Like everyone else this time of the year, the holidays are really putting a strain on my free time, which explains why this post is kind of late. Nevertheless, we now reach Dutch, the 31st language in the blog.
1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish
28. French
29. Thai 30. Turkish 31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan
Dutch is a West Germanic language (like English) spoken by over 20 million mainly in the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname, along with some parts of the Caribbean. Dutch comes from Old Frankish, a West Germanic language that was spoken in the region around the 400s.
REGIONAL HISTORY: The Netherlands, the main country where Dutch is spoken, evolved from a cluster of provinces (called the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, namesake-wise) back in the 1500s. Prior to that, the region was populated by the Franks and Frisians, followed by successful farmers from cities Flanders and Utrecht who formed their own towns. Seven of these provinces separated in 1581 and formed the Dutch Republic, which lasted for about 200 years.
During this time, the Dutch went through a golden age, particularly in the areas of exploration and travel. One major event was the establishment of Capetown (in modern-day South Africa), which led to the creation of Afrikaans, the progeny of Dutch. The Dutch Bible, Staten-Bijbel, appeared in the 17th century, being one of the first major works in Modern Dutch.
In the 1800s, both the Netherlands and Belgium (which had been connected to the Netherlands since, forever) formed their own kingdoms. The century also saw the rule of Queen Wilhelmina, which would last for 60 years. The Netherlands suffered greatly in WWII after being captured by Germany; many Dutch Jews were sent to concentration camps and civilians were forced into labor. The Dutch bounced back though after the war, rebuilding ties with Belgium and Luxembourg, creating the Benelux union. The Dutch are still going strong, with the world’s oldest stock exchange and reputation for being extremely liberal.
WRITING SYSTEM: Latin alphabet. Same as English’s basically, but there are two exceptions. The “g” sounds completely different. It sort of resembles a “kh” sound, with the tongue risen in the back. Sort of like when English speakers say “human” and they emphasize the h. It’s hard to explain, but its very recognizable when you heard it. The other exception is that the “j” sounds like a “y.” Also, when consonants appear at the end of words, they are devoiced (e.g., a voiced letter, like “b” turns into an unvoiced one, like “p”).
There’s also the “ij”. Though not technically a letter, it appears just as frequently as all the other letter.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: From looking at Dutch, it seems to resemble a funky version of English. There are a lot of double vowels, as in Afrikaans. From listening to it, it seems to resemble German (not a good thing). But I did sort of like Afrikaans, so I’ll give it a chance.
Oh, do I really have to move on? I grew rather fond on Turkish in the short time I reviewed it. It also made me reconsider some of the things I didn’t like about languages I already sampled (e.g., noun cases, vowel harmony, etc.). But time is getting short as there are only seven languages left in the project.
SUMMARY: Turkish is a Turkic language coming from the Altaic language family, which includes Azeri (previously reviewed in the blog). It is derived from Oghuz Turkic, spoken by the Seljuks, who settled in modern-day Turkey. Ottoman Turkish was used throughout the empire, which lasted from about 1299-1923. The language was heavily reformed in the 1930s by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who introduced a new alphabet, did anyway with words with Persian/Arabic roots and created the Turkish Language Association. Turkish is spoken by over 70 million.
FINAL IMPRESSION: I have a very good one of Turkish! Like I mentioned earlier, I was worried that I’d be turned off by some of the things I saw in other languages, specifically Finnish. These things include vowel harmony, noun cases and suffixes. I grew to love Turkish’s vowel harmony, as I think it makes it sound very distinct and beautiful. Also, the noun cases and suffixes are very logical, as I will get to those later.
Turkish is considerably different from English in the fact that is uses suffixes to indicate case, make nouns plural and conjugate verbs. I also doesn’t have grammatical gender or definite articles.
As for case, English speakers don’t use case at all really, so learning the forms can be kind of confusing. What Turkish does is tack on suffixes to nouns, which indicate the case, as prepositions don’t exist in English. It’s very logical, albeit hard for English speakers to grasp.
Here are the cases in Turkish (and what they mean, in case you don’t know):
Nominative – usually the main subject of the sentence (I bought a dress.) Genitive – possession (This is the woman’s dress.) Dative – noun is indirect object (I gave the dress to her.) Accusative – noun is direct object (I bought the dress.) Locative – shows where a noun is (I pointed at the dress.) Ablative – shows that the noun is away from something (I stepped away from the dress.)
Here’s a chart from Wikibooks site on Turkish. If you notice, the suffixes also change according to the last vowel in the noun (vowel harmony comes into play):
after e, i:
Nominative: no change
Genitive: -(n)in
Dative: -(y)e
Accusative: -(y)i
Locative: -de, -te
Ablative: -den, -ten
after ö, ü:
Nominative: no change
Genitive: -(n)ün
Dative: -(y)e
Accusative: -(y)i
Locative: -de, -te
Ablative: -den, -ten
after a, ı:
Nominative: no change
Genitive: -(n)ın
Dative: -(y)a
Accusative: -(y)ı
Locative: -da, -ta
Ablative: -dan, -tan after o, u: Nominative: no change
Genitive: -(n)un
Dative: -(y)a
Accusative: -(y)u
Locative: -da, -ta
Ablative: -dan, -tan
For example, otel (hotel) becomes otelin (the hotel’s) in the genitive case, and otelde (at the hotel) in the locative case.
