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Solar wrote: No, don't go into the subject of dialects... even if you ignore that pronounciation and slang vocabulary differs vastly depending on where you are in Germany, the language my grandmother grew up with is completely not understandable for anybody but someone who grew up in the same area. Not just different, or "strange", but incomprehensible. Those so-called "Platt" languages - the tongue of the commoners - derivated from the "Hochdeutsch" (High German) in the early middle ages (!), and became a language with vastly different grammar and vocabulary.

In the Netherlands, the exact same story. There are "plat"-talen, which are so incredibly weird that most people speaking the better dutch (Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands, ABN) won't even be able to make out what a sentence is, let alone know what it means . The stronger accents include Limburgs (south-east of country, where I was born and even I can't understand some of them), Twents (the east-center piece, they are incomprehensible) and the northern sites (Gronings and Fries being the most common ones). One of them (Fries) is also an official language, but nobody really cares about the language except for those that either live there or that speak it.

I come from Westphalia. I'm inclined to say "Es pl?stert", looking at a downpour. A nightgown is, for me, a "P?lter". I live in Hessian; they don't even know the words here and would be entirely lost as to what I am talking about.

Same here.... when I say that somebody's "aan het foetelen!" they look at me blank and wonder where I came from. Same with a "tuutje" (plastic bag), in Fries the same word stands for "kiss". Imagine somebody from Limburg wanting a plastic bag in a Friesisch supermarket .

Kik'n keun. Toetoet! Freez'n.

Everybody theoretically speaks Swedish, at least enough to say "Jag kan inte tala svenska." (I can't speak Swedish, in Swedish). Yet, almost everyone speaks MUCH better English than they speak Swedish; enough so that when I need to speak with native Swedish speakers (which is quite rare anyway, since most of them can speak Finnish too) I usually end up conversing in English, and I'm certainly not the only one.

It is common joke to call English "kolmas kotimainen" (3rd domestic). The idea behind the joke is that while Finnish and Swedish are the official languages, the amount of people able to speak semi-fluent English is several times bigger than the amount of people that speak conversational Swedish. In fact, it's hard to find someone who doesn't speak any English at all.

It might be a joke in Finland, but here in Estonia, there have even been some politics who're serious about it.

Yep. In German, it isn't the phonetics that make it a difficult language, it's the grammar. Where English has "the", German has "der", "die", and "das" depending on the gender of the subject spoken about - which, when it comes to inanimate objects or animals, is everything but obvious. (A table and a dog is male, a lamp and a cat are female, a house and a rhino are neuter...)

And that's only the beginning of it.

Right you are. Although it isn't especially hard to study the words with articles, using them trying to get a grammatically correct sentence, is quite hard.

That said, while Quenya (that Tolkien's elvish language) share many grammatic principles, all words and declinations are totally different. One of the things that Tolkien followed is expressing the subject in the inflection of the verb: in Finnish for example, saying "Min? olen" (I am) is equivalent to simply saying "Olen" since that form of the verb "olla" already carries the information that the subject is in 1st person. In written language the pronouns are dropped quite often, in spoken language rarely.

Actually, I would explain it this way: you can leave out "min?", because you couldn't use "olen" with any other pronoun. Same in English, alhough it's probably not grammatically correct to leave out "I" from "I am", I still do it, when I need to express myself really fast (I can't stand acronyms or worser, writing something like "RUK" instead of "are you okay?"), however I can't do it with "you are", since "are" could be used with "we" or "they". You can use "olet" without "sin?" too, I think.

Now, about those dialects. When you move to a bigger city from the countryside, no one could probably understand you, when you talked the dialect you used to. But it sounds just right, and if you talked how you wrote, all the charm of speaking natural and colorful would disappear behind stammering.

Kon-Tiki wrote: Kik'n keun. Toetoet! Freez'n.

My dialect: Ziet dau, e kornoi?n. Tendoet! J?bbeezen.
Universal Dutch: Kijk, een konijn. Maar nee! Aardbeien.

Hard to believe it's all the same language...

Same in English, alhough it's probably not grammatically correct to leave out "I" from "I am", I still do it, when I need to express myself really fast (I can't stand acronyms or worser, writing something like "RUK" instead of "are you okay?"), however I can't do it with "you are", since "are" could be used with "we" or "they".

