Closely related languages that sound nothing like each other? (Vietnamese, Brazilian)
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What are some really closely related languages that not only DON'T sound like each other, but may also sound like they're from separate language families?
Just the other day, I was hearing a rather "exotic" language across the room from my TV. It sounded really foreign and even "Semitic" at parts, until I realized that the guy was speaking Dutch. Amazing at how distinct they sound from us English-speakers, phonetically, when their language is like a sister of English (alongside Frisian).
Any other languages or good contenders?
P.S. I am aware that English and Dutch have cognates and/or similar words since they're both Germanic. It's just the way they pronounce their words that set them apart from us, as they use guttural sounds to convey them (eight: acht, with a guttural Kh sound).
French and Italian.
Bot share more than 80% of cognates, but they are completely uninteligible. Moreover, even people who speak neither will easily tell each one apart.
What are some really closely related languages that not only DON'T sound like each other, but may also sound like they're from separate language families?
Just the other day, I was hearing a rather "exotic" language across the room from my TV. It sounded really foreign and even "Semitic" at parts, until I realized that the guy was speaking Dutch. Amazing at how distinct they sound from us English-speakers, phonetically, when their language is like a sister of English (alongside Frisian).
Any other languages or good contenders?
P.S. I am aware that English and Dutch have cognates and/or similar words since they're both Germanic. It's just the way they pronounce their words that set them apart from us, as they use guttural sounds to convey them (eight: acht, with a guttural Kh sound).
English is such a mish-mash of languages, its too simplistic to just call it Germanic.
Spanish and Portuguese. They're supposed to be so closely related as to be mutually intelligible but they don't sound similar to me at all.
Portuguese and Spanish are strange. Pretty much anybody in Portugal will be able to grasp what you are trying say in Spanish. However, it does not work the other way.
There is a mish mash of vocabulary, but even then 80% of words that even an educated and articulate English speaker uses in a day are of Germanic origin. All that pie chart shows is that English hoards words of foreign origin away in its dictionaries just to take a few out on a rainy day to sound pompous (like I do quite often).
Anyway, that a language is the sum of its vocabulary is false.
There is a mish mash of vocabulary, but even then 80% of words that even an educated and articulate English speaker uses in a day are of Germanic origin. All that pie chart shows is that English hoards words of foreign origin away in its dictionaries just to take a few out on a rainy day to sound pompous (like I do quite often).
Anyway, that a language is the sum of its vocabulary is false.
Last edited by Bordeaux33; 07-01-2017 at 01:56 AM..
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