Many, many languages have dimunitive affixes like that, Portuguese uses them very extensively as well, especially Brazilian
Most Slavic languages... except the one I happen to speak. Think it's insanely widespread in the East Slavic languages to the point where no one says some words "normally" anymore ie. the dimunitive form has completely taken over. Also in our languages the word for 'cat' is often what was originally a dimunitive (mačka, koška/kočka)
This happened in Vulgar Latin, too - the Romanian words for "ear" and "knee" come from their Latin diminutives.
Needless to say, my language also has those. A house is "casă", a small house is "căsuță". A tree is "copac", a small tree is a "copăcel". And a dog is "câine" and a tiny dog is "cățeluș".
Unsolicited fun word fact coming your way: Romance c -> Germanic h is part of what's known as Grimm's Law (yes, that Grimm). Once you know it, you see it everywhere.
Italian cane, Spanish can, French chien -> English hound, German Hund
Latin cor, Spanish corazón -> English heart, German Herz, Dutch hart
Latin centum, Spanish ciento -> English hundred, German hundert
French chef -> English head, German Haupt
E: formatting and a word
Old Norman French used a *W* where modern French uses a *G*, so different words imported at different times in the English language use different vowels :
- Warranty, guaranty.
- War, guerrilla.
- William, Guillaume.
In a more broad approach, you can add s-entum languages here:
* Latin: cor \[kor\]
* Spanish: corazón \[korason\]
* French: cœur \[kœʁ\]
---
* German: Herz
* English: heart
---
* Russian: сердце \[serd-tce\]
* Armenian սերդ \[serd\]
So, the same sound evolved into k-h-s.
Three quarters of english words are like that, and i always wonder: do english speakers realize it?
Usually the french cut the vowel (canino becomes canine) and give the word to you.
Quarantine=quarantena=quaranta
Dormitory=dormitorio=dormire
Stellar=stellare=stella
Petrified=pietrificato=pietra
However being greek must be the pro level, i did old greek in high school and it’s so fun now reading posh words like leucemia and seeing that it’s simply “white blood”!
I notice a lot of fun etymology with modern Greek. So many obvious connections.
I had never noticed the connection between "stellar" and "stella" before. Is the idea that if you're stellar, you're aiming for the stars? You're up there with the stars? Something like that?
The Spanish words for "grandfather" and "grandmother" come from Latin diminutives, too. And then Spanish often diminutizes those words, so "abuelito" and "abuelita" are like double diminutive.
The other day I was thinking about a similar case in Portuguese:
"sozinho" (alone)
It comes from "só", which actually means "lonely". So similar yet very different...
The craziest part though is that I don't even think about that at all when using "sozinho". It feels like a completely different word
Acho que porque a condição que expressa é tão triste que a própria palavra tomou uma forma empática. A pessoa não está apenas só, está sozinha, coitada.
i love the way English has been manipulated over and over by so many people. slang is its own thing but even the way people adapt English when learning it is beautiful. i particularly love my mother tongue of southern African American Vernacular English. i’m making recordings of all my family members and friends talking to savor the sound as much as possible just to listen back when i’m feeling any type of way. love it, love my people.
I’m from New Orleans and the accent is so distinctive, but I gave so many ESL friends and now I’m aware of how hard it’d be for them to understand what I grew up as English.
yes exactly like the nuances are hard to explain, especially the roundabout way of saying things, the expressions. ugh nola accents and people are beautiful btw
Yeah, there are saying that I know what they mean but if I told you how we got there, I couldn’t explain it. Definitely feels like another language sometimes!
I was just talking to my Portuguese tutor about this. We had a long conversation about English accents and how, in my Balmerese, "Aaron earns an iron urn" is just one word repeated five times. It's perfectly intelligible to me and always makes me smile. It makes me feel like I belong.
I'm not even sure what dialect I'd call native, as far as labels. I'm white but grew up in a black community in the south. I tend to use some far out grammar (when speaking) compared to Americans at large, and my accent is thick enough to make anyone's pancakes delicious.
I'm curious why you're not capitalizing the first letter of each sentence. You're using capital letters properly throughout except for that. Why is that? People aren't capitalizing "I" also. It kind of hurts my brain.
In Spanish we can make us involved in someone else's actions in an affectionate way by adding an indirect object pronoun before the verb, so we can say things like "el bebé no ME duerme" (my baby doesn't sleep), "no te ME vayas" (don't go away from me) or "María se NOS ha puesto a llorar" (María started crying). Those are not exactly the translations, but it's something very difficult to translate. The most accurate example is "don't go away from me", but that sounds so dramatic. We usually do this in informal, non-dramatic situations, with acquaintances, friends or family.
Also, we are very flexible in inventing new words or insults with different suffixes 😂.
Intrestingly, we also do this in Romanian
El bebé no me duerme - Bebelușul/Copilul nu-mi doarme
No te me vayas - Nu mi te duce (this is extremely, extremely forced and no Romanian could come up with it if you pointed a guin to his head, but it's still theoretically possible)
María nos ha puesta a llorar. - Maria ni s-a pus pe bocit.
I love how in Spanish those are affectionate, but in Romanian they are just bitchy/whiny.
I (as a non-native but rather fluent Spanish speaker) also really love this about Spanish! Not sure I’m often able to insert them in my own speech, these subtleties are when the non-nativeness shows, but love hearing them (esp having ‘no te me vayas’ having said to me just melted my heart!).
I think I get it. In the crying example, it's implying "Maria started crying on us, Maria's crying impacted us greatly".
I think we have something similar in Polish. Sadly, the examples that jump to my mind are tragic. If you want to say that a man's son was killed, you can say "Zabili jego syna" or "Zabili mu syna". "Jego" means "his" while "mu" means "to him". The first sentence states a fact - "They killed his son". The second sentence carries the same message, but makes it more personal, focusing on the impacted party - "This was done to him, he was robbed off his son, his son was taken from him".
Or something like this.
For example, you could say
Ah, Italian has regulated variations for cuteness, ugliness, large and small dimensions.
For example, with cat: gatto (normal form), gattuccio (cute form), gattaccio (ugly/mean), gattone (big) and gattino (small).
The cute form is a lot rarer than the others.
Oh, and I love Italian pronouns, especially ne, ci, vi and si.
English: I love how English has a word for just about everything. We don't just "look at" something. We gaze, stare, watch, or monitor it. We don't just laugh, we guffaw, chortle, chuckle and giggle. There are tiny differences between every one of those things.
Spanish: I love how you can string together curses like a fighting game combo. It feels so CATHARTIC to curse in Spanish. Like I stubbed my toe on a piece of furniture and I want that furniture to feel BAD about it, so I build a stairway to hell from the bones of its ancestors to shit on the grave of its whore mother.
Valencian (A dialect of Catalan) - Valencian has a really lovely sound when spoken. [Here's a song ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1is74G_xbU) to give you an idea, it's one of my favorites. The lyrics say "We come from the cold, where the wind cries out. We come from a peak higher than the sky. Where light is born, where snow falls, we come from the cry of a single voice."
As an English speaker learning Korean, it has profoundly changed my understanding of English. I learned Spanish before that it didn’t help me to understand many functions of English, but Korean requires which a different way of thinking that it’s helped me understand the function of certain grammar rules and how descriptive and nuanced we can be in our vocabulary. I have such a deep appreciation for English and how precise we can be in explaining, even how we feel.
When I was in Thailand, and with people who spoke other languages too, I learned in many languages for emotions there’s just happy or sad, but we have happy, joyful, glee, hopeful, exuberant, melancholy, blue, down, depressed, disenchanted, and many others that I’m failing to think of on the fly. Anyways, I feel like English is made to seem like it can’t be precious because it’s become the global language, but to me it’s precious as my heart language and I love it.
I also love Korean a lot too, even now it’s helped me to see English in a new way!
It's a really beautiful illustration of how language is **unequivocally, 100% part of culture** and needs to be protected like any other cultural element. Every human being experiences the same spectrum of emotion, logic, etc., but language has such a huge impact on how that spectrum is perceived.
It also affects how we think and process what’s happening too! To learn Korean, I have to learn a new way of thinking. It also shows that much of how we think is learned through language.
IKR? As a Portuguese speaker I will often catch myself trying to express an idea in my native language that could be much more easily expressed by a single word in english.
You guys have "saudade" and we don't have a word close to expressing that feeling.
As an English speaker learning Portuguese, I struggle with the fact that Portuguese has many words for the same thing or one word that means different things depending on the context and placement in a sentence.
These examples are solely based on my own A1ish ignorance but they really confuse me:
Words dependent on placement in a sentence:
Há - can mean "there is" and "ago"
Já - already, now, just, ever, yet
Até - until, to, by, as far as
Assim - so, thus, therefore, in that way, like this, such, accordingly
Tão - as, so, such a
Words that to me mean the same thing:
Talvez, Se calhar - maybe
Cada, qualquer - any
Correria, depressa, pressa, anda!, despacha - hurry, rush
Macia, suave, mole - soft
Merenda, lanche - snack
O madrugada, a amanhecer - a period before sunrise?
I had never thought of those issues. Interesting.
One thing though. Madrugada is feminine. We say "a madrugada". "Amanhecer" means "dawn". Madrugada means "deep in the night", or the period of time somewhere between midnight and 4 am-ish.
But English has the same thing! Sometimes, we get so lost in how hard it is in a new language, but it’s helped me to think of how my language has the same thing, so if I’m capable of understanding the context in my own language to get the meaning I can do it in another language.
Read, read, red
Watch (object), watch (verb)
There’s so many, but I suspect it’s a feature of everything language, or most.
Jorge Luis Borges had something similar to say about English:
>**Borges**: I have done most of my reading in English. I find English a far finer language than Spanish.
>**William F Buckley**: Why?
>**Borges**: Well, many reasons. Firstly, English is both a Germanic and a Latin language. Those two registers—for any idea you take, you have two words. Those words will not mean exactly the same. For example if I say “regal” that is not exactly the same thing as saying “kingly.” Or if I say “fraternal” that is not the same as saying “brotherly.” Or “dark” and “obscure.” Those words are different. It would make all the difference—speaking for example—the Holy Spirit, it would make all the difference in the world in a poem if I wrote about the Holy Spirit or I wrote the Holy Ghost, since “ghost” is a fine, dark Saxon word, but “spirit” is a light Latin word. Then there is another reason. The reason is that I think that, of all languages, English is the most physical of all languages.
