I was just reading about the wonderful benefits of using Colagate whitening toothpaste on the toothpaste tube and stopped to think about how funny it is when they mix swedish and norwegian on grocery (and other) packages. Swedish and norwegian are very similar so to keep the lenght of the text down whoever makes the package descriptions often write the text in this weird mix of both languages since the words which aren’t exactly the same mostly are just spelled slightly differently.
So, what I started to think about was wether there are other languages which are this similar to eachother. You people from all over the world reading my blog maybe can answear that question. Is there a language similar to yours which you even if you don’t speak can understand perfectly?
When asked about how many languages I speak I always say two; swedish and english. But it’s more like two and a half really because even if I can’t actually speak norwegian I understand it. God knows there are swedish accents which are harder to understand than norwegiean (hello skånska).
Speaking of languages, I really regret that I didn’t continue with french when I started high school. I studied it for four years but now it’s been ten years since my last french class. Need I say that I’ve forgot most of it? The only thing I really remember except for a few simple words is how to pronounce things. Put a french text in front of me and I’ll read it to you in perfect french (except for those weird R:s) but don’t expect me to understand more than ten words of what I just read to you. Funny, isn’t it?
I also knew sign language. I took sing language courses with mom, grandpa and my sister when I was a kid and also studied it in high school but that’s a long time ago so I barely remember anything of that language either. That’s such a shame because it’s a perfect thing to use when you don’t want people to know what you’re saying. Like this time when me and my sister discussed a group of people standing next to us saying in sign language that the girls were bimbos and the guy a player.
Ok this was gonna be a short entry but it obviously didn’t turn out that way. I’m gonna stop now before you fall asleep. Since I have nothing else to do I’m gonna clean my apartment, again. It’s only been three days since I last cleaned it but there’s cat hair everywhery. Laters!
Plugs: Maria, Maria, Chiui, Kari, Justin, Nile, Vashael, Monica, Nicolah, snez, Jhoice, Jaclyn, sarahc, Holly, Aleida, Sakura, Jane, Belinda, kitty
Welcome to Whirlwind, the online home of a 28 year old Swedish artist, web designer and blogger who goes by the name Angelica. The site consists of 544 MB words, photos and art. Please do take a look around.
Du lär ju kunna läsa danska också.
Jag tycker att det är lättare att läsa än norska (fast obegripligt att lyssna på, haha).
I hate it when they split the language and expect us to understand that crazy norweigie stuff, i know I don’t always understand T_T
I know that finnish and estonian are very similiair, i think it’s a norweigan-swedish type of similarity.
sign language is very cool, we have some deaf students at our school and they have much advantages over us. But also they lose the connection we have in conversation due to the fact they have to look at hands/interpretor all the time. so its such a different type of conversation.
you should pick up your french again, It’s good for a resume aswell. I want to learn german XD
hello! well, our language, Filipino, is somewhat similar to Spanish since they occupied the Philippines for 300+ years (okay so i think it was for 333 years..im failing history). so there are similar words and expressions. hehe. japanese and korean also has similar words.
Um, I’m american but our english is similar to that of the UK except they have different slang that we don’t really understand. Like, they call the phone the “dog and bone” and instead of saying “You’re hot” they say “Your fit as f***”. English is english though, it’s spelled the same.
I work at a store that has a lot of South American’s coming in and buying stuff to sell in their country, and every now and then I get a couple of Portuguese customers. I can almost understand everything they say to me, and I speak to them in Spanish and they seem to understand me.
Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian… very understandable and English is my first language. Sometimes I can pick up French too, but a lot of the latin derived languages are easier to understand.
I hear some think German can be easy to decipher versus English due to the fact that both contain gutteral words and sounds.
hmm coincidentally I have spanish orals right now, you blog made me reminisce about the days of when I used to enjoy learning French and Spanish.
I really loved learning French though, I love the way it sounds. And Arabic its one of my favorite languages.
And Trinidadians here have their own language here, while the majority of us speak english, some of it is really dialect and broken mixed with french patois and its odd that we can understand each other by saying a few words like “Yea dat thing dey nah” and somehow everyone will know what “dat thing” is!
Yea so that’s my random rambling of languages. Hope you enjoy the rest of your week
I can speak one and a half!
English and sort-of Tagalog(Filipino(Taglish more like(English+Tagalog))). Sorry for those many brackets.
I don’t study another language until I’m in 8th Grade. Sigh. I was really looking forward to French.
You knew sign language?!? Wow. That is amazing
Thanks for the luck, I’ll keep it in a jar.
I wish I kept up with my languages.. At one point of time, it was Chinese (Cantonese), English, Spanish and French.. a little bit of sign language.
Serbian and Croatian are pretty much the EXACT same language except for a few words. We can understand each other perfectly but if you make the mistake of asking a Croatian if they speak Serbian they’ll hang you from a tree.
P.S the password is “batsandfrogs”
I can only speak two language/s . I love the swedish I just wish I could learn how to speak. U rock girL..well knowing how to speak those language seems pretty hard for me…norwegian is cooL toO.
I’ve hurd one of my aunties friend speaking and yeah I did like it<33
hilarious ->I was just reading about the wonderful benefits of using Colagate whitening toothpaste
haha
yah, everyone regrets the french thing I think, I can speak both so I don’t really relate but It’s definately something I’d recommend, like doing french immersion for sure!
I would have to say.. proper English? They way people spell favourite with the “u.” I love that. Even though, where I live, we don’t spell it that way, I like to and can understand it entirely. I can also understand Spanish, even though I can’t hold a decent conversation to save my life.
The comments should work now. I had to reinstall everything. Some of the content is still.. retstard.
That’s cool that you knew sign language. I’d like to learn that, it sounds like it would be useful.
Hehehe the latin languages are of course very similar (french, italian, spanish). I heard about people who speak portugese can easily understand people who speak spanish, but the other way around could be a little more difficult. I think German & Dutch are very close too, but the Grammar is just aweful (when I think about German). Dutch seems to be kinda hard too, but as a native speaker I never really thought about it. I did talk with and helped out people who were trying to learn Dutch (someone who is a native Spanish/Italian speaker and one girl who is Japanese).
Thanks!
I am never a language-type of person. It seems that you know a lot of languages…
I think the obvious is English/American being simular yet different, while both languages are English (American is not actually a language) yet some words make sense in one language have a complete different meaning in another eg Chips … England they come come for the chip shop with Fish, while in America they come in a bag in Prawn Cocktail, Salt and Vinegar etc flavours.
I learnt french in highschool, but only know the basics.
Just know my English, and the Australian slang language lol!
Russian and languages like Ukrainian and Bolgarian and such have many similar words and I think gramma is alike.. but I can’t entirely understand the other languages (apart from Russian of course) I don’t think they mix those languages in one text.. that’d be odd..
Oh and I am always happy to see a person on combat boots/pink hair.