Nouns are made plural by added -lar and -ler. -lar comes after nouns that have a, ı, o, u (back vowels) as the last vowel and -ler after nouns that have e, i, ö, ü (front vowels) as a last vowel. So … kanepe (sofa) becomes kanepeler (sofas) while kitap (book) become kitaplar (books).
Verbs sort of work the same way. Infinitives (to + verb) only end in -mak or -mek and tense is indicated by suffix. Infinitives are negated by adding -ma after the stem (for verbs ending with a back vowel) and -me (for verbs ending with a front vowel). Almak (to buy) becomes almamak (to not buy) for example. One helpful thing is that almost all Turkish verbs are regular.
As for actual conjugation … wow, there are SO many forms. I won’t put them all, but here’s an example of how simple present is formed with the verb almak (to buy):
Alıırım– I buy
Alırsın – you buy
Alır – he/she/it buys
Alırız – we buy
Alırsınız – you (formal) buy
Alırlar – they buy
Notice how the suffix changes. -ıyor indicates something is happening now. The following suffixes (-ım, -ın, ız, etc.) indicate the speaker.
To negate verbs, a m-, ma- or mi- is added in between the stem and the suffix (e.g, almam, I do not buy).
I asked several native and non-native speakers of Turkish for their thoughts about the language and English. Their comments were very helpful and they generally resonated with one another.
Most of the native speakers acknowledged some difficulty in the language. Kemal, a non-native speaker, thought Turkish would be difficult for English speakers. He pointed out that the pronunciation, grammar and word formation are different between both languages. He said Turkish is easier for those fluent in languages from sister language groups.
My friend Mehmet said that hardest part for English speakers are the extra [suffixes] in the language. He used the word geliyorum, which means “I am coming” for example. He also mentioned the difficulties with vowel harmony. Another friend İlker said to basically be open-minded and that learning Turkish will take “lots of … hard work and one spoon of willing, and half a glass of adequacy.” He also said “blocking” English grammar and starting from scratch could help beginners. He said that English speakers already use the Latin alphabet, which helps, but because the alphabet is phonetic (e.g., no digraphs like th- or ch- in English) it could throw beginners off.
Meanwhile, my friend Umut, another native speaker of Turkish, said English speakers have the advantage because English speakers are able to pronounce words from different languages (e.g. French) which isn’t possible in Turkish, but the different letters (İ,Ö,Ü,Ğ) could pose problems.
Ryan, a non-native speaker, said it was relatively easy for him to learn. He speaks English, but said the key to learning was immersion, not only in classes but also just by living in Turkey. Gökçe, a native Turkish speaker, said that Turkish was more logical than English and Italian, other languages she learned. She explained that English speakers may think Turkish is difficult, but as long as they master the word order (SOV), suffixes and vowel harmony, everything else was easy. It took her longer to learn English due to the differences in grammar.
Everyone said Azeri was extremely similar, unequivocally. Some mentioned it sounded funny or a little different, but both İlker and Ryan said that the differences in vocabulary can lead to some surprising results.
So … this is a lot to take in. I do like Turkish much, much more than Azeri. My biggest worry is learning the suffixes for the verbs. I think I am able to understand vowel harmony pretty well, though and can pronounce the words without much difficulty. On a side note, going through Turkish made me reconsider the feelings I had about Finnish and Czech, both languages I originally said I wasn’t fond of due to vowel harmony and noun cases, respectively.
I think this language may make it to Part Two. We shall see.
Oh, and of course, more Turkish music. This was Gökçe’s suggestion!
Hooray for Türkçe! Turkish is next on the list making it language number 30 in the project. Here’s where we are so far:
1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish
28. French
29. Thai 30. Turkish
31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan
Turkish is spoken by 70 million people in Turkey, Cyprus, large communities throughout the Balkans and notably Germany. It belongs the to Turkic Language family, with Azeri, which was featured way back in February.
REGIONAL HISTORY: The first Turkic empire started with the arrival of the Seljuks, who came from east in the 1000s. The Seljuks overtook the ruling Byzantine powers, while bringing with them Persian literature, art and architecture. They also brought with them their language, Oghuz Turkic, which is the direct ancestor of modern Turkish. In 1243, the Mongols defeated the Turks and the region was divided into various Turkish and Mongol states. However, around 1300, a rising state ruled by Osman I would eventually lead to the Ottoman Empire, one of the world’s most powerful and longest legacies to exist.
With the help of general Mehmet II, the Ottoman Turks took control of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), crushing the Byzantine Empire once and for all. The empire was well-trained for battle, as it expanded across Southern Europe and Northern Africa. The empire saw a golden age with the rule of Süleyman in the mid-1500s.
After losing the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the Ottoman Empire began to crumble. Western Europe rose to power through exploration and colonization, along with Central Europe’s Hapsburgs. The Empire also had to play catch up in terms of science and technology (Istanbul Technical University would be established during this period). Around the end of the empire, various states such as Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria – all countries that have been mentioned in this blog – would declare independence after centuries of rule, some of which was brutal. The Ottoman Empire lost in WWI, with a humanitarian crisis most notably referred to as the Armenian Genocide (this continues to be debated to this day).
