What language (other than English) do you speak?

[liegeprime]

it's a funny thing coz Philippines was under Spanish rule for almost 400 years the Filipino official language - Pilipino which is mainly Tagalog mixed with a whole lot of other words from the various dialects within the country is also riddled with Spanish words.

I have a Spanish colleague and she was the other day cursing incessantly (albeit a little quietly to herself) because she was getting frustrated with all the alarms and wotnot happening to her dialysis machine and wasn't being cooperative at all making the shift very busy and toxic.

When she stepped out of the room I told her I understood every curse word she was letting fly she was abit embarrassed and thought no one around understood. I told her, no worries we all do it when were frustrated to the limit, she wasn't shouting it around anyways and just cursing - muttering to herself while figuring out what's wrong why all the alarms on the stupid machine hehehehhe

I watched that video (german) Gok. It got me thinking is there a softer way of saying the word in German though, it's like the words are arranged that you have to speak it like you're angry or something... but you're not.

[GoktimusPrime]

Are you talking about the "What German sounds like compared to other languages" video? If so, then the German speaker is deliberately putting on an angry voice for comic effect, but I've been told by my fluent and native speaking German friends that his pronunciation is perfect (and indeed, they find the video hilarious ).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Xmas is a time when a lot of people like to think and talk about Elves... so I'm thinking about greeting everyone with Isusarad ‘elir, which is "merry xmas" in Elvish.

[DELTAprime]

Question for the people here that are fluent in Japanese.

As a native English speaker that only knows English I have real trouble understanding most of the people from Japan that Sony and Nintendo put on stage for their press events because they are native Japanese speakers and often have terrible English.

I'm wondering if the same thing happens when a native Japanese speaker is listening to native English speaker speak Japanese? I watched this video of Andrew House from Sony who is British talking about Hideo Kojima joining Sony and all I could think was "can anyone in Japan understand what he is saying?".

So yeah, when a native English speaker speaks Japanese is it as unintelligible as when some Japanese speakers speak English?

[GoktimusPrime]

The Brit in that video speaks Japanese fluently, so it's easy for native speakers to understand him. He does have an English accent, but it doesn't impede with his ability to be understood (after all, even native speakers have accents).

If you're bad at speaking a language, then people are going to have a hard time understanding you -- doesn't matter if it's English, Japanese, French, German, Latin or Klingon. So yeah, a person who speaks terrible Japanese would be just as unintelligible to Japonophones as a terrible English speaker would be to Anglophones.

[GoktimusPrime]

bonum diem natalis Jesu

google translate say merry Christmas in latin


Have a great Chrissie

NEVER rely on Google Translate!!!

Here is what I consider to be a better translation:
fēlīcem diem nātīvitātis (say "feh-lee-khem dee-em nah-tee-vee-tah-tiss")
It means "happy day of (a/the) birth." But it could be something that you might say to a woman as she's about to go into labour.

Here's a break down of what each word means:

• fēlīcem; (say "feh-lee-kem") accusative singular case of fēlīx (say "feh-lix"), meaning "happy," "lucky," or "blessed." The Anglophone names Felix and Felicity are derived from this word.

• diem; (say "dee-em") accusative singular case of diēs (say "dee-ess"), which means "day." "Meridiem"* means "midday," and in English we still use the Latin words for 'before midday' (ante※ meridiem = a.m.) and 'after midday' (post☆ meridiem = p.m.). And of course, many people are familiar with the Latin phrase "carpe diem" ('seize the day').

• nātīvitātis; (say "nah-tee-vee-tah-tiss") genitive singular case of nātīvitās, meaning "birth." This is just the general word for "birth," as in either a birth or the birth of someone. nātīvitātis is where English obviously gets the word "Nativity" from.

The word "Christmas" is a combination of Greek (Christ; from Χριστός) and Latin (mass; derived from the Latin word missa★. The word "Christmas" first appeared in English around the 11th-12th Centuries, some five to six hundred years after the fall of Rome. Thus Latin doesn't actually have a word for "Christmas." The nearest cultural equivalent would be sol invictus, the Roman celebration of the Unconquered Sun on December 25. Early Christians actually celebrated Christmas on the 25th of March, thus it fell close to their celebration of the Passion (forerunner to Easter), however it was moved to December when the Romans adopted Christianity (re: Constantine) and assimilated Roman religious practices. So the nearest socio-cultural equivalent to "Merry Christmas" in Latin would be FELIX DIES NATALIS SOLIS INVICTI (say "feh-lix dee-ess sol-iss in-wik-tee"), which means "happy birthday to the Unconquered Sun."

-------------------------
*meridiem; (say "meh-riddee-em")
※ante; (say "un-teh")
☆post; rhymes with "lost," and not with "host."
Also note that Latin has a slightly trilled /r/, similar to what you will find in Romance languages like Italian and Spanish, and not like the 'mushed' /r/ in English (or "postalveolar approximant" if you want to get phonologically technical ).

★Many languages still use the original Latin word for 'mass' (missa), including Japanese (ミッサ;missa), and the word for Christ is more closer to the Greek pronunciation (キリスト;kirisuto), although the Japanese word for "Christmas" (クリスマス;kurisumasu) is taken from English. Thus the meaning and origins of the word are not as immediately obvious in Japanese.

