Member Countries and Known Languages

[gach]

Ostrobothnian

What?

Care to elaborate?

I think being a linguist is very hard if you only know one language.

Only really if you work in the field. Comparative linguistics also benefits from a passive knowledge of your core target languages, but for example for lexical comparisons you just need to know the relevant lexical data. And many theoretical linguists will be perfectly happy in knowing English and being able to read their literature in English.

On the other hand, linguists are known to sometimes mix knowing about a language for actually knowing that language.

[sirdanilot]

I just have never heard of Ostrobothnia(n) before. Google learns that this is just the region österbotten or pohjanmaa in Finland, and thus apparently a dialect of that region. Then why not just use the native term? Nobody knows what 'ostrobothnia' is anyway so you might as well use the native term.

Same goes for people who use things like 'Gothenburg'. Now I happen to know a tiny bit about sweden so I know what it is, but many people don't and you can just say 'göteborg' it's perfectly fine. Because most people don't know where it is anyway.

[Plaas]

I am born and raised in the Netherlands, Dutch is my mother tongue. My father's family is from Texel, and my family taught me the dialect of that island. However, in normal life I speak Dutch with a rather neutral accent, I can switch to dialect when needed.

I live in Alkmaar (or Oudorp, a former village that is now part of the city), not far from Amsterdam. I work as a copywriter and SEO specialist, I write texts in both Dutch and German, the language I studied at the university. Other languages I am able to have a conversation in are French, Czech and Italian. Of course, I speak English, but I am not particularly proud of my English.
I can order a glass of beer in every language I ever needed for that purpose - when I plan a trip to another country, I always learn the basics of the local language. Right now, I am planning a trip to Georgia and Armenia, which in effect means that my girlfriend is already bored by me trying to pronounce ejectives.

Same goes for people who use things like 'Gothenburg'. Now I happen to know a tiny bit about sweden so I know what it is, but many people don't and you can just say 'göteborg' it's perfectly fine. Because most people don't know where it is anyway.

But if you pronounce Göteborg correctly, most people will not link that to the spelling they know from maps.

[Dewrad]

I'm 31 and live in Dorset, which is technically in the South West (oo arr, wurzels, gerr orf moy land etc.) of England: however, I don't live in the sticks but rather a large coastal conurbation where the local accent is fairly close to Standard Southern British English, with only minor influences from the rural hinterland. I've lived here for like twenty-odd years now, and broadly speaking I speak like the natives do. However, I grew up in the Midlands and retain a number of dialect features, most saliently I lack the TRAP-BATH split. This leaves people puzzled as to where I'm actually from, as does my spiteful use of dialect-specific terminology (a batch is bread roll, for example).

To further the confusion, my native languages are actually Welsh and English. My family has lived in English-speaking communities since I was about five, however, leaving my Welsh in a severe state of attrition and lacking any formal education.

At school I learnt French, German, Latin and Italian. My German is conversational now, but rusty. I studied French and Italian at university, and according to a piece of paper issed to me by the University of Southampton, I speak the former at C2 level. I feel this has more to do with my blagging abilities than any actual mastery, however. I picked up (South American) Spanish at conversational level over my years working with Venezualans and Colombians in the hospitality industry, and sat a GCSE in it last year.

I am employed to teach French, Spanish, Latin and Italian to innocent children who have done nothing to deserve this, something which has not yet ceased to surprise me.

My specialism and interests lie in diachronic linguistics: I can confidently read texts in most Romance languages, and have more than a passing acquaintance with their varying grammars. I can navigate my way through some normalised Old Irish or Old Norse with a dictionary and a stiff drink, and can still read reasonably simple texts in Breton and Cornish. I've attempted to teach myself Romani and Afrikaans, the latter I've never really got beyond the swearwords, but my Romani's not bad. As it's highly unlikely I'll ever have to opportunity to speak it to another human being in real life, I'm thinking about acquiring resources on Welsh Romani and learning that to fluency just for shits and giggles.

