Do you speak another language besides English?

[+ Gar1eth]

I speak Chinese & French in addition to English, and smatterings of other languages. One thing I've noticed is that if you meet a white American man who is a native English speaker but who speaks a second language fluently, there's a good chance that he's gay. This is just an observation, and I have no statistics to back it up, but it's been my experience. And among white Americans studying Chinese, somewhere over half seem to be left handed. Again, I have no statistics here, but am absolutely certain that left-handers study Chinese way out of proportion to their numbers in the general population. And yes, I'm gay & left handed.

 

 

There were several male German TA's at my University. One was married and I think one had dated a female TA for awhile. Of course that doesn't mean they were straight. But I'm thinking they were.

 

 

And I took an intensive Spanish course one summer at Dartmouth-the Rassias Language Institute. Lots of males as instructors. Aside from some of them being married to women, I don't think any of them really pinged my gaydar. But maybe they were just being discrete.

 

Gman

[Guest]

 

http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/MjAxMi05ZmUxN2MyZjIzNDA3NzRm.png

 

 

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51YB4ApHnSL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

[Wolfer]

I am nowhere near fluent in German. And if any native speakers of Dutch or German think differently I will gladly concede, but I doubt in general that they could understand each other very well at all except for maybe the Germans/Dutch/Belgiums living right near the borders of Holland, Germany, and Belgium. I'm betting their native dialects might be more understandable in those regions. Dutch is pronounced very differently and the words have changed a lot in spelling compared to standard German.

 

Gman

I'm a native Dutch speaker. From my experience is that Dutch speakers can understand German in very broad strokes without ever having had a lesson. Germans not so much. I always thought it was weird that it works in only one direction, but I think it does come down to the wildy different pronounciations in both languages.

Certain German words almost sound like the Dutch word, only it sounds like the Dutch word has been put through a "Gobblediegook" filter in the German version of the same word. But it does allow Dutch speakers to sort of guess what the word would be. Of course, this isn't always the case, sometimes you get German words that sound a lot like a Dutch word but have, in fact, completely different (and sometimes opposite) meanings.

 

In Belgium this has lead to a funny occurence called "Koeterduits" ("Stupid German", German as in language, not a person). This happens when a Dutch person, who has no workable knowledge of German, tries to speak German by just "Germanifying" Dutch words by changing the pronounciation, adding some extra syllables and speaking in a German accent. This never really works, as the German recipient in the conversation will be unable to understand what the Dutch speaker is saying, while the other Dutch people bend over laughing. My ex-husband has to speak German in his dayjob and I would sometimes start to speak "Koeterduits" to tease him, since it can be really confusing to listen to.

 

I remember my very first lesson in German in high school. Our teacher was speaking only German, but we could all understand him. Although I do suspect he was keeping his vocabulary somewhat limited to words that were close to the Dutch words. Years later, after my working knowledge of German had faded into obscurity, I was on a weekend Holiday where a friend apparently was speaking German (they were doing a comedy sketch) and only four or five sentences in did I realize he was speaking actual German instead of Dutch with a German accent.

 

I do find it really funny that German always seems to have way too many syllables in words. Take, for example, "nurse" is "Krankenschwester". I just love that, such a mouthful.

[Rudynate]

Krankenschwester and Krankenhaus may be my two favorite words in the German language. To a native speaker of English, they are inherently funny just because of their sound, and they are doubly funny when you know that they mean "nurse" and "hospital." And then "Krankenwagen" for "ambulance" is pretty funny too.

 

There is that sound in Dutch, the one that the Dutch say only a native Dutch speaker can get right. I had a friend years ago who was a doctor. He went to medical school in Amsterdam and had a Dutch wife. He spoke Dutch very well, I loved to listen to him. He said it wasn't a difficult language to learn at all.

