BWL

I know a lot of Chinese Canadians below 25 who can hardly speak a word of their ancestral language and I guess this trend will just continue. It's pretty sad but language loss in immigrant communities is a worldwide trend. I'm willing to bet that Arnold Schwarzenegger's children cannot speak Austrian German at all! (Or else have a very limited fluency in it).

This is a clip of a professional Lushootseed language (a native language spoken in Washington State and with many related languages spoken on Canada's West Coast. It is almost extinct but efforts have been made to revive it. It's a beautiful language with many sounds that aren't found in European and Asian languages. I like the ejective sounds (k', t', p', kw' ) and the "tl" and "lh" sounds. It has no writing system but is nowadays written in IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet. How does it sound like, compared with your own native language?

I started leaning Japanese years ago by first starting with hiragana and then katakana. After that a gradual transition to more and more complex kanji. This strategy worked best for me and I think it's a pretty good way to introduce the Japanese writing system to beginners.

I watch movies and constantly practise those languages which I am already fluent in with friends either verbally or through writing emails. I find that it is easy to maintain fluency if you are constantly using a language. Even if I haven't used a language for several weeks, usually all it takes is a few days speaking it with native speakers to "awaken" my skills, so to speak.

I have a colleague of Moroccan origin whose home is not Moroccan Arabic but rather Berber of the Shilha variety. His grandparents migrated from the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco to France about 30 years ago but raised all their children and grandchildren to speak Tachlhiyt (the local Berber dialect spoken in the High Atlas Mountains) and some Moroccan Arabic. Tachlhiyt, like some other Berber dialects has words with no vowels. It is astonishing to hear my friend's grandmother say "Tktit!" meaning "You remembered!". Yes, it is "tktit" with only one vowel in the whole word (an "i"). "You cancelled" is "tfskht". A really amazing language.

It's definitely very useful for me because I am now living near Paris' Chinatown on the 13th arrondissement. The Chinese here are either of Wenzhou or Chaozhou origin and thus speak different dialects and have to use Mandarin or French to communicate between themselves.

Interesting! I think I head "khud-khushi" from a movie as well (I can't remember the title). There does seem to be a lot of Persian and Arabic words (simple words and not complex phrases) borrowed into Hindi. I've been asked by North Indian friend whether I was a "shadi-shuda" before and I gave him a blank stare! Now I know what it means and where it came from!

Yes I totally agree about the show "Qabool Hai". Yes, on the other hand spoken Hindi does use many simple common Persian and Arabic words like "kitaab", "jaadoo", "kaghaz", "avaaz", "darwaza" etc. Formal Urdu uses even more of these words. I can see what you mean by the poetic use of Urdu in songs. I understand some Farsi and Arabic and I notice that the pronunciation of these borrowed words in Urdu (and in Hindi) is a lot softer, smoother and less guttural than in the original source languages (especially Arabic words with all the ains, ghains, qafs, daads and other harsh sounds).

When I was learning Urdu, I noticed some very Persian-style grammatical constructions like "Jaan-e-man" or "shikayat-e-dil" or "manzil-e-ishq" commonly used especially in songs and poetry. How common are phrases like these used in spoken Hind? I hear them very often in Bollywood songs but not so much in spoken language.

I was on the metro at Kuala Lumpur (a popular destination for Middle Eastern tourists) and I heard an Arab lady talking with her family. She said something like "Nga3adu!" (I use the number 3 to represent the letter 3ain). Which part of the Arab world would she and her family be from? I believe she was telling her husband and kids to sit down. I think the use of "g" for "qaf" would be Khaleeji dialect? Do correct me if I'm wrong.

Interesting. So the differences are mainly stylistic like in English "to help" and "to give a hand"? Same meaning but slightly different tone and style?

Thanks! I think that even the word "kapatid" or "sibling" comes from "patid" meaning "to break" or "to cut off" comes from the same type of metaphor. Siblings are like fruits growing and separating from the main mother tree!

This site explains the different joshi (particles) quite clearly. I'll find some other sites with better examples. Give the link below a try and see if it helps. http://japanese.about.com/blparticles.htm

I noticed this trend too the last time I was in Manila for a business trip. One Manila friend asked me "Pero yung colleague mo... mag-e-exam ba siya next week? He knew that I spoke fairly fluent Tagalog, so I guess his mixing is perfectly common in Manila and comes to him naturally.

When I first learned Hindi, I use to get stuck between deciding whether to use a full verb or one with a verb combination. For example, how do you determine when to say: "Woh school mein aa gayaa" or "Woh school mein aayaa"? Do you say "Woh nikal gayaa" or "Woh niklaa"? And what would the differences between them be like?

Written exams are always a pain. The order of strokes is essential in order to write Chinese characters, so even if you can read, if you write the wrong part of the characters first, it is technically still wrong.

My grandfather's generation grew up under British rule so I guess he would have been more of an expert on this matter than myself. I think there definitely is a grain of truth in it. Another nation with people who do not necessarily mean what they say (but perhaps in a less sarcastic way) are the Swedes. The Swedes as a rules dislike being controversial and to argue, to the point of hiding their feelings in order to keep the other party happy. I've noticed this trait among many Swedish friends! While British wit is often a form of nicely-veiled form of sarcasm, the Swedes will simply not say anything for fear they will say something offensive!

Kansai-ben is particularly rich in them. I never had the chance to learn it, so only know a few common phrases. And that accent! I also like how they say "akan" for "dame" or "ikemasen".

I've been working and traveling in so many places that most people cannot really guess where I come from anymore from my accent alone. I do have a slight British accent when I speak English but people tell me I do not have any accent at all when I speak French which probably means that I sound like someone from the North of France. I also have a Southern Chinese / Taiwanese type of accent when I speak Mandarin so yes, I'm all over the map!

Yes, I think many Eastern Indian languages have lost the gender system. Bengali verbs do not even have a plural distinction, so they say "Ami khai" (I eat) and "Amra khai" (We eat). Compare "She khay" (He eats) and "Tara khay" (They eat). Bengali makes not difference between "eats" and "eat" unlike Hindi which has a plural and gender differences in all verbs.

I use Chinese in my daily life. It's essential for my work even though I do not live in a majority Chinese-speaking country. I wish I was better at reading and writing though, but yes I think within the next 10 to 20 years, more and more foreigners will be learning Chinese.

I do not think that Hindi will ever become extinct. What I think is that the language will becoming increasingly influenced by English and that while many common words will be retained, any technical or scientific word will automatically be loaned from English, as in "Ham apni naayi phone line ko kaise connect karte hain"?

When I started leaning Hindi and Urdu years ago, I watched a Bhojpuri movie with some friends who were from that region of India and I was shocked at how much I understood! It gets more difficult with dialects further to the east and by the time you reach Bengal, it's a full-fledged language that's has its own grammar and structure.

I notice katakana is really common in popular fashion magazines and anything youth-oriented as well as in technical documents because of the large number of loanwords coming from English. It is used in some native Japanese words such as names of animals and plants (in scientific contexts) as well as for emphasis and sound effects (like italics in English).

Welcome to the forum! There are many Spanish speakers here, whether native speakers or learners like yourself. I hope you have a great time here!