Talk about Languages

[CWater]

:smallsmile:After seeing this topic brought up on so many other threads, I decided to create this. Hope there isn't already a similiar one.

So, people, anything to say about all the fine an diverse languages we speak? (Pointing out the fact that my grammar is worse than a cat's attempt to look innocent does not count:smallamused:) What is your native tongue? How do you feel about learning others? Is it easy? Though? Fun? Pain? Torture? Sure you have something to say.

I myself live in Finland and thus speak the obscure Finnish as my native. (Luckily, it's not so obscure to me.) It seems so weird to many people due to the fact that it is part of the Uralic language group instead of Indo-European.
By example, we don't use many prepositions, instead we add letters to the end of the words. As a result, the words tend to get looong... sometimes.

Learning English was fun. It is not too complicated and I think I understand it quite well by know. Speaking/Writing it myself, well...that's another story.:smallbiggrin:
Something that I'll probably never grasp is the strict word order. In Finnish it's pretty loose, except that the verb can't be last...unless you want to sound poetic, of course.

But enough of my ramble, and let's hear what you have to say. (It's sure more interesting at least.)

[Coplantor]

My native tongue is spanish, I love the way we pronounce our R's, much stronger than english R's. The other language I can comunicate quite fluently is english, I started learning it at age 4 in my school, but it was'nt untill I was about 8 or 9 that I was able to say something other than "M names is X" "My house is big" "I have a dog" and "Can I go to the bathroom?". Mainly because it was at that age that I started playing lot's of videogames, and some of them really needed me to understand what all those letters toghether meant.
The next "jump" happened when I was 15, because instead of taking the regular english classes I took the ones to prepare the FCE and it was also the year I started listening to a lot of music much more frequently than before, it was because I wanted to know what those lyrics meant (thanks Metallica for beign such an awesome teacher!). I must say, movies and series helped a lot too.

I can understand some italian and I can comunicate some very basic concepts and ideas.

[Hazyshade]

I feel nostalgia for the time when English had a proper system of cases, and therefore word order wasn't so important. (Doesn't Finnish have ~16 cases? *be's impressed)

Example: "Let us run from the giant who Sushi Monster killed" used to make sense, because the word "who", nominative case, indicated that the giant was the subject of the verb, the one who had done the killing. So this sentence would be equivalent to "Let us run from the giant who killed Sushi Monster". Which means you have a certain flexibility in which word goes at the end of the sentence and is thereby emphasised the most.

But these days, English speakers don't like cases very much, and would likely understand the above to mean "Let us run from the giant whom Sushi Monster killed". The whom, accusative case, making the giant into the object of the sentence, and having the killing done unto it.

And would thus fail to run away, believing the giant to have been slain, and get surprisingly stomped by a still-alive giant.

This is why learning foreign languages is crucial to our health.






(Now I have Ievan Polkka stuck in my head.)

[rakkoon]

(listening to Finntrol at the moment)
I can speak some English, French, Dutch, German and Afrikaans and read some Latin and Scandinavian languages :smallsmile:.
My only exam I had to redo in my last years at uni was Swahili.

Funny thing about that language is that you cannot learn it unless you are a native speaker. So roughly, if you haven't learned it before you are 12, you'll never be able to speak it. We had some professors that studied the language for over 30 years and they can roughly get by but can't speak it like an indo-european language. That was funny

[Coplantor]

(Now I have Ievan Polkka stuck in my head.)

This happens to me everytime someone even mentions something involving finnish.

[Whoracle]

Native is german. Additionally, I speak english, can read (and, if spoken slowly enough and I know the context, understand) italian and spanish to a degree (yay for half-remembered latin as a basis!), and know the basics to norwegian and swedish. Plus, I know that 'pussi' doesn't mean what one would think in finnish :smallbiggrin:

Learning new languages isn't that hard. The hardest part, imho, is the vocabulary, and that'll stick only if I have people to talk with.

[CurlyKitGirl]

English speaker born and bred.
I've learnt French from the time I was barely eight until I finihed my A-Levels, so about ten years of speaking, and I consider myself mostly fluent. I can read it, speak it, understand it spoken (but it's a little harder). Obviously I don't understand all the idioms and details, but I know it enough to get by.
Because of this I can stumble my way through some Romance languages (written only) because of the strong links.
I know some extremely basic Japanese. Extremely basic.

Weird stuff time!
I can read and write both Old English (West Saxon dialect) and Middle English (primarily East Midlands dialect) although I do need a gloss and dictionary.
I can very-barely-just read Latin. I've dabbled in Old Norse and can semi-understand it.
I can also read the IPA, and write it, so that counts too.

Can't wait for next year and the year afterwards though.
I'm doing the medieval option of my ENglish course which means I'll learn other dialects of Old and Middle English (and ENglish basically up to 1530) and later on I can specialise in things such as Old Norse, Old French, Middle French, Gothic (language), Old German, High German, Old Welsh, Middle Welsh, Old Irish, Middle Irish etc. as well as other non-language options.

It's not that hard learning a new language. I've only been learning Old English a term, yet I feel confident enough to do the translation option in my exam next term.
It's just a case of constant practice and familiarisation. I suppose that with OE and MdE I've had a head start as I know MnE, so it's not too much of a leap from MnE to MdE. OE is very different though, it's an inflected (dead) language, so it was tricky. No doubt about it.
But it gets easier with time. I've had to translate (OE to MnE) around 300 lines of poetry (and some prose) this term, and you pick it up quickly.
I think mandatory translations for language classes would increase language proficiency - well, the reading of it at least.

[Miklus]

I speak Danish and English. I used to be pretty poor at writing english, but I'm getting better. Thanks, playground!

Finnish is a funny language. It is the bane of all unser interface designers! Want to make a button? Remember that there has to be a finnish version of the software..."Next" becomes "Hakkiklyttiklippiklappi" or something. If you see a button three times wider than what it says on it, blame Finland.

[smellie_hippie]

I speak english (American-ish). I also speak ASL fairly well. That's American Sign Language. The difficulty with sign language is that sentence structure gets significantly adjusted to speak in sign. It's also moderately difficult that so many words don't have a corresponding sign, so words must be spelled out with finger-spelling.

Speaking at the "speed of thought" in ASL is very difficult.

I'm considering picking up Mandarin as my next hobby... but should probably brush up on French and Spanish (which I haven't studied in 18 years)

[truemane]

I just wanted to day at the start how pleased I am by the international nature of the mebership here in the Playground. GO TEAM INTERNET!

Anyway. Native English speaker. Took French all through school, and I still remember enough grammar and vocab to speak it like a malnourished child, but my lack of practical experience means that I can't understand it when it's spoken. Despite my deep and enduring love of French Cinema, especially Jean Pierre Melville and the New Wave.

