What are the main characteristics of your language?

[Stefan Haertel]

while germans often pronounce it almost like an 'h',

But only like a Swiss "h"

majonäse

That's one of the most disgusting atrocities done to the German language.

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

So do I

 

[Stefan Haertel]

Mundart (Mouth-art)

You can be glad that most people here don't know the difference between English and German "art". All I can tell you is that it's definately not art

 

[Grisu]

You can be glad that most people here don't know the difference between English and German "art". All I can tell you is that it's definately not art

pft, infidel

actually I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that the art used in mundart is the french word art and therefore identical to the english version and not the german one

But only like a Swiss "h"

yeah I know I described it poorly, what I wanted to say is that germans pronounce the "ch" usually much softer with much less throat-rasping than we do

 

[Lord_Sidious]

In Portuguese we transform many English words to Portuguese example:
Beef- Bife (has the same pronounce)
film- filme (has the same pronounce)
Portuguese like the Spanish has many anicent influences:
Latin (Iberia once was part of the R.I.),Greek (they founded many colonies in Iberia),Celtic (They invaded the Northen Iberia), Arab (They invaded Iberia), Goth (they too), and many other european languages. In the middle ages Portuguese and Spanish were almost equal. In the 13th century a Portuguese king D.Dinis established the Portuguese language and in the Age of Descovery we get many influences from Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Thai, Malay, African dialects and American dialects. Thats the reason why Portuguese grammar is very difficult to learn (in school i'm even better in English and French that in Portuguese!)And the verbs! I never found a English how speaked good Portuguese (many of them speak Braziliian Portuguese that is gramatical incorrect)In speaking is very difficult to English speak Portuguese. WHY? Because English is a very simple language!

 

[Stefan Haertel]

actually I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that the art used in mundart is the french word art and therefore identical to the english version and not the german one

Since the word is common in non-Swiss German, I think it's not the English meaning.

BTW, what the heck does the sentence in your signature mean?

 

[Grisu]

Since the word is common in non-Swiss German, I think it's not the English meaning.

BTW, what the heck does the sentence in your signature mean?

I googled a bit and it looks like you're propably right

my signature is taken from a Ovomaltine commercial (the chocolate-drink that gave me my nickname):

Since you're german I'll first translate it to german since that's way more accurate than my english translation: Mit Ovo kannst du's nicht besser, aber länger (With ovo will not do it better, but longer)

 

[Lord_Sidious]

In switzerland that has 3 languages there is a universal designation for the name?

 

[Grisu]

In switzerland that has 3 languages there is a universal designation for the name?

Make that 4 languages, although Rumantsch is only spoken by a few thousand.

I'm not sure I understand the question. Do you mean the name Ovomaltine? It's a brand name and they usually exist only once and are the same in every language.

 

[Lord_Sidious]

I thaugt that was Helvetia

 

[Grisu]

I thaugt that was Helvetia

now you really got me confused, you are talking about the name of switzerland

if so, there are lot's of names the latin names is:
Confoederatio Helvetica (that's where the CH comes from)

The names in thier respective language are:
German: Schweiz
French: Suisse
Italian: Svizzera
Rumantsch: Svizra

 

[hawai_74]

In Swiss german isn't : "Schwiiz" for Schweiz

 

[Jorge]

Spanish is very simple. We have a sound for every letter and that's it. There are hence only five vowels: a, e, i, o, u.

Usually the words are longer than in english, so they have more phonetic information. That together with the fact that in english you can pronunce the same letter (or group of letters) in different ways make that the spanish really have a hard time when trying to understand english. Many people can read english (more or less easily) but when they listen to it they just don't get anything.

 

[Lord_Sidious]

Yes, I've never had Spanish lessons and written Spanish I can easly read. Spoken Spanish is a bit more complicated (you speak very quick). A Portuguese can understand Spanish and a Spanish can't understand Portuguese very well.
(jorge if you live in La Coruña you speak Galician!?)

 

[MaisseArsouye]

I speak french and walloon, so I can read most of italian, portuguese and spanish texts. It's not very difficult

 

[ferenginar]

People say things like,

'arry Po'er

or

Pe'er Pan

or

tha'll learn yer

cos they aint never bean leant proper at skool

 

[Jorge]

Yes, I've never had Spanish lessons and written Spanish I can easly read. Spoken Spanish is a bit more complicated (you speak very quick). A Portuguese can understand Spanish and a Spanish can't understand Portuguese very well.
(jorge if you live in La Coruña you speak Galician!?)

The spanish pronunciation is simpler than the portuguese one (you have almost all the sounds needed to speak spanish but spanish lacks some of the sound used in portuguese). That's why portuguese can speak spanish with less effort thatn the other way.

Of course there are exceptions: people from Galicia (like myself) can learn portuguese quickly because galician is somewhere in between spanish and portuguese. I have many friends from Portugal and we can talk to each other without problems

 

[Lord_Sidious]

Yes, Portuguese and Galician were once the same language

 

[deo]

Here is the alphabet of my language (Albanian)

a,b,c,ç,d,dh,e,ë,f,g,gj,h,i,j,k,l,ll,m,n,nj,o,p,q,r,rr,s,sh,t,th,u,v,x,xh,y,z,zh

 

[tehfreak]

How about French -> abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (as usual) with some alterations -> à ù è é ê â û î ï ë ö (not sure if we still use ö in any word, but I've already seen it) ç =)

I'm from Canada (proud not to be canadian) and the spoken french here is different from the one used in France. Main difference is that we will not culturally flip to english influence like they will, with their speaking getting so frenglish

 

[Mapache]

How about French -> abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz (as usual) with some alterations -> à ù è é ê â û î ï ë ö (not sure if we still use ö in any word, but I've already seen it) ç =)

You forgot œ and æ.