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From: Rune Allnor on 25 Nov 2009 13:08 On 25 Nov, 18:51, Tauno Voipio <tauno.voi...(a)notused.fi.invalid> wrote: > Jim Wilkins wrote: > > On Nov 24, 8:40 pm, Rune Allnor <all...(a)tele.ntnu.no> wrote: > >> On 25 Nov, 02:12, Jim Wilkins <kb1...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> ... > > >> If you know both German and English, you should be able to > >> come a long way understanding written Norwegian and Danish, > >> and presumably also Swedish. The grammar is a simplified > >> version of the German grammar, words are concatenated > >> in much the same way as in German, and the vocabulary is > >> partially Germanic, with increasing amounts of anglicisms. > > >> Rune > > > Also Dutch, after learning the voiced-unvoiced shifts etc. I can't > > really make much sense of Swedish and Finnish is of course impossible. > > Cannot resist ... > > Finnish is a totally different beast from the germanic (or old > Viking) languages: The only living language resembling Finnish > so far that I can guess about half of it is Estonian. How about Sami? For somebody who knows neither Finnish or Sami, the two have certain 'acoustic' characteristics in common, but that might just be a coincidence? > For me, with Swedish as second native language, Norwegian sounds > like funny Swedish, *Formal* Norwegian (highly influenced by the dialects in the south-east central area, near Oslo) sounds like Donald Duck on helium. People with that kind of native dialect would struggle very hard to be taken seriously while speaking any non-native language. My native dialect seems to be a somewhat better staring point for speaking English, and particularly Italian. > but Danish pronounciation is impossible, Danes speak as if they have a boiling hot potato in their mouth. And no, that's only half a joke: It seems that Danish kids are among the slowest to learn their native language, lagging developments of other native languages by maybe as much as 50% (Danish kids meet linguistic expectations for 2-year-olds at age 3). Rune
From: Reinhard Zwirner on 25 Nov 2009 15:01 Jim Wilkins schrieb: > > It's a plastic distributor cap, I had to learn and correctly pronounce > the names of the numerous parts I bought to maintain my $200 VW and > make it pass the Army's version of the strict TUV inspection. Some > aren't so obvious, headlights are "shine throwers", plugs are "spark > candles", hex nuts are "mothers", especially the rusted ones. There's a slight difference: EN GE mother Mutter mothers M�tter (Muetter) hex nut Mutter hex nuts Muttern HTH ;-) Reinhard
From: Eric Jacobsen on 25 Nov 2009 15:21 On 11/25/2009 6:46 AM, Rune Allnor wrote: > On 25 Nov, 14:14, Heinrich Wolf<mu...(a)hemedarwa.de> wrote: >> Rune Allnor<all...(a)tele.ntnu.no> writes: > >>> The grammar is a simplified >>> version of the German grammar, words are concatenated >>> in much the same way as in German, and the vocabulary is >>> partially Germanic, with increasing amounts of anglicisms. >> I guess grammar is the other way round. > > German correct grammar is definately more complicted than > the Scandinavian grammars. The Scandinavian grammars sort > nouns in genuses, masculine, feminine, and neutral, and > use grammar rules accordingly. > > But unlike German, the Scandinavian languages has no > mechanism to indicate dative, accusative and the likes. > There are still traces of such forms, at least in certain > Norwegian dialects, but the main languages have long since > lost them. > >> Written Swedish has stayed much closer to the daily language of common >> people. (Ah, and I remember an article by a Swedish ``spr�kv�rdare'' >> who writes that they have a hard time to translate the EU bureaucrats >> into comprehensible Swedish.) > > Sure. Language equals expression. Different languages > invite different expressions. I can write phrases in both > Norwegian and English I would never dream of saying > orally (I am talking about *phrasing*, not contents), > simply because written and spoken languages are > different. > > If you have seen the movie "lock, stock and two > smoking barrels" you know what I mean. The dialogue > in that film might look good in text, but just sounds > awkward, construed and stylized in the flesh. That was intentional in