I can also read Latin.

And I know all the words to La Bamba and Old McDonald had a Farm in Spanish.

[Asta Kask]

Native Swedish, speaks (and writes) passable English, knows a smattering of German, a smidgeon of Russian and a mustard seed's worth of Finnish. As a Swede, I also know some Norwegian and Danish.

Oh, and CWater - have you "put the cat on the table" with someone lately? Let's see if anyone can guess what that means (and yes, it is completely board-appropriate).

[Cyrion]

I'm a native English speaker, took enough French in high school and college to get by fairly well, learned enough German in grad school to read a couple of important chemistry journals, and, picked up some Italian recently for my honeymoon. The French and German are gathering dust somewhere in the back of my brain, though the Italian is a little more current.

[Morty]

I'm a native Polish speaker who also speaks English fluently. I used to learn German and French and now I'm learning German again. I also learned Latin and I still know it rather well. I'm a bit sad I missed an opportunity to learn Russian, though.
I've never found learning languages hard as soon as I actually sat down and got to work. But the gap in my proficiency of English and French used to puzzle my teachers.

[ScottishDragon]

English is my first language,but i also am extremely fluent with spanish.When i was learning spanish i obtained a mexican accent for my english that never seems to go away so every once in a while i say something and it sounds like i' m mexican when i am not.It's really annoying and it won't go away.I am working on learning more but haven't gotten around to it.

[Ikialev]

Just like Morty, I'm a native Polish speaker. I dunno about my fluency in it, though.
...
Aaand no other languages. I'm learning german, but I don't like it, so there is no real progress in it...

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

Native English speaker here, although I know smattering of French and Spanish. I'm just terrible at remembering languages though...

Oddly, I speak and read (next to English) Ancient Greek the best...:smalleek:

[KuReshtin]

Oh, and CWater - have you "put the cat on the table" with someone lately? Let's see if anyone can guess what that means (and yes, it is completely board-appropriate).

'Sätta katten på bordet'? What the hell does that mean? I'm a native Swedish speaker, and I don't think I've EVER heard that expression before. Maybe it's some weird northern idiom or something.

As for myself, i'm a native Swedish speaker, as I mentioned above.
I'm also fluent in English, both reading and writing. I once took an Oxford Certificate of Proficiency in English as a Foreign Language exam, and still don't know what my final score was. they stopped counting above 90%.
In my everyday work, I speak with Norwegian customers all day, however I don't speak Norwegian myself. When i'm on the phone with customers, I'd say that I speak some pidgin Swedish/Norwegian mix that's mostly Swedish, but with a bunch of Norwegian words thrown in here and there.

When I was younger, I went to school for a year about a half a stone's throw away from Finland, and while there, I picked up a couple of Finnish phrases. Nothing to keep a conversation going or anything, more the likes of "Good morning, my name is Kureshtin." and that type of stuff.
I also took three years of German in school, but I never took to it, so my knowledge of German is very limited. I'm pretty sure that if there was a conversation in german, I could possibly follow it, but I couldn't add a whole lot to it. I know more German than I know Finnish, though.

And, as always, i have to add that having worked in tech support for 10+ years, I am also fluent in bulls**t and somewhat competent in technobabble.

[Deth Muncher]

Native English, took Spanish in highschool, taking Russian in college, and I know smatterings of French, German, Hebrew/Yiddish, Gaelic (written down, that is. I can't understand people speaking it), Tagalog, and a single word in Icelandic: Skow! (Skao?) It's cheers, so I hear.

[CWater]

Native Swedish, speaks (and writes) passable English, knows a smattering of German, a smidgeon of Russian and a mustard seed's worth of Finnish. As a Swede, I also know some Norwegian and Danish.

Oh, and CWater - have you "put the cat on the table" with someone lately? Let's see if anyone can guess what that means (and yes, it is completely board-appropriate).

Yes, I suppose you could say that.:smallamused:

Oh, and I forgot to mention this in my first post, but I also speak almost fluent Swedish. Though I have not used it much lately, so I might be getting a little rusty.:smallbiggrin: I also know some Italian and have just started studying Japanese, which is really nice, cos I've noticed that learning a language so different gets you to ponder the very nature of them. Both the one you're learning and your own.

[Syka]

My native language is English. I can read (to some degree of fluency, or could as of a year ago) Latin and Ancient Greek. This provides me with some reading comprehension of Modern Greek (actually, it ain't all that different), Italian (kinda), and other romance languages. I can also pronounce Russian, thanks to the alphabet that is similar to Greek, although it's beyond me to know what it means. ;)

My degree was in Classical Studies- Ancient Languages, hence the Latin and Greek. To get my A.A., however, I had to take a modern language, and ended up in Spanish. I have a semi-understanding, but it's pretty (ie, totally) rusty right now since I haven't even read anything Spanish in about...3 years. The Latin helps tremendously, though, so I should be able to pick it up again fairly quick.

One language I would love to learn is German. Romance languages will be a cinch, but German? Totally different.



Fun fact: Learning Greek is harder than learning Latin. READING Greek is easier than reading Latin. It's all in the use of personal pronouns, which Latin doesn't use. ;) Really helps with figuring out the gender of ambiguously-cased words. (Fourth and Fifth declension Latin nouns can go die, thank you very much.)

[CurlyKitGirl]

Those declensions in Latin are one of the things that put me off studying it for quite a while. They just confused and annoyed me when I was younger.
Now I've dipped my toe into inflected languages with declinable nouns and indeclinable particles and whatnot, it should be easier to understand all eight bajillion declensions of Latin.
Nominative, accusitive, genitive, instrumental, dative . . . at least I know what they mean and do now.

And as someone taking Introduction to Language and Linguistics next term I'll be able to get into the nitty-gritty of this sort of thing.

[Syka]

There are 5 distinct declensions (1st through 5th), with 7 forms (I think) in each other (nominative, genitive, etc.) in both singular and plural. That's....70 forms total, just for regular nouns and not getting into superlatives and adjectives and all.


Yeah, there's alot. But much of it is regular. The hard part is when endings are the same. As I said, fourth and fifth declensions can go jump off a cliff. They're horrible. :smallyuk: Absolutely no distinction between gender (1st is all female, second is all male/neuter; 3rd has distinctions between female/male/neuter) and half the endings are the same! Seriously. ><

That said...for all the irregularities and myriad of forms...I love it. Latin is my second love in life (orca's are my first, or animals in general).

[Icewalker]

Native English, took several years of Spanish in school. Learned much more about tense, sentence structure, and all that kind of thing learning Spanish than I EVER did in any English classes.

