Humbleman

There are several languages that make the list of the world's oldest languages,and according to be they are:

Egyptian,

Sanskrit,

Chinese

What do you guys think?

I wonder about this sometimes. If we disregard the evolution theory and subsribe to the history of man's diverse languages originating from the Tower of Babel, then it bids us to wonder what these people used to speak before that universal language was divided up into French, Spanish, Chinese, etc.

For me it is speaking, but also listening.

Speaking - whenever presented with the chance to speak Spanish, or any of the other languages I am learning, I choke up. Sometimes I do know the correct reply, but I get too insecure.

Listening - native speakers speak fast and sometimes takes away letters. Therefore, whenever I listen to a language I am learning, I miss out.

We've got the same problem my friend. It's sometimes difficult for me to keep up with the pace at which some native speakers speak. I know I am catching on and improving daily, but gosh! It's so hard sometimes. I do reading and writing better. I guess I have to invest more into resources that will aid my listening skills and ability  :nerd:

Yes that is interesting! Actually Tagalog speakers use two sets of words : tatay for father and nanay for mother (this is is equivalent to "dad" and "mom" and is more casual) OR ama for father and ina for mother. Ama and Ina are more formal. In fact the word "Ama" is used in the Filipino Catholic "Our Father" prayer.

This is quite interesting information. In Jamaica it is mamma and dadda...the fact is that universally they sound alike 

I think it can help you to understand exactly how some of the words are formed and understand why grammatical rules for that particular language exist, for example in English some words had letters added into them when the printing press was invented to make the words on the page line up correctly, so the spelling of otherwise easy words suddenly became strange and awkward.

I agree. If we as language learners are able to rationalize and see the reasoning behind the pronounciation, epitomology, etc., of the words of the language we are studying, then we will retain the language better. Otherwise, we may just find that we are swatting the information only to lose it in the near future. 

When you are learning a new language, do you ever take in consideration the history behind a language?

To be honest, no. I don't take the time to learn the history of a language I am learning and it's not because I am lazy. History overall, is interesting and helps one to piece things together as we study the present and the future. So, I would want to know the language's history, but I wouldn't say I would make a great concerted effort to do so  :nerd:

I have been to places where i have heard young people speak english better than the americans and their accents sound real authentic, but they are continents away from america. When you ask them where they learnt how to speak like that, they will tell you that they watch a lot of tv and thats where they picked it all up from.

Yes, I can attest to that. I'm one such young person. I have a British accent and an American accent as well. lol.

tau nana na...tau na tauna...can't stop this! :grin:

I've tried to in the past through meticulous research to find some root word in one language which, though the spelling may have been altered a little is part of a word [or is an actual word] that has the same meaning in the different languages [i'm not talking about related languages like Germanic languages]. I never did find any such words but realized that  word usage was similar. For example, the word snake, a euphemistic word for the male reproductive organ is used virtually all over the world to refer to the same thing. Can this be proof that people at one time spoke one language?

In my opinion, I believe that we all spoke the same language millenniums ago. At least that's what I was taught in Sunday school. From the bible, we learn of the story of the Tower of Babel and how God diversified that one language so as to cause the people to be confused (babble) and stop trying to reach the heavens with their Tower.

I find also that in studying and comparing the English Language with Espanol, there are hundreds of similar sounding words which indicate that they have the same root.

I was raised in a small, private school and we started learning Spanish in 7th grade, it was just part of the curriculum and we had to learn it weather we wanted to or not (I did). It was nice preparation for high school, were two years of a foreign language were required for graduation.

However, I know that in some schools these days they start teaching kids foreign languages when they are younger because they can absorb so much more. Or, maybe you grew up in a bilingual home and heard two languages from little on.

Some of my friends whom went to different elementary schools than I did had the ability to choose what language they wanted to learn starting in the primary grades. Although I think Spanish is a good language to learn, I wonder what it would be like had I learned French or German at a young age.

I started learning a foreign language from birth. I guess I could put it that way, seeing that English isn't really my native tongue. Day in and day out you hear your parents speaking creole in my country, but every now and then they would address you in English language. After watching lots of TV program and learning English from the school curriculum, I started to become proficient in speaking  the language. I started to learn Spanish in the first form of high school. 

Although I'm not very keen on machine translation, Google Chrome's built-in web page translator is a very useful tool. However, I wouldn't use it in every kind of site. I find it useful, for instance, in shopping websites, as a way to grasp some basic information as you can find on websites you understand, especially when it comes to find the right buttons for "Add to Cart" and "Checkout". 

However, if one's researching information or just reading a longer text on the web, the machine shows its limitations, and the result, while it may give you a glimpse of what is being said, isn't as trustworthy.

I agree with you. Google translator is automated or machine translation. Thus, it may only serve to give you  a synopsis/idea of what the website is saying, but it can't give you the complete information. Examining it myself, I find that there are certain words that are translated as synonyms to the word intended in my native tongue and thus the synonym gives a slightly different idea from the intended truth.  :sad:That's why nothing beats human translation.  :grin:

I'm curious to know how the inhabitants/citizens of your country came to be speaking the language that they now speak.

Our Jamaican creole came about as a result of a mixture of native African languages of those who were taken as slaves here with the native British language of those who were our slave masters. The English language is easily spoken and understood by most Jamaica, and for more friendly conversations, we chat wi patois. A bet yuh nuh anda-stan?  :grin: