Gaming terms in your language

[ZeroAX]

Portugal was only "part" of the Spanish empire from around 1580 until 1640 (due to a succession crisis). This didn't even complete 2 Spanish king's periods. I don't know if that is meant to be considered "a good deal of time" or not, but it certainly is NOT a good deal of time as far as language influences go.

greece had been under turkish rule, for a good 3 centuries, and while we have many common terms, the languages have nothing to do with each other, and you will understand absolutely nothing from the other language, if you know one of them.

[Incognito D]

I just can't roll my Rs for anything.

I think you can, you just don't notice. For example, when you Americans say something like "shutting" or "hottie", the sound of the "tt" is close to the sound of the Spanish (and Portuguese) "r".

I would say it's more similar to the sound "d". (in English I mean, not Spanish) I don't know what a Spanish or Portuguese "r" sounds like.

So it would be like "shudding" or "hoddie"

[jfrost]

I just can't roll my Rs for anything.

I think you can, you just don't notice. For example, when you Americans say something like "shutting" or "hottie", the sound of the "tt" is close to the sound of the Spanish (and Portuguese) "r".

I would say it's more similar to the sound "d". (in English I mean, not Spanish) I don't know what a Spanish or Portuguese "r" sounds like.

So it would be like "shudding" or "hoddie"

Yes, that's what I tried to say, that the "r" sounds like a soft "d" (or "t"). Thanks for the help.

[jfrost]

I have no problems to read in French, Portuguese or Italian since all three are romance (From latin) languages. You may need a dictionary for some words but with a bit of knoweldge you can survive. Specially for Portuguese and Italian since both were part of the Spanish empire for a good deal of time.

This thread is hilarious

From my experience, the vast majority of *native* Spanish speakers can not understand Portuguese. Heck, I once met a girl from Brazil that could only understand European Portuguese (unless spoken really slow, or imitating the accent) after some days of getting used to it.

In my experience, most problems of mutual intelligibility between Brazilian and Portuguese people arise from the difference in vocabulary (some common words in one country have been fallen out of use in one country or the other, and vice-versa). There are some problems with accent, depending on the part of Portugal the person comes from and the area of Brazil the other person comes from.

I guess that's natural in languages, given the funny characterization of the Scottish accent I've read in English books (e.g. P.G. Wodehouse's Angus McAllister).

Still sticking to my experience, I think the majority of Portuguese people can understand American Portuguese without any trouble, and can understand Spanish mostly without too much trouble (but it helps a lot if they speak slowly).
However, I seriously doubt an Italian-speaker could understand Portuguese just based on the similarities, and that a Portuguese-speaker could understand anything beyond very basic things in Italian (Pizza!). Certainly you can survive, ask for food and stuff like that.

I can understand Spanish superficially. As I mentioned, I could talk reasonably well with Mexicans. With Cubans I had trouble, as they speak very fast. Anyway, I could keep conversations with both of them, even though they were not terribly deep exchanges.

Funnily, if you come to Brazil, a lot of people will claim to know Spanish, but if you try talking to them, they will say two words and Spanish and the rest in Portuguese. Don't even bother.

As for Italian, I can't understand it at all. I can read some of it, but I cannot keep a meaningful conversation (of the kind I keep with Spanish speaking people) with Italians.

Portugal was only "part" of the Spanish empire from around 1580 until 1640 (due to a succession crisis). This didn't even complete 2 Spanish king's periods. I don't know if that is meant to be considered "a good deal of time" or not, but it certainly is NOT a good deal of time as far as language influences go. Regions in the border with Spain tend to have assimilated some terms, but that is in the realm of dialects and not the language itself.

Spain has been joined up into a single kingdom for ages, and they still have 4 rather different official languages inside it, including the one that is (correctly) referred to as "Spanish" (possibly also known as Castilian, although I don't know if they reserve that notation only for the one spoken in Spain or if it is valid to say they speak "Castilian" in the Americas). Directly above Portugal, in Galicia they have Galician, which is rather similar to Portuguese. In the North near the border with France they speak Basque (they even have a nationalistic terrorist group which tries to get independence there), and they have Catalan - or Valencian - in the Eastern part, including in Barcelona.

Well, Portugal itself has two languages: Portuguese and Mirandese, and the latter is quite different from the former, although they're both Romance languages.

And yes, Spanish in America is sometimes referred to as Castillian.

[Ack]

Yeah, English is a bit different in every nation that speaks it natively, and regional differences can apply within a nation, sometimes down to a city or city section. So in the United States, you'll get Midwestern, Southern, and Northern accents, along with cities(like a Boston accent) or city sections(Brooklyn accent, for instance). Some sections with heavy mixes of other countries sound very different, such as the use of English in Creole country in Louisiana.

The contrast between nations can be even bigger. We'll joke about Canadian English in the states, but it's a lot closer than the Australian accent or the multiple accents found in the British Isles. It gets even weirder when you mix two together(such as the Irish accent brought over by immigrants to New England, specifically Boston, has gone on to mix with the American accent and form the English used in South Boston by the Southies).