[sirdanilot]

As it's highly unlikely I'll ever have to opportunity to speak it to another human being in real life,

Why not? If you go to many eastern european countries, you see Romani people everywhere. Of course it'll be socially very strange for a Romani if a foreigner just walks up to them and speaks to them, but it's not like it's impossible ey.

My father's family is from Texel, and my family taught me the dialect of that island. However, in normal life I speak Dutch with a rather neutral accent, I can switch to dialect when needed.

That's fun, I didn't know that island had its own dialect and/or that it has been preserved to this day. My guess would be that it's slowly but surely getting extinct as many rich people from other parts of the country move to the island in favour of the original inhabitants. But perhaps I am wrong.
I have never been to Texel, I'm sure it's a lovely place. But it's incredibly far from where I'm from and beach is something we have ourselves too in Zeeland.

[KathTheDragon]

As it's highly unlikely I'll ever have to opportunity to speak it to another human being in real life,

Why not? If you go to many eastern european countries, you see Romani people everywhere. Of course it'll be socially very strange for a Romani if a foreigner just walks up to them and speaks to them, but it's not like it's impossible ey.

You seem to be assuming that he'll have the opportunity to go to these countries. I'd image Dewrad thought of this.

[Dewrad]

As it's highly unlikely I'll ever have to opportunity to speak it to another human being in real life,

Why not? If you go to many eastern european countries, you see Romani people everywhere. Of course it'll be socially very strange for a Romani if a foreigner just walks up to them and speaks to them, but it's not like it's impossible ey.

Alas, even my bloated teacher's salary precludes popping over to Bucarest in order to have a natter with complete strangers.

[Plaas]

My father's family is from Texel, and my family taught me the dialect of that island. However, in normal life I speak Dutch with a rather neutral accent, I can switch to dialect when needed.

That's fun, I didn't know that island had its own dialect and/or that it has been preserved to this day. My guess would be that it's slowly but surely getting extinct as many rich people from other parts of the country move to the island in favour of the original inhabitants. But perhaps I am wrong.

Unfortunately, you aren't. The dialect is moribund. People of my age normally never speak it, they only know it because their grandparents do. I was not raised on the island, but during the school vacations, I stayed with my grandmother and she always spoke Tessels with me - I sort of "lived" there a few months a year. People of my age that lived their whole life on the island, with their parents (the generation that was partly raised in dialect, but now not uses it anymore), of course never lived there in their grandmother's house, so they were less confronted with the dialect than I was. On the other hand, my cousins that lived in the house next to my grandmother's, had the same immersion and still speak the dialect quite well (but they never use it when speaking to classmates).

The dialect is interesting for its Frisian influences (possibly substratum) and its conservative vowels, it still has /i./ for Dutch <ij> and /y./ for <ui>. Not something you have to leave Zeeland for, I guess. The island's landscape is like Zeeland, yes, but the hilly landscape (boulder clay) and the tuunwalle give it an unexpected British touch.

[sirdanilot]

As it's highly unlikely I'll ever have to opportunity to speak it to another human being in real life,

Why not? If you go to many eastern european countries, you see Romani people everywhere. Of course it'll be socially very strange for a Romani if a foreigner just walks up to them and speaks to them, but it's not like it's impossible ey.

Alas, even my bloated teacher's salary precludes popping over to Bucarest in order to have a natter with complete strangers.

A flight to Bucarest is not that expensive nowadays. Of course chatting with romani won't be your main objective, but the traveling in the beautiful country that is Rumania (as I have heard from my friends, I haven't been there) might be.

I have only a meager student's allowance of which I have to pay most back after my study but still I have visited Hungary this year and I will also visit Portugal in summer. I try to pay for this a bit by doing some side-jobs here and there.

But of course what people spend their money to is up to them and of course staying in one place is much cheaper if you wish to save some money. But I myself just really love to travel and for me that's worth some money and I might spend less on other things than other people would.

