# What Languages Can You Speak ? ( P.S. What dialect of language ? )



## Elfhelm25 (Jan 31, 2004)

Well, this is pretty simple. 
Where are you from, what languages can you speak, and would you care to give us a sample of that fine language. 
Even if it's English ! What KIND Of English do you speak ? 


For example, I am a born-and-bred Canadian, and proud of it ! I speak (Quebec french not France french ), and Maritime( or English ). I would be delighted to demonstrate !
If you want to speak Maritime English , simply follow a few of these rules ! Two common types are Newfanese and Nova Scotian ! 
Instead of saying , 
"Whatisface down the road ", or " that guy ( or girl ) , simply say

" Buddy down the road there", or " 'Da'Missus down de road", for the ladies. 

Buddy in place of anybody ( or da'missus ) will make you feel right at home. 

Instead of saying

" Wash the clothes ", 

maritime it up a notch and say, 

" Warsh them clothes " !!!!!

Instead of saying " thingy " , say "chummy " ! 

" Wheres me chummy to ? " ( Dont say gone to, thats not Maritime ! )

Oh, and don't say "very " to enhance a sentence ! Say "some " !

And pronounce " H " as haytch, but don't actually use H/s in your speech. 

" Jeez, Dad, Im some hungry eh ? Where are we stoppin' to for dinner ?"

And then your maritime Dad will say , 

" Well, buddy, we could always stop down to MacDonalds for a MacMoose burger and some fries with dressing. " 

Oh, and always end your comments with the traditional Maritimian , 

" kiss m'arse ! " 

That about wraps it up ! I'm sure many others have their own knacks for their languages, and I for one can't wait to hear some. Until then, kiss m'arse everyone!


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## Lantarion (Jan 31, 2004)

LOL
Thank you very much for this delightful demonstration.  

I was obrn in Finland, moved to England at the age of a few months, lived there for 9 years, and have lived in Filnand ever since (huzzah!).

Fluently, I can speak only English and Finnish. The type of Finnish used differs depending on where in Finland somebody lives. As I live in almost the 'extreme' south of Finland, I speak with the dialect/slang most commonly used there (it is what I would call 'normal' Finnish ).
But almost always, written Finnish is more 'proper' unless you're talking with your friends.
To differentiate between these two styles of language, the terms _puhekieli_ ('spoken language') and _kirjakieli_ ('book language') are used.
Below is the sentence "I am not twenty years old yet", first in _kirjakieli_ (pronounced '[kir-ya-key-eh-li]', with four syllables) and then in _puhekieli_ (pronounced '[poo-he-key-eh-li]', again with four syllables).

*(Minä) En ole vielä kaksikymmentävuotias*.

And yes that is a bloody long word.  That's one of the traits of Finnish, words can be formed just by adding them together. 
And another interesting fact about Finnish is that the word for 'no' is also a verb!
_Minä_= Me, I. It is not always necessarily used, because the 'verb' word for 'No' entails the speaker.
_En_= 'I am not / I do not / I don't (something)
_ole_ = on its own, can be many different variations of the verb 'to be', but in this context the pairing _en ole_ means 'I am not'.
_vielä_ = yet. Simple as that. It can be placed either before or after the attribute, as in English.
That huge string of words actually only has two words in it. Let's break it down shall we? 
_Kaksikymmentä_ = 'twenty'; this word consists of the word _kaksi_, 'two', and _kymmenen_, 'ten'; _kymmentä_ is a form of the word 'ten' which basically means 'tens' or 'of a ten'. So "two of ten", i.e. two tens, i.e. twenty.
_-vuotias_ = '-years old', or rather '-year-older'. It is basically a form of the word _vuosi_, 'year'. _Kolmevuotias_, for example, would be directly translated as "three-year-old(er)".
And now for the slang/_puhekieli_ version:

*Mä en oo viel kakskytvuotias*

_Mä_ = shortened form of _minä_, 'I'.
_en_ = see above (can't really shorten this word! )
_oo_ = shortened form of _olen_, "I am". This is not pronuonced "ooh", but rather as a long 'o' like in "sh*o*re".
_viel_ or _viel'_ = Just dropped the 'ä'.  (Which by the way is pronounced like the 'a' in "apple")
_kakskyt_ = shortened form of _kaksikymmentä_. _Kaks_ = _kaksi_ ('two'), and _-kyt_ = _kymmentä_ ('of tens').
_vuotias_ = the same.

There are very many different dialects of Finnish, which become more and more bizarre towards the North.  Crazy Laplanders. j/k


Geez, I could write an essay on just the uses and differences in Southern Finnish dialect! 
As for my English, it has always been very good, above standard I suppose. That's what you get for being taught the language from three-years old upwards. 
I spoke with a thoroughly British accent whilst in Britain (doh), but because of the abundance of almost solely American teachers in my international school in Finland, I adopted a sort of half-American accent. I don't accentuate the 'r's and other letters as strongly as many Americans would, at least I try not to because it sound uncouth to me. (No offense )
I can also impersonate very many different English accents well, mainly to my own joy, probably because of the diversity of accents I have been around.


That's my linguistic history in a nutshell, hope you enjoyed it. 
And if anybody is interested in learning something more about the Finnish language, I would be happy to oblige.


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## Elfhelm25 (Jan 31, 2004)

Wow ! That's so interesting ! Finnish reminds me of elvish....further increasing my jealousy.  
I would love to hear more about the history and whatnot. Haha, that's right up me alley !


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## Éomond (Jan 31, 2004)

Wow, I can tell this is going to be a very cool and interesting thread.

I don't know what kind of English I speak (I live in the Northwest of the US).

I also speak (I should rather say "sign"), I sign American Sign Language. I'm sorry I can't give an example, since it's all visual, not written. Oh well, it's still really cool. 

I also know French. But not enough to hold a good conversation anymore.


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## Elfhelm25 (Feb 1, 2004)

American sign language is cool ! I would love to be able to speak it ! 
Do you know what kind of french you speak ? For example, Cajun french is quite different from Quebec french, which is quite different from Maritimes french, which are all very different from france french. ( And Im sure there are more than that, too , for the Europeans on this site. ) . 
Maritime french is a mixture of french and english words scrumbled all together so that noone knows whether a question was asked more in English or French. Quebec french is more " dignified", but in a Canadian way. I haven't heard many Cajuns speak french, although I am dying to know if i could understand them or not. I understand Quebec french perfectly but Maritime french strains my ears a bit during fast conversations. ( Even though I live in the Maritimes. ) 
Well, that's exciting anyways, and I'd better be off to work now !


