Preguntando se llega a Roma. A question for Germainc and Slavic language speakers

[Elta]

For the most part Spanish shares almost all of it's adages with Portuguese and most of them with French, Italian and to a lesser extent Romanian.

A lot of them straight from Latin I think.


Does German share a lot of phrases with Dutch and English? Or Danish?

I know a lot of them are the same with Danish-Norwegian/Swedish and Icelandic. Are they are generally from German? Or is there a more of a particularly Nordic twist?



And with Slavic is there a distinct east west set of adages? Or are they are sort of the same? I admit I don't know a lot about these languages, but I find it interesting too.

 

[warpus]

Adages are like proverbs, right?

Polish proverbs are mostly original, although some come from neighbouring countries (not only Slavic ones), some from Latin, and some from the Bible.

I would guess that what you're describing is common in Romance languages because they all come from Latin - which used to be Europe's universal language of sorts. A bunch of proverbs in Polish (and other non-latin languages, I'm sure) come from Latin, so I'm not surprised that Romance languages have a lot of common proverbs.

 

[Slaughter]

I can't speak for slavic languages, but to my knowlodge, English is the bastard child of latin and german who constantly pickpockets his half-brothers. Portuguese is the best child of latin who pickpockets EVERYONE, except those who live in Slavic Land.

I don't know anything about german, but it sounds damn like english. There are words that are pretty much english, except with something else like a k.

Also, I read the Scots version of wikipedia, and its pretty much like english, except it sounds like a really drunk dude from Scotland talking. What with all the e's and all that.

Spanish = Semi-Barbarian Language that sounds hilarious.
German Languages = BARBARBAR (German sounds pretty cool, though. English ins't bad, just very poor on some aspects)
Scots: English, but drunk.
Slavic Languages = R'ty fhiyulhetki 'go'buguntz or/zemp varich tokkkom'ak
Brazilian Portuguese = Civilizated language, best language ever since latin.
Original Portuguese = Sounds very funny.

That's just the way it is. Sorry, you have to accept that.

 

[Theige]

Spanish = Semi-Barbarian Language that sounds hilarious.
German Languages = BARBARBAR (German sounds pretty cool, though. English ins't bad, just very poor on some aspects)
Scots: English, but drunk.
Slavic Languages = R'ty fhiyulhetki 'go'buguntz or/zemp varich tokkkom'ak
Brazilian Portuguese = Civilizated language, best language ever since latin.
Original Portuguese = Sounds very funny.

Quite the objective analysis you have there

 

[really]

Scots: English, but drunk.
That's just the way it is. Sorry, you have to accept that.

After a previous thread here I changed my mind on this (and Ulster Scots).
Languages can be mutually intelligible but different.

Thinking back I had awful difficulty trying to chat up a lowland Scot once with a strong accent. I couldn't understand her and she couldn't understand me.

 

[innonimatu]

Most adages which spread beyond local lever did do through literature. And knowing how authors have always liked to quote the "old masters", I'm guessing that most can go back to latin texts. And many of those may very well be translations from greek originals...

Try comparing this truly huge collection of proverbs in spanish, french, english, italian, and latin. They are grouped with their equivalents in other languages. A fine work.

And by the way, his list of latin expressions used to be one the most complete available on the Internet. Edit: after a quick check, I think that it still is - and it has been 8 years since I had seen it!

To the OP - sorry, I hadn't noticed that you were seeking similarities win non-romance languages. With that I can't help, but I expect that they'll be similar, drawn from the same classical corpus.

 

[Agent327]

For the most part Spanish shares almost all of it's adages with Portuguese and most of them with French, Italian and to a lesser extent Romanian.

A lot of them straight from Latin I think.


Does German share a lot of phrases with Dutch and English? Or Danish?

I can say that Dutch proverbs rarely figure in German (I don't know any) and personally don't know any German proverbs that are used in Dutch as well. This however may not be true for certain border dialects.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

German and Dutch are quite simiar I think. I don't actually know a lot about Dutch language but whenever I heard it strikingly many words sounded very familar.
German and English are in some ways very close to each other as well, though of course less closer than Dutch or German. It is for example very interesting, that Shakespeare's grammar was similar to the German one.

1 Example:
Modern English: He loves her
German: Er liebt sie
Shakespeare English: He lovt her

This changed over time and nowadays English and German are quite different. Still some words are pretty much alike.

Examples:
house - Haus
way - weg
school - Schule
door - Tür
lamp - Lampe
and so on

 

[scherbchen]

oddly enough in my experience idioms (what you call adages) are quite different from English to German. enough has been said about English being a romanized Germanic language I believe, understanding single words is not the issue. when we cross the border into idioms and sayings and phrases we see that.... uhm... we see that... well there is a difference!

we share some...

first come first served - wer zuerst kommt malt zuerst
the early bird gets the worm - der frühe Vogel fängt den Wurm

but some are just not translatable (and here is where the fun starts as far as I am concerned)

most prominent of these are of course the US sports metaphors...
-ballpark figure
-to throw someone a curveball
-to play hardball
etc

but more interesting to me is the source, or rather where these idioms stem from.