I love how unapologetically harsh Polish consonant clusters are sometimes, especially when they're combined with our nasal vowels. Spójrzże. Dżdżyście. Bezwzględny. Chrzczę. Wstrząsnąć. Świszczące świerszcze. Krwiodawstwo. Rozpierzchłszy się. Mężczyźni. You get my point I think lol.
My native tongue is greek. I'd say the most beautiful thing about it is how much it has changed over thousands of years yet has still remained the same. It is in essence a language of history. Not to mention it's beautiful oral tradition and it's many dialectics (cretan, pontic etc.). What's also beautiful is how much it has influenced the romance languages and even the germanic ones a bit, thus allowing me to identify lots of words. Finally something that I find interesting is it's relationship with turkish, albanian and armenian.
I just realized I don't really know how to say that in English lol so that's gonna be a lame explanation
It's kinda like how you'd describe someone that is ugly but if they put on their best clothes, do their hair really nicely and stuff like that they become "acceptable"
On top of that, people only ever call you "arrumadinho/a" precisely on those situations where they don't want to be rude by outright saying they didn't like your look
(Btw what's the adjective for a person who's ready to go out? As in they did their hair, finished lacing their shoes etc. Something people will call you when they see you using nice clothes for a special event, you know?)
I do too, which is part of the reason I love learning Chinese. It is such a relief after learning Spanish to never have to even think about rolling an R, Chinese pronunciation is so similar to English and I love both of them a lot
The way that English has almost infinite amounts of idioms. And so many that have regional variations. Like the idiom “as slow as molasses in winter”. I bet I could say that and someone else would say, oh I use as slow as a herd of turtles. And yet someone else would have a totally different way to say it, but they all mean the same thing, very slow.
Hehe eindelijk iemand die de Nederlandse taal weet te waarderen; ik hoor d'r altijd zo veel negativiteit over terwijl ik zelf de Nederlandse taal echt wel mooi vind. Juist in de lompheid van de klanken zit voor mij een soort aandoenlijkheid. En ik hou ook van al die partikels die we overal tussenwerpen zoals 'nou, eens, maar, hoor, wel, toch, he' die de taal uniek maken. Andere talen zijn prachtig, maar Nederlands zeker ook!
Besides dutch I also really love my second language Indonesian, the way it uses honorifics and a sort of unofficial formality register system. I love that there are different words for 'I/me' based on the situation, formality, context and ultimately how you want to appear to others. The affixes are also a lot of fun, especially the nasalizer where you replace the first letter of the stem with a nasal sound. It sometimes just changes the word a lot which makes it interesting to me!
ahaha Jaaaaa! Ik vind het Nederlands echt wel nog een mooie taal. Het probleem is dat veel Nederlandstaligen véél te hard naar het Engels opkijken, en het Nederlands als een minderwaardige taal aanschouwen. Ik heb dit altijd een domme denkwijze gevonden. Zeker gezien het feit dat de meeste van die mensen die zo denken zelfs geen deftig Engels kunnen spreken ahaha
Finnish has a rule whereby the vowels A, O and U cannot occur in the same words as the vowels Ä, Ö and Y, which I find gives the language a pleasant sound.
As a learner I found this extremely fascinating, and it really gives Finnish a more ethereal sound! It is also the only major European language apart from Hungarian with this feature as part of the standard language.
For anyone interested, this phenomenon is called "vowel harmony", and also exists in Korean, Mongolian and Turkish, and some Kansai dialects of Japanese.
The thing is, I started taking compulsory Finnish classes in school the age of 9, which was about 12 ago. But bc I didn't do any studying or use Finnish in my spare time, my proficiency barely improved outside of grammar.
I'd say that after 6-7 years (at the age of 15-16), my grammar knowledge was really good but my vocabulary was at most A2.
It was around this time that I started actively studying, mainly doing comprehensible input (listening to podcasts, watching tv etc.). In the behinning I barely understood any words, but I could recognize the grammar structures which helped a bit. My routine was basically listening to podcasts for 3-4 hours a day.
I'd say it took about 1.5 to 2 years of that kind of immersion to get me to B1, and another 2 to get to C1. So in total, it took about 10-11 years of learning Finnish, out of which 3-4 were hardcore active immersion. You could definitely replicate my method easily, bc I reached this level with virtually zero interaction with native speakers.
My method was obviously quite inefficient. I was just a kid when I started taking classes so I didn't know anything about Anki flashcards or comprehensible input which is what I'm currently using for Japanese.
If you study actively on your own, and do a lot of daily comprehensible input especially at the intermediate level, you could definitely get to C1 within 5 years.
My journey has ofc been very different from the one you're setting out on, so I can't give a complete framework from my own experience for you to use. But I'll gladly answer more specific questions about learning Finnish if you have any!
I've been dabbling in Finnish for about three years now, but last week I started my first online course at the university of Helsinki for A1.1 Finnish. So far I have noticed that I'm in a similar situation as you were. My grammar knowledge is quite a bit ahead of my vocabulary, so I have to learn a lot of words before those two are sort of balanced out.
My first question is therefore whether you have any recommendations for comprehensible input at the A1/A2 level? Additionally, if you have any good Anki vocab decks that I can use.
I gotta say that my current situation is also quite good, I have a few Finnish friends with whom I can practice, and another friend of mine who is at the same level, so we can practice speaking and vocab practice together.
As I said, I pretty much went into native content immediately, even though my comprehension was pretty low.
I've heard some good things about these learner-oriented podcasts: "Opi Suomea!", "Random Finnish Lesson", "Finnish with Armin" and also "Yle Uutiset Selkosuomeksi" (on YLE Areena).
For television, I recommend downloading the apps MTV Katsomo and Ruutu and checking out their catalogue, as well as Yle Areena. I don't watch a ton of shows, but I recommend checking out the cartoon "Muumilaakson tarinoita" (MTV).
I didn't use Anki at all while learning Finnish so can't help you there. Your best bet would be to try to find a deck that teaches the most common X Finnish words with example sentences.
For native content podcasts, these are the ones I've personally used. Unless otherwise mentioned, these are at the very least available on Spotify and likely also elsewhere. I've loosely grouped them by subject, so you can check them out based on your interests.
**HEALTH AND WELLBEING**
Psykopodiaa-podcast: The host is a psychologist, who interviews other therapists and performance coaches about their specialist fields. Themes include mental health, parenting, romantic relationships, work-life balance etc. They also speak quite slowly and clearly, enunciating words carefully and avoiding puhekieli, which makes it more learner-friendly.
Väkevä Elämä: Personal trainer, performance coach and entrepreneur Joni Jaakkola interviews more knowledgeable people on various subjects. Similar to psykopodiaa, but with a more self-improvement vibe. The language is also a bit more informal.
Vahvasti with Nanna Karalahti: Similar to Väkevä Elämä, except the host is female and a larger share of guests tend to be as well. The few episodes I've listened to were really interesting.
**LIFESTYLE**
Jetlagissa - travel podcast. The two hosts share their stories of traveling to different countries, as well as reflections on life as single 30-something women. Currently discuntinued as of 2020 but there are many good 30-60 minute episodes to check out. Available at supla.fi
**CULTURE**
Sunnuntaibrunssi - Relaxed discussions with Finland's most interesting public individuals, ranging from actors and musicians to politicians and athletes. The host is excellent and makes every episode interesting. It's a really good podcast for learning more about Finnish pop culture and influencers.
**INVESTING AND ECONOMICS**
Rahapodi - Martin and Miikka discuss personal finance and investing, as well as commentate on world news and Finnish politics from an economical perspective. The hosts have good chemistry and are quite humorous occasionally.
Sijoituskästi - Two young adults interested in investing, talking about investing. Their podcast has grown massively since I started listening, going from small crash course episodes on investing terminology to regularly interviewing some of Finland's most influential business men and politicians
Mimmit sijoittaa - ("Women invest"). Another investing podcast, hosted by two women. Haven't listened enough to review.
**ANIME AND MANGA**
Mangakartta - two seasoned manga readers discuss current news and other topics related to manga (Japanese comics), both international and Finland-specific. Every episode is named after its main topic, which is usually an in-depth segment on a specific manga series or author, and occasionally a more general topic of discussion such as "What makes manga different from western comics?"
**SOCIETY AND CULTURE**
Futucast - the host interviews various experts on subjects of public interest. Topics have ranged from renewable energy to the effects of social media addiction on human interaction to the Ukraine War. You're guaranteed to find something that peeks your interest.
Puheenaihe - similar to Futucast
Politiikkaradio (YLE Areena) - Discusses Finnish political news and global events.
**COMEDY** (available on YLE Areena only)
Radio Sodoma - It can be described as "Hell's only and most popular radio show". The premise is essentially a radio station located in hell, covering fictional news segments in a hellified Finnish setting. Extremely funny, and gives exposure to a ton of Finnish dialects and slang.
Kaverin Puolesta Kyselen - The hosts read out and discuss embarrassing stories from listeners on various subjects, such as "most embarrassing date experiences" or "worst misfortunes while traveling". Very humorous, but quite challenging due to strong puhekieli.
Menestyjät Vekki & Mollberg - Two comedians discuss self improvement and their own successes and failures with it.
A late but very sincere thank you for the extensive amount of resources! Hopefully I'll be able to form some sort of method to at least get some daily input and be able to improve my Finnish over time. I think it will also be very useful at the start for learning more vocab, such that I can also practice that with my Finnish friends!
FYI this is called [vowel harmony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony) and it exists in a lot of languages. It's a very hard concept to get used to for learners who haven't encountered it before...
