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Learning a Language (pg. 3)
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| Jackson |
| quote: | Originally posted by blazed it
do you mean Hakka? the guest peoples?
don't know how to speak hakka, but thats one of the smaller dialects. I think the 2 largest for Chinese are Cantonese and Mandarin, but I could be wrong.
Whee Cantonese has 9 tones, and it's like British English it's all slang. Good stuff.
I heard Linguaphone is good, but I can't confirm it. |
Yeah, my gf pronounces it like "Hat-ga" though so i get confused.
Am i right in thinking that theres only 4 tones in mandarin? Because thats all i can find.
As for the pronounciation with the R being much stronger (so i've heard) i should be ok because of where i live in the UK, its pretty much countryside and water is pronounced wateRRR. :p |
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| TOR |
| quote: | Originally posted by DC76
The only downside to this is when it comes to translation between any two languages... you lose some of the nuances of the original text and you also add other nuances that don't exist in it, whether it be in semantics, morphosyntax, context, or ambiguity. A good translator can minimise such changes.
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true. that's what makes translating so difficult. every word, group of words, sentence, has images attached to it, and those images differ from one culture to another (example: 'switch' in English vs. 'interrupteur' in French). and it's really hard to guarantee that your translation gives the exact same images to the readers of the target culture, because when translating you're submerged in two cultures and things can get all mixed up in your head that way.
translating becomes even more difficult when the source text contains references that are inherent to one specific culture, when there's no equivalent whatsoever in the target culture. |
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| zokissima |
One of my ex's was hakka, but when they spoke, it sounded very different from mandarin. There were some similarities though.
I think I'll give myself the next year to learn french. |
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| DC76 |
| quote: | Originally posted by TOR
true. that's what makes translating so difficult. every word, group of words, sentence, has images attached to it, and those images differ from one culture to another (example: 'switch' in English vs. 'interrupteur' in French). and it's really hard to guarantee that your translation gives the exact same images to the readers of the target culture, because when translating you're submerged in two cultures and things can get all mixed up in your head that way.
translating becomes even more difficult when the source text contains references that are inherent to one specific culture, when there's no equivalent whatsoever in the target culture. |
Case in point (and you can ask Mr.Mystery about this one, or any other suomalainen for that matter): "reilu meininki"
As for Hakka and Cantonese, most linguists consider them to be separate languages from Mandarin as opposed to dialects of the same language because they are not mutually intelligible. :happy2: Hence the quote marks around "dialects" in my earlier post. And Ethnologue now lists 14 languages in the sub-group:
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=90151
Languages are fun!:D |
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| Estella |
| quote: | Originally posted by DC76
Absolutely. A grad-student friend of mine once said that it's been said, "to know another language is to possess another soul." Having studied at least a dozen languages (and retained bits), I can say, it's all true! :D
The only downside to this is when it comes to translation between any two languages... you lose some of the nuances of the original text and you also add other nuances that don't exist in it, whether it be in semantics, morphosyntax, context, or ambiguity. A good translator can minimise such changes.
(You can tell what my profession's going to be :P) |
:) I've heard that too ! As well as a different lense to view the world.
My two cents to you Jackson would just be to become immersed in the language, as well as the culture. I'm going to Spain in July for this. But as you said, I suppose you get that from your GF. Props to you for wanting to take the time and stepping out of the box to acquire knowledge of other cultures besides your own. It's all about the empathy :D |
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| ::TranceVanDyk:: |
| jackson, why chinese? china is thousands of miles and way and not in any great usage in europe? why not a language u might actually use such as german, or french? |
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| Jackson |
| quote: | Originally posted by ::TranceVanDyk::
jackson, why chinese? china is thousands of miles and way and not in any great usage in europe? why not a language u might actually use such as german, or french? |
Damn boy cant you read?! :D My gfs parents speak chinese and if i got with her to China at one point i wanna know what her relatives really think of me :p
| quote: | | why not a language u might actually use such as german? |
Gibst du kopft? :toothless |
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| goonerjack |
| mein auspoof ist gestorben :(... |
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| DC76 |
| quote: | | Gibst du kopft? :toothless |
Kopft? Gibt es Wort in Deutsch, das "Kopft" heißt? Ich weiß "Kopf," aber kein "Kopft":haha: Das macht mir kein Sinn.
Just buggin' ;)
As for the other bit, if I had a gf whose mother tongue wasn't English, I'd do the same thing out of respect for her family... and to find out what they think of me... if I had a Finnish girlfriend and I heard her parents say anything resembling "piru" and my name in the same sentence, I'd know to tread lightly so as to prove them wrong :haha: |
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| trance4life627 |
| i wanna learn dutch.....bad |
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| DC76 |
Same here. The Dutch I have heard sounds pretty cool.
I'm such a geek, though... I have a language wish-list that I want to learn - some of these are pragmatic, and others are just downright wacky. But I'm a Linguistics major, so it's to be expected ;)
The next 100 languages I want to learn (no real order):
1. Finnish
2. Russian (at least, more fluently)
3. Dutch
4. Korean
5. Karelian
6. Ingrian
7. Lushootseed (an indigenous language of Washington State
8. Hul'q'umi'num (the local indigenous language)
9. Hungarian
10. Czech (so I can insult some of their footballers whom I don't like that much :p)
11. Mandarin
12. Cantonese
13. Min Nan (I think this is the language they also call Taiwanese)
14. Northern Uzbek
15. Armenian (working on learning to read it at the moment, holy crap is it hard)
16. Modern Greek
17. Hebrew
18. Hassaniya (a form of Arabic spoken in S. Morocco and Mauritania)
19. Punjabi
20. Irish
21. Scots Gaelic
22. Malay
23. Georgian
24. Abkhaz
25. Turkish (so I can understand what Sultana is singing on the new Delerium album... ever checked out her site? God, she's hot!)
26. Serbo-Croatian
27. Tsilhqut'in (aka Chilcotin, another local lingo)
28. Xhosa
29. Navajo
30. Yoruba
31. Inuktitut
32. Welsh
33. Khanty
34. Mansi
35. Veps
36. Vod
37. Livvi
38. Liv
39. Ludian
40. Estonian
41. Dogrib
42. Dakelh (also called "Carrier," yet another local lingo)
43. Swahili
44. Zulu
45. Guaraní
46. Spanish
47. Basque
48. Portuguese
49. Romanian
50. Polish (which I can learn from my pastor :D)
51. Swedish
52. Azeri (Azerbaijani)
53. Tamil
54. Thai
55. Moksha
56. Erzya
57-67. All the Saami languages
68-69. the two varieties of Enets
70. Nenets
71. Nganasan
72. Selkup
73. Udmurt
74. Kaiapo
75. Japanese
76. Ghari
77. Amharic
78. Svan
79. Tatar
80. Komi
81. Eastern Mari
82. Western Mari
83. Permyak
84. Quechua
85. any one of the Khoisan languages of Southern Africa
86. Tamasheq
87. Khmer
88. West Frisian
89. Northern Straits
90. Adyghe
91. Kyrgyz (even pronouncing the language name properly sounds cool :D)
92. Even
93. Farsi
94. Turkmen
95-98. All the surviving Wakashan languages (all but one of which is in British Columbia)
99. Secwepmetscin (aka Shuswap)
100. Nlaka'pamxcin (aka Thompson)
No, I'm not on anything, I just love languages to the point of wanting to learn as many as I can cram in in one lifetime. |
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