German seems to be very fixated on fecal matters. I can not provide examples due to forum rules, sadly.
English has its big hitters in the sexual arena, bonus points for alluding to non-mainstream sexual orientations.
Spanish is very much obsessed with madres.

odd.

 

[scherbchen]

house - Haus
way - weg
school - Schule
door - Tür
lamp - Lampe
and so on

house is a classic, as is door, yet there are some that are even more obvious

body parts:

arm - Arm
finger - Finger
nose - Nase
hair - Haar
foot - Fuss
navel - Nabel
neck - Nacken
knee - Knie
muscle - Muskel (this one might very well be latin come to think of it)
nail - Nagel
beard - Bart
brow - Braue
elbow - Ellenbogen
nipple - Nippel
breast - Brust

etc etc pp

 

[uppi]

oddly enough in my experience idioms (what you call adages) are quite different from English to German.

If you think about it, it's not that odd. Idioms are mainly formed by written text in that language. In the case of German and English, there is no text in a predecessor language, that is common to both of them, because at the time of seperation they were not written, only spoken.

Most idioms that are common to both languages can be traced back to texts in other languages, e.g. Latin texts or the Bible.

 

[scherbchen]

In the case of German and English, there is no text in a predecessor language, that is common to both of them, because at the time of seperation they were not written, only spoken.

wouldn't at least the thorn symbol dispute your claim?

 

[kulade]

wouldn't at least the thorn symbol dispute your claim?

You mean the thorn symbol that is no longer used in English and German?

 

[scherbchen]

You mean the thorn symbol that is no longer used in English and German?

well there is no reason to use it in German as we have no sound that correlates to it. what was to become the Brits transcribed it with "th" in the long run. name one dental fricative in the German language that is not borrowed from English.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Muscle comes from the Latin Musculus, meaning little mouse.


The Normans didn't like Thorns, since they were derived from Norse runes which were sometimes used in divination and therefore considered pagan. They preferred using irrational combination of letters used by more civilized peoples to denote the sounds of letters like thorn, yogh, and eth, thus introducing the first really stupid spellings into our language. These letters continued to be used for centuries, but alternate letter combinations were used too. I think thorn lasted the longest (it was still fairly common in the 18th century, but I think Webster's spelling reforms may have got rid of it. "The" and "That" were practically the only words that still used the letter anyway), but looked identical to the letter y for much of this time since the first movable type printing presses in England were imported from Italy where torn wasn't used and the cursive form of thorn already looked somewhat like a y.


I believe that German did add the letter "dorn" (as they called thorn), but since it was pronounced exactly the same as the letter d it wasn't used a lot.

 

[Agent327]

And nose/nez/Nase is bastardized from Latin nasa (still feminine in German, but masculin in French, oddly).

German and Dutch are quite simiar I think. I don't actually know a lot about Dutch language but whenever I heard it strikingly many words sounded very familar.

Similarities between German and Dutch are superficial mostly. (Some words may be practically identical, but may differ in meaning. Praktisch = practical in German, but = almost in Dutch, being an obvious example. Since WW II Dutch no longer uses inclinations except in a few archaic expressions and most Dutch can't even understand German nowadays.)

wouldn't at least the thorn symbol dispute your claim?

What thorn symbol? Are you talking about runes?

 

[oagersnap]

Well, many words are similar between Danish and German, as well as Danish and the other Scandinavian languages. However, the Scandinavian use almost the same grammar, while the German grammar is quite different.

Icelandic is a little special, because it hasn't evolved very much for the last 800 years and is almost identical to the Old West Scandinavian language. They use many words that are archaic in the other languages. And many of their words, although their etymological roots are the same as ours, are very different from ours in the way they're written and pronounced. Also, the Icelandic grammar is different (and complicated).

 

[Winner]

I don't know, why don't you make an experiment, Elta?

Start a thread with a set of selected English proverbs. Posters from other countries can then assign versions of them from their languages, and you can compare how much they differ.

I know that many Czech proverbs are pretty unique (they usually do have simila equivalents in Germanic languages, but with different metaphores/idioms used to carry the message).

As for the following quote, na hrubý pytel hrubá záplata (a rough patch for a rough sack):

Slavic Languages = R'ty fhiyulhetki 'go'buguntz or/zemp varich tokkkom'ak

Ta vaše hatmatilka nezní o moc líp

Moderator Action: English only please.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Elta]

There are some pretty cool poll sites around.

I could do that.

Expect to see it after I am done with this semester

 

[Rik Meleet]

I can read Danish newspapers. (I don't speak nor can I understand spoken Danish)
But I can read the newspapers because I know how the letters are pronounced and many words either look like an equivalent in English, German or Dutch or sound like a word in those languages. And of course newspaper articles are very structured, which helps a lot.

Phrases are very dissimilar from languages, and even between areas of the same language. Northern Dutch use very different phrases then in the south. And that's only 300 kilometers (175 miles) apart.