[+ Gar1eth]

Krankenschwester and Krankenhaus may be my two favorite words in the German language. To a native speaker of English, they are inherently funny just because of their sound, and they are doubly funny when you know that they mean "nurse" and "hospital." And then "Krankenwagen" for "ambulance" is pretty funny too.

 

There is that sound in Dutch, the one that the Dutch say only a native Dutch speaker can get right. I had a friend years ago who was a doctor. He went to medical school in Amsterdam and had a Dutch wife. He spoke Dutch very well, I loved to listen to him. He said it wasn't a difficult language to learn at all.

 

 

Krank means sick or ill. Schwester means sister. And Haus means of course house. So sick-sister = nurse and sick-house =hospital. The Swiss German word for hospital is Spital which I'm assuming is related to our word and ultimately comes from the Latin hospes = guest.

 

Gman

[+ Gar1eth]

The Swiss German word for hospital is Spital which I'm assuming is related to our word and ultimately comes from the Latin hospes = guest.

 

Gman

 

And intermediately from French.

 

Gman

[AdamSmith]

The Awful German Language

Mark Twain

 

https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html

[Wolfer]

There is that sound in Dutch, the one that the Dutch say only a native Dutch speaker can get right. I had a friend years ago who was a doctor. He went to medical school in Amsterdam and had a Dutch wife. He spoke Dutch very well, I loved to listen to him. He said it wasn't a difficult language to learn at all.

If I'd had to guess it would probably be our "g". I've had contact with people that speak a wide variety of languages in Europe, and I've never come across another language that pronounces the "g" in the same way as Dutch speakers do. Most languages sound out the "g" like it is in the word "goal". But in the Netherlands it's more like you're coughing up flegm. I personally don't like that variation, though, I prefer the more soft "g" of Flemish Belgium.

 

I know that that "g" was often the hardest part when I was trying to have foreign friends say some Dutch words. I would sound out the "g" and they'd look at me confounded and ask: "What are you doing in your mouth and throat to get a sound like that?"

I too have heard though that Dutch is apparently a hard language to learn... We do have some pronounciation quirks and don't get me started on the differences between Dutch in the Netherlands and Dutch in Flemish Belgium. Foreigners are taught "proper" Dutch in courses in Flemish Belgium but when they go out all you hear is the Flemish dialect which has a lot of idioms, expressions and even different pronouns than "proper" Dutch. Flemish people from one side of Flanders have quite some difficulty understanding Flemish people from the other side of Flanders sometimes!

You could liken in to the difference between British English and American English. It's the same language even though there are quite some differences between the two.

[Rudynate]

If I'd had to guess it would probably be our "g".

 

I think it is. A young Dutch woman demonstrated it for me, and it sounded like someone who had bad post-nasal drip trying to clear his/her throat.

 

Dutch is supposed to be easy for native speakers to learn because the words can be so similar to English words, and the grammar is not much more complicated than English grammar. I remember when I was in high school learning Latin, the grammar was so complicated that I thought, "No wonder this is dead language."

[liubit]

As a native Spanish speaker, I do not find the Dutch g sound too difficult to pronounce, Wolfer: it is very similar to our Spanish j, perhaps just a little bit more guttural. However, to me, pronouncing the Dutch diphthong UI correctly is downright impossible. It is something like the ou in ouch, but not quite. You have to add a weird twist to your mouth.....

[+ Gar1eth]

As a native Spanish speaker, I do not find the Dutch g sound too difficult to pronounce, Wolfer: it is very similar to our Spanish j, perhaps just a little bit more guttural. However, to me, pronouncing the Dutch diphthong UI correctly is downright impossible. It is something like the ou in ouch, but not quite. You have to add a weird twist to your mouth.....

 

Does it help if you 'round' your mouth like you were puckering up for a big fake kiss while still trying to pronounce it as ou in ouch?

