What's your language?

[titanium833]

my language is persian !

 

[tomcat34]

Finnish

 

[Whisper]

Finnish

Another Finn arty:arty:arty:

 

[peter123]

German, low german, hope acceptable english, latin, a bit dutch..........

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

Haitian Creole is a sapling to the ancient redwood that is French.

I give it to you that Haitian Creole is no longer considered a dialect, because it now has a grammar of its own. However, you have just re-opened the age long debate that , defended the idea that Haitian Creole was a West African language with a French vocabulary, while others believed that Haitian Creole was a direct descendent of old French dialects spoken by the first French colonizers. :no: . The Haitian Creole is so Frenchisized that I tend to go with the latter camp.

The boundary between "a dialect" and a distinct language can be blurry and influenced more by politics than common ground and degrees of intelligibility. For instance, Catalan was regarded for years as a dialect of Spanish or French (or more intolerantly, as "Bad Spanish/French"), but is currently recognized as a distinct language. And while Catalan is spoken in Valencia, it is referred to vociferously as VALENCIAN. A more volatile example would be that of the Baltic states (Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian/Montenegrin/etc.)

I understand your point but because I speak and understand the language (not just study it ) I still view it as an official sub dialect of French. The Haitian community in Canada is concentrated largely in Quebec. In 2001, 90% for a grand total of 75,000 people who reported Haitian origins lived in Quebec. Haitian Creole from Montreal is so easy to learned that practically all kids living in the surroundings of Cote Des Neige, Cote St-Luc, Montreal-Nord, Riviere des Prairies, were able to fluently converse in the language no MATTER their etchnic backgrounds. What made it easy for them to be able to learn and speak Haitian is the amount of French present in the language. Furthermore, Haitian hasn't yet adopted officially, globally Creole as their PRIMARY language, the official language of Haiti is French.

Creoles arise in a time and place where people from different backgrounds without a common language are forced to live and communicate with each other for whatever length of time. What forms first is a pidgin- simple phrases from the languages spoken by the population to fill the need for basic communication (We have water? Where is the bathroom? Let's fuck!). Pidgins only last as long as the contact situation. Should the population become relatively stable, with children being born and raised in this environment where a pidgin has become a common parlance, the conditions for a creole arise. The children take that existing pidgin as the basis for their mother tongue, but transform it and fill in whatever grammatical gaps the pidgin hadn't filled or addressed (such as tenses, prepositions, word order, stress patterns).

Agreed Creoles are pidgins that have expanded both its linguistic structures and communicative functions and have become the native language of an entire speech communityhttp://www.ahadonline.org/eLibrary/creoleconnection/Number20/haitiancreole.htm#_edn2.

Studies of creoles show a great deal of common ground in terms of grammar, despite the source languages having no relationship to each other and minimal commonality, suggesting the existence of a Universal Grammar, an idea mostly attributed to Noam Chomsky. Think of it as humans are born with some degree of "factory programming" with regards on language and how to use it.

Off topic, but I'm a language dork and couldn't resist!

And to answer the actual question posed, I am an anglophone reasonably competent in Spanish, and I very briefly studied Catalan.

Well Mister Dork I am too a language dork... although my English sucks a little, but as I said before and will say it again... I may speak with an accent, but I do not think with an accent.

 

[Cagayan]

German, English, Portuguese and Tagalog (Philippine language)

 

[alexfot55]

Ellinika,that's Greek to you. Come to think of it every other word in English is of latin or greek origin.

 

[howardjk]

English is my native, and much to my regret, my ONLY language. Four years of Latin (and I can still read it with a dictionary close by) but we were taught that it was a "dead" language and not to consider trying to speak it!

I had three years of German in college and was getting pretty good at it but then I stopped studying and its now all gone. I traveled to Bavaria several years ago with a friend. Her relatives in Bavaria told me not to try to speak German since I have (still) a perfect Berlin accent and would be automatically disliked. I had a little speech prepared requesting that the Germans I encountered speak with me in English if they could. The relatives were right--shop clerks in Munich (Muenchen) looked at me as though I was shit and ignored my plea.

I also had two years of Russian--a totally impossible language to me. Learned nada.
Baby talk and a few simple sentences were the total sum.

I wish I spoke Italian, French, German, Mandarin and any other language other than just goddam English.

 

[BursaGAY]

Turkish. Only turkish

 

[down_the_street]

Native English. Minored in Latin. Smattering of French, Spanish and Russian.

I also speak SQL (well), SAS (middling) and R (poorly).

 

[lunita]

My first language is English and I speak a bit of Korean and Cantonese but the language I love the most is Spanish. Started to learn it about 15 years ago. My god, when spoken correctly it is absolutely beautiful. I have been told I learned Catalan and just never knew it. You could read me a soup label in Catalan and I would take off my clothes and let you fuck me senseless. Yeah, it's that good!!!

 

[Oege]

Native: Dutch

Besides Dutch I can speak Frisian, German and English.

In school I studied 3 years of French but I forgot most of that language since it is not used that much overhere.

And some years ago I studied Russian for 1 year, I hardly use it here but when travelling it is a big plus to be able to read it and to speak some of that (for me) difficult) language

 

[R_ver]

mother tongue teochew
i can speak Mandarin, Bahasa, Hakka, English. currently learning Korean Language XD

 

[ihno]

And some years ago I studied Russian for 1 year, I hardly use it here but when travelling it is a big plus to be able to read it and to speak some of that (for me) difficult) language

Well, Russia isn't the best choice to spend your vacation right now anyway.

 

[flesh84]

Io parlo italiano. (I speak italian)

 

[ihno]

Anche tu, flesh84 (you too, flesh84)?

 

[flesh84]

Ahahahah sì, anche io (ahahahah yes, me too)

 

[Sinnerr]

Hej vy dva, pište anglicky! (hey you two, write English!)

 

[MrMonkey]

1. Croatian (Hrvatski)
2. English
3. German
4. Latin
5. Slovenian and other Slavic languages
6. Klingon :thumbs up:

I can also read Cyrillic and Glagolitic alphabets.

 

[ihno]

6. Klingon :thumbs up:

Really?

What does "TaH pagh taHbe" mean? I'm not too sure about the spelling...

Qapla'!