I just started learning Italian on my own, and in six hours of study I am able to hold a conversation (with a dictionary on hand), because Italian and Spanish are almost exactly the same. It's great. I'm hoping to be able to manage the language well enough to be a tourist in Italy by this summer.

[Morty]

I'll just note that getting a hold of the declensions in Latin is much easier if your native language also has them. :smallwink:

[Maximum Zersk]

(listening to Finntrol at the moment)
I can speak some English, French, Dutch, German and Afrikaans and read some Latin and Scandinavian languages :smallsmile:.
My only exam I had to redo in my last years at uni was Swahili.

Funny thing about that language is that you cannot learn it unless you are a native speaker. So roughly, if you haven't learned it before you are 12, you'll never be able to speak it. We had some professors that studied the language for over 30 years and they can roughly get by but can't speak it like an indo-european language. That was funny

Not exactly. Sure, it takes a long time to learn a language, but that doesn't exactly mean that you can't learn a new language if your under a certain age.

Well, I know English since I was little. Recently my parents have been teaching me Urdu, since that's their secondary tongue.

(The way that it works is, Punjabi is their Primary Tongue, Urdu their Secondary, and English their Tertiary. Neat, huh? My parents are trilingual. :smalltongue:

Of course. Urdu is to Punjabi as Afrikaans is to Dutch. In a way.)

Also, I'm learning German in school, and I was learning Japanese a few years back, but I remember very little of it now.

[Eldan]

Let's see.

Swiss german, of course.
Depending on whether or not you count it as a different language, german as well. At least, I had to spend 13 years learning it in school.
Next up, French. 9 years of that, and today, I can't remember simple words, let alone form sentences that make sense.
English I had for four years. Interestingly, I started having English in school at just about the same time I started becoming a major nerd: I started playing Magic the Gathering about a week after getting to that school, Warhammer a year later and reading Pratchett in English, watching Anime with English subtitles and American TV at around the same time. Me and my friends got so much better at English, the teacher pretty much gave up on teaching us anything when we were discussing the Hitchhiker's guide in english while the rest of the class was learning how the past tense worked.

[Elder Tsofu]

'Sätta katten på bordet'? What the hell does that mean? I'm a native Swedish speaker, and I don't think I've EVER heard that expression before. Maybe it's some weird northern idiom or something.

Never heard it either, but its a long country.

Swedish here, I'm quite fluent in English (at least the written part, haven't had opportunity to practice the spoken part as people shy away when I suggest it).
Have dabbled in German, French and Latin.

[Strawberries]

My native language is Italian.

I found English easy to learn (hey, I was learning ancient Latin and Greek at the time, English's nouns and verbs were a piece of cake in comparison), but hard to learn well (I don't think I've managed yet). I think that's mainly because we tend to construct sentences differently. We use the so called hypotactic structure (lots of subordinate sentences, complex periods), while English in my experience tends to prefer parataxis (coordinated sentences, much less convoluted periods).


I can also pronounce Russian, thanks to the alphabet that is similar to Greek, although it's beyond me to know what it means.

Really? I studied ancient Greek for five years, and I couldn't make heads or tails of Russian.

[KuReshtin]

Never heard it either, but its a long country.


It is in deed. I experienced that first hand, when my dad, my brother and I drove from Övertorneå (where I went to that school I mentioned half a stone's throw away from the Finnish border) to Torsås, which is at the southern border of Småland, right between Kalmar and Karlskrona.
It took about 16 hours to drive. All except for about one of those 16 hours were pretty much due south.

[Dvandemon]

Native English speaker taking his second year of French class. I've always been really good with languages but more with pronunciation instead of listening comprehension. I would have taken Spanish but, everyone else can speak it here and I can't roll my R's

[ForzaFiori]

I speak English (American version, so no extra u's and stuff) as my native tongue.

I've taken 3 years in Spanish, and could maybe hold a basic conversation in it if I have a dictionary to look up the words I don't know. I read it much better than understand it. Most native speakers of Spanish speak WAY to fast for me to catch all the words.

I've also had 1 year of French, which did absolutely nothing.

Languages are of the biggest failures of the American school system. You don't start them till 9th grade, and your only required to take 3 years tops in HS, and maybe a year in college (unless you major in a language). To top it off, they teach you only the basics, and its... I guess you could say that they teach you the extremely proper way to speak it. It would be like learning English, but not including any mention of slang, dialects, or contractions, so that when you speak to an English speaker, and they say something like "why can't y'all speak English", you only get a couple of the words.

[albis]

Well, now, this is what I call an interesting thread.
As an Italian, I've since childhood heard that folks in my country have difficulties in learning foreing languages (partly because Italian is a needlessly complicated language, what with all the "-a", "-o", "-i" and irregular verbs and the likes, while other languages have more coherent and concise structures) but I've found the basics of English incredibly easily to learn...
When I was a child we didn't get to study English before middle school (now it's been upgraded to elementary school as well -they start teaching it to kids around age 6) but I've always been fascinated with foreign languages, and so I've been self-teaching myself ever since age 5.
As a result, I find basic English easy and simple, and -to an extent- advanced English has been as fluidly accessible to me as basic one, and my high school English teacher made me do lectures and explain to my classmates whenever they couldn't understand her (she thought that having things explained by someone their own age, in simpler terms would help them make a less rigid approach)...
I must say very advanced English and professional register and style have some subtle difficulties I can't always overcome, but I'm getting there...

In the future, I'd like to learn Russian, Japanese, and maybe German, but I fear that without a child's flexible mindset it will be more difficult than my previous experience, but I'm not going to let it stop me.

On a side note: tomorrow morning I have the first tests of an exam which, if properly passed, will certificate that I can professionally and perfectly use English and it will abilitate me to teach English in every Country in the European Union! I wouldn't really like to be an English teacher, but I think such a certificate would give me bonus points for whatever work I would apply for (I don't know how it is in other places, but in Italy the first question they ask is "do you know English language?") ...so... wish me luck! ><

[WalkingTarget]

Languages are of the biggest failures of the American school system.

Agreed.


You don't start them till 9th grade, and your only required to take 3 years tops in HS, and maybe a year in college (unless you major in a language).

I only took 2 years (Spanish) in HS and none in college (Computer Science major).


To top it off, they teach you only the basics, and its... I guess you could say that they teach you the extremely proper way to speak it. It would be like learning English, but not including any mention of slang, dialects, or contractions, so that when you speak to an English speaker, and they say something like "why can't y'all speak English", you only get a couple of the words.