Gman

[samandtham]

I speak Chinese & French in addition to English, and smatterings of other languages. One thing I've noticed is that if you meet a white American man who is a native English speaker but who speaks a second language fluently, there's a good chance that he's gay. This is just an observation, and I have no statistics to back it up, but it's been my experience. And among white Americans studying Chinese, somewhere over half seem to be left handed. Again, I have no statistics here, but am absolutely certain that left-handers study Chinese way out of proportion to their numbers in the general population. And yes, I'm gay & left handed.

 

I have no experience to confirm nor deny the veracity of your first claim (regarding white Americans, bilingualism, and homosexuality), but I do think being left-handed has one advantage in Chinese: The direction of their writing is favorable to southpaws in that it's top to bottom, right to left.

 

I'm a native Dutch speaker. From my experience is that Dutch speakers can understand German in very broad strokes without ever having had a lesson. Germans not so much. I always thought it was weird that it works in only one direction, but I think it does come down to the wildy different pronounciations in both languages.

Certain German words almost sound like the Dutch word, only it sounds like the Dutch word has been put through a "Gobblediegook" filter in the German version of the same word. But it does allow Dutch speakers to sort of guess what the word would be. Of course, this isn't always the case, sometimes you get German words that sound a lot like a Dutch word but have, in fact, completely different (and sometimes opposite) meanings.

 

Thank you. That's all I was curious about—whether a German speaker who finds themselves suddenly in a Dutch-speaking country can find a way to get by (somehow).

 

I mean, they can just speak English, since around 90 percent of the Dutch speak English in some capacity, but I digress.

[Rudynate]

I have no experience to confirm nor deny the veracity of your first claim (regarding white Americans, bilingualism, and homosexuality), but I do think being left-handed has one advantage in Chinese: The direction of their writing is favorable to southpaws in that it's top to bottom, right to left.

 

 

 

Thank you. That's all I was curious about—whether a German speaker who finds themselves suddenly in a Dutch-speaking country can find a way to get by (somehow).

 

I mean, they can just speak English, since around 90 percent of the Dutch speak English in some capacity, but I digress.

 

I think the Dutch, as a whole, may speak English better than any other national group on the continent. The Danes might be just about as good. And Dutch men, well . . .

[Guest]

I'm a native Dutch speaker....

 

I do find it really funny that German always seems to have way too many syllables in words. Take, for example, "nurse" is "Krankenschwester". I just love that, such a mouthful.

 

Ah, you remind me of that delightful Dutch musical "Yes nurse, no nurse!"

 

 

I feel a song coming on....

[Guest]

My ex used to sing this one, and he was Russian at the time...

[Guest]

[Guest]

[Wolfer]

I fucking love that movie!

 

As a native Spanish speaker, I do not find the Dutch g sound too difficult to pronounce, Wolfer: it is very similar to our Spanish j, perhaps just a little bit more guttural. However, to me, pronouncing the Dutch diphthong UI correctly is downright impossible. It is something like the ou in ouch, but not quite. You have to add a weird twist to your mouth.....

You're absolutely right, I completely forogot about the Spanish "j". It is in fact almost pronounced the exact same way (I think it might be even the exact same sound).

 

That diphtong is closer in sound to the English " Er". You know the one you make when thinking what to say like, for example: "Er, I don't know". (In British English. In American English it would " ehm", I think, although that might be too sharp)

Our "u" seems to throw people off too. I once had an American who was living in Italy tell me he didn't know how to make the "u" sound like ours. There's not even an equivalent sound in English I can refer to. For those who speak German, it sounds like a "ü".

[Rudynate]

For those who speak German, it sounds like a "ü".

 

 

It's a difficult sound to master for speakers of English.

[+ Gar1eth]

 

That diphtong is closer in sound to the English " Er". You know the one you make when thinking what to say like, for example: "Er, I don't know". (In British English. In American English it would " ehm", I think, although that might be too sharp)

 

We say er too with the r drawn out usually. But it's more of a 'put on'. I mean when we say er, we deliberately say it and know we are saying it whereas umm is more of a natural, unconscious utterance.