Personally most Southerners tell me I sound Midwestern, but I tend to use Southern terms, so I say things like "fixin' to," "ain't," and "ya'll." Rarely I'll say something and a Southern accent will come through.

[Ivo]

I agree with most of what jfrost says - in particular, I think it would be harder for an English person to understand some English accents than most Brazilians to understand Portuguese persons. That girl was the only one I ever had issues with, it was not vocabulary but the European accent. There were 4 or 5 guys from Brazil in the group all heartily making fun of her for "not understanding Portuguese"

I would also like to note, that there are a few, very limited regions in Portugal (namely in the Azores) where the accent is so thick that most Portuguese have trouble understanding it (to the point that in the news, sometimes you see subtitles for that accent - when they are talking Portuguese - and often Spanish is not subtitled).

About Mirandese, I don't think it counts as a proper "official" language, more like pseudo-official. It is not like the 3 "other" spanish languages. I don't know if they teach it in school even in its region, or if they offer government forms etc. in it (and banks or other institutions, I strongly doubt they do). It is more a curiosity (maybe I'm being disrespectful here) as it is really a tiny minority of people that know the language - apparently the language endured in that border region as it was useful for smugglers to know a language that the others didn't know (I don't know if this is a myth, but I can totally see it being true). But props for knowing it exists, I would not expect many Brazilians to be aware of its existence (it really is low key). I understand Castillian much better than Mirandese as well.

Ivo.

[RCBH928]

I am not sure how you classify a different language
While I understand/speak English fluently , and took only a month and a half of Spanish course I still can understand what it says on that Tintin episode intro, how much different can English/Spanish/French/Italian/Portuguese be? Maybe English is different, I am not sure about the rest, here is a simple example
Spanish: Uno, dos, tres, cautro
French: UN, deux, trois ,quatre

Come on, that almost same! Also my Spanish teach told me she watches Italian shows with her kids with no worries.Then again, I am an Arab, and in the arab world like every city(not country) has a different accent and local vocabulary and it is all seen as accent, While proper Arabic is consider the Language. That is like saying French, Italian, Spanish is all accents of Latin, and Latin is the official language.
I went to Barcelona , and we asked a guy at the hotel there if Catalan is really different from Spanish and he said that its basically he same except for a bit of difference in spelling and a bit word pronunciation .

As for rolling R's , Arabic has that hard R sound and I can't pronounce it. Its a defect really, that is quite common. Thats about the hardest letter to pronounce. Its like Duffy Duck with the S's. So if you can't do it, don't let others lie to you and say you have to work on it, its birth defect, that is why a lot can and then many can't. On the other hand I have heard others working on it and figuring out.

and wtf with the Samba dance, thats not how the soccer players do it!

[Erik_Twice]

I went to Barcelona , and we asked a guy at the hotel there if Catalan is really different from Spanish and he said that its basically he same except for a bit of difference in spelling and a bit word pronunciation .

It is because it is dead language that the nationalists are forced to adapt so as to force independence down people's throats. Harsh, I know but it is what you get when you try to revive a languague dead since the XIII century.

The same happens with the other "spanish" languages. They all suck, are half-invented (Or totally invented like Euskera) and used to split the spaniards so they kill each other. Nobody talked Galician 10 years ago, until the nationalist steped in and banned Spanish from the schools (Yes, that happened)

And yes, I don't like this nor does most of the Spanish population.

On other matters, Brazilian Portuguese seems pretty hard to understand compared with peninsular Portuguese and English has helped me quite a lot with my German.

[ZeroAX]

the fact that languages, have same words, doesn't mean they are alike. Most of the time, they have totally different grammar, and sentence construction

[jfrost]

I would also like to note, that there are a few, very limited regions in Portugal (namely in the Azores) where the accent is so thick that most Portuguese have trouble understanding it (to the point that in the news, sometimes you see subtitles for that accent - when they are talking Portuguese - and often Spanish is not subtitled).

That's pretty interesting.

About Mirandese, I don't think it counts as a proper "official" language, more like pseudo-official. It is not like the 3 "other" spanish languages. I don't know if they teach it in school even in its region, or if they offer government forms etc. in it (and banks or other institutions, I strongly doubt they do). It is more a curiosity (maybe I'm being disrespectful here) as it is really a tiny minority of people that know the language - apparently the language endured in that border region as it was useful for smugglers to know a language that the others didn't know (I don't know if this is a myth, but I can totally see it being true). But props for knowing it exists, I would not expect many Brazilians to be aware of its existence (it really is low key). I understand Castillian much better than Mirandese as well.

Yes, Mirandese is virtually unknown, and the community of speakers is ridiculously small (despite that, Wikipedia tells me that it is an official language of Portugal). Still, the point was that it wasn't too affected by the dominant language of the country.