Then came Mustafa Kemal. Known as Atatürk to all those who live in Turkey today, the general became the first president of the Republic of Turkey, formed in 1923, which officially ended the Ottoman Empire. Kemal ushered in a wave of reforms in attempts to modernize Turkey, and they worked. Some of these included changes to the Turkish language, like the creation of the Turkish Language Association, which fostered a new Roman-based alphabet and substitution of Arabic and Persian-based vocabulary for Turkish ones. Atatürk’s influence lives on in modern-day Turkey, as the nation has risen to become one of Europe’s powers.
WRITING SYSTEM: As mentioned before, Turkish has used a Roman alphabet since the 1930s. There are a few differences in a few consonants and vowels from the English alphabet. Q, W and X are used in loan words but are not officially part of the alphabet. I give credit to Turkey Travel Planner for an excellent pronunciation guide.
A a – a as in father
B b
C c – j as in jam
Ç ç – ch as in church
D d
E e – e as in bet
F f
G g – g as in go
Ğ ğ – not really a sound, it just lengthens vowels
H h
I ı – uh as in huh
İ i – i as in it
J j
K k
L l
M m
N n
O o – o as in phone
Ö ö – o as in world
P p
R r
S s
Ş ş – sh as in shut
T t
U u – u as in lute
Ü ü – like the French u as in bleu
V v
Y y
Z z
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: I like Turkish and have a lot of fun trying to pronounce it! I think I like it better than Azeri but I don’t know why, considering they are very similar. One of the things that makes Azeri and Turkish the same is the feature of vowel harmony, where vowels in a word have to be of the same type. Phonetically, this could make Turkish easier to pronounce (also, every letter is pronounced and there are no digraphs, e.g., the English t + h = “th”). So why didn’t I like vowel harmony when I looked at Finnish? Hmm. Listening to Turkish at first, its rhythm sounds similar to English’s, which is a plus.
One concern I do have is that Turkish is quite agglutinative. One word can be the equivalent to a simple sentence in English. But I will give Turkish the benefit of the doubt, as it uses its postpositions and suffixes to alter the meaning of words.
One thing I also love about Turkish is the music! Seriously, it’s amazing! Turkish pop and rock music blows me away, so much of it is better than the usual stuff I hear from America. I love, love, LOVE this song by MaNga, who won big at this year’s MTV European Music Awards:
This language wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I assumed it would be a carbon copy of Khmer, but it had a few surprises. Not enough of them though …
SUMMARY: Thai appeared over 700 years ago in the Buddhist Sukhotai kingdom, which is what Thailand was known as at the time. The language is highly influenced by the Indic languages Sanskrit and Pali. Thailand was never colonized at any point during its history, although it does get some of its vocabulary from Old Khmer. It is a tonal language, belonging to the Kradai language family, with Lao. Its alphabet has 44 consonants, 32 vowels (which are added below, above, to the left of right of consonants) and five tones, marked by diacritics.
FINAL IMPRESSION: I still don’t like the alphabet. I knew that would be a given, but I didn’t expect it to be even more complicated than Khmer’s. What seems to make it more difficult are the factors that determine the tone of a syllable (the class of the consonant, whether the vowel is short or long, and the tone itself). It seems like this would be a lot to remember when simply writing a word. Another issue I had was that Thai words aren’t separated by spaces. Transcribing Thai isn’t standardized, either.
For all of the complexities of the alphabet, everything else seemed to be a breeze. For example, Thai grammar is quite simple for English speakers. It doesn’t have any definite articles, verbs don’t conjugate and past/future tense is determined by the context of words or verbs dâi (will) or ja (already) placed before the main verb. Here’s an example from Into-Asia:
chán ja bpai rohng-rian – I will go to school (actually, I will go school).
Another thing about Thai are the particles khrap and kaa, used for politeness. Khrap is used at the end of sentences when speaking to men, kaa for women. They can both mean yes in some cases.
Listening to Thai was interesting as well. It’s monosyllabic, but I was able to make out words quite well; the tones actually helped with this. I compared Thai videos to Khmer ones and, even though it’s not in the same language family, Thai sounds way more relaxed than Khmer.
Still, I’m going to pass on Thai. But there are definitely no hard feelings.
Anyway, random! And funny! Here’s a group of Thai commercials for a peppermint headache gel. Even if you can’t understand them, I think you’ll still get a kick out of them:
Hey everybody! It’s … Thai Time! Thai makes number 29, as listed below:
1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish
28. French 29. Thai
30. Turkish
31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan
While going through the facts about this language, I was really surprised to learn that there are over 70 million speakers of Thai — that’s a rather impressive number! Thai is spoken in Thailand (formerly called Siam) and surrounding areas in South Asia. It is a member of the Kradai language family, which also includes Lao (with which it is mutually intelligible). Thai is also a tonal language.