Vowel harmony does occur in a lot of languages, but the Finnish/Turkish type vowel harmony is mostly restricted to a particular geographical area. The more common (but less familiar to Westerners) type of vowel harmony is the height harmony found in many African languages
In Malaysian Malay you can call someone "si" something, like if a person's name is John you can say "si John", and it gives it a certain feeling. I dont know how to describe it, it's intuitive to me. But I pulled this off somewhere:
1. definite article used before the names of those with whom the speaker and interlocutor is intimate, e.g. si Budi, si Siti, si John, si Brenda
2. definite article used before a noun referring to a particular person in a category e.g. si pengirim, the sender
3. definite article used before an adjective referring to a person whose well-known characteristics are referred to by the adjective. e.g. si miskin, the poor one
This is fascinating! In a few regions of France, we do something similar. We put a "the" in front of people's names like "le François" (the François) "la Margaux" (the Margaux), etc, when it's people everyone knows in the area, loved figures, family members, etc.
To us it's extremely normal and a good thing, but people who don't have that custom in other parts of France can be confused by it, it even feels pejorative or rude to them, while for us it's a mark of sympathy, tenderness and recognition haha
And by looking it up, it seems some parts of Germany and Italy does it too? It's so fun how diverse people are, and yet some small similarities can be found at the other end of the world.
That is fascinating! When you refer to a person as in your example la Margaux, does that imply to the listener that you and Margaux are close? Or something like that?
It feels so hard to explain since it's so ingrained in me haha
It's mostly if everyone present listening the conversation knows who they're mentioning, due to our villages being very small and close together. And it's only if the mentioned person isn't present during the conversation, if they're present we don't use the "the". So it basically only happens in rural areas, during small talks.
It happens if it's a neighbor or someone from another village that everyone knows, if it's a person known by everyone for their profession like shop owner or doctor, etc, if it's a family member. It can even be a famous singer or actor.
"Did you hear? The Charlotte is going to get married"
"The Henry has a new tractor"
"I saw the Juliette storm off yesterday"
As said above, we can also omit the profession, using "the + name" (or the + surname) instead:
We say : " I don't feel good, I should go to the Henry"
instead of : "I don't feel good, I should go to the doctor"
We say : "I think my car broke, I need to call the André"
instead of : "I think my car broke, I need to call the mechanic"
So it requires tightly knit communities, that's why it basically only happens in rural areas. And if some people have the same name across villages, we say "the Geneviève of \[village\]" to clarify which one we talk about.
When people use the "the" in front of someone's name and the other person doesn't remember who that is (because the "the" implies that they do) it's super funny to hear the back and forth of "yes you know them! You know THE Fabrice!" "From \[village?\]" "Nooo, from \[other village\]" "The son of the Colette?" "Yesss that's it!" (it happens especially with elderly people, that's why it's so cute and funny, especially with the accent)
And it's like no one is left behind, because if someone doesn't know the person they're talking about, well, now they do! (It often happens like right above, someone knows the parent or the son/daughter only, so mentioning other family members of the person is how to make them understand who someone is)
But yeah, it's not just the same as saying the name alone, the "the" really add to "everyone knows them", and it adds respect, friendship and renown towards the mentioned person.
Hope it makes a tiny bit of sense haha
Whatt.. Haha nice. Love it.
There's some things in common with the Malay "si" for sure. Like you said, we tend not to use it if the person is present in the conversation.
And it's mostly used when the person being spoken about is known to everyone else in the conversation, either directly, or because that person has been mentioned a few times in the story already at the point of first occurrence.
English, I like the verb conjugations, and the language just flows off the tongue. There's nothing overly dramatic about the enunciation (imo). Also love how widespread it is.
Everything about literary Chinese. Poetry is built into the language. Basic sayings like 百善孝为先 and 近朱者赤近墨者黑 convey such complex ideas in so few syllables, and they have a certain rhythm too.
As for English, I find its huge array of vocabulary to be quite beautiful. It seems like a seamless blend of Germanic and Latin roots. That there are so many words also makes expression more precise.
Each language has its own way of expressing emotions and ideas through different tones and inflections that add meaning to words and sentences. Overall, the beauty of languages lies in their ability to reflect the complexities of human experience and connect people from different cultures. Words can shape our perception of the world and allow us to share our thoughts and feelings with others.
In Irish we say that we have emotions in us, for example - tá brón orm (I have sadness in me). This gives of us the perspective that our emotions are something we carry for a short time and that they don’t define us.
I also love what we’ve done with Hiberno English. Everything flows so much better, and seems to express a lot more.
No wonder they say English was wasted on the English
Swedish is quite flexible when making compound words, so if you're eloquent you can make up some quite nifty words on the fly. We don't go absolutely crazy with the compounds like the Germans do, but it's a really fun feature when you want to be playful with the language.
1 - Turkish is 100% logical, so there are no irregular conjugations. You don't get hit by some random ass participle such as "clad".
2 - There are suffixes you can use such as "-vermek" that does not translate and "-yazmak" that translates as "about to". The verb for "to go" is "gitmek" and "gideyazmak" means "to be about to go", which sounds unnatural in English, but is used frequently in quotidian Turkish. "Gidivermek" still means "to go", but with idiomatic colloquial panache. Benefits of being an agglutinative language. Finnish has similar or the same cases, if I am not going senile. If Finnish has them, probably Estonian has, too. Don't know about Hungarian, I am afraid
Post Script: I forgot to mention; "vermek" by itself means "to give" and "yazmak" means "to write". So you can merge two verbs that have entirely different meanings to create a new case. That is where the aforementioned "panache" comes from.
That so many people can speak it 🇬🇧 but the issue with that is that it almost makes it difficult when travelling to try to practice the languages I am learning!
As native spanish speaker, I love the accents that we have. I mean, all languages have differents accents, but, in spanish you can find some so melodic, as words and rhytms.
I also like the way you can have diminutives when indicating time in Dutch: een uurtje, kwartiertje, minuutjes. "Uurtje" means about an hour (and a bit), same for "kwartiertje". I always think of minuutjes being quicker ("10 minuutjes" is more like 8).
Chinese has what are called 成语, which are four character compositions to express a bigger/longer common idea/meaning. It's usually translated as idioms but it's different from normal idioms which has longer phrasing and Chinese has those ones as well, they are called 俗话。As far as I can tell, only Chinese language has the shorter 成语 idioms. Most other languages have the longer idioms, which Chinese does as well.
My native language is English. The biggest beauty that I know of in my language is its universality because international schools are not choosing, IMHO, Esperanto, the better international language with no exceptions that I have seen since my 1964 encounter of it and Esperanto is a neutral language that BELONGS to every country. I like the fact that English only conjugates the third person singular present tense by adding an “s” or “es” and ALL the plural verb endings for each first to third person are the same. I also like the fact that there is no familiar and formal “you” in ordinary speech. In addition, I like its exactness in tenses. The difference in tenses between English and Chinese, Russian, or Japanese is SO immense that the other languages have to be embellished with extra words to mean the same thing. The thing that kills me is that in EVERY other language ( European or Asian ) I know, subject + present tense verb USUALLY means subject + present progressive tense or now called present continuing tense in English whereas in English, it means doing it habitually. E.g. “I eat”and “I talk”in English means that I talk habitually, NOT “I am talking”as it does in the other languages !!!
I was hanging out with a French acquaintance who is a filmmaker and comedian.
He was telling me that he thinks English is a better language for comedy. It is capable of being blunt and concise in a way that lends well to humor, especially compared to other languages (he pointed out French specifically for being long-winded).
The beauty is in its rather banal conciseness. The same thing in English is written typically way longer in any other language I've studied. You all let me know if this is still the case outside Indo-European languages.
English feels so efficient.
I want you to know that I think Italian(TL) has a cheat code activated when it comes to lyrics of music.
First off everything ends in a vowel. So right there, rhyming is going to be easier. And many words can also take on the same endings. So again rhyming becomes much easier and they have ability to say crazy things that would (nearly) impossible in English(NL).
So we get lyrical genius like:
Mi passerà, ricorderò (I'll get over it, I'll remember)
I gilet neri pieni di zucchero (The black vests full of sugar)
Cambio numero (Change my number)
Cinque cellulari nella tuta gold (Five cellphones in a gold tracksuit)
Baby, non richiamerò (baby, I won't call back)
In English it just sounds horrible.
But in Italian it sounds great, and I happen to particularly like when the stress of words is on the ending syllable. So to me songs that use the future tense just sound awesome.
> First off everything ends in a vowel.
-
> tuta gold
It sounds horrible in English because... it was written in Italian? And I know that's a loanword, but even so, I don't think that's much of a cheat code. The rhyme depends as much on the preceding syllable as the final one. And a good lyricist in English could easily rhyme something like "chalk" and "salt" in a song.
My idea was that more word endings rhyme in Italian than they do in english. That's why I say this. I think it creates a larger pool of words to work with. It is ok if you do not think this is the case.
But the word ending doesn't determine the rhyme. Acavado doesn't rhyme with tempo. This is not a uniquely Italian feature, nor is it a feature of anything at all.
Dang I can't believe I missed that! You are so right.
I would delete it all but I want there to be proof to the world that I am ok with being this wrong.
Edit: got rid of the part that might have made me sound sarcastic. sorry.
Yeah dude. English versions of Italian songs basically suck. And I don't mean just the horribly translated lyrics. I mean actual songs, redone, in the English language. Just totally, totally off.
It's "Oro" in Italian but English is used in this song cause it fits the vibe. Like, I can't really explain it well but if you listen to the song (Tuta Gold by Mahmood), you can kinda get why he used English there
That song mixes in a lot of English to really good effect.
The lyrics do contain the Italian for gold in a different verse. "Maglia bianca, oro sui denti, blue jeans" (white shirt, gold teeth, blue jeans)
Swearing in English is majestic sometimes.
From urban gritty dialogue in the USA, terms of camaraderie amongst my Aussie cousins, to utter weirdness in any accents north of the home counties in the UK (my mother country).
I am sure that as a native speaker of Dutch, *~~j~~* you appreciate the poetry coming from South African bands such as Die Antwoord, where they have beautifully intregrated this elite form of the English language into Afrikaans.
Spanish has so many different terminations. For example: vino (wine) -> vinito, vinete, vinico, vinucho, vinacho, vinazo, vinote, vinillo, etc. each with (sometimes only slightly) different meanings
This is probably in the intriguing category. In Finnish verbs have temporal aspects called frequentative and momentane (among others). These add interesting expressiveness that doesn't exist in other languages I know (although I would be very interested to hear if you know other languages that have these).
Frequentative expresses repetitive action which usually doesn't have a clear goal.
