What languages do you speak already and which would you like to learn? (and why?)

[cem_eesti]

hmms i know some useful swedish stuff too like...

hjörndöd.. skat.. or helvete or bög : )

 

[Frostheim]

my native language is turkish (it's a kind of uralic-altaic language like hungarian or finnish).

Finnish and Hungarian are finno-ugric (uralic) languages, but not altaic of any sort, although uralic-altaic and finno-ugric languages has some similarities in pronouncing and writing. And as far as I've understood, the so called "uralic-altaic" language theories are considered to be a bit insecur and elusive in nowadays linguistics in usual.

 

[cem_eesti]

well finnish language is very diffrent from turkish (it's a finno-urgic language as you say) but there are many common words in hungarian and turkish. also, as you know, hun empire is the former of hungarian people and huns (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hun) were the turkic people from central asia.

we turkish people are not orginally middle eastern, we have came inside anatolia since 1071 (AC) from central asia and orginally turkic people seem like chinians. some turkic states in that world are: azerbaijan, uzbekistan, tadjikistan, kazakistan, turkistan(in china), turkmenistan, kyrgyriztan, baskir(in russia) etc.. and diffrences in that languages are like diffrences in dutch or german language. just like diffrent dialects.

http://berclo.net/page03/03en-altaic-uralic-lang.html

 

[Frostheim]

but there are many common words in hungarian and turkish.

Of course the language-areas closer to each other does have influences to a direction and another.

also, as you know, hun empire is the former of hungarian people and huns were the turkic people from central asia.

Agreed, have read about many times, heh.

and diffrences in that languages are like diffrences in dutch or german language. just like diffrent dialects.

All the germanic, romanic, celtic, slavonic and baltic languages have at first been dialects and variations of that language that has been the proto-language of the language families listed above, and these proto-languages have had their origin in a one indo-european proto-language.

Same thing with other languages too, they have their origin, and the origin has it's origin and so on.

PS. Difficult to me to explain it with my poor skills in English..

http://berclo.net/page03/03en-altaic-uralic-lang.html

A good list that shows that the uralic and altaic languages have different origins, but of course have influenced each other due to areal and historical etc. matters.

 

[cem_eesti]

well baltic languages are really diffrent from other langauge families in europe (germanic, romanic, celtic and slavonic)

 

[Frostheim]

Aye, although indo-european languages anyway.

 

[Grim_Reaper]

heh, well-educated people gather here

i know english&spanish, a bit of german... would like to learn swedish&danish (my field of history research is Ancient Russia&Scandinavia of VIII-XI centuries)

 

[Infernium]

Finnish and english very well and some swedish, but i'm not that good at it. I'd like to learn saame, the language of laplandish people, native skandinavians.

 

[Frostheim]

laplandish people, native skandinavians.

The Lapps are not scandinavian people, although they are the first people in the area that has afterwards being called "the Scandinavia". The Lapps are finno-ugric and the Scandinavians are north-germanic.

 

[Grim_Reaper]

Offtopic:
2Frostheim: you listen to Temnozor? arent u russian?

 

[Infernium]

The Lapps are not scandinavian people, although they are the first people in the area that has afterwards being called "the Scandinavia". The Lapps are finno-ugric and the Scandinavians are north-germanic.

Anyway, you get my point.

 

[Frostheim]

Offtopic:
2Frostheim: you listen to Temnozor? arent u russian?

Hehe, I'm surely Finnish, but I'm mostly into slavonic and baltic music nowadays.

Infernium: Tarkkana näissä asioissa.

EDIT: And a course for beginners in Russian is about to begin in the autumn at the university.

 

[TravisW]

English is my native language. I know Norwegian, but it's getting worse and worse every day because I never get to use it anymore. I can read Danish pretty well, but can't understand a word of it spoken. I started on Icelandic once, but didn't get very far with it. Norwegian has beautifully simple grammar.

I took a year of French in high school, and remember extremely little. I took a year of German in college, and remember even less.

 

[Grim_Reaper]

Hehe, I'm surely Finnish, but I'm mostly into slavonic and baltic music nowadays.

Heh, i suppose, my native russian is not harder than finnish

 

[kovotojas]

Hehe, I'm surely Finnish, but I'm mostly into slavonic and baltic music nowadays.

Do you listen to the folk metal band Metsatöll (lyrics in archaic Estonian with some traditional instruments) or the Lithuanian folk groups Kulgrinda/Zalvarinis?

 

[Midnightblueshade]

Hei, this is a thread for me, 'cos I love languages :hotjump:

(BTW: The reason why I came here was to check out Vintersorg's homepage, do they have a hp besides this board?)

I speak my native German, of course, and English almost same as fluently, because I spent a year in the USA
My second language in school was Latin, which - Latin being a dead language - is not taught to speak, but to understand firstly classical literature and secondly grammar. The grammar and vocabulary helps a with learning Romance languages. I learned French and Spanish for about two years each, but haven't used it in years and forgot a lot. I can hardly speak a sentence but I can still understand written texts.