REGIONAL HISTORY: The Sukhotai kingdom, which was established in 1238, is the mother of modern-day Thailand. This period was known as the golden era in Thai history, as the kingdom was free from neighboring Khmer (mother of modern-day Cambodia) and Mon kingdoms. The Thai alphabet was also created at this time by King Ramkhamhaeng in 1283.
The Ayutthaya kingdom grew in influence over the 14th century and took over the Sukhotai kingdom, bringing with it a more absolute rule and Khmer customs. This kingdom lasted until the 18th century, until a brief period of capture by the Burmese.
King Taksin the Great was able to get rid of Burmese forces after the fall of Ayutthaya, but he spent time trying to piece together the kingdom during his short reign. Later, General Chakri, who became King Rama I, moved the capital to Bangkok in 1782. Future rulers in this period helped to repair Thailand, while trading with Western countries. King Mongkut, Rama IV (also known as the monarch from the story “The King and I”) made a lot of major reforms and helped modernize Thailand.
Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, freeing it from absolute monarchy rule since its founding. Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia that has never been colonized.
Thai technically uses an abugida, where vowels are used, but don’t have the same status as consonants. Thai’s alphabet comes from Cambodian/Khmer’s alphabet, which you probably saw in the Cambodian post.
The alphabet itself is rather complex for English speakers to learn. It is read left to right, but there are no spaces between words. It contains 44 consonants (that have 21 sounds) and 32 vowels (18 single vowels, 6 compound vowels and 8 vowels like look like consonants). Also, consonants have an inherent “a” and “o” sound.
As Thai is a tonal language, each consonant falls into a “class” which determines the tone of the consonant. Most consonants have a different sound depending on whether they begin or end a syllable. (This doesn’t seem to be a big deal, as the difference appears to be voicing or aspiration for most.)
I divided the consonants by class and then put the starting and ending sound. I used the chart listed on Wikipedia for this post:
Low:
ค – k, with breath / k
ฅ – k, with breath / k [OBSOLETE]
ฆ – k / k
ง – ng as in sing / ng as in sing
ช – a rough ch sound / no sound
ซ – a rouch ch sound / t
ฌ – s / t
ญ – j / n
ฑ – t, with breath / t
ฒ – t, with breath / t
ณ – n / n
ท – t, with breath / t
ธ – t, with breath / t
น – n / n
พ – a ph sound like phone / p
ฟ – f / p
ภ – a ph sound like phone / p
ม – m / m
ย – j / j
ร – r / n
ล – l / n
ว – w / w
ฬ – l / n
ฮ – h / no sound
Mid:
ก – k / k
จ – a rough j sound / t
ฎ – d / t
ฏ – t / t
ด – d / t
ต – t / t
บ – b / p
ป – p / p
อ – a glottal throaty sound
High:
ข – k with a breath / k
ฃ – k with a breath / k [OBSOLETE]
ฉ – a rough ch sound / no sound
ฐ – t with a breath / t
ถ – t with a breath / t
ผ – a ph sound like phone / no sound
ฝ – f / no sound
ศ – s / t
ษ – s / t
ส – s / t
ห – h / no sound
Vowels are added at the top, bottom, left or right of consonants. They can be short or long.
I divided them into single, compound and consonant-like groups. Most of them have a dash (-) as a placeholder consonant because they can’t stand alone. Again, I turned to Wikipedia for help:
Single vowels:
ะ – u as in nut (short)
า – a as in father (long)
–ิ – ee as in greedy (short)
–ี – ee as in see (long)
–ึ – u in French “du” (short)
–ื – u in French “dur” (long)
–ุ – oo as in look (short)
–ู – oo as in too (long)
เ–ะ – e as in neck (short)
เ– – a as in lame (long)
แ–ะ – a as in at (short)
แ– a as in ham (long)
โ–ะ – o as in poke (short)
โ– – o as in go (long)
เ–าะ – o as in not (short)
อ – aw as in saw (long)
เ–อะ – e as in the (short)
เ–อ – u as in burn (long)
Compound vowels:
เ–ียะ – ea as in ear with glottal stop (throaty sound) (short)
เ–ีย – eas as in ear (long)
เ–ือะ – u as in pure (short)
เ–ือ – u as in pure (long)
–ัวะ – ewe as in sewer (short)
–ัว – ewe as in newer (long)
Consonant-like vowels:
ฤ – ri as in Krishna (short)
ฤๅ – ri as in “Krishna” except longer (long)
–ำ -u as in sum (short)
ใ– – i as in hi (short)
ไ– – i as in hi (short)
เ–า – o as in cow (short)
Finally, tones are used via diacritics. There are five tones: middle, low, falling, high and rising.
A tone is indicated in script by:
1) the class of the first consonant (low, mid, high).
2) the vowel length (short or long).
3) the last consonant.
4) diacritics.
The diacritics are (with the placeholder dash functioning as a consonant) –่, –้, –๊ and –๋. Rules on how to use them can be found at Wikipedia’s page on the Thai Alphabet.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: This alphabet is HARD. I think it’s even harder than Khmer (which I claimed to have the hardest alphabet ever ) because of its tones. The fact that Thai is a tonal language put me off a little, but ever since I became confident with Chinese tones, I dismissed it. Like Khmer, I expect that the alphabet in this case is the make or break factor.