Well, I think our Spanish teacher was generally pretty good. I remember at least some slang terms/idioms even if the general vocabulary/pronunciation was more or less the "standard" one (I think Castilian as opposed to, say Galician), but that's like being instructed in, say Royal Pronunciation when learning English. The 4-year students usually had an option for a summer trip to Spain.

Sadly, I personally only speak English (General American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American), specifically). My Spanish skills have fallen off quite a bit. I remember some vocabulary and might be able to conjugate some of the regular verbs some of the time, but following a conversation wouldn't go well.

I did take a series of Linguistics courses in college, though, and know a fair bit about languages.

[Asta Kask]

Never heard it either, but its a long country.

It's a Finnish expression. My mother is Finno-Swedish.

[Elder Tsofu]

Not strange that it didn't ring a bell then, my Finnish heritage is about 10+ generations back. :smalltongue:
We're slowly spreading south, and I'm exploring new strange (and warmer) parts of our country as is due the younger generation :smallbiggrin:

[Crimmy]

My native tongue is spanish, I love the way we pronounce our R's, much stronger than english R's. The other language I can comunicate quite fluently is english, I started learning it at age 4 in my school, but it was'nt untill I was about 8 or 9 that I was able to say something other than "M names is X" "My house is big" "I have a dog" and "Can I go to the bathroom?". Mainly because it was at that age that I started playing lot's of videogames, and some of them really needed me to understand what all those letters toghether meant.
I started listening to a lot of music much more frequently than before, it was because I wanted to know what those lyrics meant (thanks Metallica for beign such an awesome teacher!). I must say, movies and series helped a lot too.


This.:smallcool:

[Zar Peter]

Well, native German (Austrian touch of course).
Learned English in school (started at age 8, ended age 19). I started again when I began reading Terry Pratchett in English (that was when I was on holidays in France and I needed something to read since I couldn't talk with anyone there). And then I found this site, from my point of view it immensely improved my English (still not perfect but I can communicate much better).

Oh, and I tried to learn Czech but didn't go far. Stopped learning it when I became father the third time, maybe I begin again sometime.

[Asta Kask]

I think the natives call it "anna kissa pöydällä".

[Atelm]

(Doesn't Finnish have ~16 cases? *be's impressed)



14, I believe.


I think the natives call it "anna kissa pöydällä".

"Panna (or "Laittaa" or "Nostaa", "nostaa" being more common) kissa pöydälle"

Nostaaa kissa pöydälle; is the form of it that I've heard used most at least.

---

As for myself, native Finnish speaker, and practically fluent in English, with conversational German and Swedish. Although, I'm much more capable of actually holding a conversation in German than Swedish. (as I've stated in an earlier, similar thread before: As long as I can get by in a Swedish anime/manga store and restaurant/bar in Swedish, I'm satisfied. :smalltongue: )

[Asta Kask]

14, I believe.

I believe Proto-Finnish had 28. :smalleek:

[Atelm]

I believe Proto-Finnish had 28. :smalleek:

But what exactly is Proto-Finnish? :smalltongue:

It's difficult to ascertain any "cut-off" points for when Finnish became distinct from the Proto-Finno-Ugric language and the other Finno-Ugric languages. So, what exactly would Proto-Finnish, be? And how could linguists know how many cases said language had?

Now, of the modern Ugric languages, Hungarian has got loads and loads of them. Even more than Finnish does.

[Strawberries]

On a side note: tomorrow morning I have the first tests of an exam which, if properly passed, will certificate that I can professionally and perfectly use English and it will abilitate me to teach English in every Country in the European Union! I wouldn't really like to be an English teacher, but I think such a certificate would give me bonus points for whatever work I would apply for (I don't know how it is in other places, but in Italy the first question they ask is "do you know English language?") ...so... wish me luck! ><

Good luck, Albis :smallbiggrin:. And yes, that's true about work. I had to take an interview in English for my current job.

[albis]

Thanks, sweety! =)
Unfortunately, they won't publish results before April 30th so I won't know if I passed or not for a long time, but being done with it will certainly ease my mind! XD

[Aedilred]

English is my native tongue. I was also taught rudimentary French from a relatively early age. I reached the peak of my French-speaking ability in about 2001-2 when I was not quite fluent, but could converse pretty happily about just about anything (just don't ask me to give a physiology lecture or conduct a light opera, as Comte Frou-Frou would say). MY French is rather rusty now, but with a bit of thought and polish it recovers pretty quickly. The accent covers for a lot, because as I started learning it fairly early in life I could still hear the sounds, and can reproduce them a bit more authentically.

I don't speak any other languages to anything like the same level. At the time of my A-levels I could read Latin pretty well, but writing, speaking or listening to it was right out. I've studied Greek, but had no aptitude for it beyond a very basic level. Likewise Russian. I've done courses in both Spanish and Catalan, and was doing well in both at the time they were called off- my vocabulary in both is pretty paltry, but I still have a fairly good grasp of the grammar.

I find it deceptively, almost frustratingly easy to pick up languages at a basic level, especially Romance languages- as it is I can understand more written Portuguese and Italian than I have any right to. Unfortunately, there aren't really any shortcuts to speaking proficiency; you simply have to put the hours into learning it, and more than anything, speaking the wretched language, and I've always been far too lazy actually to do that. I like being able to speak foreign languages, and always make an effort to pick up at least some basic phrases wherever I go out of courtesy as much as anything, but I can never be bothered to put in the mind-numbing, repetitive work to learn the language properly.

As an Italian, I've since childhood heard that folks in my country have difficulties in learning foreing languages (partly because Italian is a needlessly complicated language, what with all the "-a", "-o", "-i" and irregular verbs and the likes, while other languages have more coherent and concise structures) but I've found the basics of English incredibly easily to learn...
This might be why you find English easy to learn, because it's all full of irregularities and so on too, with relatively few grammatical rules (although still more than many people seem to think) compared to many/most other Indo-European languages. It's a mongrel tongue, you see. The English are also supposedly very bad at learning foreign languages... actually, there's no "supposedly" about it; we're terrible, but I think it's less to do with the difficulties of adapting to a new linguistic structure and more to do with general bone-idleness. After all, the rest of the world is clamouring to speak our language, so why should we bother to learn theirs? *facepalm*

[Silly Wizard]

I was raised in the United States, so English is my native tongue. I learned Tagalog, since my mother is Filipino. I can understand it perfectly, but speaking it fluently isn't something I can do.

I've also taken French for a few years, and I can speak a very basic form of it. I've got a decent ear for understanding it, since I listen to a lot of French music and watch French movies.

[Syka]

To clear up the language/age thing: after puberty, it becomes significantly more difficult to learn a foreign language to the point of fluency (speaking with the correct accent, thinking in it, etc.).

