Languages!

Almagest wrote:

I've read that Argentinian Spanish tends very much to closed syllables and has a tendency to weaken the consonants ... while on the other hand Mexican Spanish rather tends to weaken the vowels. Which could be an influence from English. I don't know. Chilean Spanish is also rather peculiar.

Well, the main differences between Spanish from Argentina (Buenos Aires in particular) and Spanish from Spain would be:

1) In Spain, the sound used for s, c (when followed by a vowel) and z are different. We pronounce them all the same way (and it's also a different way than spanish people use). That of course makes it harder for us to remember the proper spelling of some words
2) We also pronounce differently the "ll". For instance, the word "lluvia" (rain), in Spain or other latin american countries, the double L is pronounced as an I, while we pronounce it as a "Sh".
3) Different way fo saying "you". In spain they use "Tu" for informal and we use "Vos"...the using of "vos" also changes the accent in the verb that follows. For example: "Tu cantas" (you sing), the accent would be in the first syllable. "Vos cantás", the accent goes in the second syllable and it is also marked with an accent above the vowel.
4) And of course, the entonation (is that even a word? xD), the "music" sort of speak, is more similar to italian.

Grammar and spelling should be the same in all countries. Theres a Royal Academy of ther Spanish Language in Spain, and they keep track of new words, regionalisms, grammar and spelling, so the language doesn't get too "deformed".

Tarja uses the spanish from Buenos Aires, since it's where she learned it, and also how her husband speaks.

Manxita wrote:

Almagest wrote:

I've read that Argentinian Spanish tends very much to closed syllables and has a tendency to weaken the consonants ... while on the other hand Mexican Spanish rather tends to weaken the vowels. Which could be an influence from English. I don't know. Chilean Spanish is also rather peculiar.

Oops. That should read open syllables (i. e. syllables that end in a vowel), giving a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel rhythm almost like in Japanese.

Manxita wrote:

Well, the main differences between Spanish from Argentina (Buenos Aires in particular) and Spanish from Spain would be:

I know, I know! My Spanish teacher was from Buenos Aires.

Manxitea wrote:

entonation (is that even a word? xD),

Almost. It's "intonation" in English.

Manxita wrote:

the "music" sort of speak,

In German we say "Sprachmelodie" - "language melody".

Hehehe, I spelled it as we do in Spanish xD

I didn't know that you had a Spanish teacher from Buenos Aires!

Anyway, I tried to explain a bit, just in case someone was interested in reading about it
It's very difficult to explain in writing, if anybody has doubts I could maybe record something for you all to listen xD
(but on the internet there might be some websites about this that can explain it better than me, hehehe)

Yeah, I realised that

Yesss, and I learned Finnish too at the same time. But unlike what you may think now, I had no idea about Nightwish, Tarja or Marcelo at the time I started with both! It was just by pure accident that my teacher happened to be from Buenos Aires. It's so funny!

I can't find any really good websites or YouTube videos right now ... only Wikipedia ...

My Spanish teachers were both from Spain...lol, but they were totally different, different like day and night...

By the way, Manxita, I'd love to hear you talk in Spanish. I do like the sound of language, especially this accent

Oh, and by the way, both my Spanish and Finnish teachers were awesome and the people in the classes were cool, too. I kind of miss all of them ...

I love learning new languages! The languages I like the most are English and Russian.
I should retake an English course asap as my english is getting worse and worse and I'm losing the bit of fluency I had!
I also like German (I learned the basic stuff on my own, I gotta say English helped me on this work) and some more Slavonic ones such as Polish, Ukrainian, etc.

Due to my studies , I hardly have any time to learn languages but as I always say if I were immortal, I'd be spending the rest of my eternity learning new tongues I love the idea of expressing the same feelings and thoughts in so many languages, different but at the end they all mean the same

---

What is this?? I'm an UFO on forums

The people in my Spanish course laughed the first time they heard someone speaking in Argentinian Spanish...

Yeah, it's quite different if you're not used to it xD

I already knew it from Soledad's songs, lol, but I don't think I ever laughed about it...about the way she sings...

Singing is different than speaking...the most distinctive thing about our accent is the intonation, as we were talking earlier with Almagest, and you can't really hear that when someone's singing...

Well, I still hear the different pronunciation when singing, at least with La Sole...especially the "sho" instead of "yo"...or in "calle" etc...and that is what the people from the course also noticed when listening to the Argentinian person speaking...the first thing they said was that the speaker said "cashe" instead of "calle"...

I still remember being confused at first when our teacher was talking about "kateshano" all the time and having no freaking idea what the hell he was talking about ... LOL

The cool thing was that he didn't expect us to pronounce "c/z" as "th", for example. Other teachers are usually more conservative, I believe.

haha still talking about the rioplatense accent?? never thought it would be that interesting

Tarja has a very nice rioplatense accent
Viggo Mortensen, too he sounds veeeery porteño hehe

Yes, that's true! I love listening to Viggo speak spanish...Viggo and Tarja should go to a San Lorenzo football match together, both being big fans and all...

In the LOL topic there was a discussion about "laughs", how different countries spell them differently in writing...in English it's usually "hahaha"...in Spanish we use "Jajaja"...I'm interested in reading how it's done in other languages...the Brazilian laugh is quite different!