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 1, 2004)

From the foreign languages I know, English is the only one I can really speak fluently. 
About Finnish history ...
Swedish is the second official language in Finland beside Finnish, and there is a Swedish speaking minority group in Finland who are bilingual - they still remind us that Finland was almost from the beginning a part of Sweden when their kingdom grew stronger. After that was Russia, but thank God not too many Russians ever lived here and its dominion didn't last so long. Actually Finnish nation formed itself under the Swedish dominion and Finnish language got its written form from Mikael Agricola, a bishop of Turku and a dominican monk (I just had to refresh my memory..), who translated the New Testament into Finnish in 1548. He had studied in Wittenberg, Germany and met Martin Luther there. Agricola based his creation of Finnish writing system in Latin, Swedish and German. So, written Finnish, this 'kirjakieli' just emerged in the sixteenth century when Shakespeare was writing his plays in England.
As far as I know, there are only a little more than five million people who speak Finnish and yet we have some dialects...though I must say some of them seem to be dying out of use and many young people (lets say under 35) speak common form of Finnish. There are these eastern dialects, as well as southwestern and northern dialects. I don't speak any of them though my relatives do. 
Oh yeah, I might add that in Finland there is the minority group of Saami people in Lappland who speak their Saami language. They once lived like the Northern American indians though they kept herds of reindeer and many of them still make their living like that. They just don't live in the "kota" (like Teepees) anymore.
So here's some info about Finland...


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## Sarde (Feb 1, 2004)

"Bûter, brea en griene tsiis: wa't dat net sizze kin, is gjin oprjochte Frys."

That is a Friesian sentence (a so-called tongue-breaker) that we always teach to tourists. Its meaning is rather meaningless:

"Butter, bread and green cheese: whoever can't say that is not a true Friesian."

Perhaps the first part of it would appeal to a Hobbit. 

Friesland is in the North of Unquendor (The Netherlands). It's known for its cows (Friesian-Holstein: the black-and-white dairy cows) and its endless fields of succulent, green grass. There's water everywhere, lakes, the sea closeby, canals... Sailing is a much loved pastime among Friesians. The Friesian language exists next to the national language (Dutch). Especially in the countryside, many Friesian families speak only Friesian amongst themselves.


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 1, 2004)

When I visited the Netherlands ie Holland, I noticed that your language is something between Swedish, German and English. Quite easy to learn, though the way you pronounce words sounds not so easy....
There seemed to be much more cattle everywhere there (as well as in Germany) than I have never seen in Finland. And those farm houses! And vast spaces of land! We were camping by the Ijsselmeer, I think on the land you 'stole' from the sea..


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 1, 2004)

Elfhelm25 said:


> Well, this is pretty simple.
> Where are you from, what languages can you speak, and would you care to give us a sample of that fine language.
> Even if it's English ! What KIND Of English do you speak ?



I'm from Los Angeles (a rough section of the Southfarthing), and I speak Southern California English. I used to speak "self-defense Spanish" when I was working, and when I was in college I minored in German. I also invented a language called Paloochnya (the "ch" is pronounced softly as in the name Bach), whose chief advantage is that no word is ever pronounced or spelled the same way twice! So:

"¿Que paso, vato loco? Ich habe meiner Deutsch fast alles vergessen, aber mit Paloochnya, alava zoontkya keleh moynya iz gala faloochtnya galanta hossen!"

Lotho


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 1, 2004)

Lantarion said:


> LOL
> Thank you very much for this delightful demonstration.  I was obrn in Finland



I know next to nothing about Finnish, but, as with Tolkien, I love the sound of it, and especially the names! For instance, watching the "World's Strongest Woman" contests on TV, there is a Finnish woman, a beautiful woman with a delicately beautiful face, a long silvery blonde braided ponytail who can lift a VW with no particular trouble, whose name is _Heine Koyvuniemi._ Is that a _gorgeous_ name, or what! 

(To say nothing of Sibelius' music!)

Lotho


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 1, 2004)

Thank you for praising our language. Though to me English sounds far more better. Finnish has no real intonation, and when I was in America long ago I was told that Finnish sounds like we Finns are constantly mad at each other. So sharp consonants and aptruptly stopping words. And I remember a teacher at the university telling us that you need more facial muscles when you speak Finnish than what you need in English. And that's why some Finns pronounce it wrong, they simply use too many muscles to produce the sounds...English is much more 'softer' language. Usually when an english speaker says something in Finnish the word sounds much softer than it really is.
I don't know who Heini Koivuniemi is, but I suspect she's some kind of athlete..I haven't followed any kind of sports for a long time..
by the way, her last name means the cape of birches or something like that.
Though many times this word is associated with "the Lord of the cape of birches" what is a saying to discipline badly behaving children. Like "the Lord of the birch cape will whip some sense into you" or maybe more accurately this "Birch cape lord" means a birch whip. At least this is with what I associate this word, since I was told this as a child and a birch twig was brought into the house to scare us...of course they would have never used it...but maybe this was a custom in past for Finns to raise their children and that's why it's still in our language..
I guess this sounds a bit awkward, but that is really the meaning of the word.
Birches are beautiful trees anyway..


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## Niniel (Feb 2, 2004)

I can speak only Dutrch and English fluently (unfortunately not much Friesian...), I can speak French and German enough to make them understand me, and I can read Italian, Latin and ancient Greek (and some other languages if I use a dictionary). 
Real interesting thread this is; please Lanty go on with explaining Finnish cause I really like it!


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## Lantarion (Feb 2, 2004)

Haha why thank you Niniel! 
I think I will, a bit later on. 

And thank you for showing such strong interest Lotho! It's rather uplifting for some reason! 