[Dewrad]

Eeeh, you see, I'm not really all that fussed about travel. I mean, I'd love to travel around Europe (it's a bit of an ambition to visit every country west of the Urals one day), but I can't say it's a burning ambition I'm willing to sacrifice stuff for. I'd rather spend what little is left after bills and rent are paid on things with an immediate, tangible reward (because I'm shallow like that), such as food, wine and books. I have the vague intention of putting money by to save up for a holiday abroad, but it's just fairly low down on my list of priorities at the moment: I want to save for the deposit on a new flat, save up for driving lessons, replace the freezer, buy a tumble-dryer, replace the chest of drawers which is beyond my abilities to repair and so on. Mundane, boring, "shit when did I become middle aged and responsible?", priorities. Against that, a Ryanair flight to Eastern Europe and a couple of nights in a hostel aren't amazingly appealing.

That's not to say that if the opportunity to travel comes up I won't eagerly seize upon it with both hands: this year I'm going to rural Normandy for four days, and in summer I'll be in Italy for a week visiting Rome, Naples and Pompeii, and I won't be paying a penny. The down side is, of course, that I'll have to supervise/babysit thirty or so adolescent boys for the duration. In Italy I'll also be the only one of the party to actually speak Italian, which might make the entire affair somewhat stressful.

[Io]

That's surely the up-upside of it really not the downside

These days I travel as much as I can, it's pretty much the only thing I can still enjoy, somewhat (besides eating and drinking beer but I'm trying to control those two).

[HoskhMatriarch]

American, age 18. I spent some time in Brazil last year, so I speak nearly fluent Portuguese, with the occasional error. I'm learning Russian, Latin and Farsi and might add Norwegian or Finnish to that sooner or later. My accent is northwestern US, except for my /æ/, which is a monophthong as in Britain, not a diphthong as most Americans have it. This is quite odd, as I've never lived in either the northwestern US or Britain.

/æ/ is only a diphthong before nasals and in open syllables for most Americans, at least most ones I know...

Anyways, I'm from Oklahoma, I don't have a drawl accent but I probably still sound really Midwestern anyways since I say things like "come by" which I only recently learned is non-standard, I speak German almost fluently (I'm mostly just building my vocabulary now) by which I mean I can have a conversation and understand pretty much anything and I make German grammar mistakes about as often as I make English ones but if I have to respond to what people say my speech will be filled with many pauses (which is what "fluent" is about IMO, it's like "flowing"), I used to know Spanish since it was shoved down my throat since kindergarten, I still know a bit of Latin, I tried learning some Czech and Russian but I got bored with Russian and don't know what I'd do with Czech, and recently I've been trying to learn some Lithuanian (at least to a really basic level) because I'm 1/4 Lithuanian ancestry if the people in my family know what they're talking about (I seem to have really significant amounts of a few things, I'm not sure if that's weird because a lot of Americans I talk to are like "I'm mostly Dutch ancestry and that's about 1/16th..."). I also tried learning Icelandic since someone talked me into it and I might get back on that soon because Icelandic is pretty cool, although that has the same problem as Czech with that I don't know what I would do with it. I have people who want to teach me Russian and Dutch, and I don't think I would particularly mind either of those, because speaking other languages with people is just fun even when it's a language I don't particularly care about. I have a Chinese-American friend and we were talking about Mandarin and although I'm not particularly interested in Mandarin it was interesting talking about it with her and trying to correctly pronounce some words like cha.

[Gulliver]

I'm English, grew up in the Southeast, now living in the Southwest, near Bath. My accent oscillates betwixt "posh" (southeast middle class educated) and an unholy and abominable combination of both dialects and accents (I fuck up my th's and pronounce dark L's like W's but also get a bit rhotic when I'm drunk and ask people where they're to if I can't find them).

I speak French and German with comparative proficiency. Not fluent, but I above conversational with a bit of practice. I can speak BSL at a conversational level and have used it professionally. I'm a teacher of, mostly, adults with special educational needs. My Welsh is coming along tolerably but is very unpracticed and I have been challenged to learn to speak passable Italian before November.

[Dewrad]

That's surely the up-upside of it really not the downside

I promise you, being surrounded by thirty or so adolescent boys trained to do whatever I tell them is nowhere as enjoyable as it sounds.

