Languages

[Duplode]

My friend took me to her elementary Swedish class this night. It came off as a lovely, pleasant language, and one which seems surprisingly easy if you have a good grasp of English. That fits well with the impression I had about the other side of the Øresund - even if I was not really understanding what was written, the Danish on the Wikipedia and (possibly) on Jacob and Brian's Facebook posts sounded nicely familiar.

[zaqrack]

Yes, the languages sound familiar but the people are different in Sweden and Denmark - at least that is my brief experience

by the way:
the girlfriend of Andi's brother has a major in Swedish language and is teaching Swedish
the girlfriend of my cousin, Sampi has a major in Danish language and is teaching Danish
that cousin mentioned above has recently moved to Copenhagen

and it is certainily a blessing to the Indo-European language family - English and German sound so familiar then!
but of course having a detached and unique language as your mother tongue has also its blessings

[Overdrijf]

I've been in Hungary this summer. I was quite amused inspecting the outside of one of your cans of beer (while drinking from the inside of course). While the Slavic languages (at least the ones using the Latin alphabet) contained som familiar international words your Hungarian might as well have been Chinese to me (a nice kind of Chinese that is no doubt a great language to use, but stll Chinese). The only language that made any sense was Romanian. I never thought that I was ever going to use my very limited knowledge of French in such a way.
Scandinavian languages are easier to read, at least I can use my Dutch and English to sort it out.

[CTG]

The most beautiful language is still the Italian. As for me, talking in italian is almost like singing.

[Akoss Poo a.k.a. Zorromeister]

Did you know that the word S-H-I-T has an irregular past tense, namely S-H-A-T?  That was a new information for me found in the dictionary recently. 

[BonzaiJoe]

Yep, I knew this :-) it's a very nice word. Shat.

By the way, all languages are practically the same when you think of the big picture. There are some slightly different symbolic representations in sound and some different visual symbolic representations, and some languages have a larger vocabulary than others. Most of them share at least 90% of the same meaning space I guess, and surprisingly many have exactly similar, directly translatable words. One average language probably covers about 40% of meaning space and all languages together might amount to about 50%, although it's hard to estimate. All languages, with very few exceptions such as Zulu, are spoken using the same articulatory techniques. Written languages are all divided into symbols that are lined up in sequence.
The visible side of languages highlight some cultural differences, but the invisible parts speak of global similarity - we are a brotherhood of man.

[Duplode]

One average language probably covers about 40% of meaning space and all languages together might amount to about 50%, although it's hard to estimate.

I'm a little bit confused, but anyway, if I understood correctly that 50% would be the verbal part, and the other half a non-verbal meaning space - could whatever that makes poetry so hard to translate somehow fall into it? 

[CTG]

Hungarian is the easiest language, because even I am able speak it.

[zaqrack]

it has a lot in common with Chinese (more than any other European language)...

[Akoss Poo a.k.a. Zorromeister]

Yep, I knew this :-) it's a very nice word. Shat.

By the way, all languages are practically the same when you think of the big picture. There are some slightly different symbolic representations in sound and some different visual symbolic representations, and some languages have a larger vocabulary than others. Most of them share at least 90% of the same meaning space I guess, and surprisingly many have exactly similar, directly translatable words. One average language probably covers about 40% of meaning space and all languages together might amount to about 50%, although it's hard to estimate. All languages, with very few exceptions such as Zulu, are spoken using the same articulatory techniques. Written languages are all divided into symbols that are lined up in sequence.
The visible side of languages highlight some cultural differences, but the invisible parts speak of global similarity - we are a brotherhood of man.

Yes, because we see the same world. 

And about the articulatory techniques: I think Hungarian, being not an indo-European language, not having any real relatives, is unique in its way. (If you thought about the biological aspect of this: yes, we have the same organs. )

[alanrotoi]

The fact is who has the longer 

[zaqrack]

which brings us to world map of national IQ scores vs. Average penis size:
http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4923

[BonzaiJoe]

I can't check the average IQ in Denmark because our penis size marker covers the whole country.

[CTG]

I can't check the average IQ in Denmark because our penis size marker covers the whole country.

Small country anyway...

[Chulk]

which brings us to world map of national IQ scores vs. Average penis size:
http://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=4923

I must confess it is a really good self-esteem booster seeing I'm over the average in both measures of Argentina (and over maximum values worldwide as well!). It's also funny to see how Sierra Leone or Mali have no inhabitants with dicks (I wonder how the reproduce...)