Lotho_Pimple said:


> _Heine Koyvuniemi_


Are you sure it was 'Heine'? Because it isn't a Finnish name, she must have some German(ic) ancestry or parentage if that is her first name.. 
And it's actually '_Koivuniemi_'.  The thing I like aobut Finnish names is that evey single one means something in the modern form of the language, and can be seen objectively in that sense; but often English surnames like Banks or Attenby or Daniels, although their meanings can be traced to something or they actually do mean something (like 'banks', as in river bank), they are usually seen as "just names". I see all Finnish surnames as objective and often beautiful word-combinations.
In this case:
_koivu_ = birch tree
_niemi_ = cape (as in a landmass), promontory

As I se it, most if not all Finnish surnames which have naturalistic words in them have originated from the places of residence of the ancestors of a person. The great-great-great-great grandparents of Heine Koivuniemi probably lived on a small promontory of land where birches grew. That's how I would reason it anyway. 

I think it's true what you say aobut the Finnish language being somewhat somewhat abrupt; and I asked an English friend of mine who doesn't speak FInnish at all what it sounded like, and he said it sounded extremely fast. That's probably because of the way we form words, by adding them to one another (something like _saippuakivikauppias_ ), and thus the language sounds long and difficult, maybe; but it's definatley in part also because of the phoneticity of the Finnish language: everything is pronuoced just as it is written, and/or vice versa. There are no 'silent' letters, no needless consonants (like in the word I mistype the most, _though_; where the hell did the 'g' and 'h' get in?!), and generally nothing extra. 
I think in a way, and in terms of Tolkien's Eldarin languages, Finnish is a mixture of Quenya and Sindarin: it has a majority of beautifully flowing and/or phonetically and aesthetically appealing words and use of assonance and vowels, like in Quenya, but then there is the harsher side and the constant use and pronunciation of double consonants (like in the word _katto_ or _nummi_ or something similar), like in Sindarin. 
What baffles me is that when non-Finnish speakers try to pronouce Finnish, or in particular these double consonants, they treat it as though it was English: because in English it doesn't matter whether you have two letter 'n's in a word, it's still just pronounced as a single 'n', in reality. But in Finnish double-consonants have to be taken into acocunt and pronounced properly, i.e. as a long consonant. It's very hard to explain in words like this, I should have some soundbytes or something attached. 

Woah I sort of got caught up there.. 
ANyway this is fun, if anybody wants to know anything specific about the language feel free to ask.


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## Sarde (Feb 2, 2004)

Niniel said:


> I can speak only Dutrch and English fluently (unfortunately not much Friesian...), I can speak French and German enough to make them understand me, and I can read Italian, Latin and ancient Greek (and some other languages if I use a dictionary).
> Real interesting thread this is; please Lanty go on with explaining Finnish cause I really like it!



Not much Friesian, but some? From where in Holland are you? I am in Leeuwarden.


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 2, 2004)

Ireth Telrúnya said:


> Thank you for praising our language. Though to me English sounds far more better.



Isn't that just the way! To me there's nothing uglier than to hear any non-English language spoken with a heavy American accent — ugh!



> Finnish has no real intonation, and when I was in America long ago I was told that Finnish sounds like we Finns are constantly mad at each other.



With friends like that, you don't need enemies...



> So sharp consonants and abruptly stopping words. And I remember a teacher at the university telling us that you need more facial muscles when you speak Finnish than what you need in English. And that's why some Finns pronounce it wrong, they simply use too many muscles to produce the sounds...



That sounds absolutely silly! Your professor sounds like an intellectual idiot, of which, unfortunately, there are many — too many.



> English is much more 'softer' language. Usually when an english speaker says something in Finnish the word sounds much softer than it really is.



I have seen a reasonable number of Finnish movies, and no such thought has ever come to my mind.



> I don't know who Heini Koivuniemi is, but I suspect she's some kind of athlete..I haven't followed any kind of sports for a long time...



She is indeed, an honest-to-god amazon! I discovered the "World's Strongest Man" contests on cable TV one day, and have been fascinated with it ever since. There aren't too many of these men — perhaps a dozen or two — who compete. They meet each other in various parts of the world to lift logs, cars, pull trucks and even airplanes, run with boulders — it's a hoot! And many of them are from Finland, Sweden and Norway. Occasionally they will show a "World's Strongest Woman" contest, and that's where I saw Heini (although a woman from Texas usually wins).



> by the way, her last name means the cape of birches or something like that.
> Though many times this word is associated with "the Lord of the cape of birches" what is a saying to discipline badly behaving children. Like "the Lord of the birch cape will whip some sense into you" or maybe more accurately this "Birch cape lord" means a birch whip. At least this is with what I associate this word, since I was told this as a child and a birch twig was brought into the house to scare us...of course they would have never used it...but maybe this was a custom in past for Finns to raise their children and that's why it's still in our language..



Thanks for that bit of Finnish culture!



> I guess this sounds a bit awkward, but that is really the meaning of the word.
> Birches are beautiful trees anyway..





Lotho


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 2, 2004)

Lantarion said:


> ...thank you for showing such strong interest Lotho! It's rather uplifting for some reason!



My pleasure!



> Are you sure it was 'Heine'? Because it isn't a Finnish name, she must have some German(ic) ancestry or parentage if that is her first name...



It was "Heini." She might have some German ancestry: light skin, green eyes, toehead blonde hair.



> And it's actually '_Koivuniemi_'.  The thing I like about Finnish names is that evey single one means something in the modern form of the language, and can be seen objectively in that sense; but often English surnames like Banks or Attenby or Daniels, although their meanings can be traced to something or they actually do mean something (like 'banks', as in river bank), they are usually seen as "just names". I see all Finnish surnames as objective and often beautiful word-combinations.
> In this case:
> _koivu_ = birch tree
> _niemi_ = cape (as in a landmass), promontory



I think all surnames must mean something or other, if only to indicate being a descendant of someone or other: Ben-levi; O'Brien; Balian for instance. Tolkien used descriptive names extensively in the surnames he invented.



> As I see it, most if not all Finnish surnames which have naturalistic words in them have originated from the places of residence of the ancestors of a person. The great-great-great-great grandparents of Heini Koivuniemi probably lived on a small promontory of land where birches grew. That's how I would reason it anyway.



Works for me!



> I think it's true what you say aobut the Finnish language being somewhat somewhat abrupt...



Someone else said this, not me.



> ...we form words, by adding them to one another (something like _saippuakivikauppias_ ), and thus the language sounds long and difficult, maybe; but it's definatley in part also because of the phoneticity of the Finnish language: everything is pronuoced just as it is written, and/or vice versa. There are no 'silent' letters, no needless consonants (like in the word I mistype the most, _though_; where the hell did the 'g' and 'h' get in?!), and generally nothing extra.



