What are the main characteristics of your language?

[Birdjaguar]

What are the main characteristics of your language?

English:
Most native speakers use it badly and write it worse, so it is constantly evolving with nouns becoming verbs, verbs becoming nouns, foreign words get adopted, meanings change, etc. English is an elusive language with a huge capacity for multiple (and often) confusing meanings. In English "words are like slippery pigs, they can be hard to grasp."

 

[Furry Spatula]

English: the main characterstic is its Lazy, like most people who speak it. Its a vicious cylce.

 

[blindside]

Although English is my main language, I'll talk about Urdu. It's spoken like Hindi, spelled more like Arabic.

 

[Dr. Yoshi]

English: For every single rule there is an exception or multiple exceptions.

 

[Birdjaguar]

English: For every single rule there is an exception or multiple exceptions.

"ie" and "ei" combinations are difficult in English, so we have a rhyming rule to keep it simple:

"i" before "e" except after "c" or when sounding like "a" as in neighbor and weigh." The exceptions to this rule are: neither leisure foreigner seized the weird height.

Just thought you'd like to know.

 

[SeleucusNicator]

Although English is my main language, I'll talk about Urdu. It's spoken like Hindi, spelled more like Arabic.

Interesting. You know Urdu?

It's up there on my list of "Languages I want to Rule", but I may not be able to get there for a while.

 

[blindside]

Interesting. You know Urdu?

It's up there on my list of "Languages I want to Rule", but I may not be able to get there for a while.

Uh, I'm kind of illiterate in it now, but I can understand it pretty well.

 

[MaisseArsouye]

Walloon uses the letter "å" wich is pronounced between "a" and "o" ( french pronounciation of course ) in Liège

We also have some diasystems whose pronounciation is different in some cities :
xh : Namur => ch , Liège => h ( a few like spanish "j" )
ea : Namur => ia , Liège => è
jh : Namur => j , Liège => h ( a few like spanish "j" )
å : Namur : => au , Liège => å

ex : måjhone = house
in Liège : "måhone" and in Namur : "maujone"

 

[Warman17]

@Stefan Haertel:

Don't forget that Germans put (nearly) all the verbs at the end of a sentence!

Only in model(i spelled it wrong, i know v_v;; ) sentences ^_^. I take German as a second language. Basically verbs like "would like(mochte)", "need"(brauche), "want"(wollen) or "allowed to"(durfen)-some of those have umlauts.

Also an interesting note, i'm not sure but we were taught that standard German(not any regional dialects) have replaced the B looking letter with two s's.

 

[King Alexander]

Here is the Greek alphabet: ΑΒΓΔΕΖΗΘΙΚΛΜΝΞΟΠΡΣΤΥΦΧΨΩ,αβγδεζηθικλμνξοπρστυφχψω.

One thing in our alphabet is that it has 5 different ways to write the 'I': I, EI, H, Y, OI and 2 'O': O and Ω. Of course, the posible combinations are too many and the meaning changes every time as the pronounce.

As you see, those letters have a few thousand years in use, so most of them are common in most of today's alphabets(and those that you don't understand, have been fit to other form in other languages).

 

[Akka]

One thing in our alphabet is that it has 5 different ways to write the 'I': I, EI, H, Y, OI and 2 'O': O and Ω.

Yeah, but seriously, what was this stupid idea of making the iotisation ? Talk about killing a language diversity !
You should have kept the old way

 

[King Alexander]

@Akka: I don't understand the 'iotisation'. You mean, the many 'I' combinations? That was done by the ancients and they had their reason for this.

What is the old way?

Btw: No Greek wishes to have one 'I' in our alphabet, because every combination has a meaning and a reason to exist.

 

[Akka]

"iotisation" was the phenomenon when nearly every vowel started to be pronounced as a iota (hence the name, and the expression "not changed of a iota").

Back in the past, each vowel has its own pronounciation : Y was "U" (probably like the french "u"), EI and OI were, well, "ei" and "oi", and H was the open version of E (like omega is the open version of omicron).
Only the "i" was already pronounced "i" ^^

I don't remember why there was this "iotisation", but I think it's a very sad enpoorishment (is that a word that actually exists ? 0_o) of a language.

 

[King Alexander]

I'm not a language expert or a grammar expert, to answer you about the 'iotisation'.

If I understood well, each vowel still has it's own pronounciation. The 'I' combinations are pronounced 'I' only inside the words, like 'w' is like 'dabliyou' in English, 'Y' is 'Ypsilon' in Greek, and so on.

 

[Mapache]

I don't remember why there was this "iotisation", but I think it's a very sad enpoorishment (is that a word that actually exists ? 0_o) of a language.

Impoverishment

 

[Stefan Haertel]

Also an interesting note, i'm not sure but we were taught that standard German(not any regional dialects) have replaced the B looking letter with two s's.

You mean ß - in most cases, it has been replaced by double s, but not everywhere. I think that ß is still written after long vowels (like in Straße, Maß). This reformed spelling has been introduced only a few years ago, so I'm not too safe on it yet.