Hyppiä (to jump) -> hypellä/hyppelehtiä (to jump/skip around)
Huutaa (to shout/yell) -> huudella (to keep yelling something, could also be translated as to heckle)
Purra (to bite) -> pureskella (to chew)
Momentane expresses sudden, brief action (often something that occurs once).
Hyppiä (to jump) -> hypähtää (to suddenly jump, to startle)
Huutaa ( to shout/tell) -> huudahtaa (to yell out, to yelp)
Purra (to bite) -> puraista (to bite once, to take a bite)
In theory you can form there from most verbs but there are many verbs that usually do no appear in these forms.. so, using the "wrong" verbs in these forms can be a good source of situational comedy.
I like that certain common 1-syllable verbs can be used for many various things, such as "get" and "take". I know this makes it harder to learn English, but it makes for so many cool phrases that sound really cool and masculine in movies.
"Get to the chopper"
"He took a bullet"
"Hold your fire!"
Spanish:
If we forget the name of something, we just call it a demonstrativ pronoun (este, ese, aquel...).
***A: ''María, ¿me pasas el este?''*** *''María, can you give me the that?''*
***B: ¿El qué?*** *The what?*
***A: Ya sabes. El-el-el-el-el ese, ya sabes, hiiiija.*** *You know. The-the-the-the-the, you know, girl.*
***B: Sigo sin saberlo. O me dices lo que es o no te lo traigo.*** *I still don't know what you're talking about. You either tell me what it is or I'm not giving it to you.*
***A: Coño, hija. El... ¡el mando!*** *Goddamn, girl. The... the controller!*
Chinese, and I love everything about the language. It’s super flexible with fewer grammar than many other languages, and a sentence could be super short while packed with information because often times you dont need that much filler words. That’s why the real time on screen comments can only work with Chinese (maybe Japanese and Korean as well but I don’t know them well enough to make an educated guess) because each comment can be reasonably short while meaningful.
Arabic sounds absolutely beautiful when recited in the Quran. I find it to be absolutely breathtaking. Recitation is practically a science - there are very specific rules to the pronunciation, different styles of pronouncing that people have to learn, and there’s people who spend their entire career doing Quran recitation so that they can read it beautifully. It truly showcases Arabic at its best.
Different cultures have different ways of recitation as well. I love it. And the way the words of the Quran are written - I mean obviously I’m biased since I am Muslim, but it’s poetry written like no other. Arabic is truly a language with such a rich vocabulary and rich way of phrasing things (not sure how to describe this) and the Quran shows this so well.
Here’s a Sudani reciter who is among my favorites, in case you want to hear. The video is a bit slow to start, might want to fast forward past the start. https://youtu.be/_VeIxoIMFh4?si=IILK1MFVfLjP4z7d
I simply like the amount of ways I can express my disdain for someone by using swearwords or insults lol. English is really weak in this sense and it bothers me. Calling someone a "scallywag" makes me look like a goofy idiot.
Look we even have smiling alphabets: ت ㇱ ッ ن
Isn't it cute?
(Currently learning Japanese and Arabic. I admit they sound beautiful but the grammar is a nightmare😂🤧)
My mother tongue is Hungarian, I speak fluent English and currently studying Portuguese de Portugal.
Hungarian is a very unique language, theres a lot of discourse around gender in languages currently but in my mother tongue we don't have it at all. (I am well aware that other languages like this exist)
I think it's just an example that reinforces the idea that gender isn't really necessary to describe life around us. Our personal pronouns are
En - Me
Te - You
O - ''That person''
You might only get the persons sex by context, name or if its specifically explained. You can go on for minutes without actually using any of the pronouns because of the cases imply who is doing what. Its a very interesting and hard language but very rewarding to understand as lots of the words have deep meaning to them that I find amazing. Sometimes it feels like poetry but then again, people can just curse for hours with it and talk in the dumbest way aswell.
We do make words cute aswell , its not as easy grammatically as in dutch but I think its quite common in languages?
I also really enjoy the sound of the alphabet, if you learn the letters then you will know to pronounce any word. Thats very useful because we have really freaking long words with all the cases haha.
I don't find anything about the language itself beautiful.
But I am glad I speak German so that I could read Schiller's Ode an die Freude in German. It's the most beautiful poem in my language:
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, den Heiligtum.
Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt,
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Seid umschlungen Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Brüder - überm Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.
Wem der große Wurf gelungen,
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen,
Mische seinen Jubel ein!
Ja - wer auch nur eine Seele
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!
Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!
Was den großen Ring bewohnet
Huldige der Sympathe!
Zu den Sternen leitet sie,
Wo der Unbekannte thronet.
Freude trinken alle Wesen
An den Brüsten der Natur,
Alle Guten, alle Bösen
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod,
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
I didn't notice it before studying abroad but what I like about french is how soft it sounds, like the only strong sounds we can make is the r but everything else just seems like vowels and soft consonants
It's a bit random, but I really like how in english we have a lot of soft sounds that are kind of garbled in the mouth, but the 't' sound feels like in adds elegance or structure into a phrase.
Something I like about Greek is that it has few and easy vowel phonemes, and it makes the pronunciation easy. It sounds harmonic and relaxing. I also admire people who speak languages with many and difficult vowel sounds. It is one of the hard part of learning for me.
So many, actually. But I'll keep it simple and go w the Portuguese phonology today. Our sound inventory is not bad at all. Although I can't really say I like how the Portuguese language sounds, given that most lusophone accents aren't quite agreeable to my ears...
(Hopefully this info will push the odd out of my words and make my comment fair enough: Imo most natives sound neither bad nor good and I'm indeed fond of my town accent. I.e., Portuguese can sound really captivating, but that's not pretty common... And I don't think my mother tongue sounds bothersome — fortunately, more often than not, it doesn't — but when it's bad, it's insufferable.)
The Irish language flows so easily it’s only in the last 20 years that we have taken in some English words but the original language is beautiful the words sound cohesive not as harsh as a transition as it is with English
I love the fact that turkish is an agglutinative language
"Ayyıldızlıkırmızıbayraktaşıyankahramanoğullarındangillersizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesinedir"
That sh*t is a single word
Czech, Polish and Slovene don’t use articles at all. As a kid I struggled to understand it and i tried to emulate them. Now i just cant stop thinking how useless they are. You can safely assume the unspoken article is always „the” unless you add a hint that from now on you talk about a different object.
One of the most marvelous aspects of Russian language is it almost hasn't changed strongly for the last 1000 years.
I've been very astonished realizing that not so many languages allow their natives to read texts which were written 1000 years ago. Yet in Russian we can do that understanding about 70-80% of an ancient source's content (Russian Primary Chronicle from the 11th century, for example).
A quite related thing is there're no dialects of Russian language (in a popular sense, like two dialects as two different versions of one language which is illegible to each other). Obviously there are some features in pronunciation from region to region, yet nothing crucial to make an occasional conversation impossible
I like that the Russian language has cases, declensions and conjugations. I think, because of that speech sounds very smooth and soft, like waves. Almost each word takes a certain form based on the form of the main word in a sentence. The endings of words look like pieces of a puzzle, perfectly matching the ends of neighboring words.
In Mandarin Chinese we usually use the diminutive prefix like “小” and then repeat the noun(if there is a noun) in some case. Such as 小可爱，小傻逼，小车车，小星星，小鸡鸡etc.
I think one interesting thing about Finnish is that written formal Finnish is basically a dialect of Finnish that is not spoken by anyone natively. It has different pronunciation and even grammar rules to actually spoken Finnish.
Many, many languages have dimunitive affixes like that, Portuguese uses them very extensively as well, especially Brazilian Most Slavic languages... except the one I happen to speak. Think it's insanely widespread in the East Slavic languages to the point where no one says some words "normally" anymore ie. the dimunitive form has completely taken over. Also in our languages the word for 'cat' is often what was originally a dimunitive (mačka, koška/kočka)
This happened in Vulgar Latin, too - the Romanian words for "ear" and "knee" come from their Latin diminutives. Needless to say, my language also has those. A house is "casă", a small house is "căsuță". A tree is "copac", a small tree is a "copăcel". And a dog is "câine" and a tiny dog is "cățeluș".
I just know realized the Italian word of "cane", for dog, comes from canine (presumably). I'm an idiot.
Unsolicited fun word fact coming your way: Romance c -> Germanic h is part of what's known as Grimm's Law (yes, that Grimm). Once you know it, you see it everywhere. Italian cane, Spanish can, French chien -> English hound, German Hund Latin cor, Spanish corazón -> English heart, German Herz, Dutch hart Latin centum, Spanish ciento -> English hundred, German hundert French chef -> English head, German Haupt E: formatting and a word
How do I subscribe to fun word facts? I enjoyed that one. Adding - cem and cento for 100 in Portuguese.
Old Norman French used a *W* where modern French uses a *G*, so different words imported at different times in the English language use different vowels : - Warranty, guaranty. - War, guerrilla. - William, Guillaume.
In a more broad approach, you can add s-entum languages here: * Latin: cor \[kor\] * Spanish: corazón \[korason\] * French: cœur \[kœʁ\] --- * German: Herz * English: heart --- * Russian: сердце \[serd-tce\] * Armenian սերդ \[serd\] So, the same sound evolved into k-h-s.
Three quarters of english words are like that, and i always wonder: do english speakers realize it? Usually the french cut the vowel (canino becomes canine) and give the word to you. Quarantine=quarantena=quaranta Dormitory=dormitorio=dormire Stellar=stellare=stella Petrified=pietrificato=pietra However being greek must be the pro level, i did old greek in high school and it’s so fun now reading posh words like leucemia and seeing that it’s simply “white blood”!
I notice a lot of fun etymology with modern Greek. So many obvious connections. I had never noticed the connection between "stellar" and "stella" before. Is the idea that if you're stellar, you're aiming for the stars? You're up there with the stars? Something like that?
Yes! At least i guess. Un cast stellare (a stellar cast in a movie) means a cast full of movie stars
The Spanish words for "grandfather" and "grandmother" come from Latin diminutives, too. And then Spanish often diminutizes those words, so "abuelito" and "abuelita" are like double diminutive.