Sanskrit works the same way. Nothing is silent, and not only are there double vowels, but double consonants which are pronounced differently than the single ones, but which are held twice as long as the single ones. I wonder if the two languages are somehow related?

As for such crazymakers as "thought," "though," through," cough," etc., I think that comes from history: Before the advent and distribution of printed books, people could spell any way they felt like it. As books became more prevalent, the spelling began to "stick," as people saw words down in print. Whatever they saw became "official." Trouble was, words were spelled different ways in different books! French and English are the two worst languages for spelling.

Years ago I taught basic reading with a phonetic alphabet first used in England. It was the standard Roman alphabet with some special characters for specific sounds. This alphabet was used to teach youngsters their first reading lessons. It was so accurate that in reading what they had written, you could pick up how the children pronounced or mispronounced their words, and you could pick up various accents! Once they made satisfactory progress, they were weaned off of it and were shifted over to the normal alphabet and the normal ridiculous way of spelling English.



> I think in a way, and in terms of Tolkien's Eldarin languages, Finnish is a mixture of Quenya and Sindarin: it has a majority of beautifully flowing and/or phonetically and aesthetically appealing words and use of assonance and vowels, like in Quenya, but then there is the harsher side and the constant use and pronunciation of double consonants (like in the word _katto_ or _nummi_ or something similar), like in Sindarin.



But since Quenya and Sindarin are invented languages, would you not say that they are based on Finnish?



> What baffles me is that when non-Finnish speakers try to pronouce Finnish, or in particular these double consonants, they treat it as though it was English: because in English it doesn't matter whether you have two letter 'n's in a word, it's still just pronounced as a single 'n', in reality. But in Finnish double-consonants have to be taken into acocunt and pronounced properly, i.e. as a long consonant. It's very hard to explain in words like this, I should have some soundbytes or something attached.



I get what you mean: like Sanskrit, which I discussed a bit above.



> Woah I sort of got caught up there..
> ANyway this is fun, if anybody wants to know anything specific about the language feel free to ask.



I'm trying to come up with questions even now!


Lotho


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## Sarah (Feb 2, 2004)

Ihay amhay ablehay ootay eakspay igpay atinlay uentlyflay. Ihay ancay oldhay entirehay onversationscay inhay igpay atinlay.


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 2, 2004)

Ireth Telrúnya said:


> From the foreign languages I know, English is the only one I can really speak fluently.
> About Finnish history ...
> Swedish is the second official language in Finland beside Finnish, and there is a Swedish speaking minority group in Finland who are bilingual - they still remind us that Finland was almost from the beginning a part of Sweden when their kingdom grew stronger. After that was Russia, but thank God not too many Russians ever lived here and its dominion didn't last so long. Actually Finnish nation formed itself under the Swedish dominion and Finnish language got its written form from Mikael Agricola, a bishop of Turku and a dominican monk (I just had to refresh my memory..), who translated the New Testament into Finnish in 1548. He had studied in Wittenberg, Germany and met Martin Luther there. Agricola based his creation of Finnish writing system in Latin, Swedish and German. So, written Finnish, this 'kirjakieli' just emerged in the sixteenth century when Shakespeare was writing his plays in England.
> As far as I know, there are only a little more than five million people who speak Finnish and yet we have some dialects...though I must say some of them seem to be dying out of use and many young people (lets say under 35) speak common form of Finnish. There are these eastern dialects, as well as southwestern and northern dialects. I don't speak any of them though my relatives do.
> ...



That was fascinating! Thank you!

Lotho


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## Elfhelm25 (Feb 2, 2004)

Haha ! Pig latin ! That's some funny. Who invented that anyways ? I mean, um......oo...hay....um......uh......
Who invented that anyways ?


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## Starflower (Feb 3, 2004)

Well I speak Finnish, as mother tongue. I'm also one of the relatively small number of Finns who speak fluent Swedish but are not bilingual in the normal sense of the word. Noone in my family speaks swedish, I learnt it in school, and learnt it well enough to be fluent still, ten years after leaving school . I also speak fluent English, I live in England now, but I'm told I don't have a recognizable accent. When people meet me for the first time, they usually take me to be a native English speaker, but cannot place the accent(they usually suggest Canada or New Zealand as my place of origin). Only if I have an actual conversation with someone does it become apparent that I'm not a native speaker, mainly because I use words and phrases that native English speakers don't use. I speak English the way I learnt it from books, ie I use a lot of literary forms and I tend to overly obsessive about correctness...I think I would make a good proofreader  
I also speak adequate French and Spanish, I can read German and Italian and I can make some sense of Danish and Norwegian too.

More to Lanty's and Ireth's study of Finnish, a little example of how we Finns look at words and decide how to pronounce them. When I first arrived in England I caused hilarity by mispronouncing place names, like *Tottenham* , I pronounced very carefully Tot-ten-ham , but no - it is pronounced approx. *Tott-nam*. Well, I took heed and next up was *Islington*, well I took my time and came with Ai-lin-ton, only to find out that it is pronounced exactly as it is written, Islington. So nowadays, I have given up looking for the right pronounciation, chances are I will get it wrong, so I'll just say it how I think it is said and wait for someone to prove me wrong


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 3, 2004)

It wasn't a long ago when I learned how Lancaster and Manchester are pronounced (something like Lan-ster and Mans-ter and the middle part of the word is not really said).


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## Starflower (Feb 3, 2004)

those are not bad, wait til you get to Leicestershire and Gloucestershire ! And I have completely given up on all the Welsh names, they are all llllannwweallyth-type words, would like to learn it though, maybe I'll sign up for evenign classes or something


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## Niniel (Feb 3, 2004)

I would really like to learn Irish or Welsh; actually I took a class in university in Old Irish and Middle Welsh, but it was quite hard to learn. The class lasted only 7 weeks, so we didn't get past basic grammar rules, but it was very interesting. Maybe I'll do a follow-up class as well.


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 3, 2004)

Starflower said:


> Well I speak Finnish, as mother tongue. ...



Some silly questions to the Finns here: to what extent is English used in Finland (and other languages)? And when you read Tolkien, do you read him in English or use a Finnish translation — or is there such a thing? And if there is, how good is it?

