BWL

If you can tell the difference between the intonation of these four different sentences (in English), then you are not tone deaf  

1.) You are sick?

2.) You are sick!

3.) Ohhhh, you are sick?

4.) Darn it! You are sick!

In sentence 1 the "...sick?' part would be tone 2. 

In sentence 2 the "...sick!" would be tone 1

The "Ohhh...." in sentence 3 would be tone 3.

And the "Darn..." in sentence 4 would be tone 4.

Bumping up this thread  (Admin - If this is not allowed, feel free to remove it!)

I used to live (well for 3 months anyway) in a small neighbourhood in Istanbul called Kuzguncuk on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. The area was once a Jewish and Greek enclave and there are  still two synagogues, two Greek Orthodox churches, an Armenian Orthodox church and a mosque all in close proximity to each other. Most of the Ladino speakers have emigrated from Kuzguncuk but I remember being taken on a visit by local friends to the Old City on the European side of Istanbul. While walking in one of the old neighbourhoods, we overheard an elderly Turkish couple chatting in what sounded like Spanish. Turns out they were Jewish and were from one of the last families left in the area who had not emigrated to Israel or the US. 

"Chipashvili" is Georgian if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if 停滯不前 is a good Chinese transliteration of its pronunciation. You can go one of two ways: either pick a set of characters that match (more or less) the pronunciation or else pick a characters that match the meaning. 

Feel free to ask me any questions! Your may write in English, French, Bahasa Malaysia, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish and Chinese. Although don't expect a 100% perfect response in Chinese (I only learned to read Chinese characters in my late 20s - early 30s and speak a very divergent dialect as my native language)

I've added a common Navajo (yes, the Native American language with the largest number of speakers) idiom for "to be clumsy or awkward" (the equivalent of the Englisn "to be all thumbs", and the French "avoir deux mains gauches").

Tʼóó bílaʼ dijool

Meaning, "his or her hand is just round". There is no gender distinction in Navajo pronouns so this can be used to refer to either male or female. If you'd like a grammatical breakdown (Native American languages are very complex and you could write a thesis just to explain the phonology and morphology of Navajo, for example) I could start a new discussion because if would be a lot of info  

Hi! My name is Brian and I'm with a London-based company called uTalk (formerly Eurotalk). We're specialists in language-learning apps particularly for rarer languages like Basque, Greenlandic, Scottish Gaelic, Maltese, the various Polynesian languages (Samoan, Fijian, Hawaiian, Maori), Khmer, Burmese, Javanese and even uncommon Indian languages like Gujarati and Kachchi. Feel free to check out our website for the full list of languages! https://utalk.com/en/store

Our app is full of useful, everyday words and phrases divided into topics, with up to 180 hours for each language. All words and phrases are voiced by male and female native speakers (yes, imagine trying to get Greenlandic, Xhosa and Tok Pisin speakers to come record at our studio in London! When all else fails we make the extra mile - we've actually recorded speakers in the middle of the desert and in Siberia in winter! We've got enough material to make a documentary! ) The app also allows you to record yourself mimicking the native speakers' pronunciation, so you can practice until you get it right. And to make it even more fun, you get to play five increasingly challenging games to help you memorise new vocabulary. 

And that's not all! For a limited time, we're offering a special discount for Linguaholic forum members for a 50% discount on any language in our 140+ library! (Hint: The discount link can be reused indefinitely until the offer period of 2 weeks starting from today is up so if you feel like switching languages halfway, you can do so at the same discounted rate!) Our app works on Android, iPhone, iPad, Macs and PCs running on Windows.

Already browsed through the list and found a language you'd like to learn? Well then let's proceed, all you have to do is:

Follow this link to sign up, download the app and get started for a 50% discount (depending on the language and subscription type, it might be as low as $0.94 a month!): https://uta.lk/polyglots50

Hi !

My name is Brian and I've been a member of this forum for years but due to work commitments had been away. I'm back (partly due to this lockdown)!