This isn't conjecture; it is fact. HOWEVER, you're ability to pick up a language post-puberty is also governed by natural talent (some people have an ear for languages) AND your native tongue. One whose first language is Italian will more easily be able to pick up Spanish or French or Romanian than Chinese or Russian. A native English speaker should be able to pick up Germanic and Romance languages more easily than non-Germanic and Romance languages.


In studies done on adult non-native English speakers, those who spoke Romance languages (Spanish was the biggest one I saw) reached a higher level of fluency than those who had Asian languages as their native tongue. Very, very few reached total fluency, however.

There is just something in the brain that changes around puberty to make it more difficult to learn a foreign language. Not impossible, but unlikely. I've met very few people who were bilingual without an accent in their second language. The only one I can think of off hand was a gentleman I knew who was born in Peru and moved to America around 10 or so. He had no trace of accent whatsoever, but his Spanish was impeccable, accent-wise. Meanwhile, my Spanish teacher who moved to the states from Costa Rica when he was 13 or so still has a very strong accent and would stumble every now and then despite having lived here since (decades).


So basically it's governed by age, natural talent, and native language.

[CWater]

I think the natives call it "anna kissa pöydällä".



"Panna (or "Laittaa" or "Nostaa", "nostaa" being more common) kissa pöydälle"

Nostaaa kissa pöydälle; is the form of it that I've heard used most at least.

What he said.:smallsmile:
Now, what this phrase actually means? Well, I'm not very good at explaining things in English in general, but I shall try.
"Nostaa kissa pöydälle" could be translated as "pick up a subject that has been bugging you and talk things through" ...or something.

An another saying including cats, but with opposite meaning is "kiertää aihetta kuin kissa kuumaa puuroa", which literally translates to "avoid a subject like a cat (avoids) hot porridge":smallbiggrin:

Any funny sayings & idioms in your languages, people?
(including English, they don't teach those too much in English class)

[Zar Peter]

I learned from my working mate that the german (or Viennese) saying "Besser als ein Stein am Schädel" ("Better than a stone on the head", used for example when winning 1 € in Lottery) is translated in Czech "Lepsy nes Draht v'ocku" (Better than a wire in the eye). The Czech are definitely more brutal :smallbiggrin:

[Asta Kask]

What he said.:smallsmile:
Now, what this phrase actually means? Well, I'm not very good at explaining things in English in general, but I shall try.
"Nostaa kissa pöydälle" could be translated as "pick up a subject that has been bugging you and talk things through" ...or something.

Put the cards on the table. Plain speak. Time to talk business.


An another saying including cats, but with opposite meaning is "kiertää aihetta kuin kissa kuumaa puuroa", which literally translates to "avoid a subject like a cat (avoids) hot porridge":smallbiggrin:

Any funny sayings & idioms in your languages, people?
(including English, they don't teach those too much in English class)

Well, we have the porridge one in Swedish as well - "Gå som katten kring het gröt." But my favorite one is "As long as the arse is on land, there's no cow on the ice." Which means roughly that there's no danger yet, but the subject's worth watching because if one more thing happens...

[lostlittlebear]

I speak both English and Chinese as my native tongues - English a lot more fluently, but Chinese well enough to pass off as a native.

I personally think Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn. There are no grammatical or phonetical rules at all, and you have to memorize each character separately. And there are a LOT of characters. I'd estimate to be able to even do basic communication in Chinese you'd need to memorize roughly 1-2 thousand characters, and educated Chinese know roughly 4000 characters themselves. I don't think I'd be able to pick it up if I hadn't been brought up in a Chinese-language environment from young.

[albis]

This might be why you find English easy to learn, because it's all full of irregularities and so on too, with relatively few grammatical rules (although still more than many people seem to think) compared to many/most other Indo-European languages. It's a mongrel tongue, you see. The English are also supposedly very bad at learning foreign languages... actually, there's no "supposedly" about it; we're terrible, but I think it's less to do with the difficulties of adapting to a new linguistic structure and more to do with general bone-idleness. After all, the rest of the world is clamouring to speak our language, so why should we bother to learn theirs? *facepalm*

You know, I never thought about it like that... you wouldn't believe the quantity of compatriots that ask me how the heck did I become so fluent, and I honestly can't say I know for sure... I've polished my use of the language somewhere between 2007 and the present day, but before that... I don't know when or how thinking in English became natural for me... so it's surprising to hear (read) someone say that English should be more or less easy to learn for most Italians, even though I know you didn't mean it in a universal way...

...for example, today I went to this exam, and we gave all the written tests (reading, writing, use of English, listening) ...there were only 4 candidates, including me, for the level I applied for (which is "CPE", and I've been told it's the highest possible in Europe) the schedule of the whole thing was clearly made to take in few people at a time, but I was expecting 7, maybe 10 people... it made me very nervous to be one of the "brave" challengers to such a level, but I must say, it went fairly well.
I had never had to face tests with that degree of difficulty, but rather than frightening it was stimulating, and I look forward to the Speaking tomorrow, so I can get it done with and speculate about my passing or not. =)

The thing that really excites me about all this is that, if I get the certificate, there's not turning back: while true that it guarantees my competence, its presence will also raise expectations that will have to be always met, so I'll never have to let my mastery of the language falter, which means to keep studying, reasearching, and doing a lot of things I probably wouldn't have kept doing otherwise.
What do you think?

[Fifty-Eyed Fred]

One whose first language is Italian will more easily be able to pick up Spanish or French or Romanian than Chinese or Russian. A native English speaker should be able to pick up Germanic and Romance languages more easily than non-Germanic and Romance languages.



I also think it's part of your nature as an English speaker as to whether you find Germanic or Romance languages easier to learn. Speaking from experience, I know people who tend towards German (for example, myself) and others who tend towards French and Spanish.

[UnChosenOne]

Finnish as native (Yep. Finnish about only lagunge that can produce sentences like this: Kokko, kokoa koko kokko. Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko.), somewhat weak english (I understand english better than I produce it) and I've somewhat abysmal skills in swedish and germany.

[Asta Kask]

Finnish as native (Yep. Finnish about only lagunge that can produce sentences like this: Kokko, kokoa koko kokko. Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko.), somewhat weak english (I understand english better than I produce it) and I've somewhat abysmal skills in swedish and germany.

Alas, you are wrong. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Benjamin_Mako_Hill/List_of_homophonous_phrases)

I heard another one in Finnish, but I've forgotten it in the original. It was something "There was a wind, there burned a fire, the wind blew, the fire went out."

[RebelRogue]

Native danish speaker here. Pretty good at english, less so at german. Being danish, I know some Norwegian (which is basically misspelt danish :smalltongue: ) and Swedish.