One thing, to all English speakers: There is a difference between "burg" and "berg" in city names. Most people simply write "burg". It's wrong. For instance, the city is named Nuremberg. I know it's a bit confusing because there is also "burg" in city names, like in Regensburg. There is no rule to this; "Burg" means "castle" and "Berg" means "mountain". But if you write the name in the way it is written down in a book or on a map, it is most probably right.

In German, "i" is pronounced like the English "e". To get the English "i" sound, you write "ei". To get the normal German "e" sound, pronounce the short English "e" like in "get", but try to stretch it.

Some funnies:
"become" and "bekommen" mean two different things. So do "eventually" and "eventuell", "also" and "also", "gift" and "Gift", and, of course, "die" and "die".
"Die" can either be the feminine form of "the" or be a plural article. In that case, "that girl" means "das Mädchen" and "these girls" means "die Mädchen", whereas "that woman" means "die Frau" and "these women" means "die Frauen".
It's "das Mädchen" but "der Junge" (the boy).
Sometimes, singular and plural don't differ at all:
"Ein Kanadier", "viele Kanadier" (one Canadian, many Canadians).
Oh yeah, the English k-sounding "c" is written "k" for those who haven't noticed.
If you pronounce the English "v", you get the German "w", in all cases. When pronouncing "w" as standalone, it is pronounced like the English "v" -Germans have no use for "double-u". "v" is pronounced like an f, and as stand-alone pronounced "fau". It's pretty much a superflous letter. There are only a few cases in which "v" is pronounced like an English "v".
German "au" is not pronounced like English "au". It's more like English "ou".

German accent is the most sinister and evil-sounding thing in the world. Observe:
Tshermen exsent iss ze most ssinisster end eevill-sounding sing in ze vorld.

Thinking about it, German is almost as difficult as French.

 

[Grisu]

what separates swiss german from regular german most is propably the way we pronounce the 'ch'. while germans often pronounce it almost like an 'h', we speak it as if we were accumulating spit (you know the sound you make to get enough spit together) . We also have no simple past or "präteritum", we only use past perfect

unlike popular belief in germany we do not put 'li' at the end of every noun.

furtermore, we do not use the ß even when writing 'normal' german, we use ss instead. and we didn't accept all changes in the new german ortography, e.g we don't write majonäse, we still use the proper () spelling mayonnaise

oh and we usually don't call our language Schwyzer-dütsch as most germans think, we usually use the word Mundart (Mouth-art)

a local speciality of basel ist that we tend to stretch vowels extremely: Basel becomes Baaaasel, Rhy (Rhein) becomes Rhiiiiiiii (spoken like reeeeeeee with a rolled r).

 

[Grisu]

One thing, to all English speakers: There is a difference between "burg" and "berg" in city names.

hehe, I always liked to capture "Heidelburg" just to give it back it's correct name

 

[Akka]

I'm not a language expert or a grammar expert, to answer you about the 'iotisation'.

If I understood well, each vowel still has it's own pronounciation. The 'I' combinations are pronounced 'I' only inside the words, like 'w' is like 'dabliyou' in English, 'Y' is 'Ypsilon' in Greek, and so on.

You said yourself that H, Y and I are all pronounced "I". It's been the case only after the iotisation phenomenon. Before, Y and H had a different pronounciation ("u" for the Y, "è" for the H).
For some reason, there was a change in the pronounciation of some letter in the past, which leaded to the fact that now, half of the vowels and diphtongues are pronounced "i" rather than "ei", "oi", "u" or "è".

In fact, Y was not "ypsilon", but "upsilon". Hence the modern words "glucose" but "glycerine" : the latter was invented some time ago, using the actual greek pronounciation. The former is more recent, and "went back to the roots" by using the old greek pronounciation (glukos : energy, IIRC).


Oh, and thanks Mapache, I knew there was something fishy about "empoorishment" ^^

 

[Mise]

"ie" and "ei" combinations are difficult in English, so we have a rhyming rule to keep it simple:

"i" before "e" except after "c" or when sounding like "a" as in neighbor and weigh." The exceptions to this rule are: neither leisure foreigner seized the weird height.

Just thought you'd like to know.

I before E except after C when the sound is E is what I learnt. Of course, there are still exceptions, like seized, but it reduces the number of exceptions. If you include your version, i.e. add "and E before I when the sound is A" or something to the end of mine, the number of exceptions reduces significantly. BUT: there are still exceptions, such as the plurals of words ending in "cy", such as "vacancies", etc. So, to eliminate THESE exceptions, we add "unless it's a plural". BUT: There are still words like "seized" and "phenolphthalein", which are (I think) Latin or something, so we need to add "unless it's a crazy latin word".

So, I before E [(except after C when the sound is E), (except if the sound is A), (unless it's a plural, or a crazy latin derived word, in which cases no rule really applies)].