I speak English, French, Mandarin, Taiwanese fluently and have a working knowledge of Turkish, German, Hindi and Burmese.

Currently learning: Arabic (Syrian dialect), Navajo, Warlpiri and Nahuatl. Yes I know, strange combination!

2 minutes ago, linguaholic said:

I am doing fine! I had a hard time these past couple of weeks (was sick) but now I feel much better! Hope you are doing good as well! Where are you now?

Glad you are feeling better! So many people are getting sick these days, it's scary. 

I'm in Malaysia and am staying put for a while thanks to all the craziness in the world today.

I finally have time to get back to my language studies and have just published my first ebook.

Just now, linguaholic said:

WOW, BWL is back! What an honor. WELCOME!

Hi! thank you, the honor is mine  Was terribly busy these past couple of years. 

How are you doing ?

I've been dabbling in Navajo and Warlpiri for a few years now. Both are quite complex and significantly different from more familiar European and Asian languages. Let me know if you want to know more!  

I just found out about this amazing place in Paris: http://www.mundolingua.org/

It's a museum for languages and linguistics! For any language lover who's in Paris, this is a must-see! It's the first European museum dedicated to languages!

I vividly remember my friend from Kyoto who kept calling her mother "Okahan, Okahan!" I suppose the -san > -han and -masen>-mahen change is one of the stereotypical markers of Kansai speech.

5 hours ago, VinayaSpeaks said:

I find gender most difficult aspect of French grammar. Most of the animate as well as inanimate words have gender.How do we differentiate gender of any words in French language?

That's a good question! Here's a rough (OK, very rough) guide:

Feminine noun endings

• The majority of words that end in -e or -ion.
• Except words ending in -age, -ege, -é, or -isme (these endings often indicate masculine words)

Masculine noun endings

Most words with other endings are usually masculine.

There are numerous exceptions, for example "la plage" and "le poète", that the above rules will work with about 80% of French nouns you will encounter.

Happy Learning!

On 4/1/2016 at 9:32 AM, Teira Eri said:

Thank you :3  
The kanji for hasami is 鋏 but kana is the chosen method for writing it.  Supposedly, there's a second reading to the kanji, "yattoko/やっとこ" which means pincers or shears.  I suppose to prevent confusion, hiragana became the popular way to differentiate the two.

Yes that explains a lot! I've noticed a lot of words like this as well, common Japanese words written in hiragana rather than kanji. 

For instance, do people still write  "おはようございます" and  "こんにちは" with kanji? 

Thanks!

1 hour ago, Teira Eri said:

May I add a few to the list?

食器（しょっき）Shokki   pronounced "show-key"  = Dinnerware, dining ware, usually the ceramic and stoneware goods

炊飯器（すいはんき）Suihanki   pronounced "soo-e-han-key" = rice cooker

トースター　Toosuta  pronounced "toasta" = toaster

箸（はし） hashi  pronounced "hah-shee" (emphasis on the HAH) = chopsticks

鍋（なべ） nabe  pronounced "naw-bay" = Japanese hot pot

小鉄（こてつ） kotetsu pronounced "koh-teht-soo" = Japanese heated table for the winter

鉄板（てっぱん） teppan pronounced "tep-pan" = The specialty teppanyaki maker/dish thing.  I can't really describe it.

フライパン furaipan "foo-rye-pan" = Fry pan

はさみ hasami "hah-sah-mee" = Scissors

食器洗浄機（しょっきせんじょうき） shokkisenjyouki "show-ki-sen-jo-key" = main word for dishwasher
食器洗い機（しょっきあらいき） shokkiaraiki "show-ki-ah-rye-key" = secondary word for dishwasher
食器洗剤（しょっきせんざい） shokkisenzai "show-ki-sen-zai" = dishwasher detergent

棚（たな） tana "tah-nah" = cupboard or cabinet or shelving (depends on the room)

 

 

That's a great list! BTW do Japanese normally write "hasami" in kanji? I remember seeing it written in hiragana although I can't recall if I've ever seen the kanji.