Well, we have the porridge one in Swedish as well - "Gå som katten kring het gröt." But my favorite one is "As long as the arse is on land, there's no cow on the ice." Which means roughly that there's no danger yet, but the subject's worth watching because if one more thing happens...
We use those in danish as well, but with the cow one, the first half is not mentioned. So people simply say "Der er ingen ko på isen" ("There's no cow on the ice"), making it seem rather non-sensical. Actually, I doubt most people here know the first half of the sentence.

As for the cases in Finnish, I've been told they're mostly there because the language lacks prepositions: there a case for each one instead. Is that correct?

[Kneenibble]

albis, may I ask you a question?

As a native speaker of Italian, what is it like to read Latin? -- surely you have seen it, even though you don't mention having studied it.

May I say that your written English, at least, is better than many native speakers'.

[Asta Kask]

We use those in danish as well, but with the cow one, the first half is not mentioned. So people simply say "Der er ingen ko på isen" ("There's no cow on the ice"), making it seem rather non-sensical. Actually, I doubt most people here know the first half of the sentence.

That's the way it's used here as well. I can only guess how confusing it is for our immigrants...

[Strawberries]

albis, may I ask you a question?

As a native speaker of Italian, what is it like to read Latin? -- surely you have seen it, even though you don't mention having studied it.

May I say that your written English, at least, is better than many native speakers'.

Mind if I answer that, as another native speaker? Latin is not difficult to read for an Italian speaker. The words are pretty much read as they are in Italian, save for a couple of exceptions. For instance the vowel group 'ae' is read as a single sound in Latin, while in Italian the two vowels are read as two different sounds, or the group 'ph' in Latin is pronounced like it is in English (it's different in Italian).

It's also sometimes possible to guess the meaning of simple sentences based on their similarities with Italian (after all, many of our words derive from Latin)...of course that is risky if you are actually translating something,as 'false friends' are common (bella means 'the wars' in latin, but means 'beautiful' in Italian :smallbiggrin:)

[albis]

albis, may I ask you a question?

As a native speaker of Italian, what is it like to read Latin? -- surely you have seen it, even though you don't mention having studied it.

May I say that your written English, at least, is better than many native speakers'.

Well, I actually did study a bit of Latin in high school, but I've lost most of my skills in it for lack of practice...
Though there are some things I can clearly remember, for example, aside from few exceptions like the ones Strawberries mentioned, Latin sounds are pretty much the same as Italian ones, so reading Latin is pretty easy for a native Italian speaker.

Speaking it and mastering its use can be more tedious, even for an Italian, since, while true that the basic structure is very similar to modern Italian, there are some peculiarities about Latin that make it tricky to speak it properly... some things remind me of languages like Japanese, paradoxically...
to make an example:
"fourty" in Latin is translated "quadraginta" which literally means "four times ten";
similarly, in Japanese, it's "yonju" in which "yon" is four and "ju" is ten... (I apologize to Japanese speakers if I didn't write those correctly, I don't remember numbers too well yet)...
I guess if you want to learn Latin and you're not an Italian native speaker, you have to wrap your mind around the fact that there are lots of irregularities, everchanging cases and so many exceptions to the rules that they become rules themselves...
Just reading is a lot deal easier if you can manage Italian pronounciation at least a bit.


oh, and thanks about my English, I've studied it with a passion all my life, so it's quite the compliment :smallredface:

[Eldan]

Alas, you are wrong. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Benjamin_Mako_Hill/List_of_homophonous_phrases)

I heard another one in Finnish, but I've forgotten it in the original. It was something "There was a wind, there burned a fire, the wind blew, the fire went out."

Ah yes. Homophonous phrases. Always funny.

"Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach."
is a popular one in german. :smallbiggrin:

[Amiel]

On Latin



[Italian] words are pretty much read as they are in Latin[...]
Italian sounds are pretty much the same as Latin ones[...]

Fixed :smallbiggrin:


similarly, in Japanese, it's "yonju" in which "yon" is four and "ju" is ten... (I apologize to Japanese speakers if I didn't write those correctly, I don't remember numbers too well yet)...

This is very true; also, fourteen, to flip Albis' example is pronounced ju yon, literally ten-four. The Japanese number system is after all, entirely based on the Chinese numerals and its number grouping tradition.

[albis]

Whew, I'm glad I didn't say it wrong (I can barely count, say my name and other few general greetings and questions in Japanese, so I was worried) :smallbiggrin:

[Asta Kask]

The Danish system of counting is so insane I'll leave to a native to teach it. It's based on five, but the fives are assembled into 20s and half-twenties. So 70 is something like "three four-fives and one half four-five." Headache inducing.

[albis]

That's beyond insane. O_O

[Flickerdart]

Ancient Slavs used to count in threes, but modern Russian is more sensible. The teens (staring from 11, none of that 13+ nonsense) are derived from an archaic form of "X-on-10", and the 10s (with the exception of 40 and 90 for some reason) are similarly just "X of 10" (20 and 30 being the old style, and 50+ being more modern).

French, as I recall, counts by 20s, which is stupid.

[ForzaFiori]

French is odd too. When counting, Its simple for 20-70 (you pretty much just say 2-10 or 5-10 or what ever) but eighty translates as 4 twenties. I don't remember if ninety and stuff is still weird though.

as for Idioms, English has a bunch:

Let the cat out of the bag - To tell a secret by accident

Two peas in a pod - Two people who are very similar are "like two peas in a pod"

Make a mountain of a molehill - making something insignificant seem like a huge deal.

Making bets in a burning house - doing something that isn't important when there is something important to do.

Look what the cat dragged in - if someone arrives and looks real messy or like they just got drug around by a cat

Make money hand over fist - making money very fast and easy. It came from the process of counterfeiting money where (when you pressed the money) you had an open hand over your fist.

Up the creek without a paddle - completely screwed, like if you were stuck in a creek and didn't have a paddle (if REALLY screwed, some people say up s*** creek without a paddle)

Monday morning quarterback - Someone who knows exactly how something should have been done, after looking back on it (quarterbacks lead American football teams, who play on Sunday night usually)

[Asta Kask]

Up like a sun, down like a pancake - Start gloriously, then peter out
Empty barrels make the most noise - Good-for-nothings talk loud

[Kneenibble]

The nineties in French go quatre-vingt dix, quatre-vingt onze, quatre-vingt deuze, &c. I find the irregularity charming, actually.

@ Strawberries & albis,
Thanks for replying you both.

I guess the purport of my question was about grammar and sense and similar words more than pronouncing and speaking the language itself. Which you've both kind of answered.

