Usenet Phrase Guide--request for help
e.c.leeper
and five languages) that *the* two most useful phrases in any language X are:
"Thank you."
and
"I don't speak X; do you speak Y (please)?"
(For English-speakers, 'Y' is 'English'; for others, you can substitute the
language of your choice.)
So...please send me *via email* these two phrases for any languages
(especially the less common ones) that you know. If pronunciation is not
obvious, please provide transliteration. I can provide the Spanish,
(and English, though that's not very helpful) so that's a start. In a couple
of weeks, I'll summarize to the net (in net.travel). If it seems useful, I
will try to repost (with additions) every six months or so.
Yes, I realize that one should try to learn a little more of the language, but
for people doing the "five countries in two weeks" routine, it's nigh onto
impossible. And I realize that this is very much directed to native English
speakers, but since that is the language I speak best (I think!), I'll collect
that one.
Evelyn C. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl
(or ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl)
ing...@pilchuck.uucp
> and five languages) that *the* two most useful phrases in any language X are:
> "Thank you."
> and
> "I don't speak X; do you speak Y (please)?"
> (For English-speakers, 'Y' is 'English'; for others, you can substitute the
> language of your choice.)
>
> ...ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl
> (or ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl)
Swedish--
thank you is "Tack" (not like the tack you affix things to the wall with)
and the "I don't speak" sentence would go something like
"Jag talar ingen Svenska; talar du Engelska?"
(yogg tall-are' ing-in sven-skah'; tall-are' due sven-skah'?)
har...@kvvax4.uucp
>We found that anywhere we went in Sweden, Denmark or
>Norway everyone knew English since they must start learning it in 3rd
>grade.
This is about true. I bet almost any person in this country at least
understands "thank you". And for the language question, "Do you speak
English?", if someone dont answer reasonably to this, then either
he/she dont speak the language, or you're in Finland :-).
--
Harald Eikrem, a/s Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk, CTG4 dept, Kongsberg, Norway
{decvax,garfield,okstate,philabs,seismo,ukc,..}!mcvax!kvvax4!harald
--
--
Harald Eikrem, a/s Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk, CTG4 dept, Kongsberg, Norway
{decvax,garfield,okstate,philabs,seismo,ukc,..}!mcvax!kvvax4!harald
chmorris
>Though I do not want to appear rude by insisting on English, when we
>covered 3 countries in 3 weeks, it hardly paid to learn the languages.
>This was never a problem and the Scandinavians did not seem to resent
>talking in English.
I expect this depends which countries you covered, and how remote an area.
When we went to Norway, Denmark and (briefly) Sweden, we found a large number
of people who did not speak English! Many of these people knew German (or,
exceptionally, French), but in rural Norway the farmer we stayed with did
not speak any of these three languages and we were very glad of our Norwegian
phrase book.
Corinne Morris at the University of Waterloo
David Cohn
> Evelyn's query reminded me of it because there is a phrasebook in it
> which gives a few phrases in 25 different languages. The
> words/phrases are listed in the roman alphabet with pronunciation
> guides. They are "excuse me", "please", "thanks", "where is ...",
> "how much is ...", "yes", "no", and "good". He gives many other
> phrases in different parts of the book. Kind of silly, but nice to
> have in one place, and fun to read. You'll know what to say to your
> Swahili buddies.
I bough one of these (Berlitz) while hitching through north Europe. It *was*
very useful but not for the reasons that the publisher intended. My rides
always spoke some English, frequently perfect English with an American
accent. As a source of amusement during long rides, I would attempt to
read some of the anglified phrases and they would try to guess what I was
saying.
Some one the more amusing entries (remember, this is Berlitz!) were:
"Excuse me, you've dropped your handkerchief"
"Do you live alone?"
"Do you *have* to go home tonight?"
Really, though, the phases you need are ones that need to be popped out
in a moment when there's no time to look up: "Thanks", "Please", "Excuse me".
Just asking "English?" is a clear enough question to any European; prefixing
it by an "Excuse me" in the appropriate language is even better.
---------------
blue skies,
-pablo
Matt Fichtenbaum
>>Norway everyone knew English since they must start learning it in 3rd
>>grade.
English has been taught universally in Sweden only since W.W.II, so
the "everyone" of whom you speak probably omits older people.
I have been in many places in Sweden where my imperfect Swedish was
the most effective way for me to communicate with people there.
Furthermore, having studied a language doesn't mean that one is
comfortable speaking it. Some of the best discussions I have had
with Swedes were in our respective languages - I speaking English
and the other party speaking Swedish. Speaking a "foreign" language
is much more effort than listening to it.