Sinisinta kita sounds very poetic to me, like something a hero in a romantic novel would write on a piece of paper and tie to the leg of a homing pigeon and then send it flying his beloved's house  

Incidentally "sinta" (the root of "sinisinta") is cognate with Malay and Indonesian "cinta". We use the word "cinta" in a rather poetic way too, I don't think it's a coincidence.

http://www.omniglot.com/blog/?p=12207

I'm sharing an interesting link from Simon Ager's amazing blog and website, Omniglot. Guess which type of Gaelic the recordings are in: Irish, Scottish or Manx

Try not to read the comments below the recordings in the post  there are a lot of clues there!

I studied the lyrics of this song by Jacques Dutronc for my DELF B1 and amazingly, while living in Paris I discovered that after all these decades...... Paris at 5 am is still exactly as he described and sang about way back in the 60's. 

A similar debate has been raging on and off in Malaysia for decades. The official language is Malay, originally known as 'Bahasa Melayu'. 'Bahasa' simply means language (yes, it's derived from Sanskrit), so the word means 'the Malay language'. When Malaysia became an independent nation, the official language was renamed 'Bahasa Malaysia' (Malaysian language) instead. 

Some purists claimed that the original name should be retained while others say that 'Bahasa Malaysia' belongs to all Malaysians and not just to the majority Malay ethnic group. The debate rages on.

I personally say "zed", that was the way I was taught in Malaysia (a former British colony, so British spellings and pronunciations are standard here).

When I studied Japanese at university, we were taught the standard  Jōyō kanji (around 2000 plus). The main problem for me was that I was a native Chinese speaker (I grew up speaking a non-standard dialect) and I kept having problems when reading aloud because I often could not decided if a kanji was to be pronounced with on-yomi or kun-yomi. 

Learning to read names was a big problem for me (though I believe that I'm not alone) - for example, the unisex name Hajime (meaning 'beginning', 'origin' or 'first') can be written with 10 different kanji, and this does not include hiragana and katakana. For example, the kanji for the name of Moriyasu Hajime (the famous Japanese footballer) is  森保 一 !

In other words, among other ways the name 'Hajime' can be written as 一 (usually meaning "one" in Chinese)! I found this to be particularly difficult!

Apologies for bumping this thread, I just heard this one the other day while watching a Japanese anime, just couldn't resist sharing.

耳が遠い (mimi ga tooi) = to have bad hearing (ears are far)

もっと大きな声で話してくれませんか。おじいさんは耳が遠いんです。

Could you please speak louder please? Grandpa has bad hearing (literally, "Grandpa's ears are far").

A friend recently asked me how to say 'love at first sight' in Chinese. Well it's:

一见钟情 (yījiànzhōngqíng)

The literally meaning is: one glance (一见), fall deeply in love (钟情).

Pretty much self-explanatory

The most boring part for me is memorizing vocabulary. However this becomes a little less boring when there is context associated with the learning process, like when I struggled to learn Turkish in order to follow a recipe book (my aim at the time was to make the best and most authentic imam bayıldı ever from a book of traditional recipes). Needless to say the dish turned out so-so but my vocabulary increased dramatically.

I've also been tinkering with the idea of starting a language learning blog focused on using recipes for traditional dishes as texts for foreign language learners (complete with annotations and grammar references).

By any chance, are any forum members here learning a Native American (or Canadian First Nations) language? I fell in love with Navajo years ago, developing fluency in such a complex language was exceedingly difficult. I'd love to interact with learners in this language as I am intending to brush up my command over the next couple of months.

Another interesting language I tried learning was Plains Cree, from the Algonquian language family. It's unrelated to Navajo, the way that English is totally different from Basque. Plains Cree even has it's own fantastic writing system, Cree Syllabics.

I'd love to hear from others who are attempting to learn these amazing languages.