spanish and italian

What??? What are you talking about?

I don't wanna be so damn protected.

What do you mean, Xatu?

Hello, everyone. This thread is fascinating. I came this forum in my search to find the pronunciation of the "J" in Jordi, having seen the actor Jordi Molla in several movies recently. (Thanks for the answer, Jordi.) I've always loved studying languages, and I especially enjoy reading about the less well-known ones. I hope to join in more when I have time. Meanwhile I have some comments about some of the topics in this thread.

Relative difficulty of different languages: I think each language has its own difficult aspects. I studied French and Italian in school and had one year of German in college. As an adult, I studied Russian. The general consensus in my country (USA) is that Russian is a very difficult language. However, I didn't find it any more difficult than any of the other languages I studied; the difficulties were just different ones. As for Spanish being easy, I won't be the best judge if I ever get around to studying it, as I've already studied French and Italian and have lived most of my life in San Francisco and New York, where you see Spanish written everywhere.

Catalan sounding like "a gay version of Spanish": It's interesting how certain languages sound to people who aren't native speakers of that language. I have one Mexican friend who thinks that Portuguese is funny because it sounds to her like Spanish baby talk, while another Mexican friend loves the sound of Portuguese because he thinks it sounds as if the speaker is making love. I've had both of these reactions to French, and I think it's because of the frequency of the "u" and "eu" sounds, both of which require pursed lips. It was when I was in Russia and heard Russian baby talk for the first time that I realized that pursed lips are such an important feature of baby talk.

Non-Latin based European words for dog: I suppose that since dogs were domesticated so long before the colonizing cultures of Europe started their colonizing, it's only natural that words from older cultures would survive. I can conceive of “gos” as being onomatopoeic. If you pronounce the “g” very hard and forcefully, it could sound like a dog barking. (I was told that Russian dogs say “gaf! gaf!”) This is all uneducated conjecture, of course.

Language vs. dialect: I like the statement that Easterner quoted on another thread in this forum: A language is a dialect with an army and a fleet.

Interintelligible languages: With my one year of college German, I thought I’d be able to understand at least a bit of Swiss German when I was in Switzerland for a couple of weeks as a member of a small dance company giving a workshop. Well, on the first day, the person who organized the event gave a welcoming speech, in Swiss German. I didn’t understand anything until he said, in hochdeutsch, “Now I’m going to speak hochdeutsch, so the foreigners in our group can understand me.”

Jordi mentioned the very different meanings of “burro” in Spanish and Italian. When I lived in New York, I had an embarrassing experience the first time I went to my local grocery store, which was run by Puerto Ricans. I couldn’t find the butter, and the only clerk working there at that hour didn’t speak English, so I tried to ask for butter in Spanish. I’ve never studied Spanish, but I knew a few basic phrases, so I said, “Donde está,” and then couldn’t remember the word for butter. I figured Italian would be close enough, so I added “el burro.” I immediately realized my mistake and blurted out “mantequilla,” but not before everyone in the store had turned to stare at me.

Wow, my first post is huge! Sorry. I wish I could edit it. And since I can't edit it, I meant to say that I came ACROSS this forum.

Deborah, that's a great debut for you! :-P