If I could be a little more specific then, I wanted to know if an Italian speaker looking at Latin is more like an English speaker reading Chaucer (middle English, looks familiar but weird: doable without training), or an English speaker reading Bede (Anglo-Saxon, looks strange and only vaguely like English: impossible without training).

Bella means beautiful in Latin as well, Fraga. :smallwink:

[Strawberries]

If I could be a little more specific then, I wanted to know if an Italian speaker looking at Latin is more like an English speaker reading Chaucer (middle English, looks familiar but weird: doable without training), or an English speaker reading Bede (Anglo-Saxon, looks strange and only vaguely like English: impossible without training).

Bella means beautiful in Latin as well, Fraga. :smallwink:

I'd say impossible without training, aside from very simple and specific words or phrases. And I wasn't aware of the alternate translation of "bellum", but it's been a while since I opened a Latin dictionary...I studied it in high school (that and ancient Greek), then chose to graduate in Chemistry :smallwink:.

Funny joke, very common among Latin students. "I Vitelli Dei Romani Sono Belli", is a perfectly legitimate Italian sentence, meaning "Romans' veals are pretty". In Latin, it means "Go, o Vitellius, to the sound of the War of the Roman God ".

[Pocketa]

Native English, 3rd year of Spanish currently, and I know enough Chinese to get by in Hong Kong, and parts of Japan. Long story.

One of my best friends speaks English, Dutch, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. He's going to pick up Korean soon.

[RebelRogue]

The Danish system of counting is so insane I'll leave to a native to teach it. It's based on five, but the fives are assembled into 20s and half-twenties. So 70 is something like "three four-fives and one half four-five." Headache inducing.
I guess it is rather confusing. Here's a short explanation for those who care:

Twenty is "tyve", a number also known as a "snes" which was the old measure of quantity before the ten-based, modern numbers were introduced. Therefore the names of numbers divisible by ten are essentially references to how many multiples of twenty they are.

Couple this with some old words for 1½, 2½, 3½ etc. (of which only the word for 1½ - "halvanden" - is in common use today) and you get:

1½: Halvanden (halfway to the second)
2½: Halvtredje (halfway to the third)
3½: Halvfjerde (halfway to the fourth)
4½: Halvfemte (halfway to the fifth)

So 50 is "halvtresinds-tyve" (2½ times 20), 60 "tresinds-tyve" (3 times 20), 70 "halvfredsinds-tyve" (3½ times 20), 80 "firsinds-tyve" (4 times 20) and 90 "halvfemsinds-tyve" (4½ times 20). Today shortened forms are almost always used.

30 and 40 are odd ones out, in that they refer to quantities of 10 (even though an old form of 40 includes the "tyve"-suffix).

Whew, that does look rather insane now that I look at it :smalleek:

[Lioness]

おはよう。。。

日本語をはなせます。
はじめまして。

まったね!

[Frozen_Feet]

Ja mitähän helkkaria edellisessä viestissä mahtaa lukea?

*ahem*

Another Finnish person here. Hello.

[PJ the Epic]

I speak English, I suppose. I don't exactly know what language I was raised on, since my unlces speak Czech on one side of the family, and my grandmother still can speak Norwegian. I wish I knew how to speak either, but I don't. If anyone would care to, please teach me Norwegian. I really think it is a nice langauge to learn, especially since about half of my family lives in Norway, and it would be nice not having to use Google Translate.

Anyway, I can speak Spanish decently, and I can read the Mandarin Newspaper on occasion. What's wierd though is that I can understand all the language teachers at my school well enough to know what the general concept of what their saying is.

Any way, someone needs to teach me Norwegian!!!

[albis]

おはよう。。。

日本語をはなせます。
はじめまして。

まったね!
first line it's easy, ohayou to you too! =)
um... in the second line I think see a "wo..ha..something...se..masu" and I'm a bit lost already
okay, third line is "hajimemashi.te".... oh, nice to meet you too!
fourth line is... "ma...tsu...ni" and the last one I just can't remember ^^°

[Lioness]

first line it's easy, ohayou to you too! =)
um... in the second line I think see a "wo..ha..something...se..masu" and I'm a bit lost already
okay, third line is "hajimemashi.te".... oh, nice to meet you too!
fourth line is... "ma...tsu...ni" and the last one I just can't remember ^^°

Second line: 'nihongo wo hanasemasu' I can speak Japanese
Fourth line: 'matta ne!' Later!

[albis]

Ooh, I see =)
I can barely grasp hiragana and katakana XD

[KuReshtin]

Ah yes. Homophonous phrases. Always funny.

"Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach."
is a popular one in german. :smallbiggrin:

In Swedish, I think the most common of those phrases would be:

"Får får får?"
"nej, får får inte får, får får lamm"

Basically translates into:
"Does sheep get (as in give birth to) sheep?"
"No, sheep does not get sheep, sheep gets lambs."


Also, here in Scotland, it would be possible to have the following scoreline in a football game:

East Fife 4 - 5 Forfar

[Asta Kask]

In Swedish, I think the most common of those phrases would be:

"Får får får?"
"nej, får får inte får, får får lamm"

Basically translates into:
"Does sheep get (as in give birth to) sheep?"
"No, sheep does not get sheep, sheep gets lambs."

Yep. And "Jag såg och såg och vart jag såg blott såg vid såg jag såg." Which works in english as well: "I saw and saw and where I saw just saw by saw I saw."

[Eldan]

Ah, yes. The one I posted doesn't work that well in english, but still a little:

If flies are flying behind flies, flies are following flying flies.

[Amiel]

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!"


Albis, your Japanese is pretty good! :) Much better than mine

[albis]

Lol, not really, I can speak a couple basic phrases, but that's about it... thanks anyway =)

Italian doesn't have homophonous phrases ç_ç

I can only think of those that you can read both left to right and right to left..

like: "I topi non avevano nipoti" which means "Mice didn't have grandchildren"
that can be written backwards and sound the same XD

[KuReshtin]

Lol, not really, I can speak a couple basic phrases, but that's about it... thanks anyway =)

Italian doesn't have homophonous phrases ç_ç

I can only think of those that you can read both left to right and right to left..

like: "I topi non avevano nipoti" which means "Mice didn't have grandchildren"
that can be written backwards and sound the same XD

Palindromes.

[Asta Kask]

Like the Finnish "soap merchant."

[albis]

Palindromes.

That's the word I was looking for XD

[snoopy13a]

I'm semi-fluent in English :smallbiggrin:

I studied French in high school, don't remember much. I took three semsters of Swedish in college and I don't remember much. At one time, I suppose I could have a semblance of a conversation in Swedish but not anymore (that means please don't ask me any questions :smallsmile: ).