Due to my busy schedule this week, I haven’t had a lot of time to review French. But it wouldn’t have mattered anyway, considering that I had reached a conclusion only an hour after listening to it again:
I should have skipped this language.
Maybe it was a mistake on my part to assume that I’d find some renewed fascination from French. Maybe there was something I missed from looking at it when I was younger. But whatever the case, my brain turned off.
Here’s where we are in the project:
1. Romanian
2. Macedonian
3. Spanish
4. Vietnamese
5. Norwegian
6. Bulgarian
7. Slovenian
8. Malagasy
9. Japanese
10. Moldavian
11. Hindi
12. Finnish
13. Azeri
14. Arabic
15. Czech
16. Albanian
17. Cambodian
18. Serbian
19. Chinese
20. Xhosa
21. Portuguese
22. Armenian
23. Korean
24. Croatian
25. Afrikaans
26. Greek
27. Swedish 28. French
29. Thai
30. Turkish
31. Dutch
32. Hebrew
33. Danish
34. Filipino
35. Polish
36. Lao
37. Catalan
SUMMARY: French appeared in the Northern region of France as an “oil language” in the Middle Ages, part of a group of other Romance-based languages also spoken in the area. France at the time was invaded by a number of different tribes around Europe (Franks, Vikings, Celts, Normans, Arabs) who brought lots of new vocabulary. After standardization in the language, the development of Académie français and promulgation by royalty, French became the language of the arts and literature. Following the exploratory periods in the 1600s-1800s, French spread everywhere, extending to Africa, Asia and the Americas.
FINAL IMPRESSIONS: French is just like most of the other Romance languages in Europe. It has grammatical gender (masculine/feminine forms for nouns and adjectives) and its definite articles are Latin based (le, la, les). It is a Subject-Verb-Object language, except when object pronouns are used, in which case they are placed before the verb.
Regular French verbs have three main forms (-er, -ir, and -re) and are conjugated like this:
-er / marcher (to walk)
marche – I walk
marches – you walk
marche – he/she/it walks
marchons – we walk
marchez – you (all) walk
marchent – they walk
-re / répondre (to respond)
réponds – I respond
réponds – you respond
répond – he/she/it responds
répondons – we respond
répondez – you (all) respond
répondent – they respond
-ir / finir (to finish)
finis – I finish
finis – you finish
finit – he/she/it finishes
finissons – we finish
finissez – you (all) finish
finissent – they finish
Verbs are normally negated by adding a “ne” before and “pas” after the verb. For example, Je ne parle pas means “I do not speak.” When the word after “ne” begins with a vowel, it becomes “n” and an apostrophe and that vowel (e.g., Il n’est pas voici, not Il ne est pas voici, which means “He is not here.”).
As far as dialectical differences, French from Belgium and Switzerland has relatively few differences, apart from different vocabulary words (in Metropolitan French, the word for 70 is soixante-dix, while in Belgian and Swiss French it’s septante). African French, more specifically, French from Senegal, Cote D’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other areas are more influenced by local languages, while the guttural “R” in standard French is replaced with a trilled one (like in Spanish).
The major differences appear to come from Quebecois and Metropolitan French. French spoken in Quebec has a lot of older words because it originated from Classical French spoken in the 17th and 18th centuries (a classic example is the word stop on stop signs, which is Arrêt in Quebec, while it’s just Stop in France). French in Quebec also has a lot of English-based vocabulary. While Quebecers and European French can understand each other, they are less likely to understand informal speech.
So in spite of all of this, why should I have skipped French? Well, it’s really simple, although probably traumatic for some to hear:
I just don’t like the way it sounds.
After listening to it for several hours, I got sick of it. I don’t like how so many sounds are pronounced at the front of the mouth. Other issues for me were how I couldn’t detect consonant sounds and the nasally ones in general, which seem difficult to pick up, despite me being able to replicate them. It seems like whenever I listened to French, a word would just blend right into the other. Parisian French sounded a lot sharper than Quebecois and African French, but this didn’t help.
So, I’m going to pass on this one. It pains me quite a bit because I absolutely love French culture, cinema, cuisine … Paris is even one of my favorite destinations. Perhaps I will change my mind about it. But for now, I have to bid it adieu.
But not without an entertaining video of course. The clip is from a Korean show and has women discussing differences between French dialects. Interessant. What a shame I can’t understand!
About a year and a half ago, I was walking the streets of Paris, lost. It was my first time to France and I was in Arrondissment 16, the same district where the Musee du Vin was located. I was freaking out, because I was to meet my friend at an apartment we were staying in; I had forgot to wrote down his phone number when I left the States.
I asked many different people for directions to find Rue Charles de Gaulle, from random ladies eating at a cafe to a cyclist, who tired for about 20 minutes and gave up. But every time I attempted to speak French, I could only mutter a “Je suis” or a droite. While I asked two servicemen who were finally able to help me, I apparently had butchered the language so badly that a passerby literally stopped and stared at me. How had my French, a language I studied when I was younger, gotten so terrible?
As you can see, French has a special place in my heart. Why did I decide to learn it and then ditch it when it counted? I don’t know. But for some reason, I’m deciding to give it another shot.