[Io]

Damn, you've really lost your edge

[schyrsivochter]

I’m 16 years old, from Germany. I speak standard German, with only a slight northern dialect, in my opinion. I’ve been learning English at school since I was … nine, I think, but most of my English I haven’t learned at school; earlier from books, and in the last two years (which improved my English significantly) from watching films in English and reading things on the Internet in English (fanfictions, for instance). About that time I started to pay attention to the differences of American and British English, and thus my English shifted from a German-coloured mix between American and British to a nice British pronunciation.

I also learned French at school for four years, but although I can pronounce it quite well, I lack a great deal of vocabulary and I’m unable to understand even simple sentences from native speakers. But I’d like to improve that. I also picked up Swedish from my parents, who learned it about ten years ago; we’ve been to Sweden almost every year ever since. We also sometimes watch Swedish films or generally say random things in Swedish (my mother has taken to pronouncing Hund [ˈhʊnt] ‘dog’ like Swedish hund [ˈhɵnˑd] (same meaning), which I find most annoying) and so I’m a lot better at understanding Swedish than French. Also I can understand written texts quite well, because most words are recognisable when you know German and English; and I can also speak it fluently, although I often can’t find a word I need.

Other languages I know something of:

• Latin – quite a bit of grammar (especially morphology, not so much syntax) and not quite enough vocabulary to understand texts. Pronunciation works just fine.
• Sindarin – good pronunciation (not fluent though), advanced knowledge of grammar, but not many words.
• Japanese – basic grammar, a handful of words. Don’t ask me to pronounce anything, though. In theory I know how, but in practice I’d probably screw up.
• Polish – pronunciation: yes; grammar and vocabulary: about nonexistent.

[hwhatting]

Tea and pickles!

[schyrsivochter]

Tea and pickles!

Why? (Why here?)

[jmcd]

Ich vermute, dass er noch nicht dein Vorstellungthema gesehen hat.

I presume he hasn't seen your introduction thread yet.

[hwhatting]

Ich vermute, dass er noch nicht deinen Vorstellungsthread gesehen hat.

I presume he hasn't seen your introduction thread yet.

Yep, I hadn't. And I see noone has offered him the traditional greeting there up to now, this board seems to have forgotten the good, old ways...

(And from what I can see, the word in use on German fora is der Thread).

[jmcd]

Bei dict.cc hatte ich beide Wörter gesehen. Ich wollte "Gurken und Tee!" sagen aber ich hatte vergessen.

On dict.cc I saw both words. I wanted to say "Gherkins and tea!" but then I forgot.

[hwhatting]

Bei dict.cc hatte ich beide Wörter gesehen. Ich wollte "Gurken und Tee!" sagen aber dann habe ich es vergessen.

On dict.cc I saw both words. I wanted to say "Gherkins and tea!" but then I forgot.

I would use Thema for "thread" only as long as "thread" is used meaning "topic", but if the emphasis is on the location of a discussion, as it was in your post, I'd use Thread. But I'm only rarely active in German online discussions, so maybe there are Germans out there who use these words differently.

[schyrsivochter]

Ja, ich weiß, dass Gewürzgurken und Tee hier Begrüßungsgeschenke sind, aber ich wollte fragen, warum hier und nicht anderswo. Aber trotzdem danke!

Yes, I know that pickles and tea are a welcome present here, but I wanted to ask why here and not somewhere else. But thank you anyway!

[Qxentio]

I’m 16 years old, from Germany. I speak standard German, with only a slight northern dialect, in my opinion.

/kɛːzə/or /keːzə/?

[schyrsivochter]

/kɛːzə/or /keːzə/?

/kɛːzɛ/ and /keːzɛ/, please. We’re talking about phonemes, and the reduction of unstressed /ɛ/ to [ə] is not present in all dialects (some Southern dialects don’t do it, for instance).

On the question: Both, I think. I want to pronounce long ä as /ɛː/, but I think it becomes /eː/ in ‘non-careful’ (how do you call it?) speech.