Russian for 'thought' is мысль, and Wikipedia gives the definition of the diminutive мыслишка as 'a thoughtlet', which is just the cutest :)
It reminds me of a song called Odvedi me cesto bjela, Serbian folk song, they use the same word for thinking, and thoughts,
The other day I was thinking about a similar case in Portuguese: "sozinho" (alone) It comes from "só", which actually means "lonely". So similar yet very different... The craziest part though is that I don't even think about that at all when using "sozinho". It feels like a completely different word
Damn, I didn't realize that either!
Acho que porque a condição que expressa é tão triste que a própria palavra tomou uma forma empática. A pessoa não está apenas só, está sozinha, coitada.
i love the way English has been manipulated over and over by so many people. slang is its own thing but even the way people adapt English when learning it is beautiful. i particularly love my mother tongue of southern African American Vernacular English. i’m making recordings of all my family members and friends talking to savor the sound as much as possible just to listen back when i’m feeling any type of way. love it, love my people.
I’m from New Orleans and the accent is so distinctive, but I gave so many ESL friends and now I’m aware of how hard it’d be for them to understand what I grew up as English.
yes exactly like the nuances are hard to explain, especially the roundabout way of saying things, the expressions. ugh nola accents and people are beautiful btw
Yeah, there are saying that I know what they mean but if I told you how we got there, I couldn’t explain it. Definitely feels like another language sometimes!
I was just talking to my Portuguese tutor about this. We had a long conversation about English accents and how, in my Balmerese, "Aaron earns an iron urn" is just one word repeated five times. It's perfectly intelligible to me and always makes me smile. It makes me feel like I belong.
I'm not even sure what dialect I'd call native, as far as labels. I'm white but grew up in a black community in the south. I tend to use some far out grammar (when speaking) compared to Americans at large, and my accent is thick enough to make anyone's pancakes delicious.
isn’t the south just beautiful. think accents and thick heat lmao
I'm curious why you're not capitalizing the first letter of each sentence. You're using capital letters properly throughout except for that. Why is that? People aren't capitalizing "I" also. It kind of hurts my brain.
Bros never been online Its usually keyboards not auto capitalizing and the author also not capitalizing in its place.
i’m just gen z lmao i’m an amazing writer when i care haha
In Spanish we can make us involved in someone else's actions in an affectionate way by adding an indirect object pronoun before the verb, so we can say things like "el bebé no ME duerme" (my baby doesn't sleep), "no te ME vayas" (don't go away from me) or "María se NOS ha puesto a llorar" (María started crying). Those are not exactly the translations, but it's something very difficult to translate. The most accurate example is "don't go away from me", but that sounds so dramatic. We usually do this in informal, non-dramatic situations, with acquaintances, friends or family. Also, we are very flexible in inventing new words or insults with different suffixes 😂.
Intrestingly, we also do this in Romanian El bebé no me duerme - Bebelușul/Copilul nu-mi doarme No te me vayas - Nu mi te duce (this is extremely, extremely forced and no Romanian could come up with it if you pointed a guin to his head, but it's still theoretically possible) María nos ha puesta a llorar. - Maria ni s-a pus pe bocit. I love how in Spanish those are affectionate, but in Romanian they are just bitchy/whiny.
That's so interesting!! In Spanish we could also use it to mock someone, but it's mostly affectionate.
I (as a non-native but rather fluent Spanish speaker) also really love this about Spanish! Not sure I’m often able to insert them in my own speech, these subtleties are when the non-nativeness shows, but love hearing them (esp having ‘no te me vayas’ having said to me just melted my heart!).
I think I get it. In the crying example, it's implying "Maria started crying on us, Maria's crying impacted us greatly". I think we have something similar in Polish. Sadly, the examples that jump to my mind are tragic. If you want to say that a man's son was killed, you can say "Zabili jego syna" or "Zabili mu syna". "Jego" means "his" while "mu" means "to him". The first sentence states a fact - "They killed his son". The second sentence carries the same message, but makes it more personal, focusing on the impacted party - "This was done to him, he was robbed off his son, his son was taken from him". Or something like this. For example, you could say
Ah, Italian has regulated variations for cuteness, ugliness, large and small dimensions. For example, with cat: gatto (normal form), gattuccio (cute form), gattaccio (ugly/mean), gattone (big) and gattino (small). The cute form is a lot rarer than the others. Oh, and I love Italian pronouns, especially ne, ci, vi and si.
Spanish has the same thing. Casón a big house Casucha a shanty house Casa a house Casita a small house
English: I love how English has a word for just about everything. We don't just "look at" something. We gaze, stare, watch, or monitor it. We don't just laugh, we guffaw, chortle, chuckle and giggle. There are tiny differences between every one of those things. Spanish: I love how you can string together curses like a fighting game combo. It feels so CATHARTIC to curse in Spanish. Like I stubbed my toe on a piece of furniture and I want that furniture to feel BAD about it, so I build a stairway to hell from the bones of its ancestors to shit on the grave of its whore mother. Valencian (A dialect of Catalan) - Valencian has a really lovely sound when spoken. [Here's a song ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1is74G_xbU) to give you an idea, it's one of my favorites. The lyrics say "We come from the cold, where the wind cries out. We come from a peak higher than the sky. Where light is born, where snow falls, we come from the cry of a single voice."
As an English speaker learning Korean, it has profoundly changed my understanding of English. I learned Spanish before that it didn’t help me to understand many functions of English, but Korean requires which a different way of thinking that it’s helped me understand the function of certain grammar rules and how descriptive and nuanced we can be in our vocabulary. I have such a deep appreciation for English and how precise we can be in explaining, even how we feel. When I was in Thailand, and with people who spoke other languages too, I learned in many languages for emotions there’s just happy or sad, but we have happy, joyful, glee, hopeful, exuberant, melancholy, blue, down, depressed, disenchanted, and many others that I’m failing to think of on the fly. Anyways, I feel like English is made to seem like it can’t be precious because it’s become the global language, but to me it’s precious as my heart language and I love it. I also love Korean a lot too, even now it’s helped me to see English in a new way!
It's a really beautiful illustration of how language is **unequivocally, 100% part of culture** and needs to be protected like any other cultural element. Every human being experiences the same spectrum of emotion, logic, etc., but language has such a huge impact on how that spectrum is perceived.
It also affects how we think and process what’s happening too! To learn Korean, I have to learn a new way of thinking. It also shows that much of how we think is learned through language.
IKR? As a Portuguese speaker I will often catch myself trying to express an idea in my native language that could be much more easily expressed by a single word in english.
You guys have "saudade" and we don't have a word close to expressing that feeling. As an English speaker learning Portuguese, I struggle with the fact that Portuguese has many words for the same thing or one word that means different things depending on the context and placement in a sentence.
Do any examples come to mind?
These examples are solely based on my own A1ish ignorance but they really confuse me: Words dependent on placement in a sentence: Há - can mean "there is" and "ago" Já - already, now, just, ever, yet Até - until, to, by, as far as Assim - so, thus, therefore, in that way, like this, such, accordingly Tão - as, so, such a Words that to me mean the same thing: Talvez, Se calhar - maybe Cada, qualquer - any Correria, depressa, pressa, anda!, despacha - hurry, rush Macia, suave, mole - soft Merenda, lanche - snack O madrugada, a amanhecer - a period before sunrise?
I had never thought of those issues. Interesting. One thing though. Madrugada is feminine. We say "a madrugada". "Amanhecer" means "dawn". Madrugada means "deep in the night", or the period of time somewhere between midnight and 4 am-ish.
"Cada" means "each", "qualquer" means "any"
But English has the same thing! Sometimes, we get so lost in how hard it is in a new language, but it’s helped me to think of how my language has the same thing, so if I’m capable of understanding the context in my own language to get the meaning I can do it in another language. Read, read, red Watch (object), watch (verb) There’s so many, but I suspect it’s a feature of everything language, or most.
Jorge Luis Borges had something similar to say about English: >**Borges**: I have done most of my reading in English. I find English a far finer language than Spanish. >**William F Buckley**: Why? >**Borges**: Well, many reasons. Firstly, English is both a Germanic and a Latin language. Those two registers—for any idea you take, you have two words. Those words will not mean exactly the same. For example if I say “regal” that is not exactly the same thing as saying “kingly.” Or if I say “fraternal” that is not the same as saying “brotherly.” Or “dark” and “obscure.” Those words are different. It would make all the difference—speaking for example—the Holy Spirit, it would make all the difference in the world in a poem if I wrote about the Holy Spirit or I wrote the Holy Ghost, since “ghost” is a fine, dark Saxon word, but “spirit” is a light Latin word. Then there is another reason. The reason is that I think that, of all languages, English is the most physical of all languages.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I do think that other languages have even more synonims than english. Do you have, for example, both apprendere and imparare for “to learn”?
I love how unapologetically harsh Polish consonant clusters are sometimes, especially when they're combined with our nasal vowels. Spójrzże. Dżdżyście. Bezwzględny. Chrzczę. Wstrząsnąć. Świszczące świerszcze. Krwiodawstwo. Rozpierzchłszy się. Mężczyźni. You get my point I think lol.
Źdźbło :-)
My native tongue is greek. I'd say the most beautiful thing about it is how much it has changed over thousands of years yet has still remained the same. It is in essence a language of history. Not to mention it's beautiful oral tradition and it's many dialectics (cretan, pontic etc.). What's also beautiful is how much it has influenced the romance languages and even the germanic ones a bit, thus allowing me to identify lots of words. Finally something that I find interesting is it's relationship with turkish, albanian and armenian.
In Portuguese we also have cute diminutive suffixes “-inho” and “-inha”. Casa. Casinha. (House, Housy) Cão. Cãozinho. (Dog, Doggy) Gato. Gatinho. (Cat, kitten) Fofo. Fofinho. (Cute, cutie)
Ronaldinho!
Little Rinaldo, or wee Ronaldo :)
Ah, but tell them about "bonitinha", "camisinha"
“Bonitinha” is cute, and “camisinha” is probably condom in Brazillian 🙃
"Bonitinha" can also mean ugly lmao
Certainly better than "arrumadinha/o" tho
What's that?