French is used pretty much everywhere by about 265 million speakers, making it the one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Beyond its birthplace, it is used a great deal in many parts of Africa and southern Asia, Belgium, Luxembourg, in the Caribbean and Canada.
REGIONAL HISTORY: French is a descendant of Vulgar Latin, a language that was spoken in the Roman Empire, which is also the mother of most Romance languages. Starting in the 200s AD, Gaul (what France was called at the time) was invaded by a bunch of different Germanic tribes, most notably the Franks. It is from their language from which français (French for French) derives; the arrival of the Franks also had a big effect on Latin. A group of Romance languages spoken in the northern region, known as “oil languages” are referred to as Old French.
French first appeared in the Strasbourg Oaths in 842 AD. During the middle ages, French was being bombarded with new words from Viking, Celtic, Norman and even Arab invaders, adding lots of new words. French became the official language in the country in 1539 by King Francis I, and soon it was to become the preferred language of the arts, literature and aristocracy. One important thing that happened a century later was the establishment of the Académie français, an institution created for the sake of preserving the French language. The academy is still operating to this date.
France was one of the most powerful countries in Europe for several centuries, causing the language to spread to other parts of Europe (and by this time being used by everyone, not just the rich) and, through exploration, to settlements and colonies in the Americas, Africa and Asia. The lingering influence of French in these regions led to the creation of the Francophonie, or a community of French-speaking nations that currently includes 56 members.
WRITING SYSTEM: French uses a Latin alphabet that is exactly the same as English’s. The main difference is that French has four diacritics or marks that goes over vowels and a consonant: the grave accent (`), acute accent (`), circumflex (^) and cedilla (¸). The first three mainly change the sound of e and a, while the cedilla is only used under the c to make it soft (like in français). With exception of the h, which is silent, the consonants sound mostly the same as in English. Here’s what I found from Smartphrases concerning the vowels:
a – ea as in heart
â – a as in above
e – an “uh” sound
é – a as in day
è, ê – a as in above
i – e as in me
o – o as in more
u – u as in cue
French sometimes uses the letters œ (oe, similar to “eu” in French) and æ (ae, similar to a in cat), but these are not part of the alphabet.
One important thing to note is that the last consonant in French words is never pronounced, except if the last letter is C, F, L or R or the first letter in a following word is a vowel or h. For example grand (big) would just sound like “grawhn” while grand homme (big man) would sound like “grawhn DOME.”
This also happens for nouns that begin with a vowel or h when used with their articles le, la, les (the), except that the first vowel is eliminated and replaced with an apostrophe. For example, le homme becomes l’homme (the first e is removed).
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: This is really a review, as noted in the first post, but I’m not sure what to think. One issue (that may have led to my ennui and eventual departure) came from French’s pronunciation and lexical similarity with English (about 30 percent), which really throws me off. Sometimes when I speak it, I always feel the need to hesitate before proceeding, as I worry that I have mispronounced something.
When I was in Paris, the French I heard had lots of throaty “ooh”, “euhhh” and r sounds. I am able to mimic this, but it takes effort to do it effortlessly. I also am curious about regional varieties of French this time around, not just the ones spoken in France.
I will leave you with France’s most famous singer, Edith Piaf, with the classic “Non, je ne regrette rien.”
Before I even start this post, I just want to say wow! Swedish was a blast. And, according to the views from the last post, a lot of people agreed with me. I’m almost pained to leave, but not before I leave you with my deductions, which may surprise you.
SUMMARY: Swedish is spoken by about 10 million people, mostly in Sweden, some parts of Finland, and to a lesser extent, Denmark and Norway. The language evolved from Old Norse (like its relatives Norwegian and Danish) got the Latin alphabet when Christianity came in the 1000s and later became more modernized with the advent of a Swedish Bible from national hero Gustav Vasa in the 16th century. Swedish transformed into its contemporary state due to social reforms (like the creation of a public schooling system) and industrial revolution in the 1800s, making the language much less formal. Authors like Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, can also be credited with the language’s transition.
FINAL IMPRESSIONS: If you can read my mind, I can’t help but think this ultimately comes down to a Norwegian vs. Swedish showdown. Which language will win?
Some general facts about Swedish:
-It has a general spoken form called Standard Swedish or rikssvenska, spoken by most Swedes.
-It has a lot of false cognates with English (for example, barn=child and dog=died).
-The grammar is pretty similar to English. It’s SVO (Subject, Verb, Object) and doesn’t use cases all that much. Unlike English, it has two genders for words, common and neuter, which are signified by the articles en and ett. Nouns and adjectives also decline for definite forms (basically adding “the” to the noun), which is sort of complicated. Definite articles are usually added as a suffix. This can get complicated for English speakers; definiteness can be specified up to three times for a phrase.
Ok, now the hard part — Norsk vs. Svenska. Based on reading and listening to both languages, it was impossible for me not to compare Norwegian and Swedish.
Writing:
I prefer Norwegian, if only for a simple reason. The umlauts in Swedish throw me off (and remind me way too much of German – sorry!). I’m not able to tell any major differences in the vocabulary other than some words spelled differently (e.g., også in Norwegian and ocksa in Swedish, which both mean “also”).
