Closest language to your language.
Thanks for correction!
So you mean that there are Karelian language plus Karelian dialects spoken in Finland?
I copied these texts from omniglot..and bas, i don't speak sami a word so i can't say what is wrong or right.
Are you originally from Finland? And which languages do you speak (at least many finno-ugric!)
Isn't it galician which is the closest to portuguese?
OK, I forgot about Kashubian. MAybe that is closer to Polish than Slovak - I have never heard it spoken. There is also that Sorbian language spoken in part of Germany - I don't really know...And do we class Slask as a language or as a dialect? Up until the period between the wars it could have been classed as a language, perhaps. Slask Cieszynski is an interesting dialect anyway. Ni mo tokiego gwaru, mowisz? oj dzolozko!
Which is the closest language to Romanian? Apart from Aromanian. Maybe Sardo?
Oh yeah, and with Estonian, wouldn't the almost extinct Livonian language spoken in parts of Latvia perhaps be closer than Finnish? People still sing songs in that language, anyway...
Hmmmmmmmmmm
Three things that have been discussed in this forum:
1. If English should not be called English because most speakers do not live in England, the same would happen to Portuguese, French and Spanish. In fact, in many parts of the Spanish-speaking world, we call our language 'Castilian' which refeer to the part of Spain where it originated. I think the name of a language should be based on its origin, otherwise, every place that feels very independent or superior from another would have a different language.
2. I don't think Spanish is that close to Catalan. The phonology of both languages is extremely different. The use of two verbs for 'to be' is more similar between Catalan and Italian than between Spanish and these languages (from the little I know about them).
3. I hope I do not offend anyone with this: Galician is not a language. It has official status in Spain and it has its own literature, so historically and politically it could be considered a language. I have done some research in this topic and 90 per cent of linguists consider that Galician is technically a dialect of Portuguese. There are even some authors that talk about "Galician-Portuguese" to refer to this language.
I think Portuguese is the closest language to Spanish. From what I said in my third point, the closest Portuguese dialect to Spanish is Galician (Galician sounds like Portuguese spoken by someone with a very thick Spanish accent). Brazilian portuguese from the south of Brazil is also quite intelligible with Spanish dialects from the neighbouring countries.
Pablo said : " 3. I hope I do not offend anyone with this: Galician is not a language. It has official status in Spain and it has its own literature, so historically and politically it could be considered a language. I have done some research in this topic and 90 per cent of linguists consider that Galician is technically a dialect of Portuguese. There are even some authors that talk about "Galician-Portuguese" to refer to this language. "
I don't agree in some parts . Let's see..
Galician and Portuguese belonged to the same language in the Middle Ages , a language that we could called as Galician-Portuguese . And it obvious there were dialectal differences between the language talked in the north ( the current Galicia ) and in the central and south part ( the current Portugal ) , but we can observe certain cohesion which lets us to talk about a shared language.
But after serveral centuries belonging to different countries, the Galician and Portuguese separated their ways and the current Galician is different to the current Portuguese . The Galician has suffered a lot the spanish influence and a portuguese person isn't able to understand the galician much better than the spanish . It's true that both languages still share a lot of similar words etc , but nowadays the difference is so significant that in my opinion we cannot talk about galician is a dialect of portuguese because : 1) There are a lot of differences between the two languages to talk about one of them is a dialect of the other, i think both are languages completely independent , and ..2) Why galician is a dialect of portuguese and not the other way round ?? i mean portuguese a dialect of galician ??? . I think both languages have the same age and was the romance language which developed in the western part of Iberian peninsula and not the galician comes from portuguese.
To sum up , in my opinion, both are different languages with a communal past ( a simlar case of occitan and catalan that in the Middle Ages it seems they were the same language but today we have to talk about to independent languages ) , and the term of "Galician-portuguese " i would only used to talke about the communal language in the Middle Ages and not the current .
"I think Portuguese is the closest language to Spanish."
Really? I only know Spanish, but superficially speaking, Portugese seems so phonologically different (particularly in Brazil). Spanish SOUNDS much more like Italian or Catalan to me, although I haven't studied the grammar of Portugese all that much, so in that respect the differences might be mostly in pronunciation.
"I have done some research in this topic and 90 per cent of linguists consider that Galician is technically a dialect of Portuguese."
Out of curiosity, is there any rudimentary scientific definition of "language," or is it completely subjective? For my money, many the Balkan languages are really dialects of each rather than truly seperate tongues. Then you have Sicilian, a separate language from Italian, which is typically referred to as a "dialect."