You can't really get away with this in English, despite the fact that the only personal pronoun that goes with 'am' is first person singular. It's a sufficiently odd use of 'am' that the listener has to stop and start deciphering your meaning, which negates any effort at fast expression on your part.

Far better to stick to contractions "I'm", "You're" etc. In normal conversation these are actually used more commonly than their uncontracted counterparts. The only time I'd actually use the uncontracted form in a conversation would be to emphasise what I am saying.

Eg
"Don't play by the pool John"
"Do not play by the pool John"

The second form can be made into a far more serious warning just by increasing emphasis on the 'not'.

That and not using contractions is one of the biggest giveaways for people who have learned English as a second language. It's almost instantly discernible, no matter how fluent their English is. Michael Shumacher is one example of someone who has come to grips with this aspect pretty well (Peter Schmeichel would be another).

StrangeQuark wrote: My dialect: Ziet dau, e kornoi?n. Tendoet! J?bbeezen.
Universal Dutch: Kijk, een konijn. Maar nee! Aardbijen.

Hard to believe it's all the same language...

My sentence wasn't even my dialect. Was from mom's side. Can't even start to write it in dad's dialect, as I don't hear some of the sound differences. Dad says: "No, you pronounce it like this: <He pronounces it>" I say: "I said it like that. See? <Pronounces it>" Dad: "No, that's waaaaaaaay off." etc. etc.

Also, in German, there are cases. Depending on which case a noun in the sentence falls in, the ending of the noun will change.

(Is this right, Solar?)

Well, yes, but many other languages have that too, haven't they? And it's a quite common joke that even most Germans - especially adolescents trying to sound "cool" - have difficulties with this part of German grammar:

"Verein zur Rettung von dem Genitiv."

"Club for preserving the Genitiv" - 2nd case - phrased incorrectly in 3rd case. Correctly phrased:

"Verein zur Rettung des Genitivs."

@solar: well, this is maybe the difference between *dialect* and *high language*

Ever been in Berlin and felt the desire to have a snack - especially in Siemensstadt or so - where I've spent about a week. Ask for the bill, the answer is like this maybe: "Achsooo, ick hab ihnen det zetterl in die t?te jemacht" (I've put the bill into the bag). Kinda earsoothing this is.

As for genitiv and dativ: these two are mixed often in spokem/written german. One example:

strict correct german (as I usually speak/write): Wegen des Regens bin ich nass geworden. (due to the rain I got wet)

loosely spoken and tolerated even in Austrian Commercial Academies as written german: Wegen dem Regen bin ich ... . Althou you ask: Weswegen?

Well - and to find out whether to use genitiv or dativ is rather simple: just ask for the subject. wessen? (whose?) is Indicator for plain genitiv.

Humhom as Treebeard says, and now I set off to have more coffee. Ha en bra dag

I wouldn't ask "weswegen" but "wodurch" - "durch den Regen" - but we're quite OT by now, are we?

Thats a different point of view and a different constellation of the sentence - well, my example 's been a bit dull, I admit. *gg*

Regarding OT: never mind. we are still in the realm of languages if not english but some relative: german. After all we share the same lingual roots don't we? Multum delectatum! *sssfg* Slainte!

Just this weekend I got my hands on a magazine featuring a relationship tree of languages... and I was stunned to see how many of the European languages actually are of indogermanic descent.

And by that overview, German and English are indeed very closely related (steming from "Proto-Germanic"...) as opposed to French, which stems (like Italian) from Latin. Even the scandinavian languages (with the noteable exception of Finnish, which isn't scandinavian at all) are more closely related to English and German than French or Italian are...

So, Pype, how come that you are so good at English, without the convenient excuse of close relations? ;D

Maybe I'm gunna learn sum gaelic, that would be fun *ggg*

Well, peut-etre Monsieur Pype parle l'anglais tellement parfait car il lui faut(est-ce-que c'est correcte,la?) de la parler toute l'heure, hm? *ggg*

hmm ... latin is indogerman too. Just a few thousands of years old.

Even the slavic languages are indogerman, just yet older.

Solar wrote: Even the slavic languages are indogerman, just yet older.

so, if I figure this out correctly, knowing english, german and dutch quite well, doing swedish should be very doable?

And spanish would be harder because I only know french in that group?