Funnily enough, I feel learning Latin (analysing the grammar of a sentence) even helps me a bit with learning a language that is not at all related to Latin: Finnish. (If nothing else, it helps to understand and remember the names of all those Finnish cases )

well, I'd like to learn finnish, too, but I suppose that's to difficult to do it just for fun.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing now: Learning Finnish just for the fun of it! At first, I learned from a book for half a year, then I started a course at university. I wanted to know what those 15 cases are all about, and I liked the challenge of learning a non-Indo-European language Finding out about the grammar was more important to me than being able to speak to Finns.... and I really haven't gotten very far in the speaking department: I tried to say "Te olette mailmaan hyvin bändi!" to the Children of Bodom drummer, but I only started to stutter and I don't think he understood me... probably didn't even recognize my words were meant to be Finnish I can write Finnish way better and it's really fun to assemble Finnish sentences

And here's a Finnish word with one prefix and "a couple" of suffixes:
Epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkäänköhän.

Cool! What does it mean? I understand the end of it -nsä-kään-kö-hän = -his/her - and not - question - stress

-ellä- reminds me of verbs like oppiskella
-yd- is a variation of ys I think, and ending making a noun from a verb
-ttöm- is plural of -tön- I think, like in yötön or asuton ...without something
-ttä- might be abessive, also meaning without
-y- I think that's another suffix that turns a verb into a noun
-telmä- afaik that's another verb or verb-to-noun suffix

-järje- should be the stem, weak form I think.... järki might be ordinary form... so now I finally found something to look up in my dictionary (Did everything without a dictionary or grammar book so far.) Well, so this " puzzling", that's what I like about Finnish. For me it's like solving a puzzle, better than any crosswordpuzzle

Actually, I started to get interested in Finnish because of Finnish bands, and now I'm also getting into Swedish because of Swedish bands. I really like those two Swedish songs by Falconer, and I also like Neslepaks by Isengard - not until I read the booklet did I find out that song is actually in Norwegian Now I have to decide wether to learn Swedish or Norwegian 'cos these languages are so close to each other I'd probably mix them up all the time if I tried to learn them both.

 

[Stoker]

I speak English (my first language) and French.
I am also teaching myself Norsk (Norwegian) right now.

 

[Mormagil]

Norweigian is coooool. I've been playing with some more languages lately, because I kind of put Romanian on the back burner, so I've been learning little bits of Finnish, Gothic, Old English, and soon Old Norse, and a few other languages, but the first four I mentioned are the ones for which I have the most material to work with. I just spent a good chunk of time translating a text from Old English to English (The Voyage of Ohthere), but I'm not sure how accurate it is.

 

[Frostheim]

Do you listen to the folk metal band Metsatöll (lyrics in archaic Estonian with some traditional instruments) or the Lithuanian folk groups Kulgrinda/Zalvarinis?

Metsatöll is absolutely great, finno-ugric tradition meets metal music at it's best, hehe. Kulgrinda is surely supreme! And Ugnelakis is nice too, as well as Zalvarinis that is their jointproject with Kulgrinda. Other bands let's say Spanxti, Peorth, Skyforger, Wejdas, Hate Forest, Branikald, Girnu Giesmes, Old Wainds, Nav, Nitberg, Forest, Wojnar, Ohtar, Abusiveness, Veja Chmar, Knell, Reusmarkt, Stanica, Piorun, Slovisha, Oyhra, Natural Spirit, Mertvye Velda, Kruk, Rundagor, Kataxu, Guszczar, Dissimulation, Golfaron, Angis... That sort of bands in example. Outside of metal I'm also extremely much into traditional ugric, baltic and slavonic folk music.

btw, here:
http://www.ukrmusic.com.ua/v0/category.php?id=1&lang=eng

I'm a kantele player, and have a band in shamanistic themes. And the language used in my lyrics are in Finnish of an archaic style, although they're all a sort of spell and singing language of my very own.

 

[Frostheim]

"Te olette mailmaan hyvin bändi!"

It would be "Te olette maailman paras bändi";
hyvä = good
parempi = better
paras = the best
but:
hyvin = (doing/having it/being) good, well, very

Maailma -> two words: maa-ilma (ground-air) meaning "the world".

====

Epä-järjestelmä-llis-ty-ttä-mättö-myy-de-llä-nsä-kään-kö-hän:

prefix:
Epä = "un"

the main word:
järjestelmä = "a system" (järki [substantive] = "sense", järjestää [verb] = "to put in order")

suffixes:
-llis = like in the verb järjestelmällistää = a sort of a meaning "to make it become a system / in order"
-ty = like in the substantive järjestelmällistys = "the action of making something to become a system / in order"
-ttä = like in the verb järjestelmällistyttää = "to make somebody else to make it to become a system / in order"
-mättö = like in an adjective järjestelmällistyttämätön = a negation: "something that has not being made to become a system / in order"
-myy = järjestelmällistyttämättömyys = here meaning "a state or a condition where it has not being made to become a system / in order"
-de = an inflection that belongs to certain words in certain situations, ie. käsi (a hand) -> kädellä (on a hand, with a hand...)
-llä = possession suffix, "with (somebodys) epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyys"
-nsä = an addition to the possession suffix, a bit of dialectic/poetic/eloquent expedient / style
-kään = a sort of a meaning "not even with"
-kö = a suffix for expressing a question
-hän = meaning: a suffix to express one's attitude of finding something to be kind of self-evident OR a question-like guess-work of trying to find out if something is really as one has thought

As I said, the word is grammatically right, but the IRL situation would be totally absurd and impossible. Here can thus be seen that Finnish is a very complex language; much of small and significant matters concerning attitudes, starting-points, purposes, meanings etc. in every possible hall.