Pronunciation:
Swedish wins this one, but by a tiny margin. While they both sounds the same, Swedish seems just a teeny bit clearer to me. I don’t know if it has to do with its intonation (which is not noted in written Swedish, by the way). Norwegian has tons of dialects but not a standard one, like Swedish, which could make learning it harder.
Grammar:
Draw! Both Norwegian and Swedish have systems that seem to mirror English’s and are easy to learn (verbs don’t conjugate, only the pronoun changes). Both are SVO and don’t use cases very much, if at all. One difference is that Norwegian has three genders for nouns and adjectives (at least in the written form Bokmål) while Swedish only has two, but this makes no difference to me; English doesn’t have grammatical gender, so I figure I would have to get used to using them either way.
However, both languages seem to put the verb before the noun in questions (switching to VSO order from SVO order). Both also appear to use a V2 form (putting the verb as the second part of a sentence, even if it comes before the subject) with adverbs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen V2 used in English.
I had several friends – two native Swedish speakers, a Norwegian and an American who speaks Swedish – who I owe a great deal of gratitude to for this post. My friend Daniel, who is from Sweden, said he’s able to understand Norwegian perfectly. My Norwegian friend Sissel also said the same thing. Both of them said that there were some vocabulary differences, but the mutual intelligibility was very, very high.
Ethan, my American friend who studied abroad in Sweden, said he was also familiar with Norwegian and that it has the most intelligibility with Swedish and Danish. My other Swedish friend, Katerina, agreed. Like Ethan, she said some of the sounds were difficult to learn, but Swedish was relatively easy for people who already speak Germanic languages, especially grammar-wise. Both Ethan and Sissel suggested that Swedish would be easier to learn; Ethan, because more people speak it and it has more authority, and Sissel, because of the complications of Norwegian dialects.
Katerina, however, thought Norwegian would be easier because of it being the “golden” middle of all the continental Scandinavian languages. And, as you’ll witness in a couple of paragraphs, she’s not the only one who thinks so.
(One thing that was resoundingly clear from everyone was that Danish was the hardest to learn out of all of the Scandinavian languages due to its pronunciation. Danish is coming shortly, so we’ll see if I think the same.)
With all things considered, I … still think I would pick Norwegian to learn over Swedish. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Swedish a lot, but I think this is what convinced me:
The mutual intelligibility between the Continental Scandinavian languages is asymmetrical. Various studies have shown Norwegian-speakers to be the best in Scandinavia at understanding other languages within the language group.
This was referenced in my first post about Norwegian. If I was to learn any Scandinavian language, I think I would want to learn the one that has the best ability to be understood. (The chart also mentioned that Icelandic speakers have the best comprehension out of them all, but I’m not interested in Icelandic, unfortunately). Some have even said Norwegian is written like Danish and spoken like Swedish. Now that I’ve mentioned Danish in this post, I wonder what other keys it has to the Scandinavian language continuum. Hmm …
Even if I don’t pick Swedish to learn in the long run, I will always, always love Swedish music. Here’s a treat — pop star named Darin covers a Swedish hit, Det Gör Ont.
Note: After going through the blog, I’ve adjusted Norwegian’s evaluation. Its previous score for resonance was 4, but due to my strong feelings about it, I’ve changed it to 5.
If you can tell, I’m a little bit excited. I’ve been dying to do Swedish for the blog because, well, I’ve been (really) obsessed with Sweden for some time now. Just ask yourself; how can anyone not love a country that’s given us the wonders of IKEA, H&M and ABBA? Certainly not me.
In spite of my early fascination, it’s only fair that I treat Swedish just like all the other languages I’ve done for the blog. Will it ultimately be the language for me? We’ll find out, for better or worse, as there are only 10 languages left until Part Two of the blog! Wow, the end is really in sight!
Swedish is spoken by 10 million people in Sweden, Finland and various parts of North America and northern Europe.
REGIONAL HISTORY: One word … Vikings! From the 700s-1000s, these explorers, also known as the Rus, raided Europe, going as far as modern-day Baghdad and Istanbul. Like Norwegians, some of them even set sail to lands in modern-day America. Most of the people were pagan at the time, until Christianity swept the country in the 1000s, bringing with it a Latin alphabet for Swedish.
Sweden was later ruled by various kings (though power struggles were bitter) and united with the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway to form the Kalmar Union. At the time, the region also suffered a lot of losses from the bubonic plague, which was sweeping through Europe. Sweden only stayed in the union for about 200 years after conflicts with Denmark, declaring independence and naming Gustav Vasa their king on June 6, 1523, also known as Swedish Independence Day. To his credit, he was also responsible for the first Swedish bible, a big step in the Swedish language.
In the following centuries, Sweden would rise to become a great power, gaining most of the Holy Roman Empire and parts of the Baltic. Russia, meanwhile, fought for dominance and would later win, taking Finland with them. However, Sweden bonded with its adversary and Britain around the Napoleon area to attack Denmark. The Danes surrendered Norway, leading to another union of Sweden-Norway that lasted for about 100 years.