[GoktimusPrime]

Talk about being massively lost in translation; Star Wars' Duel of the Fates is based on a Welsh poem known as Battle of the Trees. The words to this poem was loosely translated into the Classical Indian language Sanskrit, and then that translation was then rearranged to form the words for Duel of the Fates. However, the words were really chosen for their sounds and not their meanings, so when you translate it back from Sanskrit to English, you can see that the meaning has been severely warped. This video plays Duel of the Fates with lyrics in Sanskrit and translated to English, and the English is pretty nonsensical.

But this is nothing new to Star Wars. Previously we've had:
* Rodese (Rodian language, as spoken by Greedo); a simplified form of Quechua
* Sullustan (as spoken by Nien Nunb); Haya, a regional Tanzanian language. I don't know how much similarity it has with Swahili though.
* Ryl (Twi'lek language, as spoken by Oola); French! As Jabba yanks her chain towards the Rancor trap door, she cries, "Non, ne me tuez pas!" ('No, don't kill me!').
* Ewokese; the Kalmyk language; although it's a Russian language, apparently it bears striking similarities with Mongolian. I have had Mongolian speaking friends tell me that they can understand bits of Ewokese, so there does appear to be some level of mutual intelligibility.

And of course, Galactic Basic = Modern English. However, not all languages in Star Wars are represented by real life languages. Some languages are constructed; AFAIK languages like Huttese and Mandalorian (we briefly hear Jango speak it to Boba Fett) were constructed for the films.

Star Wars Force Awakens Language "Spoilers" Ahead: There is no discussion about the actual plot/story of the movie, but for anyone who's avoiding absolutely everything about the movie until they see it, feel free to stop reading now.



Star Wars The Force Awakens also introduces a few new languages. One of the first that we encounter is the language spoken by some of the inhabitants of Jakku, and Rey is also able to speak this language too. I have no idea if this language is based on a real world language or if it was constructed for the movie. I suspect that the members of Kanjiklub are actually speaking in Bahasa Indonesia (or possibly another Indonesian language). Can anyone confirm this?

[Sunsurge]

I speak a little bit of Other at home. Not fluent by any stretch, but my other half takes great delight in teasing me when I make a mistake.

[GoktimusPrime]

fēlīcem diem nātīvitātis (say "feh-lee-khem dee-em nah-tee-vee-tah-tiss")

Correction: nātīvitātis = "nah-tee-WEE-tah-tiss."

[GoktimusPrime]

From here:

羊 in Chinese is a generic term for caprids. It can be both. And the Chinese zodiac is the same which does not really specify whether it's sheep or goat. Try googling a picture of say “Chinese zodiac 2015” you'll find all sorts of caprids.

Heh, even when I Google Image 未年 (Year of the Caprid), I get images of both sheep and goats! Also, you'll notice that the Kanji for Caprid in the compound for Year of the Caprid is 未, and not 羊 (hitsuji) or 山羊 (yagi). 未 on its own means "not yet," as in words like:
未来 (mirai) = "future", lit. "(events which have) not yet come (to pass)"
未成年 (miseinen) = "minor" (as in a person under age). lit. "not yet become years (i.e. come of age)"
But in the context of the Lunar Zodiac, 未 refers to the '8/12 heavenly branch,' which is the caprid.

It doesn't surprise me that while 羊 semantically means "sheep," it may also be synonymous with goats or just any kind of caprid. As I mentioned before, while 猿 (saru) semantically means "monkey," it can also be used to generically refer to any kind of non-human primate, thus apes can also be included (which is why 孫悟空 (Son Gokuu) is often portrayed as a tailless ape as well as a tailed monkey. Then there's Dragonball which just gave us tailed apes, but they're aliens, so that's okay. )

[doublespy]

From here:

Heh, even when I Google Image 未年 (Year of the Caprid), I get images of both sheep and goats! Also, you'll notice that the Kanji for Caprid in the compound for Year of the Caprid is 未, and not 羊 (hitsuji) or 山羊 (yagi). 未 on its own means "not yet," as in words like:
未来 (mirai) = "future", lit. "(events which have) not yet come (to pass)"
未成年 (miseinen) = "minor" (as in a person under age). lit. "not yet become years (i.e. come of age)"
But in the context of the Lunar Zodiac, 未 refers to the '8/12 heavenly branch,' which is the caprid.

It doesn't surprise me that while 羊 semantically means "sheep," it may also be synonymous with goats or just any kind of caprid. As I mentioned before, while 猿 (saru) semantically means "monkey," it can also be used to generically refer to any kind of non-human primate, thus apes can also be included (which is why 孫悟空 (Son Gokuu) is often portrayed as a tailless ape as well as a tailed monkey. Then there's Dragonball which just gave us tailed apes, but they're aliens, so that's okay. )

Very informative. I'm a native Chinese (mandarin) speaker, so I understand you perfectly and it's always interesting to see the difference between the Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi when there is.

Btw, Sun Wukong (Son Goku in Japanese) has always been portrayed with tail in Chinese literature and folk lore. In fact it's one of his weaknesses. He can change to 72 different forms (a bit like early concept TFA Blitzwing ), but always can't hide his tail that well.
Check out this google doodle paying tribute to the fantastic animated film Havoc in Heaven. The letter "G" is when Wukong changes to a temple but can't hide his tail