BrainKing - Diskussionsborde (Languages)

Languages

Ask questions or just talk about different languages. Since BrainKing is an international game site supporting many languages, this board can be kind of useful.

Since we will be dealing with pronunciation of words rather than their spelling, I think it's useful to have a link to The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet.

To see translations of some frequently used phrases and sentences in other languages see Languages

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31. Juli 2006, 13:05:21

Rose

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Emne: Custom

To me 'custom' is a very obsurb word. It has a few different meanings in the English language

1. practice followed by people of a particular group or region.
2. Duties or taxes imposed on imported and, less commonly, exported goods.
3.Made to order.

Then if you make the word 'customer'
a person or business that purchases a commodity or service

English is a very difficult language to master I would think.

31. Juli 2006, 13:38:04

Pedro Martínez

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Emne: Re: Custom

Tilpasset af Pedro Martínez (31. Juli 2006, 13:38:31)

Rose: Well, no language is easy to master but trust me, English is one of the least difficult ones.

I think having one word for a number of different meanings is a good thing for somebody who wants to learn the language. Imagine if you wanted to learn Czech. In your example, the 1 would be "zvyk", "zvyklost" or "obyčej" (depending on circumstances), 2 would be "clo" and 3 "zakázka". Plus there are more meanings of 'custom'. It can be a noun or an adjective. And all these have different words in Czech and in other languages.

31. Juli 2006, 14:08:36

King Reza

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Emne: Re: Custom

Rose:That's true that English is tough to master, but not very difficult to learn to speak and understand to a great extent. Pedro knows hoe tough Farsi, my language, can really get considering the fact that we do not write down the short vowels! So in a word, all you see is the consonants and long vowels while depending on how short vowels are changed, many words are produced which are written exactly the same in farsi.

ببر

is a very good example. It can be read: Bebar, Bebor, Babr meaning "take, cut, tiger" respectively. I can imagine how confused a non-native may get when he/she comes acroos this word in a text.

31. Juli 2006, 15:22:43

Pedro Martínez

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Emne: Re: Custom

King Reza: That's exactly the biggest problem I have with Farsi. I don't know if you agree with me or not, but I think that while you can make yourself well understood in English after, say, 1 year of every-day studying (maybe less), it takes a considerably longer time to do so in Farsi.

31. Juli 2006, 15:27:25

King Reza

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Emne: Re: Custom

Pedro Martínez:Yes, after studying English for a year, one can really speak it to a great extent. I would say that doing so about Farsi can result in a satisfactory progress, but I also agree that it takes much longer time to understand Farsi, especially the written form.

On the other hand, farsi is a language whose written and spoken form have gone too far from eachother. You write Hendavaane, but in a normal speaking, you'd say it Hendoone!

So just enjoy yourself with Farsi. I'm glad I can fully understand and speak and write it and don't have to 'study' it .