Sweden didn’t get industrialized until later in the 1800s (way after some parts of Europe) and suffered from famine. These changes led to a rise of union-based political parties and reforms. Along with the works of authors in Sweden at the time, this period contributed to major changes in the Swedish language, making it more contemporary and less formalized. While staying neutral in WWI and (somewhat) neutral in WWII, Sweden’s economy skyrocketed. Dips occurred later unfortunately, but Sweden joined the European Union in the 1990s and has since retained its influence in the global market.
WRITING SYSTEM: The Latin alphabet is used. Same as English, except with the letters å, ä and ö. However, some of the letters sound quite different. Most notably, the vowels can be short or long. The Stockholm School of Economics provides a helpful guide for all the letters, but I only put the vowels and the ones that are notably different from English:
a – a as in bar
e – Long: e as in French cafe / Short: e as in net
i – Long: ee as in keep / Short: i as in bit
o – Long: oo as in tool / Short: o as in not
u – Long: u as in rude / Short: an “uh” sound as in good
å: Long: o as in fore / Short: o as in yonder
ä: Long: ai as in fair / Short: e as in best
ö: Long: eu as in French peu / Short: e as in her
j – like y in yes
r – trilled (rolled as in Spanish)
x – x as in exceed
y – similar to a French u
z – s as in sing
Also, Swedish distinguishes between hard vowels (a, o, u, å) and soft vowels (e, i, y, ä, ö), which makes consonants hard or soft. So …
c (before a, o, u, å) – hard c as in cake
c (before e, i, y, ä, ö) – c as in city
g (before a, o, u, å) – g as in go
g (before e, i, y, ä, ö) – y as in yes
k (before a, o, u, å) – k as in keep
k (before e, i, y, ä, ö) – ch as in check, but softer
FIRST IMPRESSIONS: I can’t help but compare Swedish to its sister Norwegian, the only other Scandinavian language I’ve done on the blog, which was an early favorite. Swedish sounds more sing-songy than Norwegian, due to its pitch accents. One thing I guess I noticed right off the bat is that Swedish is not phonetic, although it seems to be similar to English in this regard (particularly with the hard vowels). Swedish has more vowels, particularly two with Umlauts, which seem German … I dislike. The long/short vowels would probably be hard to detect because the language doesn’t really use diacritics or accent marks for distinction.
Grammar seems similar to English: no cases and subject-verb-object order for sentences. Pretty straightforward.
What worries me is most Swedes already speak English rather well — would learning Swedish even be worth the effort?
Anyway, this isn’t in Swedish, but it’s one of my favorite Swedish bands …
Time to say so long to Greek! It definitely had its delights. For you music lovers:
SUMMARY: Greek’s been around since the classical era. The alphabet, which first appeared around the 900 or 800s BC, was the first one to have vowels. The region where Greek was spoken went from Roman to Byzantine to Ottoman rule, until the Greeks declared independence in 1821, followed by a nine-year war. In the later 1900s, Greece went from being a dictatorship to a parliamentary democracy and joined the European Union. Greek is spoken by 15 million around the world.
FINAL IMPRESSIONS: I like Greek, but … hmm. How do I explain this?
I like the way Greek sounds (it has a strong “r” sound by the way), how stress varies among words and how its rhythm seems to match English’s. I especially love hearing it when sung and am able to pick out words that end in “-os” (this language seems to have a lot of “o” sounds in general). I really admire how it can’t be compared to any other language in this regard (even as people mention its related to Armenian, which I still don’t get). I also like how easy the alphabet is to learn.
Greek grammar is quite complex, however. Lang Intro really spelled out how Greek grammar works (even to the point of explaining how things work in English, like cases). I highly recommend that you check out that site if you’re beginning Greek. Anyway, here’s some basics about grammar:
–> Nouns have masculine, feminine or neutral gender. They also change according to case, which is how the noun works in the sentence (in general, if a noun is a subject, a possession or an object) and number (if the noun is singular or plural). All of this is determined by word endings. Adjectives work the same way and must agree with the noun.
Most nouns, when singular and in the nominative (subject) case end in the following:
masc: -ης, -ας; fem: -α, -η; neu: -o, -ι, -μα
–> Nouns usually use a definite/indefinite article (“the” and “a/an”), which must agree with the nouns. Here are the definite articles that match the noun endings above, as an example:
the: masc: o; fem: η; neu: τo
a/an: masc: ενας; fem: μια; neu: ενα (these words also just mean “one”)
–> Adjectives also must agree with the noun in gender, number and case and have varying word endings. There are so many endings, so I will just link to this helpful chart from Lang Intro (starting with masculine adjectives).
–> Regular Greek verbs are conjugated like this:
First person singular (I): -ω Second person singular (you): -εις Third person singular (he/she/it): -ει First person plural (We): -oυμε Second person plural (You): -ετε Third person plural (They): -ouv
Basically it seems like Greek relies more heavily on declensions, even though it is a SVO language.
I think I will pass on Greek. I like it in theory, but whether or not I should continue with it is questionable. The grammar would probably be the hardest part to learn, but beyond that my overall impression is just a “hmm.” I like it, but from afar, I guess.
First person singular: -ω
Second person singular: -εις
Third person singular:-ει
First person plural: -oυμε
Second person plural: -ετε
Third person plural: -ouv