I am impressed at how much better Europeans are with language usage than Americans. When it comes to handling more than one language, most of us Americans are bereft. Some, unfortunately, are even xenophobically proud of the fact that they only speak English, and expect everyone else to learn to speak it, rather than (God forbid) they should go to the trouble to learn the other fellow's language.

Spanish is the "main other" language here, but one hears many Asian languages spoken as well, although mainly from one native speaker to another. One must go into ethnic neighborhoods to see signage, for instance, in Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Thai, etc.

Lotho


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## Lantarion (Feb 3, 2004)

Lotho, I posted a huge message relating to your previous post, but TTF was experiencing difficulties (or my computer was ) and it got erased. 
Well, I'll answer it again then! 

On Snaskrit: I think that it might be somehow, very distantly related; Finnish is descended, in large part, from the Indo-European and Germanic language groups (those and the Fenno-Ugric oddities and things from the North and from the Urals), and as Sanskrit is used in the area of the world where other languages were descended from the Indo-European language roots, I think it might be possible.  Some words might even look similar! but I wouldn't know. 
And on Quenya: Toklien himself did say that he based Quenya mostly on Finnish, as he did Sindarin on Welsh, and Tolkien was a great scholar of Finnish and I believe he even read the _Kalevala_ in its original language! 

On the use of English: Well, there is a growing minority of English-speakers who can actually speak the language fulently; there are quite a few International Baccalaureate (IB) schools all over Finland, where the teaching is all in English. I am in one, but lamentably some of our teachers are Finns and only have a sufficient knowledge of English to be able to speak it; taching is sometimes a little problematic, as is pronunciation and grammar..  But we get by.
A lot of Finns actually do learn to speak even commendable English at school (it is taught from the fourth grade up I believe), but it's the pronunciation and the ourageous accents which bother me. I don't hold it against them really, it's not like they can do that much about it, but it really annoys me sometimes.  
A lot of jobs also require good knowledge of English, including stall-salesmen and cafe staff and the like.. So English is pretty widely used, though the quality of speech varies.. 
English is a bit like Latin in a way in Finland; it is used as a language of 'lore', or by people who want to show off, and many university books are in English.


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## Arvedui (Feb 3, 2004)

Hmmm.... the Fins are all over this place I see.... Unfortunately I don't understand much of their language. Come to think of it, 'Olut' and 'Kippis' are probably the only words I know.. 

But I do speak both English and American fluent enough to pass as a resident of both nations.
I can also understand German, but I am not so sure if Germans can understand me.

Other than that, I can only a few phrases of this and that.
But I can do some rather good impersonations of Swedes and Danes speaking English. And Fins as well....


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## Sarah (Feb 3, 2004)

Elfhelm25 said:


> Haha ! Pig latin ! That's some funny. Who invented that anyways ? I mean, um......oo...hay....um......uh......
> Who invented that anyways ?



oohay inventedhay atthey anywayshay.

Not hard elfie!


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## Lantarion (Feb 3, 2004)

Omg Arvedui! The only words you know in Finnish are 'beer' and 'cheers'!  Hehehe...
I know them in Swedish but that's as close to you I can get.  They would be _öl_ and _skål!_ 
Haha you can impersonate a Finn speaking English? That's easy, just make sure you speak really haltingly and over-coherently. 

Ig-latinay ishay ettypray unfray ootay eakspay!
Not exactly difficult.. There are several of these 'mock languages' in Finnish too; my favourite one is what's called the _Vis-kieli_, 'kieli' meaning 'language'.
You do the same as in Pig-Latin, just use the word 'vis' instead of 'ay'. 
E.g. here is a normal sentence in Finnish: *Minun lakkini on kadonnut* ('My cap has gone missing') 
Here it is in the Vis-tongue:
*Mis-vinun las-vikki os-vin kas-vidonnut* 
 It's really fun, but probably only if you can sdpeak Finnish.. :rolleys:
I actually had a friend who I knew for almost ten years called Johannes. His name in the Vis-tongue would be _Jos-vihannes_, which was a point of true hilarity for us all, because the word _'vihannes'_ means 'vegetable'!  
Ah, good times..


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## Starflower (Feb 4, 2004)

Lotho_Pimple said:


> Some silly questions to the Finns here: to what extent is English used in Finland (and other languages)? And when you read Tolkien, do you read him in English or use a Finnish translation — or is there such a thing? And if there is, how good is it?
> 
> I am impressed at how much better Europeans are with language usage than Americans. When it comes to handling more than one language, most of us Americans are bereft. Some, unfortunately, are even xenophobically proud of the fact that they only speak English, and expect everyone else to learn to speak it, rather than (God forbid) they should go to the trouble to learn the other fellow's language.
> 
> ...



well English is a compulsory subject in school so everyone under 30 has at least some knowledge of english. Also most of the programs on TV are english or american and they are subtitled so you can hear the language, same goes for films in theaters, they are all subtitled. SO you can't really escape hearing english, and there is a significant english-speaking population in Finland, especially in the larger cities such as Helsinki ( the capital). 
As to Tolkien, there does exist a finnish translation, it was published sometime in the sixties ( i don't have one i'm afraid so can't check), and it was thought very highly of by Prof Tolkien himself, who had some knowledge of finnish. English books are readily available at any bookstore, I personally like reading Tolkien in English,have done so for the last 15 years or so, but I haev read the Finnish one as well, and as I recall it was very good. it has kept the etymology of the names, such as *Baggins*, which has been translated into Finnish as *Reppuli* , which contains the stem *reppu-* meaning *Bag-*. Same goes for most of the English names in the books,for example *Isengard* is *Rautapiha* , which is a literal translation of the name.


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## Arvedui (Feb 4, 2004)

Lantarion said:


> Omg Arvedui! The only words you know in Finnish are 'beer' and 'cheers'!  Hehehe...
> I know them in Swedish but that's as close to you I can get.  They would be _öl_ and _skål!_


FYI, these are the same in norwegian, only _olut _is written _øl._
I find it strange that I know those two words in a number of languages.....


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## Starflower (Feb 4, 2004)

this letter *ø *  and like are so strange, why can;t you norwegians just use ö instead 

There is a Norske Sjomanns Kirke here in London, right next to the Finnish and the Swedish ones.


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## Arvedui (Feb 4, 2004)

We prefer to be original, rather than copies of others.... 



