Which language family do you specialize in?

Gokol   Thu Jul 03, 2008 9:10 am GMT
Germanic, romance, slavic or some other?
Skippy   Thu Jul 03, 2008 12:17 pm GMT
Germanic
Guest   Thu Jul 03, 2008 12:37 pm GMT
All of them.
Guest   Thu Jul 03, 2008 1:00 pm GMT
Germanic
Guest   Thu Jul 03, 2008 2:40 pm GMT
Romance
Guest   Thu Jul 03, 2008 4:46 pm GMT
None
Guest   Thu Jul 03, 2008 5:29 pm GMT
Indo-European
K. T.   Wed Jul 09, 2008 3:28 pm GMT
I like Indo-European languages a lot, but I study other languages as well.
Jmo, but I would find it boring to only study one group and never venture outside of it. You wouldn't know the interesting ways Russian, Portuguese, Greek, and Italian are related, for example.
PARISIEN   Wed Jul 09, 2008 10:59 pm GMT
<< Jmo, but I would find it boring to only study one group and never venture outside of it. You wouldn't know the interesting ways Russian, Portuguese, Greek, and Italian are related, for example. >>

-- That's right. And you wouldn't know that the similarities and phonetic differences between Swedish and Danish strangely replicate the relationship between Italian and Spanish.
K. T.   Wed Jul 09, 2008 11:17 pm GMT
Actually, I'd like to read about that, Parisien.
K. T.   Wed Jul 09, 2008 11:44 pm GMT
I'll look it up.
PARISIEN   Wed Jul 09, 2008 11:49 pm GMT
Quite simple. While learning Swedish I trained myself to guess (not always succesfully should I say) what matching Danish words should be.
Later I became interested in Italian and Spanish, and noticed some parallels could be drawn:

- Spanish often adds an 'i' to make a diphtong from plain Italian vowels.
Simple and famous example: SP. 'mierda' vs. It. 'merda'.
Similarly: Dk. 'bjerg' vs. Sw. 'berg' (= "mountain")

- Spanish often eliminates It. final vowels, and substitutes a voiced consonant for an Italian unvoiced consonant. For instance:
It. 'Salvatore' vs. Sp. 'Salvador'
Dk. 'uden' vs. Sw. 'utan' (= "without")
Dk 'laeger' vs Sw. 'läkare' (= 'doctor')

- Spanish sometimes skips an unstressed middle consonant (e.g. 'caer' instead of Italian 'cadere' (= "to fall"); Danish is also famous for such shortcuts.

- And many unexpected 'v' sounds where there should be a voiced plosive ('skov' vs 'skog' = "forest"), somewhat like Spanish with its obnoxious 'b' pronounced like 'v'.

- Etc.
K. T.   Thu Jul 10, 2008 12:30 am GMT
Okay. I see what mean. I ask, rather than guess, but it's really the same thing. Simply thinking a "little" helps a lot in language learning.

Whoa! I just noticed something. The word for "doctor" reminds me of the words in Ukrainian and Bosnian. I haven't seen the words in print, only heard them. I need to check this out-a hit or a miss?

Spanish is in a state of flux. I hear all kinds of Spanish. Some people use "b" and some "v" and some use a sound between the sounds . More and more I hear "h" in words where "h" is usually silent.


Merci vielmols.
K. T.   Thu Jul 10, 2008 12:40 am GMT
Apparently it's very similiar in Finnish, Czech, Polish and Norwegian, but I didn't make the connection until today. It's child-like, but it's like Hebrew or a language where you put out the consonants and start to guess the vowels.

L_ _g/k__r/e.

Interesting.
PARISIEN   Thu Jul 10, 2008 12:58 am GMT
<< a language where you put out the consonants and start to guess the vowels >>
-- Very efficient method with Slavic languages.
R-B-T: 'aRBeiT' = 'RaBoTa'