that particular movie, and even as a native English speaker I had to have a lot of it explained to me by some British friends. Many of the jokes and the verbal nuances in that movie had to do with the plays on Cockney rhyming slang. It's a much deeper and interesting movie when you're aware of that, and I think much of it still went over my head. > >> Finally, we have already seen a funny concatenation within the current >> thread: ``Katzenjammer''. Resolving it into the two words will not >> lead to the meaning which is hangover or, in a wider sense, when >> someone feels bad and complains though this is the consequence of >> something that he originally welcomed and where the consequence should >> have been obvious. I thought a little over that strange expression >> and it quicly occured to me that the usual translation of hangover is >> ``Kater''. Now that word means also (in the first place) a male cat! >> And there is also ``Muskelkater'' meaning delayed onset muscle >> soreness. >> >> But phonetically ``Kater'' is close to greek ``katharsis'' and there >> is a German Wikipedia artikel saying the word ``Kater'' started to be >> used in the 19-th century by university students to describe their >> state after an evening of drinking. >> >> Making ``Katzenjammer'' from ``Kater'' was then a straightforward >> ``Verballhornung'' (cacography). Lang lebe die deutsche Sprache! > > I would have guessed "Katze" = "cat". In that case, > "katzenjammer" means something like "squealing sounds > made by cats". > > But I have got burned on etymological speculations > in the past. > > Rune -- Eric Jacobsen Minister of Algorithms Abineau Communications http://www.abineau.com
From: Heinrich Wolf on 25 Nov 2009 15:22 Jerry Avins <jya(a)ieee.org> writes: > Rune Allnor wrote: >> On 25 Nov, 14:14, Heinrich Wolf <mu...(a)hemedarwa.de> wrote: > > ... >>> Making ``Katzenjammer'' from ``Kater'' was then a straightforward >>> ``Verballhornung'' (cacography). Lang lebe die deutsche Sprache! >> I would have guessed "Katze" = "cat". In that case, >> "katzenjammer" means something like "squealing sounds >> made by cats". >> But I have got burned on etymological speculations >> in the past. > > In New York at least, katzenjammer includes "noisy hubbub" among its > meanings. "Yammer" means lament; wail; shriek. Perhaps > http://www.kingfeatures.com/features/comics/katzkids/about.htm led to > the local (and colloquial) meaning. That would rather be ``Katzenmusik'' in German. You might want to look up both terms at http://wortschatz.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/ I have scanned and put on the Web a work by Wilhelm Busch, author of ``Max und Moritz'', called ``Katzenjammer am Neujahrsmorgen''. You can find it at http://hemedarwa.de -- hw
From: Rune Allnor on 25 Nov 2009 15:33
On 25 Nov, 21:21, Eric Jacobsen <eric.jacob...(a)ieee.org> wrote: > On 11/25/2009 6:46 AM, Rune Allnor wrote: > > Sure. Language equals expression. Different languages > > invite different expressions. I can write phrases in both > > Norwegian and English I would never dream of saying > > orally (I am talking about *phrasing*, not contents), > > simply because written and spoken languages are > > different. > > > If you have seen the movie "lock, stock and two > > smoking barrels" you know what I mean. The dialogue > > in that film might look good in text, but just sounds > > awkward, construed and stylized in the flesh. > > That was intentional in that particular movie, I am sure it was intentional. Still, I think its dialog was a very good example on the difference between written and spoken language. The non-cockney English came across as very formalistic and stylized etc. The cockneys I have worked with, talked nowhere near the dialog of that movie. > and even as a native > English speaker I had to have a lot of it explained to me by some > British friends. Many of the jokes and the verbal nuances in that movie > had to do with the plays on Cockney rhyming slang. It's a much deeper > and interesting movie when you're aware of that, and I think much of it > still went over my head. I've seen the movie a couple of times, but with Norwegian subtitles. I must admit that with the subtitles, my attention to the spoken dialog is not quite as high as it might have been. Rune |