|
|
World's Stangest Languages
:===) Thank you :=====)
My country is not exactly bilingual. It's like Spain, there are many languages, but everybody speaks Spanish there. In Ecuador almost everybody (maybe 95%) speaks Spanish, except (perhaps) the Indigenous people who live in places where no white man has been. However, the Indians and the Quechua language are really important for Ecuador, they're like its essence. I'll make and effort to learn the language. I've made an effort before, but I was really surprised when I discovered that Quechua has declensions like Latin! In Peru (which is NOT where I live), Quechua is an official language, and so is in Bolivia, where Spanish and Aymara are official too.
Anyway, written Catalan is far much beautiful than written Occitan (it's my opinion). Or at least it is more understandable for me, a Spanish speaker.
For those interested, here are some songs in Quechua, with Spanish and English translation provided (including El Condor Pasa, which is one of my favourite melodies, now at least I know the text, too):
http://www.andes.org/songs.html
By the way, although I am aware that the two languages are completely unrelated, some Quechua words bear a strong resemblance to Finnish ones, and the rhythm of some songs bear a resemblance to the Kalavala, the Finnish national epic. Of course my remark concerns some isolated words only, not the language as a whole.
Mmmm, maybe you'll resolve an old mystery...
Sulischallay
Compare this word with "sol". In Quechua 'owner' is 'amu', and in Spanish it is 'amo'. Mmmm...
Xatufan,
Actually, it has been discovered that some languages in Siberia are similar to Amerindian ones, and the Uralic language family (to which Finnish and Hungarian also belong) also originates from western Siberia. Since there used to be a strip of dry land between the easternmost part of Siberia and Alaska in the distant past, it could not have taken much ingenuity to cross that in search of a better place to settle and in quest for game. Most ethnologists say that Amerindians most probably came from (or through) Siberia, with the exception of Thor Heyerdahl, who preferred a theory of Polynesian origin for the Quechua and other South American peoples, but evidence supports the former theory.
Easterner,
Once again, it's good to hear from you. From the latest linguistic research that I have read, Yukaghir, spoken in central Eastern Siberia is a distant relative of Hungarian even though it usually gets classified as "Paleo-Siberian". Chukchee is a relative of Aleut and Eskimo, Koryak, I believe, is closer to Hungarian, like Yukaghir although they get called "Paleo-Siberian" too. The American Indian languages seem to fall into two large groups (supergroups): Amerindian which includes nearly all of the native languages spoken east of the Rocky Mountains, the Caribbean and nearly all of South America. The second group, dubbed "Pacific Rim" stretches from Alaska down through California and Mexico to northern Colombia. However, there were small pockets of Amerindian speech in California and Arizona; small pockets of Pacific Rim in Texas. Linguists still aren't really certain which supergroup Mayan belongs to. The Pacific Rim group may be distantly related to Sino-Tibetan in Asia and Ibero-Caucasian (including Basque) in Europe. Nobody, has determined Ameridnian's closest relatives in the Old World; but the discovery of mitochondrial DNA links between a Greek Woman and a Cree Indian Man suggest a remote connection to Indo-European. As far as we know, Indo-European languages of some kind have always been spoken in Greece although pre-Hellenic Pelasgian and Mycenaean probably represented some of the earliest layers of Indo-European. Many linguists think that Greek has a substratum from one or both of these languages. If only we knew more about what they were like!
World's Stangest Languages - page 5
Previous page
Xatufan Wednesday, February 09, 2005, 19:11 GMT
:===) Thank you :=====)
My country is not exactly bilingual. It's like Spain, there are many languages, but everybody speaks Spanish there. In Ecuador almost everybody (maybe 95%) speaks Spanish, except (perhaps) the Indigenous people who live in places where no white man has been. However, the Indians and the Quechua language are really important for Ecuador, they're like its essence. I'll make and effort to learn the language. I've made an effort before, but I was really surprised when I discovered that Quechua has declensions like Latin! In Peru (which is NOT where I live), Quechua is an official language, and so is in Bolivia, where Spanish and Aymara are official too.
Anyway, written Catalan is far much beautiful than written Occitan (it's my opinion). Or at least it is more understandable for me, a Spanish speaker.
Xatufan Wednesday, February 09, 2005, 19:53 GMT
Far more beautiful.
