classes in Dutch, English, French and German. Additionally, VWO students must take either Latin or Greek, with the subset of Gymnasium VWO students having to take both.

Because there is a lack of HBO and WO students in both German and French, there are plans in the works to stop offering both in future, though the schools that can afford parents to ask for a voluntary so-called "ouderbijdrage" (voluntary parents' contribution) that's more than the usual € 50 - € 100 per year might be able to offer the languages as electives anyway. I heard at least one local school is going to raise the ouderbijdrage, which really isn't voluntary in practice, to ensure that French and German will still be on offer. The problem with this way of doing things is obvious, especially in the city where I live, which happens to house some of the country's poorest neighbourhoods within its borders. Only middle class and upper class parents will be able to pay the € 1,100 a year ouderbijdrage that some schools are asking or are going to ask parents to pay in future.

I am very upset by this new practice of basically banning poor kids from language classes. My parents would never have been able to pay an € 1,100 a year "voluntary" fee - my family has been in the poorest 20% of households for most of my life and I have been working 20+ hours a week since age 12 to support my family. If schools really are going to cut back on languages in the next few years as they are planning to do at this point in time, I fear for the linguistic future of the kids with not-so-well-off parents.  I have been lucky enough to learn languages and travel because I happened to be slightly better than most people at snowboarding, but being good enough at a sport to be given the opportunity to travel is like a lottery ticket and should never be the sole opportunity.

Starting in September, a new system of financing higher education will create a situation wherein poor students will  graduate with tens of thousands of euros in student debt and middle class and upper class kids will be free of debt on graduation. The Dutch government has said that poor kids will get money from the government that may be converted into a gift, but given the enormous bureaucracy one has to endure to get it, I doubt many students who need it will get it. It took me well over four months and two binders of paperwork  to  get it - and that is under the old, much less complex system and with access to a lawyer. What will students get in return? Well, "up to" € 1 billion in "investments in an education of a higher quality". That basically means: we'll cut you guys, but you'll get empty promises in return (except that you'll get indebted, lower wages, less benefits, worse retirement fund options and higher taxes).

Seriously, if you cut things, it is not wise to cut a system that has resulted in every single family, regardless of income, to have access to higher education. Well, unless you have a Prime Minister that has literally said that we need more lower-educated people and those who are not ethnic Dutch must "fight" to get a life here and while discrimination should not happen, one must accept it happens and apparently being ranked the 2nd-worst EU member state in a list of best opportunities for second-generation immigrants is not a bad thing for a country that used to be known for its tolerance.

[Mons Garle]

Wow... I'm really sad to hear about the way things are going in the Netherlands. One thing I will say is that there is almost always opportunity for kids to go on to uni in the UK, regardless of whether you attend a large comprehensive secondary/community college or even a private boarding school - indeed unis like Oxford/Cambridge that used to discriminate against poorer students are slowly having to change their ways.

The only really awful thing is that students like myself from England have to pay full fees (£9k/year) to study anywhere in the UK, whereas Scottish and Welsh students study free and with subsidies respectively in their own countries, along with EU students. English students are the ones that pay in full, along with internationals.

The issue here is not the lack of availability or cost of language tuition, it's the fact that almost no-one is interested. The uptake for French and German A-levels from 2013 to 2014 dropped 5% for both, whilst Spanish saw a modest rise. It's the assumption that everyone will speak English, and thus studying languages in the UK is redundant, that's causing the damage. What didn't help was that Tony Blair decided to remove compulsory language study past the age of 14 in 2004. Seriously... -_-

I just can't get over the cost of extra language tuition in the Netherlands. I certainly could never have afforded that :/

[Mons Garle]

And yeah like most others I'll be topping £40k debt when I graduate... Just CAN'T wait!!

[Kingdom of Grolsch]

Unless I get into a tuition fee waiver programme for my Master's degrees, €96k/£70k/$101k here. However, most of that is by my own choice as that's because I pay non-EEA tuition fees because I am not allowed to receive any government support because of my job. By the time I graduate, the statisticians say I should earn the equivalent of at least £57k per year before taxes after graduation, which is more than enough to be able to pay off the student loans in 15 years (I have to repay the whole lot within 15 years).I'm not too worried about my own future, I am more worried about those entering the secondary and tertiary education system in the next few years. Especially with the shortage of language, maths and science teachers and financing changes in education.

[Mons Garle]

Ah I see. Yeah I'm not even sure I'll go onto post-grad... I'm hoping a decent language BA will be enough for me. And I haven't factored in my loans for living costs, so I'm not sure how much it will be in the end - what I do know is there's a lot less support for postgrad studies than undergrad.

We don't have to repay until you earn £21k+ per year, and then it's 9% of whatever you earn over that, and it will be wiped after 30 years. But it does mean that you'll still be saddled with it all during that period, plus interest.

And yeah it worries me how future generations will manage. At the moment if your household earns less than £25k per year you qualify for £3,000 non-repayable grant in the first year and then £2,000 in subsequent years provided you still qualify... They're reducing the first figure to £2,000 as of next year, as well as the loss of the EMA in 2010... They'll definitely be a lot worse off, sadly -_-

And there's absolutely no extra incentives to increase the numbers studying languages...

[Avaerilon]

One of the problems we have in the UK with unis is that too many people are going to them and now universities have simply become something that everyone does before they go into the job market. It used to me more like the Dutch system, where there were different types of higher education to suit different people and pursuits. Unfortunately, now that everything's been combined into one thing, a number of issues have developed which are generally impacting on ordinary students the most. 

I'll be shelling out a lot too for what I'm planning to do this coming September, should UC Utrecht work out for me, although I've been lucky in that I had the lower fees for uni the first time around.

I can't believe the way government are treating languages at the moment; language learning is good for you and gives you an excellent skill, and given the multilingual nature of the EU, we ought to be encouraging and supporting more and more people to learn new languages. Logically these people would be more likely to then work in an area which would benefit the EU as a whole.

[Chameliya]

The Dutch school system sounds like the British grammar school system on steroids. I think the system we have of comprehensive schools does give everybody a chance to go on to the best colleges and universities, the only thing holding comprehensives back is that there's not usually the same mindset as private schools when it comes to thinking Oxbridge is an achievable goal.

I think a language GCSE ought to be compulsory. Brits have gotten very lazy about languages because the assumption is that everyone talks English anywhere. I think it's embarassing when news reporters go abroad and record 9 year olds answering difficult questions in flawless English.

My Dad reckons I can get into university for at least a reduced amount because our family income isn't that high. Fingers crossed, I will be able to when the time comes.