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OK, but can a Norwegian understand a German? They are both Germanic languages.
Can an Englishman understand a Frenchman? I mean, look at the pie chart. They should at least get the gist.
Mutual intelligibilty does not directly correlate with the relatedness of languages.
No an Englishman cannot understand a Frenchman or a German or a Spaniard or a Norwegian or a Russian, this is why I believe that English is more than just 'Germanic', French has a lot of influence in the English language but then again why wouldn't it, don't forget about 1066, this must have had a big impact? I believe the pie chart shows that French and Latin have the biggest influence on English followed by Germanic languages (various ones), I believe that Latin has a lot of influence on all European languages, even then there are plenty of other influences in English, the Scandinavians have particularly influenced the North East of the island.
Portuguese and Spanish are very similar in the written form but in the spoken form it really depends, Brazil alone has at least 15 different popular accents, Portugal has several others, when Brazilians want to make themselves understood by spanish speaking people they usually talk in a slow pace mix of brazilian portuguese and spanish.
I did a test with a group of tourists from spanish speaking countries, I showed them the video bellow and asked how much they could understand of it, even the ones that were at intermediate-advanced level in brazilian portuguese told me they could not understand more than 15% of the entire conversation.
So I think the other guy is right, spanish and portuguese are very similar in the written form but in the spoken form it really depends on which accent is used and how much effort each one put to make it easier to be understood by the other.
In fact, I can understand more the Portuguese language when it's spoken than when it's written.
And I repeat, I've never studied Portuguese, at all.
As for those videos, the only problem is that they speak too fast. If the pace was slower I could have understood it better.
Korean and Japanese have 70% vocabulary from Chinese though (including the words made from Chinese roots by themselves). It's not uncommon that Chinese people can catch a few words in their speech, although the pronunciation has changed a lot since the time they borrowed.
This is only if Japanese is using Kanji which is a modified Chinese form. Japanese has three different systems. Hiragana is a Japanese phonetic system used for grammar. Katakana is used for foreign words not associated with Kanji.
This is only if Japanese is using Kanji which is a modified Chinese form. Japanese has three different systems. Hiragana is a Japanese phonetic system used for grammar. Katakana is used for foreign words not associated with Kanji.
You confused language with script. Some languages have no written forms at all but we can still talk about their similarity to other languages.
Yes Japanese use kanji to write Sino-Japanese words. Even if they do not do so (like Koreans and Vietnamese of today), the connection is still there.
English: I speak English.
German: Ich spreche Englisch.
English: I have six fish.
German: Ich habe sechs Fische.
Are you sure you cannot guess the meaning?
You forgot "das ist meins" = "that is mine".
But to be fair, these are simple phrases and you could have easily chosen the more identical sounding ones to further your case. A lot of English and German sentence structures don't even have the slightest resemblance:
English: Can we go now?
German: Können wir jetzt gehen?
English: Stop doing that!
German: Hör auf!
English: Pass me the salt.
German: Reich mir das salz.
English: You have a beautiful smile.
German: Sie haben ein schönes lächeln.
English: Where are you?
German: Wo bist du?
And I could go on and on...
P.S. You can do this with Dutch too - My favourite is, "De man is dood" meaning "the man is dead".
But to be fair, these are simple phrases and you could have easily chosen the more identical sounding ones to further your case. A lot of English and German sentence structures don't even have the slightest resemblance:
English: Can we go now?
German: Können wir jetzt gehen?
English: Stop doing that!
German: Hör auf!
English: Pass me the salt.
German: Reich mir das salz.
English: You have a beautiful smile.
German: Sie haben ein schönes lächeln.
English: Where are you?
German: Wo bist du?
And I could go on and on...
P.S. You can do this with Dutch too - My favourite is, "De man is dood" meaning "the man is dead".
Says German and English sentence structures don't have the slightest resemblance.
Posts sentence structures that have a lot of resemblance.
Says German and English sentence structures don't have the slightest resemblance.
Posts sentence structures that have a lot of resemblance.
Don't become a lawyer
The world section and its mindless, newbie chumps.
Bub, do you realize that I was making an emphasis on the vocabulary? Newsflash, vocab is part of a sentence structure. How the hell does reich and pass sound the same?
You should learn how to read and heighten your comprehension skills?
The world section and its mindless, newbie chumps.
Bub, do you realize that I was making an emphasis on the vocabulary? Newsflash, vocab is part of a sentence structure. How the hell does reich and pass sound the same?
You should learn how to read and heighten your comprehension skills?
Newsflash right back at you, vocabulary doesn't matter in sentence structure. Sentence structure is about how/where verbs, subjects and objects etc. are positioned. Second newsflash, how words sound also doesn't matter in sentence structure.
You confused language with script. Some languages have no written forms at all but we can still talk about their similarity to other languages.
Yes Japanese use kanji to write Sino-Japanese words. Even if they do not do so (like Koreans and Vietnamese of today), the connection is still there.
Point being, you can't just use one Japanese alphabet to make a comparison when it has three.
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