Linguistic survey !

Sander   Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:52 pm GMT
Piotr   Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:07 am GMT
<Rats can tell the difference between Dutch and Japanese, suggests a new study.>


Well, the conclusion of this survey is that Humans prefer Italian and the Rats prefer Dutch !
Dawie   Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:34 am GMT
Sander, ek stem heeltemal saam dat die gramatika van die twee tale baie anders is. En tog kan ons aan mekaar skryf en mekaar verstaan!

Ek moet sê dat ek baie beïndruk is moet jou poging om Afrikaans te skryf! Daar's 'n paar foute hier en daar, maar in die algemeen is jou woorde heeltemal verstaanbaar. Ek twyfel of my poging om Nederlands te skryf sou so verstaanbaar wees nie.

Kry jy ooit kans om met Afrikaanssprekendes te gesels waar jy is?
Larissa   Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:36 am GMT
I prefer Italian! Italian is a very beautiful language, but my favorite one is American English!
Frank   Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:50 am GMT
I am not a rat and I like Dutch more.
BTW when I read posts in Afrikaans here, I understand almost everything, though I never tried to learn the language.

"ek stem heeltemal saam " -- what does it mean? I know Dutch word "helemaal" but in general I dont understand this phrase.
Dawie   Thu Jan 12, 2006 11:15 am GMT
Frank

As I'm sure you know "heeltemal" (in Afrikaans) or "helemaal" (in Dutch) means "totally". The infinitive verb "om saam te stem" (lit. "to together agree") means "to agree". So "Ek stem heeltemaal saam" means "I totally agree". I'm not sure how close this would be to the Dutch usage.

Interestingly if you just used "om te stem", this means "to vote".
Sander   Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:24 pm GMT
=>Sander, ek stem heeltemal saam dat die gramatika van die twee tale baie anders is. En tog kan ons aan mekaar skryf en mekaar verstaan!
<=

That's because of vocabulary differences. If you compare the grammars, you'll see that Afrikaans is nearly analytic while Dutch is highly inflected.

Compare,

"To be" present, in Afrikaans;

ek is
jy is
hy is
ons is
julle is
hulle is

"To be" present, in Dutch;

ik ben
jij bent
hij is
wij zijn
jullie zijn
zij zijn

=>Interestingly if you just used "om te stem", this means "to vote". <=

That would be 'stemmen' in Dutch, which also means 'to get someone in a certain mood' (Gunstig stemmen) and ' to tune' as in 'tuning a musical instrument'.

=> Kry jy ooit kans om met Afrikaanssprekendes te gesels waar jy is? <=

Yes, I often visit this site, http://www.langcafe.org/ , which has a Dutch and Afrikaanse forum. Why don't you visit it or try it out? You too Frank.
Frank   Thu Jan 12, 2006 1:59 pm GMT
I can't open this link, is the addresse right?
By the way Sander, I want to ask you what's the best way to say "I like it" in Dutch? For example "I like this city".
Sander   Thu Jan 12, 2006 2:03 pm GMT
Sorry, this is the right link ;-)

http://www.langcafe.net/


=>"I like this city"<=

*Ik houd van* deze stad.

or,

*Ik ben weg van* deze stad.
Frank   Thu Jan 12, 2006 2:28 pm GMT
Kan je ook zeggen "ik mag deze stad", zoals in Duits? Ik dacht vroeger dat "houden van" = "to love", dus je kan alleen van een mens houden.
Sorry, ik spreek Nederlands niet zo goed.
Sander   Thu Jan 12, 2006 3:44 pm GMT
Btw, I'm very impressed by your Dutch!
Sander   Thu Jan 12, 2006 3:53 pm GMT
Oh, seems I forgot to post my original message.

Ja, 'ik mag deze stad' kan ook, 'houden van' isn't used just for humans but for practically everything, from chocolate milk to your dog.

But we have a lot of verbs for 'to love' , 'lief hebben' (litt. to have love for) is usually used for living things, although a ;'liefhebber' (one who has love for ... ) is used for all sorts of things like a '*wijn*liefhebber' (someone who loves wine) or an '*auto*liefhebber' (someone who loves cars) , for female variant '-in' is added to 'liefhebber(in)'.

The only verb that in nearly always used to describe a person that you truly love is 'beminnen' it means 'to love' but it's much and much stronger, it means that you'll do anything for him/her ( and means you are having or want to have intercourse with her) .So, it's not very wise to say that you 'bemin' your mother ...
remember ?   Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:57 pm GMT
I told you Sander , <most people prefer Romance languages>
Sander   Thu Jan 12, 2006 8:54 pm GMT
remember ?,

I haven't seen 3billion +1 people yet.
*CarloS*   Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:36 am GMT
A pretty obvious question... ITALIAN OF COURSE.