 

Our "u" seems to throw people off too. I once had an American who was living in Italy tell me he didn't know how to make the "u" sound like ours. There's not even an equivalent sound in English I can refer to. For those who speak German, it sounds like a "ü".

 

It's a difficult sound to master for speakers of English.

 

The umlaut u isn't really that hard. For all the German umlauts pretty much you make the sound as you might in English but you round up and purse your lips. The umlaut u-is kind of like saying ew but through rounded, pursed lips. With the umlaut a I'd say you pronounce a as in apple and round your mouth without much rounding of your lips. For the umlaut o, say o as in hope but round and purse your lips again like for the u.

 

Gman

[AdamSmith]

Just retrieved from the fading memory that old crack that Dutch is German spoken with a potato lodged in your mouth.

[liubit]

Thanks for the "er" explanation for "ui", Wolfer. As for the Dutch u, it is the French u or the German ü.

[Wolfer]

Wait 'till you hear "ui" and "eu". There's virtually no difference between these diphtongs, yet they make a big difference if you use them incorrectly. For years my dialect substituted all "eu" sounds with the "ui" sound. I wasn't aware until I moved away from my hometown and people said I was mispronouncing things.

[+ Gar1eth]

Wait 'till you hear "ui" and "eu". There's virtually no difference between these diphtongs, yet they make a big difference if you use them incorrectly. For years my dialect substituted all "eu" sounds with the "ui" sound. I wasn't aware until I moved away from my hometown and people said I was mispronouncing things.

 

To make sure I understand - there's virtually no difference but enough of one that people who speak the 'standard,' I'm assuming people who use the 'Amsterdam' dialect can hear it?

 

I remember my German TA in first year German. A lot of German words end in -ig. In her dialect they pronounce it as we do. Technically it should be more pronounced as -ich with the 'ch' being that hard, breathy German 'ch' and not our 'ch' in ch-imney.

 

Funny story. There was a not too bright girl in my 1st year college German. I can't remember if she was in my second year or not. If this incident occurred in my second year class, it's even worse. Oh and if anyone is upset at me calling her a girl, I would also refer to the other males in the class as guys -so I have a tendency to not use the terms men and women for my college classmates. Anyway the girl was not too bright. But she actually had mentioned she was thinking of majoring in German. I used to cringe when I heard that because she wasn't very good. So one day in our lab class, the TA who was Swiss mentioned William Tell. This classmate of mine said, "Oh, I think I've heard of him. " I just stared. I mean I don't know what percentage of college students know about him today. But when I was a child watching reruns of Disney or Merrie Melodies Cartoons-wasn't William Tell a fairly common theme for them to make a joke of? I can almost picture a Bugs Bunny cartoon with him shooting an apple off of Elmer or Porky Pig. And then at home we had a book of children's stories which told about him.

 

 

Gman

 

PS. There were also some not very bright guys in my class. But I can't remember any particularly stories about them. The 'William Tell' incident has remained stuck in my memory because of how unbelievable I found it.

Edited September 12, 2015 by Gar1eth

[Wolfer]

To make sure I understand - there's virtually no difference but enough of one that people who speak the 'standard,' I'm assuming people who use the 'Amsterdam' dialect can hear it?

Any Dutch native speakers will be able to easily discern between the two sounds, but foreigners will have a tough time to tell them apart. My dialect is a variation of Flemish Dutch, since I live in Belgium.

I moved away from home when I was 17, and whenever me and my ex-husband would visit my mother he'd always be amused at some of the dialect words she uses.

For instance "fork" in Dutch would officially be "vork", but in my dialect it's "frinket". Or "beast" is "beest" (pronounced "baste") but in my dialect it's "byost".

 

I've recently been refreshing my French, since a number of cute working guys here converse mainly in French.

I've been randomly saying thins like:" J'adore ta grosse bite!"

 

I haven't used it in actual conversation, though, first I need to brush up on my French a bit more. And my French kissing! (See what I did there... )