Lexically italian and french are the closest for sure.
About phonetic i think french and portuguese are closer.
<< For my money, many the Balkan languages are really dialects of each rather than truly seperate tongues.>>
You say that to a Balkan person and see what happens. LOL
D'accord avec nico, sauf que l'accent de phrase en français est différent du portugais.
I am a native Spanish speaker and the closest languages to mine are Portuguese (which I and almost everyone in my country can understand almost completely) and French. FOR SOME REASON the letter "Ç" is present in the Portuguese alphabet and the French alphabet as well, but not in the Spanish... and Spain is just between Portugal and France, isn't that weird? Also, in the luso-hispanic country boundaries in Latin America has emerged a "dialect" popularly called "portuñol" or "portunhol" which is a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese (duh...) and maybe it will be the key for Latin American integration in the future although I cannot assure anything. =)
Jonne,
I am Finnish (partly Finnish Swede), born in Finland and lived here whole of my life.
I can´t really say which languages I speak because it is difficult to define how well you should know a language before you can say you speak it, but I have studied (mostly by myself) Balto-Finnic and Saami languages, to some extent our more distant linguistic relatives, like Mordvian and Hungarian.
Stefaniel,
the closest language to Estonian is probably Votic (spoken by about 30 elderly people in Ingria at the coast of Gulf of Finland north-east from Estonia). Estonian, Votic and Livonian make up the southern branch of the Balto-Finnic languages (some linguists prefer other ways of grouping), but in fact Livonian differs most from the other Balto-Finnic languages.
Finnish: Me emme ole olleet siellä tänään.
Estonian: Me ei ole olnud seal täna.
Livonian: Meeg äb uuomõ vonnõd sääl tämpõ.
English: We not have been there today.
Sanja,
the basic grammar and vocabulary of Finnish and Estonian are really close, but the separate development during the last centuries has made our languages so different that we can´t e.g. read each other´s newpapers without learning first the language of our cousins.
The last fluent native Livonian speaker in Latvia is Viktor Berthold, 84 years, buth there are a handful of enthusiastic youths who have learnt the language of their ancestors. Maybe they are a germ from which a revival will arise, as has taken place with Cornish in Cornwall (SW England). Cornish was indeed dead for more than houndred years before its revival.
Guest: >>Out of curiosity, is there any rudimentary scientific definition of "language," or is it completely subjective? For my money, many the Balkan languages are really dialects of each rather than truly seperate tongues. Then you have Sicilian, a separate language from Italian, which is typically referred to as a "dialect."<<
In my opinion, we can look at this question both from a linguistic and an etnological viewpoint. From a linguistic point of view, all "languages" are really dialects, i.e. representations of one linguistic system which exists in the speakers' head, and which various groups of speakers use a little differently. However, ethnologically speaking, "language" is usually the dialect of a group which considers itself separate from another group speaking a similar dialect. In this way, the issue can be decided by looking at the attitude of the ethnic groups in question towards each other.
Thus, even if Serbs and Croats speak almost the same language, they regard each other as completely separate ethnic groups or cultural entities, and therefore, from an ethnological viewpoint, Serbian and Croatian are separate languages (and the actual usage is also drifting apart nowadays, due to the effort of mostly Croatian linguistic authorities). Same goes for Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, which from a strictly linguistic point of view are representations of the same linguistic system, i.e. "dialects". On the other hand, Arabic dialects differ in many respects from each other, to the point of being mutually almost unintelligible (like those of the Arabian Peninsula and of the Maghreb countries). Still, I would not call them separate languages, as Arabs from all countries seem to look at themselves as basically belonging to the same ethnic community, even if they may have a sense of local identity.
Do you think we can use the above as a rule of thumb?
That was quite well put, Easterner. Koszonom. I think we can use that as a rule of thumb. If (enough) people want to call their 'linguistic system' a language, then we shouldn't belittle them. Or they may prefer to stress unity or commonality with other varieties, and call themselves a dialect. This seems to be the case in China, where many quite different tongues are called 'dialects' and not languages to stress national unity. Then again, there will be others who have a different agenda.
Perhaps the old-fashioned 'tongue' might be a nice break from 'dialect' versus 'language' - certainly it is easier to translate into certain other tongues....
Aitah, Suomalainen for the details about Votic and Livonian. Livonian really is quite different, isn't it? Maybe it is due a revival. What about the 'tongues' spoken on Saaremaa and Hiumaa? Is there any movement for them to be preserved or revived?