Gaming terms in your language

[jfrost]

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

The example is so simple it's actually meaningless. Nouns derived from a common language often look similar, but languages differ in syntax, pronunciation etc. I might as well give the following example and claim that Portuguese and Spanish are radically different:

Portuguese: segunda-feira, terça-feira, quarta-feira, quinta-feira, sexta-feira
Spanish: lunes, martes, miércoles, jueves, viernes

Lexical similarity might be high, but that's only a small component of what's a language. And, to be sure, they aren't that different, but mutual intelligibility isn't as high as many people seem to think.

Come on, that almost same! Also my Spanish teach told me she watches Italian shows with her kids with no worries.

Honestly, I doubt it. I've read a couple of times that Spaniards can understand Italian decently, but still, you've got to have some prior knowledge to effectively communicate and understand.

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.

Throw in Romanian in the Latin languages batch and you'll see matters considerably complicated.

There are accents in Portuguese as well. It's quite different for me to go to the south of Brazil and go to Uruguay. In one case, I have 100% mutual intelligibility, even though Southerners use different intonation and slangs. In the other case, I have, supposedly, 54% mutual intelligibility, if they speak slowly.

I found a good article about the subject: http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009 ... languages/

Some interesting links in there.

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

Well, that was an odd video.

This is Brazilian samba:


Or this:


And this is "samba de gafieira" (aka ballroom samba):

[Raziel]

By the way, does anyone know somekind of an index for video game terms? I'd like to translate or form equivalent words for my own use, because it pains to see sentences like "kuulge, see survival horror on päris vahva, ainult multiplayer'is on liiga palju fragger'eid", where Estonian language is mixed with English.

[RCBH928]

don't worry
every language is mixed with English now and it sucks and it makes no sense.
Amazingly, only english can accept foreign language vocabulary and sound good.

Catalan was dead since the 14th century? That is new news!
But is it similar to Spanish?
More amazingly, I want to know how Israel collected people from different parts of the world and made them speak Hebrew!? As far as I understand Hebrew was a dead language only in the holly books. That is like taking two Americans and put them in Japan and force them to communicate in Latin, although both of them understand English. Why wouldn't they just use English in between them!? That is pretty amazing to me.

Jfrost
My Spanish teacher was from Venezuela , she said she can understand Italian TV shows in worries. As a matter of fact she said she watches them with her kids and enjoy them. So I don't know.

Will be looking at all the links
and yeah, that is closer to the kind of samba I had in my mind

[jfrost]

My Spanish teacher was from Venezuela , she said she can understand Italian TV shows in worries. As a matter of fact she said she watches them with her kids and enjoy them. So I don't know.

Well, if she says so... I still doubt it, though, because I'm a skeptical bastard.

and yeah, that is closer to the kind of samba I had in my mind :)

Yeah, see? Amigo doesn't have that swing :)

[MrPopo]

don't worry
every language is mixed with English now and it sucks and it makes no sense.

I think we can directly blame the internet for that one.

Amazingly, only english can accept foreign language vocabulary and sound good.

I think it helps that English is made up of equal parts German, French, and Latin. So the language is already a hilarious mix of two very different kinds of languages (romance and germanic), and tossing in extra ones doesn't seem out of place.

More amazingly, I want to know how Israel collected people from different parts of the world and made them speak Hebrew!? As far as I understand Hebrew was a dead language only in the holly books. That is like taking two Americans and put them in Japan and force them to communicate in Latin, although both of them understand English. Why wouldn't they just use English in between them!? That is pretty amazing to me.

Well, that was the key. You had large groups of people from all over the world who all spoke a different language. However, there was a common language that they all knew: Hebrew. All these Jews were used to reading and singing in Hebrew, so taking the next step and adapting it to modern life wasn't all that difficult. And it helps that there were already several spoken languages that were derivatives of Hebrew, like Yiddish.

[crux]

My mother-in-law speaks Spanish, Italian and English (she's Dominican and her first husband was Italian), but she admits she can only partially understand Portuguese - not always well enough to fully comprehend it. I too doubt that fluency in Spanish would enable someone to easily understand an Italian television show, though perhaps being a teacher of the Spanish language could have some influence on the ability to understand a similar foreign language. I'll have to ask my mother-in-law how easy it was for her to learn Italian. On the other hand, my father-in-law isn't even fully fluent in Italian (he natively speaks Spanish, from Chile), but claims to understand Portuguese as well. He tends to embellish a lot, but he also worked as a translator for the Emergency Hospital of a busy hospital in Brooklyn, which perhaps gives credence to the claim.

I've enjoyed this topic, by the way. I've always had a fascination in linguistics which I really need to follow someday. I'm slowly assimilating the Spanish language because of my in-laws and a few years of Spanish in high school, but not as well as I should living in a country where Spanish is quickly becoming a majority language (if it isn't already in the US). I adore the French language as well, and probably have more motivation to learn it than Spanish, but figure Spanish would be a hell of a lot more practical to learn.

I've always wondered whether it would be more efficient to learn Latin if I have the intention to learn many Romance languages or whether jumping right into a live language would be the more practical choice.

[vejita]

Well, it depends on the Latin you would take- Classic Latin would be interesting but it's a bit removed from Vulgar Latin, which had generally been spread out and eventually formed into the common person's languages...

I'd say if you want to learn Latin to start with the basics and then move through history deciphering where they all broke apart and reformed. If you know any devout Catholics they might be happy to help with Latin and could probably give some interesting historical insight.

[crux]

My father-in-law was a Roman Catholic priest and studied at the Vatican at one point in his youth, so he does indeed speak some Latin and Greek, now that I think of it. Which gives a lot more credence to the idea that he could understand Portuguese, really.

[RCBH928]

inernet has a big role so do computer programming languages.
email , websites, and many things can be only in English (btw, the wise use of the Latin letters is really not helping those who are not using them)

while the Israeli example by you is understood, but that is when every one of them would be speaking a different language. If I am not mistaken, there was a huge chunks of Russian speakers, English, and German.
If I speak English I might speak Hebrew with the ones that speak German. But to the other chunk of people who already speak English? Russians to Russians? Germans to Germans?

I also like to add that it is amazing that they got hundreds of thousands of people to learn a new language and speak it, keep in mind the age variety. My information(internet) tells me the language was only in the holly books and priests/monks only understood it. Even if they used to read it in their prayers I do not think they understood it. Really amazing if you ask me.

any one trying to learn a new language, my advice learn something that is not connected to English. You want some kind of an advantage. Everyone speaks English and all Europe speaks English probably, and even if they don't many people are bilingual with one european language and English.

Learn something different. Like Chinese or Japanese. How many people can read that ? You will be superb between friends. Anything Spanish or french probably you can ask a guy off the street about it.

[MrPopo]

while the Israeli example by you is understood, but that is when every one of them would be speaking a different language. If I am not mistaken, there was a huge chunks of Russian speakers, English, and German.
If I speak English I might speak Hebrew with the ones that speak German. But to the other chunk of people who already speak English? Russians to Russians? Germans to Germans?

I also like to add that it is amazing that they got hundreds of thousands of people to learn a new language and speak it, keep in mind the age variety. My information(internet) tells me the language was only in the holly books and priests/monks only understood it. Even if they used to read it in their prayers I do not think they understood it. Really amazing if you ask me.

Oh, I agree fully that it's still pretty amazing that they managed to bring it off. But they were helped that everyone wanted to bring it back. It's a part of the shared Jewish heritage, so bringing it back as the official language of Israel just like it was before the destruction of the temple made perfect sense.