> There is a Norske Sjomanns Kirke here in London,


 There are churches like that in a number of countries all over the world. there used to be a time when there were norwegian sailors to visit them, too. But those days have passed, and less and less norwegians work as merchant sailors. It is much cheaper for the Shipping agencies to hire people from the Far East... But there are still a lot of norwegian officers, and quite a lot of ships carry the norwegian flag.


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## Lantarion (Feb 4, 2004)

Haha! When I was younger and living in England, me and my family used really often to visit the Finnish 'Seamans' Church'.. I would always remember being excited to go to the _Merimieskirkko_, because it always smelled of rye bread and Carelian pies, and everything was so Finnish there!


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 4, 2004)

I just bought "The Silmarillion" today from a bookstore here called "Readers" or something. They seemed to have quite a lot of books in English, also all the LotR books, but then... I have them all in just one book with the battle of the Helm's Deep on the cover!! (100 pages already covered from that one...) 
And now that I'm reading, the language seems much easier than I remembered. I hardly need the dictionary when reading.

About English in Finland: many young people here oppose of having to learn Swedish at school but learning English seems to be a matter of honor for most. Maybe it is just that we Finns have a bit negative picture of Sweden for after all, it was the country that once ruled here for a long time...but if Finland wants to be a Scandinavian country it's essential for us to learn Swedish since Finnish is a very different language from all the other Scandinavian languages. Icelandic, Faeroese, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are all related to each other but Finnish is a Finno-Ugrian or an Uralic language that has relatives in some small tribes in Russia. Hungarian and Estonian also belong to this Uralic language group.
Anyway, in my opinion, Swedish is the second official language here, but in truth, English is more like "the second official". There are more people here who can speak fluent English than fluent Swedish.


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## Elbereth (Feb 4, 2004)

Well, I am from Northeastern United States. I spent the first half of my life in Maine...and then the second half in New York City. So, mainly I speak English (but of course  ). I don't really have an accent per se...I've been told I have very clear American english... and many foreigners have complimented me on my English speech as they say it shows no trace of any specific accent at all (except it is clear that I'm an American when you hear me speak). However the dialects I can speak and understand are: New York, Spanglish, and Mainah

Now you all know how New Yorkers speak...that should go without saying...

*Spanglish *  is basically a combination of Spanish and English in one sentence. 

Such as: "Hey amiga! Let's go to the restaurant to get some arroz con pollo. Vamos chica! I'm muy hungry!"  


Then there is *Maine speech: *  

*Here are the rules: * 

The "er" endings of words like "car", "lobster", and "Mainer" become replaced with "ah". For example, "car" becomes "cah", "lobster" becomes "lobstah", and "Mainer" becomes "Mainah". 

Drop the "g" in words ending in "ing". "Fishing" becomes "fishin'" while "running" becomes "runnin'". 

Stretch some one syllable words into two syllables. "You can't get they-uh from hee-uh". 

Drag out the "a" and "e" sounds of some words. "Can't" becomes "cahn't" while "calf" becomes "cahf". 

*Now here are a few key Maine phrases:*

Away - Anywhere south of Kittery. 

Ayuh - Usually meaning yes, but also to describe someone wicked borin'. 

Cah - Anything other than a truck with four wheels. 

Crittah - Any fur bearing animal. 

Gawmy - Clumsy, Awkward. 

Lobstah - Favorite food of Mainers and those people from Away. 

Mowah - As opposed to less. 

Summah - A few days in August. 

Wicked - Can be said almost every sentance, usually followed by the word good. 

Wonduh - A confused state. Ex. I wonduh whey-yuh I pahked the cah. 

Wun't - Wasn't. Ex. Wun't that lobstah wicked good? 

Yessah - "Yes Sir". Applies to either a man or a woman."


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 6, 2004)

Arvedui said:


> FYI, these are the same in norwegian, only _olut _is written _øl._
> I find it strange that I know those two words in a number of languages.....



We remember what interests us...



Lantarion said:


> Haha! When I was younger and living in England, me and my family used really often to visit the Finnish 'Seamans' Church'.. I would always remember being excited to go to the _Merimieskirkko_, because it always smelled of rye bread and Carelian pies, and everything was so Finnish there!



Ah now, what is a Carelian pie, and what is the recipe?



Ireth Telrúnya said:


> ...Swedish is the second official language here, but in truth, English is more like "the second official". There are more people here who can speak fluent English than fluent Swedish.



The only thing I know in Swedish is something I can't repeat here. But it starts with _"Svenska flicka..."_



Elbereth said:


> Well, I am from Northeastern United States. I spent the first half of my life in Maine...and then the second half in New York City.
> So, mainly I speak English (but of course  ). I don't really have an accent per se...I've been told I have very clear American english...



After spending all that time in Maine and NY???!!! Wow!

I used to teach in a school with a high concentration of Spanglish speakers, kids who were L.A. Hispanic. They were "linguistically ambidextrous," switching from English to Spanish and back again several times in one sentence, certainly many times in a conversation, in order to make a point or an emphasis to what they were saying.

Thanks for the disquisition on Maine English! (I remember a young woman from Maine in the early days of my Air Force hitch, who told me that Mainers pronounce potato as "p'teyta," with the "ey" being held long.)

Lotho


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## Starflower (Feb 6, 2004)

Lotho_Pimple said:


> Ah now, what is a Carelian pie, and what is the recipe?
> 
> Lotho



Carelian Pies  

very basically, they are pies, made with rice porridge in rye crust. They take a while to make, obviously in Finland you would buy some ready from the shop and just heat them up. You can eat them hot or cold, with any topping you prefer, ham, cheese etc, or traditionally with egg mayonnaise. 
I miss them......... *sigh* maybe I'm due a visit to the seamen's mission....


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 7, 2004)

Starflower said:


> Carelian Pies
> 
> very basically, they are pies, made with rice porridge in rye crust. They take a while to make, obviously in Finland you would buy some ready from the shop and just heat them up. You can eat them hot or cold, with any topping you prefer, ham, cheese etc, or traditionally with egg mayonnaise.
> I miss them......... *sigh* maybe I'm due a visit to the seamen's mission....



Sounds like! 