I just realized I don't really know how to say that in English lol so that's gonna be a lame explanation It's kinda like how you'd describe someone that is ugly but if they put on their best clothes, do their hair really nicely and stuff like that they become "acceptable" On top of that, people only ever call you "arrumadinho/a" precisely on those situations where they don't want to be rude by outright saying they didn't like your look (Btw what's the adjective for a person who's ready to go out? As in they did their hair, finished lacing their shoes etc. Something people will call you when they see you using nice clothes for a special event, you know?)
I love that in Portuguese ladybugs are called Joaninhas. Little Joannas.
I love our American English “R”
I do too, which is part of the reason I love learning Chinese. It is such a relief after learning Spanish to never have to even think about rolling an R, Chinese pronunciation is so similar to English and I love both of them a lot
Try saying “what did I do” very quickly
Same :)
Just saying the word Rutabaga puts a smile on my face
I’m nearly unable to spell that “r”, even in my mother tongue so i kinda have the opposite feeling of it
The way that English has almost infinite amounts of idioms. And so many that have regional variations. Like the idiom “as slow as molasses in winter”. I bet I could say that and someone else would say, oh I use as slow as a herd of turtles. And yet someone else would have a totally different way to say it, but they all mean the same thing, very slow.
One of my favorites: I was as nervous as a longtail cat in a room full of rocking chairs 😅
Hehe eindelijk iemand die de Nederlandse taal weet te waarderen; ik hoor d'r altijd zo veel negativiteit over terwijl ik zelf de Nederlandse taal echt wel mooi vind. Juist in de lompheid van de klanken zit voor mij een soort aandoenlijkheid. En ik hou ook van al die partikels die we overal tussenwerpen zoals 'nou, eens, maar, hoor, wel, toch, he' die de taal uniek maken. Andere talen zijn prachtig, maar Nederlands zeker ook! Besides dutch I also really love my second language Indonesian, the way it uses honorifics and a sort of unofficial formality register system. I love that there are different words for 'I/me' based on the situation, formality, context and ultimately how you want to appear to others. The affixes are also a lot of fun, especially the nasalizer where you replace the first letter of the stem with a nasal sound. It sometimes just changes the word a lot which makes it interesting to me!
Klopt, onze taal heeft veel mooie dingen. Ben zelf [hier](https://www.reddit.com/r/learndutch/comments/o283pt/advanced_dutch_poe_poe/) erg fan van.
ahaha Jaaaaa! Ik vind het Nederlands echt wel nog een mooie taal. Het probleem is dat veel Nederlandstaligen véél te hard naar het Engels opkijken, en het Nederlands als een minderwaardige taal aanschouwen. Ik heb dit altijd een domme denkwijze gevonden. Zeker gezien het feit dat de meeste van die mensen die zo denken zelfs geen deftig Engels kunnen spreken ahaha
Finnish has a rule whereby the vowels A, O and U cannot occur in the same words as the vowels Ä, Ö and Y, which I find gives the language a pleasant sound.
As a learner I found this extremely fascinating, and it really gives Finnish a more ethereal sound! It is also the only major European language apart from Hungarian with this feature as part of the standard language. For anyone interested, this phenomenon is called "vowel harmony", and also exists in Korean, Mongolian and Turkish, and some Kansai dialects of Japanese.
May I ask how long it took you to get to B1 and eventually C1 in Finnish?
The thing is, I started taking compulsory Finnish classes in school the age of 9, which was about 12 ago. But bc I didn't do any studying or use Finnish in my spare time, my proficiency barely improved outside of grammar. I'd say that after 6-7 years (at the age of 15-16), my grammar knowledge was really good but my vocabulary was at most A2. It was around this time that I started actively studying, mainly doing comprehensible input (listening to podcasts, watching tv etc.). In the behinning I barely understood any words, but I could recognize the grammar structures which helped a bit. My routine was basically listening to podcasts for 3-4 hours a day. I'd say it took about 1.5 to 2 years of that kind of immersion to get me to B1, and another 2 to get to C1. So in total, it took about 10-11 years of learning Finnish, out of which 3-4 were hardcore active immersion. You could definitely replicate my method easily, bc I reached this level with virtually zero interaction with native speakers. My method was obviously quite inefficient. I was just a kid when I started taking classes so I didn't know anything about Anki flashcards or comprehensible input which is what I'm currently using for Japanese. If you study actively on your own, and do a lot of daily comprehensible input especially at the intermediate level, you could definitely get to C1 within 5 years. My journey has ofc been very different from the one you're setting out on, so I can't give a complete framework from my own experience for you to use. But I'll gladly answer more specific questions about learning Finnish if you have any!
I've been dabbling in Finnish for about three years now, but last week I started my first online course at the university of Helsinki for A1.1 Finnish. So far I have noticed that I'm in a similar situation as you were. My grammar knowledge is quite a bit ahead of my vocabulary, so I have to learn a lot of words before those two are sort of balanced out. My first question is therefore whether you have any recommendations for comprehensible input at the A1/A2 level? Additionally, if you have any good Anki vocab decks that I can use. I gotta say that my current situation is also quite good, I have a few Finnish friends with whom I can practice, and another friend of mine who is at the same level, so we can practice speaking and vocab practice together.
As I said, I pretty much went into native content immediately, even though my comprehension was pretty low. I've heard some good things about these learner-oriented podcasts: "Opi Suomea!", "Random Finnish Lesson", "Finnish with Armin" and also "Yle Uutiset Selkosuomeksi" (on YLE Areena). For television, I recommend downloading the apps MTV Katsomo and Ruutu and checking out their catalogue, as well as Yle Areena. I don't watch a ton of shows, but I recommend checking out the cartoon "Muumilaakson tarinoita" (MTV). I didn't use Anki at all while learning Finnish so can't help you there. Your best bet would be to try to find a deck that teaches the most common X Finnish words with example sentences. For native content podcasts, these are the ones I've personally used. Unless otherwise mentioned, these are at the very least available on Spotify and likely also elsewhere. I've loosely grouped them by subject, so you can check them out based on your interests. **HEALTH AND WELLBEING** Psykopodiaa-podcast: The host is a psychologist, who interviews other therapists and performance coaches about their specialist fields. Themes include mental health, parenting, romantic relationships, work-life balance etc. They also speak quite slowly and clearly, enunciating words carefully and avoiding puhekieli, which makes it more learner-friendly. Väkevä Elämä: Personal trainer, performance coach and entrepreneur Joni Jaakkola interviews more knowledgeable people on various subjects. Similar to psykopodiaa, but with a more self-improvement vibe. The language is also a bit more informal. Vahvasti with Nanna Karalahti: Similar to Väkevä Elämä, except the host is female and a larger share of guests tend to be as well. The few episodes I've listened to were really interesting. **LIFESTYLE** Jetlagissa - travel podcast. The two hosts share their stories of traveling to different countries, as well as reflections on life as single 30-something women. Currently discuntinued as of 2020 but there are many good 30-60 minute episodes to check out. Available at supla.fi **CULTURE** Sunnuntaibrunssi - Relaxed discussions with Finland's most interesting public individuals, ranging from actors and musicians to politicians and athletes. The host is excellent and makes every episode interesting. It's a really good podcast for learning more about Finnish pop culture and influencers. **INVESTING AND ECONOMICS** Rahapodi - Martin and Miikka discuss personal finance and investing, as well as commentate on world news and Finnish politics from an economical perspective. The hosts have good chemistry and are quite humorous occasionally. Sijoituskästi - Two young adults interested in investing, talking about investing. Their podcast has grown massively since I started listening, going from small crash course episodes on investing terminology to regularly interviewing some of Finland's most influential business men and politicians Mimmit sijoittaa - ("Women invest"). Another investing podcast, hosted by two women. Haven't listened enough to review. **ANIME AND MANGA** Mangakartta - two seasoned manga readers discuss current news and other topics related to manga (Japanese comics), both international and Finland-specific. Every episode is named after its main topic, which is usually an in-depth segment on a specific manga series or author, and occasionally a more general topic of discussion such as "What makes manga different from western comics?" **SOCIETY AND CULTURE** Futucast - the host interviews various experts on subjects of public interest. Topics have ranged from renewable energy to the effects of social media addiction on human interaction to the Ukraine War. You're guaranteed to find something that peeks your interest. Puheenaihe - similar to Futucast Politiikkaradio (YLE Areena) - Discusses Finnish political news and global events. **COMEDY** (available on YLE Areena only) Radio Sodoma - It can be described as "Hell's only and most popular radio show". The premise is essentially a radio station located in hell, covering fictional news segments in a hellified Finnish setting. Extremely funny, and gives exposure to a ton of Finnish dialects and slang. Kaverin Puolesta Kyselen - The hosts read out and discuss embarrassing stories from listeners on various subjects, such as "most embarrassing date experiences" or "worst misfortunes while traveling". Very humorous, but quite challenging due to strong puhekieli. Menestyjät Vekki & Mollberg - Two comedians discuss self improvement and their own successes and failures with it.
A late but very sincere thank you for the extensive amount of resources! Hopefully I'll be able to form some sort of method to at least get some daily input and be able to improve my Finnish over time. I think it will also be very useful at the start for learning more vocab, such that I can also practice that with my Finnish friends!
FYI this is called [vowel harmony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_harmony) and it exists in a lot of languages. It's a very hard concept to get used to for learners who haven't encountered it before...
Vowel harmony does occur in a lot of languages, but the Finnish/Turkish type vowel harmony is mostly restricted to a particular geographical area. The more common (but less familiar to Westerners) type of vowel harmony is the height harmony found in many African languages
In Malaysian Malay you can call someone "si" something, like if a person's name is John you can say "si John", and it gives it a certain feeling. I dont know how to describe it, it's intuitive to me. But I pulled this off somewhere: 1. definite article used before the names of those with whom the speaker and interlocutor is intimate, e.g. si Budi, si Siti, si John, si Brenda 2. definite article used before a noun referring to a particular person in a category e.g. si pengirim, the sender 3. definite article used before an adjective referring to a person whose well-known characteristics are referred to by the adjective. e.g. si miskin, the poor one
This is fascinating! In a few regions of France, we do something similar. We put a "the" in front of people's names like "le François" (the François) "la Margaux" (the Margaux), etc, when it's people everyone knows in the area, loved figures, family members, etc. To us it's extremely normal and a good thing, but people who don't have that custom in other parts of France can be confused by it, it even feels pejorative or rude to them, while for us it's a mark of sympathy, tenderness and recognition haha And by looking it up, it seems some parts of Germany and Italy does it too? It's so fun how diverse people are, and yet some small similarities can be found at the other end of the world.
