What languages do we speak?

[Gangerolf]

Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German. At least that's the languages I've read books in. I know a handful of phrases an words in many other languages though.

Well I don't really speak Swedish and Danish per se, but I understand both and have read lots of books in both languages. I speak with Swedes on a daily basis so I don't really have any problems understanding it. Actually I have more problems understanding certain Norwegian dialects than any Swedish dialect I can think of. Spoken Danish isn't as difficult as many claim, when you get used to the "sound of it" it's easy as hell. Strangely enough I've found that many Danes have problem understanding me.

My German isn't as good as it should have been due to lack of practise and exposure. I understand both written and spoken German well, it's just that my vocabulary is quite poor. Luckily taking an English or Scandinavian word and "Germanise" it works most of the time.

[DAVOUT]

Only four Italian-speaking posters on Apolyton ?

[Locutus]

Originally posted by alva
One trend we, well, recently copied from from the dutch and one that annoys me beyond aaaarghh is the 'je' and 'jij' form used in shops or tv and such, instead of the more polite 'U' (for the french: using 'toi' instead of 'vous' .
I absolutely can't stand it !!!
Van't Hek once did a great piece on this, using Ikea.

The whole U/Jij, Sie/Du, Vous/Tu thing is stupid anyway, half the time you don't know which one to use. I like the uniform English 'You' much better...

(not to be used by dutch people though, please don't 'cause you can't pull it off )

Neither can you Flemish, but we're having too much fun seeing you guys making fools of yourselves to tell you about it

[Ecthy]

if rumors prove true and this uni offers a Chinese basic course from next semester on, I'll go for it.

[alva]

Neither can you Flemish, but we're having too much fun seeing you guys making fools of yourselves to tell you about it

But the ones you see/hear are probably attempting to speak something in between their own dialect and propper dutch, which is bound to fail miserably.

[Q Classic]

huh . . . i wonder who else at apolyton (besides yin26 and I) can speak korean? i know Q Cubed is korean, but i didn't think he knew the language fluently, maybe I was wrong?

i can understand it with no trouble at all, which is great, because i love korean movies.
the problem is actually talking. i don't have anything beyond the third-grade level or so, mostly because i only speak it around the house.

[Bereta_Eder]

Flemish are bad people! And I will tell you why.
You go to Flanders everything is in dutch! Everything!!!
You go to Wallonia everything is in dutch and french.

Bilingualism beautiful. But noooo the flemish have to make a pooint against the formerly oppressive francophones! So noooo french anywhere. And they'll speak english happily but nooooo french. Even if they know it, which they do. Noooo only english. Never speak french with a flemish guy. He'll reply in english.


Only exception Brussels

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Locutus


The whole U/Jij, Sie/Du, Vous/Tu thing is stupid anyway, half the time you don't know which one to use. I like the uniform English 'You' much better...

Actually historically English has a singular second person : thou-thee-thy-thine. You-ye-your-yours was the plural, and formal formal form, just like in other western european languages. See Shakespeare, for example. For reasons that arent terribly clear to me the singular-informal was dropped, with the formal-plural taking over for everyong. (the direct object of you "ye" was dropped as well) Quakers of all people retained thou-thee for some time, since it was part of their egalitarian ideology to use the informal for everyone (just the kind of thing our Flemish friend is objecting to above)

Losing the formal - informal distinction doesnt seem to have hurt english one bit, but losing the plural singular distinction is quite annoying - with the result that non-standard second person plurals have reemerged - "you guys" or "Youse" in the Northern US, and "you all" or "Y'all" in the Southern US (Not sure if there is any parallel development in UK, Canada, Oz, Kiwi, etc) Although I generally speak "yankee" i tend to use "y'all" when i need a second person plural, since i can't shake the class associations of "you guys".


Hope that helped y'all.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Flemish are bad people! And I will tell you why.
You go to Flanders everything is in dutch! Everything!!!
You go to Wallonia everything is in dutch and french.

Bilingualism beautiful. But noooo the flemish have to make a pooint against the formerly oppressive francophones! So noooo french anywhere. And they'll speak english happily but nooooo french. Even if they know it, which they do. Noooo only english. Never speak french with a flemish guy. He'll reply in english.


Only exception Brussels

Intersting - kinda like Canada, where anglo canada is bilingual (at least in the East) , and Quebec has language police to enforce French dominance.

[alva]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Flemish are bad people! And I will tell you why.
You go to Flanders everything is in dutch! Everything!!!
You go to Wallonia everything is in dutch and french.

Bilingualism beautiful. But noooo the flemish have to make a pooint against the formerly oppressive francophones! So noooo french anywhere. And they'll speak english happily but nooooo french. Even if they know it, which they do. Noooo only english. Never speak french with a flemish guy. He'll reply in english.


Only exception Brussels

huh, me thinks you have it upside down..

Flemisch will speak french, english, heck they will attempt to speak chinese if necessairy.
True, signs are dutch only (some are in english for tourists), just like they're french only in the south, only in Brussels they will be bi-lingual (in the german part even tri-lingual).This is by law (peace has come at a price here but peace we have )

A walloon win only (and trust me on this )speak any english or dutch by exception. Younger people will do so more easily although their dutch is very, very poor despite having to learn it at school)

In Brussels you will die of hunger if you don't speak any french.

Having said that, the level of french has deteriorated over the last say 15 years and english is the common second language for most now.

the formerly oppressive francophones!

The're not oppressing us anymore, changed strategy 'cause now they're into blackmail and hostage tactics.

[Bereta_Eder]

Em, coming to think about it, I've been to plenty flemish cities (Antwerp, Brugge, Leuven etc etc) but I don't recall any walloon one except Charleroi but I admit I don't remember if they had bilingual signs.
I remember in the "harbour" we entered an all flemish pub and -admittedly- did the mistake of ordering in french. Our drinks never came.... We left went to another ordered in english and in 2 minutes, voila the drinks But ok, this is very extreme.

In Brussels you will die of hunger if you don't speak any french.

That's a little exaggerated...
Although the chances of flemish people speaking french is much bigger than in Flanders proper.

The're not oppressing us anymore, changed strategy 'cause now they're into blackmail and hostage tactics.

What did they do tell me?!

[Peter Triggs]

The whole U/Jij, Sie/Du, Vous/Tu thing is stupid anyway, half the time you don't know which one to use

That reminds me, a girl once said to me "On n'indique pas 'vous' dans le lit."

That wasn't covered in junior high school French class.

[Bereta_Eder]

Although I admit I've never tried (/could) to speak to a walloon in dutch to see his reaction So my observations are bound to be one dimensional

[Adagio]

What I can speak/read:

Danish
German
English
ADG's language (My main language)

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
That reminds me, a girl once said to me "On n'indique pas 'vous' dans le lit."

That wasn't covered in junior high school French class.

Well, she obviously wasn't in for a ménage à trois then