Thank you for the recipe. However when I went to the site the recipe was all mixed up with a lot of HTML coding that made it hard to extract from the rest of the text. However after working with it for a few minutes in my word processor I came up with this:

CARELIAN PIES (16 pieces)

Filling: 300 ml water 
200 ml porridge rice
700 ml milk 
3⁄4 teaspoon salt 

The crust: 100 ml cold water 
1⁄2 teaspoon salt 
150 ml rye flour 
100 ml wheat flour 
1 teaspoon vegetable oil

Moistening: 75 ml milk 
25g margarine or butter 

1.Stir the rice in boiling water, add milk and stir until the porridge starts to boil. Let it simmer under the lid at low temperature until it is well done. Stir now and then. Add some salt and let the porridge cool. 

2.Mix in cold water salt, flour and vegetable oil. Work the dough even with your hands. 

3.Make the dough into a bar and divide it into 16 parts. Roll the pieces into
balls, and then make them flat. Roll them into round pie crusts, 17 cms in diametre. Spread some rye flour on the crusts. 

4.Make the pies one by one. Remove the flour on the crusts and spread some filling on them. Lift the edges towards the middle and crumple with your index fingers so that the pie will get its shape. 

5.Put the pies on a baking sheet side by side and bake them in the middle part of the oven at the temperature of 300 degrees for 15-20 minutes. The pies will be well done when there is colour in them. 

6.Dip the pies into a hot liquid of milk and fat and put them on each other in a bowl to soften. Cover them with baking paper and a cloth. 

7.Serve the pies together with egg butter.

Is this right? (I'll have to do something to convert from the metric system to the degenerate American system of ounces/pounds, but that's a minor challenge.)

Evidently we lost some jpegs in the process, pity, I would like to have seen what the site was supposed to have looked like. Thanks again!

(Now what is egg butter? And are those temperatures Fahrenheit or Celsius?)

Lotho


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## Lantarion (Feb 7, 2004)

'Egg butter' or _munavoi_, is just that: it's basically normal butter mixed with egg, and mixed into a lovely spread or paste.  Yum I actually have some _Karjalan piirakoita_ downstairs, I'm gonna go eat some! 
Hehe great job with the recipe there, I wouldn't know if it was corect or not because I've never made them myself; oh and all tempereatures in Finland are in Celsius.


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 7, 2004)

Lantarion said:


> 'Egg butter' or _munavoi_, is just that: it's basically normal butter mixed with egg, and mixed into a lovely spread or paste.  Yum I actually have some _Karjalan piirakoita_ downstairs, I'm gonna go eat some!
> Hehe great job with the recipe there, I wouldn't know if it was correct or not because I've never made them myself; oh and all tempereatures in Finland are in Celsius.



You stalwart Finns — evidently the harsh winters make you fearless of cholesterol! We Americans shrink at the thought! (And then go ahead anyway)

Are you talking about mixing butter with raw or cooked eggs? :::cringing at the possible answer:::

Lotho


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 7, 2004)

Egg butter is made by mixing cooked eggs with butter. Yep, it's not very wise to eat that too much...
My grandmother, who's from Carelia (which now is mostly part of Russia) used to make heaps of those pies and usually with smashed potatoes, not rice. I think potato pies are better and more original than rice pies. And they go with meat and brown sauce..
She's told me that when she was little, they made lots of pies for the whole household to eat with meat when they came back from the fields. And her family had two houses but they had to leave them when war (one of the battles of the Second World War) began and flee from there.


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 7, 2004)

Ireth Telrúnya said:


> Egg butter is made by mixing cooked eggs with butter. Yep, it's not very wise to eat that too much...
> My grandmother, who's from Carelia (which now is mostly part of Russia) used to make heaps of those pies and usually with smashed potatoes, not rice. I think potato pies are better and more original than rice pies. And they go with meat and brown sauce..
> She's told me that when she was little, they made lots of pies for the whole household to eat with meat when they came back from the fields. And her family had two houses but they had to leave them when war (one of the battles of the Second World War) began and flee from there.



This is getting more and more interesting! Do you suppose it would be worth it to start a thread for family recipes and their history?

Lotho


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## Ireth Telrúnya (Feb 7, 2004)

To tell the truth, I don't really know many recipes. I've never been interested in cooking much...but if someone wants to start a thread on that, they can do so. Maybe I'd learn something too.


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## Starflower (Feb 8, 2004)

> My grandmother, who's from Carelia (which now is mostly part of Russia) used to make heaps of those pies and usually with smashed potatoes, not rice. I think potato pies are better and more original than rice pies. And they go with meat and brown sauce..
> She's told me that when she was little, they made lots of pies for the whole household to eat with meat when they came back from the fields. And her family had two houses but they had to leave them when war (one of the battles of the Second World War) began and flee from there.


you can actually make the crust and fill it with whatever is to your taste, it can be mashed potatoes, carrots, rice on its own, rice with meat... anything savoury really.
And I'm all for putiing up a recipe thread for you Lotho, there are a lot fo interesting foods in Finland that you cant really find anywhere else  

And we should start up a Finnish history thread too for those who would like to know more about Finland, I think it's time we educate the world on FINLAND!!


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 8, 2004)

Starflower said:


> ...I'm all for putting up a recipe thread for you Lotho, there are a lot of interesting foods in Finland that you can't really find anywhere else
> 
> And we should start up a Finnish history thread too for those who would like to know more about Finland, I think it's time we educate the world on FINLAND!!



Both threads sound great! However, I'd like the recipe thread to include everyone's favorite recipes, each from their own country. (There's more to American food that cheeseburgers and fries — although I can't recall anything else just now...)

So just for the sake of expediency, I'll put up the recipe thread (in Stuff and Bother) and you do the Finnish History thread!

Lotho

EDIT: It's done! I put up a new thread for recipes from around the world (most certainly including Finland!) in Stuff and Bother. Now StarFlower will make one for Finnish history!


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## Lantarion (Feb 8, 2004)

A Finnish history thread! Wahoo! 
Hmm, I recall there being some trouble with threads like this.. Well, as long as there are no discussions in Finnish (although I'd really like that ) it would not only be fine but very very cool.


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## Elbereth (Feb 9, 2004)

Lotho_Pimple said:


> After spending all that time in Maine and NY???!!! Wow!
> 
> Lotho




You think that is bad...on top of having to deal with those accents...I have to struggle not to get my mom's thick Philipino accent. It's been a struggle...but my English is quite good.


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## Barliman Butterbur (Feb 9, 2004)

Elbereth said:


> You think that is bad...on top of having to deal with those accents...I have to struggle not to get my mom's thick Philipino accent. It's been a struggle...but my English is quite good.