Easterner Wednesday, February 09, 2005, 20:59 GMT
For those interested, here are some songs in Quechua, with Spanish and English translation provided (including El Condor Pasa, which is one of my favourite melodies, now at least I know the text, too):
http://www.andes.org/songs.html
By the way, although I am aware that the two languages are completely unrelated, some Quechua words bear a strong resemblance to Finnish ones, and the rhythm of some songs bear a resemblance to the Kalavala, the Finnish national epic. Of course my remark concerns some isolated words only, not the language as a whole.
Xatufan Wednesday, February 09, 2005, 21:54 GMT
Mmmm, maybe you'll resolve an old mystery...
Xatufan Wednesday, February 09, 2005, 21:58 GMT
Sulischallay
Compare this word with "sol". In Quechua 'owner' is 'amu', and in Spanish it is 'amo'. Mmmm...
Easterner Wednesday, February 09, 2005, 22:06 GMT
Xatufan,
Actually, it has been discovered that some languages in Siberia are similar to Amerindian ones, and the Uralic language family (to which Finnish and Hungarian also belong) also originates from western Siberia. Since there used to be a strip of dry land between the easternmost part of Siberia and Alaska in the distant past, it could not have taken much ingenuity to cross that in search of a better place to settle and in quest for game. Most ethnologists say that Amerindians most probably came from (or through) Siberia, with the exception of Thor Heyerdahl, who preferred a theory of Polynesian origin for the Quechua and other South American peoples, but evidence supports the former theory.
Brennus Wednesday, February 09, 2005, 22:59 GMT
Easterner,
Once again, it's good to hear from you. From the latest linguistic research that I have read, Yukaghir, spoken in central Eastern Siberia is a distant relative of Hungarian even though it usually gets classified as "Paleo-Siberian". Chukchee is a relative of Aleut and Eskimo, Koryak, I believe, is closer to Hungarian, like Yukaghir although they get called "Paleo-Siberian" too. The American Indian languages seem to fall into two large groups (supergroups): Amerindian which includes nearly all of the native languages spoken east of the Rocky Mountains, the Caribbean and nearly all of South America. The second group, dubbed "Pacific Rim" stretches from Alaska down through California and Mexico to northern Colombia. However, there were small pockets of Amerindian speech in California and Arizona; small pockets of Pacific Rim in Texas. Linguists still aren't really certain which supergroup Mayan belongs to. The Pacific Rim group may be distantly related to Sino-Tibetan in Asia and Ibero-Caucasian (including Basque) in Europe. Nobody, has determined Ameridnian's closest relatives in the Old World; but the discovery of mitochondrial DNA links between a Greek Woman and a Cree Indian Man suggest a remote connection to Indo-European. As far as we know, Indo-European languages of some kind have always been spoken in Greece although pre-Hellenic Pelasgian and Mycenaean probably represented some of the earliest layers of Indo-European. Many linguists think that Greek has a substratum from one or both of these languages. If only we knew more about what they were like!
"Afrikaans"
It is a decendent from my language (Dutch) in the 17th century,but it seems like the abbandoned all of the verbs!(And Dutch has a lot of verbs)
No, Xatufan, I wasn't being sarcastic. I really mean it. Not many 14-year-olds I know are as smart as you. All the best :)
Thanks. Good news for you: OK, this is my last time here in Antimoon. Maybe forever (if I die), maybe for just 3 weeks (if I don't die).
Id say Dutch,Im Netherlandish myself but a lot of my foreigh friends say Dutch sounds like a is cow choking on a carrot and farthing at the same time.(talking about compliments)
I'm not sure I ever thought of any language as being strange because of it's structure. There have been languages that I thought sounded strange, such as Chinese, but one I started seeing a lot of Chinese movies, the language began to sound perfectly normal to me.
One language that still sounds a bit strange to me (indicating that I just haven't listened to it enough) is Vietnamese, because of a certain consonant. I couldn't even think of how to describe the sound, except that it sounds as if it's being swallowed, so I did a google search, not even knowing what to search for. What I found was someone's non-scholastic description of this sound, which I will use here: "like an implosive-sounding 'b' with an 'm' in front of it. This 'b' sounds like it goes from the outside in, rather than the normal way you pronounce a 'b' from the inside out."
That last sentence seems to fit in with my impression that it's being swallowed. Does anyone here speak Vietnamese?
"but one I started seeing" --> "but once I started seeing"
|