Anyone got a language to share? Tell a few people how to say a couple of words!

[chocolate101]

Ok! Here is a thread where you can share your ideal thoughts about a language you may speak! Ask someone for translation, say Irish to English! Or maybe someone requested a word from you but don't want to just send a private message to only them! If that's the case or it's something else about languages, have some fun posting! Don't be shy, remember, you may not be the only one asking that question! Ok, so start posting!

[kk]

I can speak some Irish (or Gaelic, depending on what you want to call it), and I'm learning a bit more every day. It's very fun stuff, and though the words and pronunciations are complicated, it gets pretty easy once you understand the grammar, and get used to the fact that 'th' is silent most of the time, and that 'bh' is usually pronounced like a v.

But some fun phrases are:

"Tubhar dom an caca milis" -- this one, I actually saw in a video that was on DD's blog... but all the same, it means, "Give me the cake!" and is pronounced "toor - dome - on - caw - cuh - mill - ish."

"Nil rocead eloi me" -- "I am not a rocket scientist!" XD I love this phrase. Pronunciation: "Neel row-she-ad ell-oi me"

More will come soon, and you can ask for phrases as well... I may not always know them, but I have a tutoring software, and I can always look them up...

[Zirsta]

I'm South Korean, and I know a tiny bit of the language. Like, "hello" and "thank you" and a few of the foods.

"Hello" is (I don't know what the spelling's supposed to be, so I'm spelling them how it sounds) "anyong as'ayo." (I'm 99.8% sure I did that wrong...) and "thank you" is "kum sumeda" and you pronounce that like come-some-ee-dah. (that's also wrong, I know it)

[alla]

[nelina]

English: Have a Nice Trip
French: Bon Voyage
Spanish: Bueno Viage
German: Ghut Fhart
Greek: Kalo Taxiti
Italian: Bono Viage

[Emi]

I'm like 3/4 Japanese... I know some phrases. I can't really speak it fluently though, because my dad's a bum and didn't want us to have the "accent".

Anywho.

English: Good morning. Good day. Good night.
Japanese: Ohaio Gozaiimasu (O-hi-o go-za-ee-mah-s). Konichiwa (Cone-nee-chee-wah). Konbanwa (Cone-bahn-wah)

Not that hard. I could do more, but it's really hard to spell it out phonetically.

Hm... I wonder if I can get the characters to work on here.

????????????

That was the good morning.

?????

That was good day.

??????

That was good night (evening).

These were all written in hiragana characters. I'm not really sure what it would look like in actual Kanji.

[Septimus]

I'm fluent in spanish and Iranian (which is called farsi if you want to be Technical) bet none of you can speak Farsi, lol jk

Persian hello how are you: Salom, shomah chetor E'?

Spanish hello how are you: Hola, como estas?

I can say way more but it would take absolutly forever to name each word in my voacbulary.

[Tuttle]

Another interesting thing to share, along with the normal words such as Hello, Good bye, etc, is words which aren't quite translatable into English. Other cultures have ideas which just don't quite fit in English, and those are interesting.

Along that line the word I want to share is 'sisu'. This is a Finnish word, which if you are to translate it into a short phrase, the closest is "to have guts", but that isn't quite right. There is an aspect of almost stubborness in terms of determination, as well as still acting rationally. Another way to describe it is "the ability to get things done when it is necessary". For more of an explanation there is always wikipedia.

[Birdhead]

I had te reo M?ori class tonight so I was thinking about this. I'm just starting to learn te reo, which is/was the language spoken by the more-or-less indigenous peoples of New Zealand Aotearoa. A bunch of words in M?ori are a part of NZ English, like whare (house), whanau (family), kia ora (hi - it also means thank you but it's rarely used in this context in English). But the level of fluency in M?ori here is very low - first-language te reo speakers are very rare and M?ori is spoken outside the home only in a very few communities. This is a real shame: this is the only country where New Zealand M?ori is going to be spoken (there is also Cook Islands M?ori - linguistically Pacific languages are close.) And it's a really interesting language as well as a culturally important one. (It's absolutely lousy with pronouns, for example, but verbs hardly change shape at all!)

So! This is a language that will probably never be useful to you! But, you know, it's a novelty for y'all.

T?n? koe - (formal) Hello! (to one person.)
T?n? k?rua - Hello! (to two people.)
T?n? koutou - Hello! (to three or more people.)
T?n? koutou katoa - Super-formal way of saying hello to everyone when addressing a big group - you would say this (actually a slightly longer version of this) at the end of a speech.
M?rena! - Good morning! (This is an anglicism, really informal.)
Kia ora! - Hi! (This is above and beyond the most common M?ori word in NZ. It also means "thanks!" and it literally means "be well.")
Pomarie - Good night.
Ka kite ano - Good bye.
Ma te wa - see you later!
Kei te p?whea koe? - How are you?
Kei te pai ahau! - I'm fine.
Kei te ngenge ahau - I'm tired (I use this one aaaall the time.)
Ko wai t? ingoa? - What's your name?
Ko Tui taku ingoa. - My name's Tui.

There's a whakatauk?, a proverb, that goes something like this: "Ko te reo te taikura o te whakaaro m?rama" - language is the key to understanding. (This is more or less the mission statement of my class - it's about learning language and through that learning culture.) I think the whakatauk? are the best thing about the class in some ways! Some of them are literal (like that one) but lots of them are metaphorical and I like most of them. There's one that goes, if the front is in order, and the back is in order, everything will go fine - which is about the importance of everyone doing their job right, but it's also about the value of every job that's being done, even the ones that aren't public or obvious. I think that's kind of neat. I think the importance of whakatauk? in te reo is one of its really distinguishing features; you can be a decent French speaker without necessarily knowing too many proverbs, but the same isn't true of te reo M?ori.

[alla]

M?ori always looks so interesting. Quick question, Tui, how does the pronunciation work? Is every vowel pronounced? Or are there diphthongs? And are consonants pronounced in the same way as English?

[Birdhead]

M?ori pronunciation is really easy IMO (I mean, I suck, but it's relatively easy.)

Vowels: There are five vowels: a, e, i, o and u. A as in car, e as in bed, i as in three, o as in or, u as in through. (An easy mnemonic is "Are there three or two" - a e i o u. Vowels written a e i o u are short vowels; vowels with macrons ? ? ? ? ? are held longer. (Vowel length is meaningful: matua means father, m?tua means parents.)

Consonants: there are ten, h k m n p r t w ng and wh. ng is pronounced like the middle ng in singing and wh is pronounced more or less like an f - sorta. The other tricky bit with consonants is that the t changes the way it's said depending on which vowel it precedes - ta, te, and to are said with a t that's more like the t in tongue; ti and tu are more like the t in teeth. Otherwise consonants are basically the same as English.

Dipthongs: sorta. Each vowel is pronounced individually but run together really fast, so when you say, for example, "ahau", it more or less rhymes with "ago".

[kk]

I've been trying to learn the Irish national anthem, and it's a lot of fun. If anyone wants to PM me, I can send them an mp3 and pronunciation guide for it (I'd rather not post it here; it would take up too much space and go against the "no posting full lyrics" rule that Kathy pointed out once).

The fun thing with the song, is it sounds really good in Irish, and in English. It's amazing! And fun to learn, a bit tricky to pronounce; but really cool.

[SaxySullivan]

in Gaelic:

Co bha an dorus? (ko va un torus) Who was at the door?
Tha mi fuar. (Ha mee foo-ur.) I am cold.

[dorotheia]