I'm sure you have a WONDERFUL Mom, and she raised you beautifully. Tell her "_Salamat_ for doing such a great job with me Mom!" 

Barley


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## Tar-Elendil13 (Sep 24, 2005)

I speak Russian, Spanish, and Dixie English.
Here's the difference between Dixie English and General English:
1. "Y'all" is absolutely necessary. "Y'alls" is outdated and dorky. "All Y'all" is cool.
2. The slower, the better.
3. Shopping carts do not exist. They are buggies.
4. "ol'" is used instead of "old"
5. barbecue is a food type or an adjective describing food that has been cooked outside, not a verb meaning "to cook outside"
example: "Y'all want barbecue?"
or: "Y'all want some barbecue chicken"

That's about it in Texas.


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## Barliman Butterbur (Sep 24, 2005)

Elfhelm25 said:


> Where are you from, what languages can you speak, and would you care to give us a sample of that fine language.
> Even if it's English ! What KIND Of English do you speak ?



Ah, languages! I'm afraid I am not nearly as gifted in them as most of the rest of the posters in this thread! The only two languages I speak fluently are English and Profane. 

However, I took some Spanish in high school, back in the Jurassic Age, _aber Deutsch war meiner Nebenfach ins Universität_. I took it a bit farther when, after two years of lower-division German, as a sophmore at UCLA, I studied the German "fate plays" (_Schicksalspielen_) of the 19th century, the Romantic Era. _Es ist Schade, daß ich hab' es fast alles vergeßen haben, und ich hatt immer schwer Problemen mit die Grammatik und die Rechtschreibung — besonders jetzt! Ach! Gott in Himmel!_

When I started teaching however, I was forced to teach myself to speak "Self-Defense Spanish" _porqúe tengo muchos estudiantes de otros campos, y no es posíble para hablar inglés con ellos._ Most of what I said was in the present tense no matter what, but I could make myself reasonably understood. It was much easier for me to "transmit" than to "recieve."

As for my English — ah, what shall we say about _that?!_ I am an unabashed word lover. I have an unabridged dictionary squatting upon my desk which I use with astonishing frequency compared to the average American _zhlub._ I have internet subscriptions to Word A Day, Word Doctor, and World Wide Words. 

All during the year I cull interesting words from these sources and compile them into an ever-growing "private dictionary" of my own favorite words, which I email each January to my friends — at least those who like words as much as I do!

(One of the things I appreciate about TTF is the opportunity stretch out and actually _use_ more of my functional vocabulary than ordinarily.)

I suppose I speak with a "Standard American" accent — that is to say, like what you hear from most American radio and TV announcers. When I was stationed in the South 50 years ago, I began to soak up all the southern accents and could tell what Gulf Coast town a native was from simply by listening to him speak.

I have done some voiceover work — not much — in L.A., which was a lot of fun, so I suppose my pronunciation is decent. What _galls_ me however, is what I consider to be the degeneration of American English (which was never the equal of British English) over my lifetime. 

Some of my pet peeves: "I go/he went" instead of "I said/he said". "Snuck" instead of "sneaked." "Snuck" was once considered simply wrong — _a non-word._ But what really annoys me intensely is what has happened to the pronunciation of the word "the".

The word is correctly pronounced "thee" before nouns beginning with vowels, and slides into the noun _with no glottal stop._ ("the apple" becomes "theeyapple" — smooth — no glottal stop. "Flows like oil," as Mozart would say.) 

It is properly pronounced "thuh" before nouns beginning with consonants. These days however, it is "thuh" for everything, and nothing sounds more grotesquely awkward than to say "thuh apple; thuh ingredient" with that damned glottal stop everywhere!

It's a good thing I don't have to make a living as a grammarian; I'd have fatal ulcers. The truth is, language shifts and changes. It both both evolves and _de_volves, depending on the direction in which society is heading — which, ultimately is down.

I was actually very carefully _taught_ the proper use and application of "the" clear back in grade school — as early as the third grade! They say one of the primary laws of physics is that everything runs down. That is certainly the unfortunate situation with modern English! 

Gee — I feel _much_ better now! 

Barley


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## e.Blackstar (Sep 24, 2005)

Good old Midwestern English here. And I'm so close to Canada that it overlaps a bit.

However, I use British words, phrases and spelling with increasing regularity, including but not limited to: queue, apoligise, colour, theatre, etc etc.  

I'm also a fan of and a user of archaic words. My language pet peeve is when people say "from whence". If you're going to use archaic language, use it correctly!  


I'm currently in my third year of Spanish; I went to Costa Rica this summer and got some good immersion experience. Also, my mum, my aunt, and my sister all speak Spanish, so I can speak it to them.


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## Wraithguard (Sep 24, 2005)

First off no, you may not have a sample, and second, yes I speak these fluently.

English
Arabic (Standard, Egyptian, and Judeo-Iraqi)
Greek

Those I cannot speak fluently but if I were placed in their primary country, could survive on.

Hebrew
French
Hindu
Norwegian (Bokmål)
Vietnamese

Other than that I know bits and traces of other languages that I can combine to confuse the heck out of people.


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## Hammersmith (Sep 24, 2005)

e.Blackstar said:


> I use British words, phrases and spelling including apoligise


You mean "apologise" 

I speak English, with close to a perfect Received Pronunciation accent. If you want to know how that sounds, think the love child of Queen Elizabeth and John Cleese. I also spell Theater in the American way, but to discover why you'll have to do some research.

Besides English, I speak pigeon German with a Franco-Belgian accent - I could probably get by and I can read the gist of German texts but fluent I am not. Furthermore I can order four coffees with milk in Hebrew with an Arabic accent, evangelise in Swahili and call you a barbarian in Russian and Japanese.


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## e.Blackstar (Sep 24, 2005)

Holy cow! Rai, how do you keep all that in your head? I think I'd spontaneously combust while trying to conjugate some verbs.


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## Wraithguard (Sep 25, 2005)

Can anyone figure out why I made it a priority to learn the Judeo-Iraqi Arabic?  

Hebrew came from my trip to Israel and Hindu bored itself into my head when I went to Mumbai, India (Bombay). Greek is obviously my native language but without the accent and to this day I still don't know where Vietnamese came from.


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