English is a funny language

[The Hot Pepper]

Then there's the fact that the way you say one single word can have several totally different meanings in Chinese - like san, san and san.

English has this too. See the first post doh!

 

[Davetaylor]

aye a ken whit ye mean enlish is a bit o a bam whit wae aw the commas an fhul stoaps an at, an ye gotta mind where they aw gan, then as moentioned before there is all the local slang and dielect, lets just say that when i started reading trainspotting (irvine welsh) it confused me and i had to re read the first stentence, but as soon as i clicked that he had written it phoneticailly then the speed i read it was faster than than any other book ever!

 

[MrArboc]

aye a ken whit ye mean enlish is a bit o a bam whit wae aw the commas an fhul stoaps an at, an ye gotta mind where they aw gan,

OK?

Good point I guess, sometimes it's really hard for us foreigners to understand when people try to "spice up" their posts by writing as they speak(?). Something to consider if you want us to understand

 

[Badger]

English has this too. See the first post doh!

I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make THP. We have words that have different meanings but sound the same when spoken (to,too,two). The meaning is not determined by the way you say a word - the meaning is in the word. In Chinese the meaning of a word is carried in the way the word is spoken - the inflection in your voice.

 

[The Hot Pepper]

I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make THP. We have words that have different meanings but sound the same when spoken (to,too,two). The meaning is not determined by the way you say a word - the meaning is in the word. In Chinese the meaning of a word is carried in the way the word is spoken - the inflection in your voice.

I'm not missing the point. I think you are missing that English has this too. The examples are above, that was the point of the post. Not to, two, too... same spellings. Wound, wound. Produce, produce. Present, present. Number, number. Sow, sow... The definition is determined by the pronunciation. Read the first post again

 

[Badger]

I really f**ked this up din't I? I didn't come accross right. What I meant was that while in English we often have 2 meanings for a word (depending how they're pronounced) Chinese can have many more - up to 8 I believe. Looking at my previous posts, I made my point about as clear as sheet lead. Sorry I made this such hard work - Nova, add me to the failometer will ya?

 

[The Hot Pepper]

I got cha.

 

[Badger]

Thanks for bearing with me dude - I had the grandaddy of all hangovers earlier and was making about as much sense as an Albanian DVD player instruction manual.

 

[chilehunter]

I thought my previous post was kinda funny, guess not.
the 1st post had 1 word that meant 2 different things. my post had 3 words that meant 8 different things.

 

[lostmind]

lol.

All I know is my wife's family speaks 3 chinese dialects, malaysian and mandarin (I don't count that as a dialect, though I suppose it is..) and all mixed with english words... I'll never learn to fully communicate with them.

I have an Uncle who speaks Italian, but has to speak English to his cousin from Italy, because they can't understand each other in Italian...

When I go to Japan I have to repeat myself three times in Japanese to be understood because the majority of Japanese have difficulty believing a white guy like me is attempting to speak Japanese so they are trying to understand my English and my accent is pretty bad so it's just all around confusing - although I have some Canadian Japanese friends who seem to understand me just fine.

I go to Germany, everyone starts speaking to me in German, then switches to English when they see my eyes glaze over... I'll never learn German because everyone in Germany speaks some degree of English...

I took French in school for 6 years, yet I can barely order food or ask for the washroom... and French is our second language in Canada.

I know how to swear at white people about 20 different ways in Punjabi but don't know how to politely say hello to someone.

Languages are fun!

 

[Armadillo]

japanese, chinese, german, french... in all these languages it doesn't work this way. You mess up the tone, inflection, grammar, feminine or masculine and you change the entire MEANING of the word around, thus causing you to speak gibberish.

In German that's not so bad. Even if you mess with the articles that tell you if a substantiv is male, female or neutral you are understood. Our Turkish, Italian and Greek people mix up a lot of grammar and swallow the words' endings and we still understand them. Now imagine that in China, Japan or the Arabian world. Would you survive the day? But German is still a difficult language to learn. The best thing about it is that in German almost everything is pronounced as it is written. In English sometimes I know the word but pronounce it wrong and no one understands what I'm talking about.

 

[lostmind]

In German that's not so bad. Even if you mess with the articles that tell you if a substantiv is male, female or neutral you are understood. Our Turkish, Italian and Greek people mix up a lot of grammar and swallow the words' endings and we still understand them. Now imagine that in China, Japan or the Arabian world. Would you survive the day? But German is still a difficult language to learn. The best thing about it is that in German almost everything is pronounced as it is written. In English sometimes I know the word but pronounce it wrong and no one understands what I'm talking about.

Ahh this is true about German then? my friend always makes me read the German news paper phonetically and says I pronounce everything perfect... I thought he was just teasing me.

maybe I am just lazy and haven't built a big enough vocab...

What get's me about German are these words that are approximately 20 words crammed into one giant string of text. My mind just can't read that!

 

[Badger]

I admire the German language - it's so logical. Like Armadillo says, words are pronounced how they are written (mostly). Take the word "chemist", why is it spelt with what looks like a ch sound at the beginning? In German it's "Kemist" - what you see is what you get. Know what you mean about the long words though - they take some getting used to.

 

[pepperfever]

I don't know a lot about German but have had instances of someone pronouncing the last name wrong...two vowels oe get a long a sound not long o. Daden instead of Doeden

 

[Armadillo]

In German it's "Kemist" - what you see is what you get. Know what you mean about the long words though - they take some getting used to.

Sometimes it depends on the dialect too. The chemist is the Chemiker. In some German dialects you pronounce him "Kemiker", in others he's the "Shemiker".

I don't know a lot about German but have had instances of someone pronouncing the last name wrong...two vowels oe get a long a sound not long o. Daden instead of Doeden

Hard to say cos I can't hear how you would pronounce what you write. The so called "Umlaute" ä, ö, ü can also be written ae, oe, ue. But also a loooong o can be oe etc..