Conclusion: many people in Scandinavia will be able to communicate
with you in English; some won't, and there will be times that the
latter group are the only ones around.
--
Matt Fichtenbaum
...Henry VIII, Henry VII, Henry VI, Henry V, Henry IV,
Henry III, Henry II, Henry I, William Sydney Porter.
Dana S. Nau
>an...@utastro.UUCP (Anita Cochran) writes:
>>We found that anywhere we went in Sweden, Denmark or
>>Norway everyone knew English since they must start learning it in 3rd
>>grade.
>
>This is about true. I bet almost any person in this country at least
>understands "thank you". And for the language question, "Do you speak
>English?", if someone dont answer reasonably to this, then either
>he/she dont speak the language, or you're in Finland :-).
As I found out on a recent trip to Finland, nearly everyone there speaks
English too. If I remember correctly, they all have to learn two foreign
languages in school, and most of them choose Swedish and English.
I would imagine the Finns have some pretty compelling reasons for learning
foreign languages: Finnish is a difficult language to learn (for example,
they have no prepositions, but instead have about sixteen cases), and most
non-Finns would have little reason for learning it.
--
Dana S. Nau, Comp. Sci. Dept., U. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
dsn@maryland seismo!umcp-cs!dsn (301) 454-7932
John Quarterman
--
John Quarterman, UUCP: {gatech,harvard,ihnp4,pyramid,seismo}!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET: j...@im4u.UTEXAS.EDU, j...@sally.UTEXAS.EDU
and...@stc.uucp
| "Thank you" in English is "Ta!" :-)
Oh, I always was taught that ``ta'' was a vulgar acronym for
Thanks Awfully --- Not forgetting the plummy voice :-)
--
Regards,
Andrew Macpherson. <and...@tcom.stc.co.uk>
{aivru,btnix,concurrent,datlog,iclbra,iclkid,idec,inset,root44,stl,ukc}
!stc!andrew
steve shellans
>In article <2...@kvvax4.UUCP> har...@kvvax4.UUCP (Harald Eikrem) writes:
>>an...@utastro.UUCP (Anita Cochran) writes:
>>>We found that anywhere we went in Sweden, Denmark or
>>>Norway everyone knew English since they must start learning it in 3rd
>>>grade.
>>
>>This is about true. I bet almost any person in this country at least
>>understands "thank you". And for the language question, "Do you speak
>>English?", if someone dont answer reasonably to this, then either
>>he/she dont speak the language, or you're in Finland :-).
.
.
>
>I would imagine the Finns have some pretty compelling reasons for learning
>foreign languages: Finnish is a difficult language to learn (for example,
>they have no prepositions, but instead have about sixteen cases), and most
>non-Finns would have little reason for learning it.
>--
>
>Dana S. Nau, Comp. Sci. Dept., U. of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
>dsn@maryland seismo!umcp-cs!dsn (301) 454-7932
Years ago I picked up a piece of information that is intriguing, but I
have never been able to confirm. It is: The Finnish and Hungarian languages
are related to each other but to no other languages.
Can anyone confirm? Are there any theories as to how this might have
evolved, and when?
Steve Shellans
Tektronix, Beaverton OR
{ihnp4,ucbvax,decvax,allegra,zehntel}tektronix!tektools!steves
Matthew P. Wiener
>Years ago I picked up a piece of information that is intriguing, but I
>have never been able to confirm. It is: The Finnish and Hungarian languages
>are related to each other but to no other languages.
>
>Can anyone confirm? Are there any theories as to how this might have
>evolved, and when?
From a table in my _Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary_, found by
looking up the word 'language':
Ural-Altaic is a major language family, on par with Indo-European.
It is divided into three groups, as follows:
Finno-Ugric Turkic Mongolian
----------- ------ ---------
Magyar Uigur Mongolian
Finnish Turkish
Estonian Uzbek
Kirghiz
Magyar (roughly pronounced MAWDyor) is the language spoken in Hungary.
These peoples all started around the Urals and migrated. The Magyar have
a fascinatingly complicated history, too long to relate here, and ended up
in the middle of Europe with everyone else around them speaking nothing but
Indo-European languages.
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As a side question, this seems to be the appropriate newsgroup to ask.
Does anyone out there use a dictionary besides me? I never use 'spell'
for example, but keep my Webster's I've had since high school next to
my terminal when posting. And when someone uses a word I don't know,
I <gasp> look it up. It takes up to a minute sometimes. A very useful
and informative minute.
Does anyone out there even OWN a dictionary anymore?
ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720