[Hazyshade]

Als daar waar zelf niet door te zagen zagen zagen zagen zagen zagen, zagen zagen zagen zagen zagen, zagen zagen zagen zagen zagen, zagen zagen.

Ah, Dutch ^_^

EDIT - in fact, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo" is a perfectly valid sentence in English. Ah, English ^_^

[Lioness]

EDIT - in fact, "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo" is a perfectly valid sentence in English. Ah, English ^_^

I am compelled to translate that into multiple languages and see what results


Of the buffalo buffalos of buffalos of the buffalo buffalos of the buffalos the buffalo buffalos


Buffalo of buffalo of Buffalo of buffalo of Buffalo of buffalo of buffalo of Buffalo


Water buffalo of water buffalo of buffalo of water buffalo of buffalo of water buffalo of water buffalo of buffalo



Buffalo of the buffalo of the buffalo of the buffalo of the buffalo of the buffalo of the buffalo of the buffalo

Hm. Not as amusing as I thought. Still...try the nursery rhyme "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly" into Japanese. It's pretty funny.

[albis]

try the nursery rhyme "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly" into Japanese. It's pretty funny.

How does it sound? *curious*

[Lioness]

How does it sound? *curious*

Original:


There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly,
I guess she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a spider,
that wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a bird.
How absurd to swallow a bird.
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
that wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a cat.
Imagine that, she swallowed a cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird.
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
that wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a dog.
My what a hog, to swallow a dog.
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat.
She swallowed the cat, to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
that wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly.
I guess she'll die.

There was an old lady who swallowed a cow.
I don't know how she swallowed a cow.
She swallowed the cow to catch the dog.
She swallowed the dog, to catch the cat.
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird.
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
that wiggled and wiggled and tickled inside her.
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly.
I don't know why she swallowed the fly
I guess she'll die.

I know an old lady who swallowed a horse...

She's dead of course!

Translated to Japanese and back (warning: wall of text)


There was an old age lady who swallows growing. As for I don' t me she'[wo] which is presumed has known she why swallowed growing; ll dies. Is swallowed the old age lady who, was shaken also the [ku] in her, inclination, and the [ku] immediately and others the [re] is that was. She in order to catch growing, swallowed difficult. You know I don' t she why swallowed growing. I presume she'[wo]; ll dies. There was an old age lady who swallows the bird. The thing irrationality which swallows the bird how. It was shaken also her foil, in her, inclination, and it swallowed the bird in order the [ku] immediately and others the [re] it is that to catch. She in order to catch growing, swallowed difficult. You know I don' t she why swallowed growing. I presume she'[wo]; ll dies. There was an old age lady who swallows the cat. That, her imagine the cat which is swallowed. She swallowed the cat in order to catch the bird. It was shaken also her foil, in her, inclination, and it swallowed the bird in order the [ku] immediately and others the [re] it is that to catch. She in order to catch growing, swallowed difficult. You know I don' t she why swallowed growing. I presume she'[wo]; ll dies. There was an old age lady who swallows the dog. In order my how cover, to swallow the dog. She swallowed the dog in order to catch the cat. She was shaken also her foil which swallows the cat, in order to catch the bird, in her, inclination, and swallowed the bird in order the [ku] immediately and others the [re] it is that to catch. She in order to catch growing, swallowed difficult. You know I don' t she why swallowed growing. I presume she'[wo]; ll dies. There was an old age lady who swallows the cow. You know I don' t she how swallowed the cow. She swallowed the cow in order to catch the dog. She swallowed the dog, in order to catch the cat. She swallowed the cat in order to catch the bird. It was shaken also her foil, in her, inclination, and it swallowed the bird in order the [ku] immediately and others the [re] it is that to catch. She in order to catch growing, swallowed difficult. You know I don' t she me she'[wo] why swallowed the growing which is presumed; ll dies. As for me horse…She' which knows the old age lady whom you swallow the s proper it dies!

The Japanese


はえを飲み込んだ老婦人があった。 I don' tは彼女がはえをなぜ飲み込んだか、私推測するshe'を知っている; llは死ぬ。 くもを飲み込んだ老婦人が、彼女の中で振られ、振られ、そしてくすぐられたそれあった。 彼女ははえをつかまえるためにくもを飲み込んだ。 I don' tは彼女がはえをなぜ飲み込んだか知っている。 私はshe'を推測する; llは死ぬ。 鳥を飲み込んだ老婦人があった。 鳥を飲み込むこと不合理いかに。 彼女はくもを、彼女の中で振られ、振られ、そしてくすぐられたそれつかまえるために鳥を飲み込 んだ。 彼女ははえをつかまえるためにくもを飲み込んだ。 I don' tは彼女がはえをなぜ飲み込んだか知っている。 私はshe'を推測する; llは死ぬ。 猫を飲み込んだ老婦人があった。 それを、彼女飲み込んだ猫を想像しなさい。 彼女は鳥をつかまえるために猫を飲み込んだ。 彼女はくもを、彼女の中で振られ、振られ、そしてくすぐられたそれつかまえるために鳥を飲み込 んだ。 彼女ははえをつかまえるためにくもを飲み込んだ。 I don' tは彼女がはえをなぜ飲み込んだか知っている。 私はshe'を推測する; llは死ぬ。 犬を飲み込んだ老婦人があった。 私のなんとブタ、犬を飲み込むため。 彼女は猫をつかまえるために犬を飲み込んだ。 彼女は鳥をつかまえるために猫を、飲み込んだ 彼女はくもを、彼女の中で振られ、振られ、そしてくすぐられたそれつかまえるために鳥を飲み込 んだ。 彼女ははえをつかまえるためにくもを飲み込んだ。 I don' tは彼女がはえをなぜ飲み込んだか知っている。 私はshe'を推測する; llは死ぬ。 牛を飲み込んだ老婦人があった。 I don' tは彼女が牛をいかに飲み込んだか知っている。 彼女は犬をつかまえるために牛を飲み込んだ。 彼女は猫をつかまえるために犬を、飲み込んだ。 彼女は鳥をつかまえるために猫を飲み込んだ。 彼女はくもを、彼女の中で振られ、振られ、そしてくすぐられたそれつかまえるために鳥を飲み込 んだ。 彼女ははえをつかまえるためにくもを飲み込んだ。 I don' tは彼女が私がshe'を推測するはえをなぜ飲み込んだか知っている; llは死ぬ。 私は馬を…飲み込んだ老婦人を知っている She' 死んだs当然!

[albis]

Lol, nice poem XD

but... um... could you write the Japanese version in western letters? (*is reeeeeally slow at deciphering hiragana and really wants to know how it's pronounced* XD)