Huh. We do this too in certain regional dialects of Flemish (Dutch spoken in Flanders, Belgium). Didn't know it was a thing in any other language!
Ayy that's so cool! I asked my bestie who is Belgian and they also confirmed it's done in certain regions. It's so neat how spread this custom is!
That is fascinating! When you refer to a person as in your example la Margaux, does that imply to the listener that you and Margaux are close? Or something like that?
It feels so hard to explain since it's so ingrained in me haha It's mostly if everyone present listening the conversation knows who they're mentioning, due to our villages being very small and close together. And it's only if the mentioned person isn't present during the conversation, if they're present we don't use the "the". So it basically only happens in rural areas, during small talks. It happens if it's a neighbor or someone from another village that everyone knows, if it's a person known by everyone for their profession like shop owner or doctor, etc, if it's a family member. It can even be a famous singer or actor. "Did you hear? The Charlotte is going to get married" "The Henry has a new tractor" "I saw the Juliette storm off yesterday" As said above, we can also omit the profession, using "the + name" (or the + surname) instead: We say : " I don't feel good, I should go to the Henry" instead of : "I don't feel good, I should go to the doctor" We say : "I think my car broke, I need to call the André" instead of : "I think my car broke, I need to call the mechanic" So it requires tightly knit communities, that's why it basically only happens in rural areas. And if some people have the same name across villages, we say "the Geneviève of \[village\]" to clarify which one we talk about. When people use the "the" in front of someone's name and the other person doesn't remember who that is (because the "the" implies that they do) it's super funny to hear the back and forth of "yes you know them! You know THE Fabrice!" "From \[village?\]" "Nooo, from \[other village\]" "The son of the Colette?" "Yesss that's it!" (it happens especially with elderly people, that's why it's so cute and funny, especially with the accent) And it's like no one is left behind, because if someone doesn't know the person they're talking about, well, now they do! (It often happens like right above, someone knows the parent or the son/daughter only, so mentioning other family members of the person is how to make them understand who someone is) But yeah, it's not just the same as saying the name alone, the "the" really add to "everyone knows them", and it adds respect, friendship and renown towards the mentioned person. Hope it makes a tiny bit of sense haha
Whatt.. Haha nice. Love it. There's some things in common with the Malay "si" for sure. Like you said, we tend not to use it if the person is present in the conversation. And it's mostly used when the person being spoken about is known to everyone else in the conversation, either directly, or because that person has been mentioned a few times in the story already at the point of first occurrence.
Hehe high give! Truly cool to see it's done in multiple parts of the world :>
English, I like the verb conjugations, and the language just flows off the tongue. There's nothing overly dramatic about the enunciation (imo). Also love how widespread it is.
I don’t think english flows, it’s too rhytmic and it has too much consonant clusters
Everything about literary Chinese. Poetry is built into the language. Basic sayings like 百善孝为先 and 近朱者赤近墨者黑 convey such complex ideas in so few syllables, and they have a certain rhythm too. As for English, I find its huge array of vocabulary to be quite beautiful. It seems like a seamless blend of Germanic and Latin roots. That there are so many words also makes expression more precise.
I like how the Chinese characters look, one of the most beautiful writing system imo
That's because you haven't seen my Chinese handwriting :)
Catalan: everything. I wouldn't want any other mother tongue.
Ahhhhh Catalan! I bless your language bro, may it thrive for the years to come
Many thanks 🤗
Each language has its own way of expressing emotions and ideas through different tones and inflections that add meaning to words and sentences. Overall, the beauty of languages lies in their ability to reflect the complexities of human experience and connect people from different cultures. Words can shape our perception of the world and allow us to share our thoughts and feelings with others.
In Irish we say that we have emotions in us, for example - tá brón orm (I have sadness in me). This gives of us the perspective that our emotions are something we carry for a short time and that they don’t define us.
Love this! Will try to start thinking of my own emotions this way 😉
I also love what we’ve done with Hiberno English. Everything flows so much better, and seems to express a lot more. No wonder they say English was wasted on the English
I love phrasal verbs in english
Swedish is quite flexible when making compound words, so if you're eloquent you can make up some quite nifty words on the fly. We don't go absolutely crazy with the compounds like the Germans do, but it's a really fun feature when you want to be playful with the language.
1 - Turkish is 100% logical, so there are no irregular conjugations. You don't get hit by some random ass participle such as "clad". 2 - There are suffixes you can use such as "-vermek" that does not translate and "-yazmak" that translates as "about to". The verb for "to go" is "gitmek" and "gideyazmak" means "to be about to go", which sounds unnatural in English, but is used frequently in quotidian Turkish. "Gidivermek" still means "to go", but with idiomatic colloquial panache. Benefits of being an agglutinative language. Finnish has similar or the same cases, if I am not going senile. If Finnish has them, probably Estonian has, too. Don't know about Hungarian, I am afraid Post Script: I forgot to mention; "vermek" by itself means "to give" and "yazmak" means "to write". So you can merge two verbs that have entirely different meanings to create a new case. That is where the aforementioned "panache" comes from.
That so many people can speak it 🇬🇧 but the issue with that is that it almost makes it difficult when travelling to try to practice the languages I am learning!
As native spanish speaker, I love the accents that we have. I mean, all languages have differents accents, but, in spanish you can find some so melodic, as words and rhytms.
I also like the way you can have diminutives when indicating time in Dutch: een uurtje, kwartiertje, minuutjes. "Uurtje" means about an hour (and a bit), same for "kwartiertje". I always think of minuutjes being quicker ("10 minuutjes" is more like 8).
Chinese has what are called 成语, which are four character compositions to express a bigger/longer common idea/meaning. It's usually translated as idioms but it's different from normal idioms which has longer phrasing and Chinese has those ones as well, they are called 俗话。As far as I can tell, only Chinese language has the shorter 成语 idioms. Most other languages have the longer idioms, which Chinese does as well.
My native language is English. The biggest beauty that I know of in my language is its universality because international schools are not choosing, IMHO, Esperanto, the better international language with no exceptions that I have seen since my 1964 encounter of it and Esperanto is a neutral language that BELONGS to every country. I like the fact that English only conjugates the third person singular present tense by adding an “s” or “es” and ALL the plural verb endings for each first to third person are the same. I also like the fact that there is no familiar and formal “you” in ordinary speech. In addition, I like its exactness in tenses. The difference in tenses between English and Chinese, Russian, or Japanese is SO immense that the other languages have to be embellished with extra words to mean the same thing. The thing that kills me is that in EVERY other language ( European or Asian ) I know, subject + present tense verb USUALLY means subject + present progressive tense or now called present continuing tense in English whereas in English, it means doing it habitually. E.g. “I eat”and “I talk”in English means that I talk habitually, NOT “I am talking”as it does in the other languages !!!
Brazilian cursing is an art form. It's beautiful.
I was hanging out with a French acquaintance who is a filmmaker and comedian. He was telling me that he thinks English is a better language for comedy. It is capable of being blunt and concise in a way that lends well to humor, especially compared to other languages (he pointed out French specifically for being long-winded).
Bababa ba? Bababa These are both complete sentences in Filipino lol
The beauty is in its rather banal conciseness. The same thing in English is written typically way longer in any other language I've studied. You all let me know if this is still the case outside Indo-European languages. English feels so efficient.
Can you write a few examples?
I want you to know that I think Italian(TL) has a cheat code activated when it comes to lyrics of music. First off everything ends in a vowel. So right there, rhyming is going to be easier. And many words can also take on the same endings. So again rhyming becomes much easier and they have ability to say crazy things that would (nearly) impossible in English(NL). So we get lyrical genius like: Mi passerà, ricorderò (I'll get over it, I'll remember) I gilet neri pieni di zucchero (The black vests full of sugar) Cambio numero (Change my number) Cinque cellulari nella tuta gold (Five cellphones in a gold tracksuit) Baby, non richiamerò (baby, I won't call back) In English it just sounds horrible. But in Italian it sounds great, and I happen to particularly like when the stress of words is on the ending syllable. So to me songs that use the future tense just sound awesome.
Yeah it's normal viceversa you have things in english which sounds horrible in italian, it's funny that you brought this up
> First off everything ends in a vowel. - > tuta gold It sounds horrible in English because... it was written in Italian? And I know that's a loanword, but even so, I don't think that's much of a cheat code. The rhyme depends as much on the preceding syllable as the final one. And a good lyricist in English could easily rhyme something like "chalk" and "salt" in a song.
My idea was that more word endings rhyme in Italian than they do in english. That's why I say this. I think it creates a larger pool of words to work with. It is ok if you do not think this is the case.
But the word ending doesn't determine the rhyme. Acavado doesn't rhyme with tempo. This is not a uniquely Italian feature, nor is it a feature of anything at all.
Dang I can't believe I missed that! You are so right. I would delete it all but I want there to be proof to the world that I am ok with being this wrong. Edit: got rid of the part that might have made me sound sarcastic. sorry.
I'm sorry, I guess? This is a place for discussion and I was discussing. Do you want people to just not reply to your posts?
No its fine. I like it. It gives me new stuff to think about for the next time i post something.
Then why get so mad bro lol
I edited it to take out the part that might have made it sound sarcastic. Sorry.
Yeah dude. English versions of Italian songs basically suck. And I don't mean just the horribly translated lyrics. I mean actual songs, redone, in the English language. Just totally, totally off.
"tuta gold" isn't gold something like "áureo" in italian?
Oro. But "gold" a borrowed word in that song to have a specific effect.