Manxita wrote:

In the LOL topic there was a discussion about "laughs", how different countries spell them differently in writing...in English it's usually "hahaha"...in Spanish we use "Jajaja"...I'm interested in reading how it's done in other languages...the Brazilian laugh is quite different!

In Romanian is "hahaha" as well... But we hardly write it, a regular Romanian would insert the Y!M smiley ": ) )" instead, or "LOL".

When I read 'Jajaja' for the first time I was like " WTF?"

But most of the people use 'hahaha' I guess!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOL#Translations_in_widespread_use

Hahaha, nice!
So if I say '5555555555' will you get it?

I hope now everyone here will get it

OK, "redirecting" the laughter discussion to here:

Karina wrote:

Hey, thanks for that explanation!
When I was lurking in the brasilian forum or on Orkut, I always wondered, what this... uhm... special laughing was about.
Sometimes in spanish forums, there is "Jejejejejeje".

Laughter on the internet. Might be a good theme for a dissertation.

A friend of mine who studies linguistics actually plans to write his M. A. thesis on emoticons and their use. Very interesting and complicated subject. He's got the impression that the professors love the subject, so he's optimistic, and in fact I can see enough material for a dissertation here ...

There are many variations of written forms of laughter in Brazil. In official literature you most likely find "hahaha". Actually I've never seen any other way. But on the internet you find a lot of weird ones: "kkkkkk", "huahuahuhaua", "hsuiahiuahsia" and the list goes on.

I love languages and I hope I'll get back to take english lessons next semester. I love the language and I like it way more than Portuguese. I'd also love to learn German. My grandparents speak "German" but I'm not sure if it's the southern brazilian dialect of German or the standart German. But I bet it's the dialect. I hate the sound of spanish but I can understand 100% of it, and actually the Argentinean spanish is way easier for me to understand. I think the differences between Spain's spanish and Argentina's spanish are very similar to Portugal's portuguese and Brazil's portuguese. The changes in the intonation are similar imho. But maybe it's because my family is southern and our accent may have had influences from the countries close to us: Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina.

I'd love to learn finnish, the sound of the language is lovely. It's very clear. I even have 2 books and grammar but i'm lazy to learn it now, once there isn't anybody I could actually speak it with, or someone who could correct me and so on.

crucified_vampire wrote:

I'd also love to learn German. My grandparents speak "German" but I'm not sure if it's the southern brazilian dialect of German or the standart German. But I bet it's the dialect.

Is it this one? Interestingly, I read about this one not very long ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riograndenser_Hunsr%C3%BCckisch

Or possibly this one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treze_T%C3%ADlias

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_German

How much of your grandparents "German" do you personally know or at least understand?

I know there is a dialect of German spoken in Brazil...due to immigrants from Germany living in Brazil...they brought their language with them..but changed it apparently. "Real" German is different though from that dialect.

Almagest wrote:

crucified_vampire wrote:

I'd also love to learn German. My grandparents speak "German" but I'm not sure if it's the southern brazilian dialect of German or the standart German. But I bet it's the dialect.

Is it this one? Interestingly, I read about this one not very long ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riograndenser_Hunsr%C3%BCckisch

Or possibly this one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treze_T%C3%ADlias

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_German

How much of your grandparents "German" do you personally know or at least understand?

It's probably the Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, because my grandparents and my father come from Rio Grande do Sul. The second link is in another region, called Santa Cantarina that also have a lot of germanic inspired cities like Blumenau which is the city that holds the biggest oktoberfest here in Brazil, and Joinville, but there are a lot of austriac immigrants there as well, much more than in Rio Grande.

Actually I don't understand anything at all when they speak German. I've seen them speaking German only a few times and it was when I was a kid. I just read the wikipedia article and if I visit my grandparents this xmas I'll ask them more about it.

There is also this other variation of German that I know many people who actually speaks it, especially from the church. My family is lutheran and the lutheran church in Brazil still nowadays consists mainly of people with some sort of German ascendancy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomeranian_%28German_dialect_group%29

icare4u wrote:

I know there is a dialect of German spoken in Brazil...due to immigrants from Germany living in Brazil...they brought their language with them..but changed it apparently. "Real" German is different though from that dialect.

You probably mean Riograndenser Hunsrückisch. As the article explains, it's not like the immigrants "changed" the dialect so much than rather several dialects that various immigrant groups brought along with them gradually became mixed, and of course Brazilian Portuguese exerted an influence especially in the form of borrowed words. I'm sure that if Paulo knew his grandparents' language better, it wouldn't be difficult for him to learn Standard German.

Paulo: I know about Santa Catarina, I found it quite amusing when as a child I found out that there is a city called Florianópolis

It's a pity that you don't even understand any of your grandparents' German.

Pomeranian is Low German, but Low German is actually more similar to Dutch. It should be easy to understand for Dutch people, less so for Germans who don't come from Northern Germany (where Low German is still widely known - at least understood -, especially at the coast). Low German, like Dutch, is relatively similar to English or Scandinavian languages, too, also thanks to long-standing contacts across the seas, while German is more peculiar with its sounds like "pf" and other effects of the High German sound shift that have made the common Germanic foundation less easy to recognise.