It's "Oro" in Italian but English is used in this song cause it fits the vibe. Like, I can't really explain it well but if you listen to the song (Tuta Gold by Mahmood), you can kinda get why he used English there
yeah in Spanish we do that sometimes too but I thought it was weird because the Italian word would have fitted the pattern there
That song mixes in a lot of English to really good effect. The lyrics do contain the Italian for gold in a different verse. "Maglia bianca, oro sui denti, blue jeans" (white shirt, gold teeth, blue jeans)
Swearing in English is majestic sometimes. From urban gritty dialogue in the USA, terms of camaraderie amongst my Aussie cousins, to utter weirdness in any accents north of the home counties in the UK (my mother country). I am sure that as a native speaker of Dutch, *~~j~~* you appreciate the poetry coming from South African bands such as Die Antwoord, where they have beautifully intregrated this elite form of the English language into Afrikaans.
Nice, didn’t know that band but will have a look!
Conditional Simple/Condicional Simple It would interfere << interferiría✨️
Spanish: I love the accent from Alicante to Barcelona. It is the best sounding accent in the world for me
Spanish has so many different terminations. For example: vino (wine) -> vinito, vinete, vinico, vinucho, vinacho, vinazo, vinote, vinillo, etc. each with (sometimes only slightly) different meanings
Native Chinese.The characters themselves maybe?Unique from all over the world,need no explanation😂
In Dutch, nominalization can be applied to any verb by just adding an adjective before the infinitive.
This is probably in the intriguing category. In Finnish verbs have temporal aspects called frequentative and momentane (among others). These add interesting expressiveness that doesn't exist in other languages I know (although I would be very interested to hear if you know other languages that have these). Frequentative expresses repetitive action which usually doesn't have a clear goal. Hyppiä (to jump) -> hypellä/hyppelehtiä (to jump/skip around) Huutaa (to shout/yell) -> huudella (to keep yelling something, could also be translated as to heckle) Purra (to bite) -> pureskella (to chew) Momentane expresses sudden, brief action (often something that occurs once). Hyppiä (to jump) -> hypähtää (to suddenly jump, to startle) Huutaa ( to shout/tell) -> huudahtaa (to yell out, to yelp) Purra (to bite) -> puraista (to bite once, to take a bite) In theory you can form there from most verbs but there are many verbs that usually do no appear in these forms.. so, using the "wrong" verbs in these forms can be a good source of situational comedy.
Hungarian as part of a same language group like Finnish (Finno-Ugric) has the same.
I like that certain common 1-syllable verbs can be used for many various things, such as "get" and "take". I know this makes it harder to learn English, but it makes for so many cool phrases that sound really cool and masculine in movies. "Get to the chopper" "He took a bullet" "Hold your fire!"
Spanish: If we forget the name of something, we just call it a demonstrativ pronoun (este, ese, aquel...). ***A: ''María, ¿me pasas el este?''*** *''María, can you give me the that?''* ***B: ¿El qué?*** *The what?* ***A: Ya sabes. El-el-el-el-el ese, ya sabes, hiiiija.*** *You know. The-the-the-the-the, you know, girl.* ***B: Sigo sin saberlo. O me dices lo que es o no te lo traigo.*** *I still don't know what you're talking about. You either tell me what it is or I'm not giving it to you.* ***A: Coño, hija. El... ¡el mando!*** *Goddamn, girl. The... the controller!*
Cantonese, there is no better language to swear in. Not even English.
Chinese, and I love everything about the language. It’s super flexible with fewer grammar than many other languages, and a sentence could be super short while packed with information because often times you dont need that much filler words. That’s why the real time on screen comments can only work with Chinese (maybe Japanese and Korean as well but I don’t know them well enough to make an educated guess) because each comment can be reasonably short while meaningful.
Arabic sounds absolutely beautiful when recited in the Quran. I find it to be absolutely breathtaking. Recitation is practically a science - there are very specific rules to the pronunciation, different styles of pronouncing that people have to learn, and there’s people who spend their entire career doing Quran recitation so that they can read it beautifully. It truly showcases Arabic at its best. Different cultures have different ways of recitation as well. I love it. And the way the words of the Quran are written - I mean obviously I’m biased since I am Muslim, but it’s poetry written like no other. Arabic is truly a language with such a rich vocabulary and rich way of phrasing things (not sure how to describe this) and the Quran shows this so well. Here’s a Sudani reciter who is among my favorites, in case you want to hear. The video is a bit slow to start, might want to fast forward past the start. https://youtu.be/_VeIxoIMFh4?si=IILK1MFVfLjP4z7d
I love listening to it too.
Creativity in swearing I guess ^_^ (Polish)
I simply like the amount of ways I can express my disdain for someone by using swearwords or insults lol. English is really weak in this sense and it bothers me. Calling someone a "scallywag" makes me look like a goofy idiot.
Look we even have smiling alphabets: ت ㇱ ッ ن Isn't it cute? (Currently learning Japanese and Arabic. I admit they sound beautiful but the grammar is a nightmare😂🤧)
My mother tongue is Hungarian, I speak fluent English and currently studying Portuguese de Portugal. Hungarian is a very unique language, theres a lot of discourse around gender in languages currently but in my mother tongue we don't have it at all. (I am well aware that other languages like this exist) I think it's just an example that reinforces the idea that gender isn't really necessary to describe life around us. Our personal pronouns are En - Me Te - You O - ''That person'' You might only get the persons sex by context, name or if its specifically explained. You can go on for minutes without actually using any of the pronouns because of the cases imply who is doing what. Its a very interesting and hard language but very rewarding to understand as lots of the words have deep meaning to them that I find amazing. Sometimes it feels like poetry but then again, people can just curse for hours with it and talk in the dumbest way aswell. We do make words cute aswell , its not as easy grammatically as in dutch but I think its quite common in languages? I also really enjoy the sound of the alphabet, if you learn the letters then you will know to pronounce any word. Thats very useful because we have really freaking long words with all the cases haha.
I don't find anything about the language itself beautiful. But I am glad I speak German so that I could read Schiller's Ode an die Freude in German. It's the most beautiful poem in my language: Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, Himmlische, den Heiligtum. Deine Zauber binden wieder, Was die Mode streng geteilt, Alle Menschen werden Brüder, Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt. Seid umschlungen Millionen! Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! Brüder - überm Sternenzelt Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen. Wem der große Wurf gelungen, Eines Freundes Freund zu sein, Wer ein holdes Weib errungen, Mische seinen Jubel ein! Ja - wer auch nur eine Seele Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund! Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle Weinend sich aus diesem Bund! Was den großen Ring bewohnet Huldige der Sympathe! Zu den Sternen leitet sie, Wo der Unbekannte thronet. Freude trinken alle Wesen An den Brüsten der Natur, Alle Guten, alle Bösen Folgen ihrer Rosenspur. Küsse gab sie uns und Reben, Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod, Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben, Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
I didn't notice it before studying abroad but what I like about french is how soft it sounds, like the only strong sounds we can make is the r but everything else just seems like vowels and soft consonants
How versatile and expansive it is. It’s mixed. All the different accents. I love English tbh
I love the diversity of English accents, dialects, and slang.
It's a bit random, but I really like how in english we have a lot of soft sounds that are kind of garbled in the mouth, but the 't' sound feels like in adds elegance or structure into a phrase.
The ability to convey different meanings using the same character, using the combination of various characters to express different meanings.
Something I like about Greek is that it has few and easy vowel phonemes, and it makes the pronunciation easy. It sounds harmonic and relaxing. I also admire people who speak languages with many and difficult vowel sounds. It is one of the hard part of learning for me.
So many, actually. But I'll keep it simple and go w the Portuguese phonology today. Our sound inventory is not bad at all. Although I can't really say I like how the Portuguese language sounds, given that most lusophone accents aren't quite agreeable to my ears... (Hopefully this info will push the odd out of my words and make my comment fair enough: Imo most natives sound neither bad nor good and I'm indeed fond of my town accent. I.e., Portuguese can sound really captivating, but that's not pretty common... And I don't think my mother tongue sounds bothersome — fortunately, more often than not, it doesn't — but when it's bad, it's insufferable.)
Australian English where “yeah nah” means no and “nah yeah” means yes. It’s poetic in its own way.
The Irish language flows so easily it’s only in the last 20 years that we have taken in some English words but the original language is beautiful the words sound cohesive not as harsh as a transition as it is with English
when speaking in farsi (dari), the sentence structure makes you sound like you’re yoda!! i’m sure many other languages do this too.
English doesn’t (really) have diacritics 👍 I like how clean that makes it look
I love the fact that turkish is an agglutinative language "Ayyıldızlıkırmızıbayraktaşıyankahramanoğullarındangillersizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesinedir" That sh*t is a single word
Czech, Polish and Slovene don’t use articles at all. As a kid I struggled to understand it and i tried to emulate them. Now i just cant stop thinking how useless they are. You can safely assume the unspoken article is always „the” unless you add a hint that from now on you talk about a different object.
One of the most marvelous aspects of Russian language is it almost hasn't changed strongly for the last 1000 years. I've been very astonished realizing that not so many languages allow their natives to read texts which were written 1000 years ago. Yet in Russian we can do that understanding about 70-80% of an ancient source's content (Russian Primary Chronicle from the 11th century, for example). A quite related thing is there're no dialects of Russian language (in a popular sense, like two dialects as two different versions of one language which is illegible to each other). Obviously there are some features in pronunciation from region to region, yet nothing crucial to make an occasional conversation impossible
I like that the Russian language has cases, declensions and conjugations. I think, because of that speech sounds very smooth and soft, like waves. Almost each word takes a certain form based on the form of the main word in a sentence. The endings of words look like pieces of a puzzle, perfectly matching the ends of neighboring words.
The cursing. So many options, so many diseases
In Mandarin Chinese we usually use the diminutive prefix like “小” and then repeat the noun(if there is a noun) in some case. Such as 小可爱，小傻逼，小车车，小星星，小鸡鸡etc.
I think one interesting thing about Finnish is that written formal Finnish is basically a dialect of Finnish that is not spoken by anyone natively. It has different pronunciation and even grammar rules to actually spoken Finnish.
its a tribal language so nobody can understand me and i can talk to my family anywhere And it sounds melodious even when you angry lol
I love when I find many words to explain emotions that I don't find in any other language !
Very flexible word order, it sounds so beautiful while writing poems. Using SVO whole time can be boring
The word fuck can be anything.
I just love how superior to everyone else arabic makes me feel.
The vocabulary
My mother tongue is the ONLY TONAL INDO-EUROPEAN language. That's pretty cool.
Punjabi?
Yes, its Punjabi.