Does anyone know a second language?

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in norway, apart from dialects SO local that i can barely understand them at all, there is a completely unrelated official language as well, namely saami/lappish. while even the most difficult dialects are still nordic/germanic, the saami language is finno-ugric.
it is _extremely uncommon_ for your average norwegian to even
know a SINGLE word.

the lapps were persecuted to the point of killing them off, today they are associated w light ridicule, "you saami" is still an insult, and nobody has the slightest interest in learning lappish.

i never remember learning a single word in school, and the only word i have picked up myself is...
the word for "norway".
norwegian: Norge.
saami: Norga.

that's still good, at least it's the same root. saami language is not even a indo-europan one so it's completely uncomprehensible, like finnish.

I don't know a single finnish word but I can do a decent parody of it



I've always had this problem too. it sucks to know a language when you can't really use it in real conversation :p unless people make actual pauses. (this is another reason why I hate French, these people don't make damn pauses. and their numbering system is a joke!)

its "uralic"
i actually know more finnish than saami:
yksi = 1, kaksi = 2, perkele = damn, suomi = finland, ruotsi = sweden.

thats it.
i can repeat that, over and over if i ever visit finland.

//

forgot to add:

i "know" swedish and danish of course :S i wouldnt really try to speak either, especially not danish sorry danes, its just a very.,.. strange sound you guys have and being too similar to my own language, it would just come out weird, IN FACT scandinavians should never (ever) try to speak each others languages on tv, its embarassing as hell :I

^^ I think you'll like this

and btw, I totally agree about Danish- I understand written Danish perfectly, but spoken is a f*****g joke! they swallow half the letters! and the letters that they pronounce they pronounce the *wrong* way lol

and yeah, all you have to do to parody Finnish is say a lot of kekkikokkukakkokukki real fast hehe

we ALL knew that, its been like an "folk myth" forever, swedes have to resort to english and stuff, and we're like "men herregud da... " also, that article was SLAM on the front pages here

a collective national giggle

and thats my finnish immitation as well, for lappish make it less harsh, and more friendly, and soften it "goika gaika joika" same accent, bur friendlyer

my animation teacher was estonian, to me, that sounded very very similar to finnish.

Do you really mean Norse, or was that meant to be Norwegian? I can't imagine anyone giving lectures in Norse today?

Good for them! I tried to learn Hebrew about 15-20 years ago, and the way everything is taken the male way really annoyed me. For instance how the word for child and boy is the same. Or if both men and women are present then verbs take the male form. Grrr....

You can speak Chinese but no Japanese? Pretty weird

If you meet a beautiful Finnish woman, you can say to her: "Sulla on hassut kasvot." She will love it. (joke).

you cant?
a friend of mine wanted to study scandinavian languages. norse was a course. hah that rhymed.
but it was.

why would norse be an ignored topic in the world of education?

oddfinn: for pure fun, im gonna say that to a chick who knows some finnish, get the translation from her see if she can crack it. if she cant, she will probably go out of her way to figure it out, and dont worry, coming from me she will assume its some sort of joke

the second one is Japanese..it's also called nihongo
I could speak it..

PS:chinese and japanese are really quite different

are you either? maybe undercoveralien thought you were one of the two, and found it strange that you spoke another idunno.

norwegian is NOT similar to a tongue twister.
it is very smooth and comfortable to listen to.
especially trøndersk, sjø.

Yes Japanese writing is based off of chinese script but has been adapted to suit their language although the do have japanese and chinses pronounciation of the same things at times, not completely sure how it works.

its the magic of "loan words"

its the same miracle that makes "pizza" a similar word in norwegian, english, spanish and italian. :]

Really? Then who are all these native Scottish Gaelic speakers that I'm coming in contact with in my Gaelic studies?

There are a few thousand native speakers left, in the UK and in Canada. It's dwindling, yes, because fewer children are learning Gaelic at home. But there are native speakers still around, and many of those native speakers happily speak Gaelic in preference to English, with anyone, even students like me.

There are still hundreds of thousands of native Welsh speakers too (Welsh, BTW, isn't Gaelic--it belongs to a different branch of the Celtic languages). Welsh, in fact, is the strongest of the surviving Celtic languages. The second is Breton, in France. Irish still has several thousand native speakers left, although most Irish people today are learning Irish in school, as a second language.

Of the 6 Celtic languages alive in the 20th century, only 2 have been officially deemed previously "extinct" at some point (no native or fluent speakers left): Manx Gaelic and Cornish. Efforts have been made to revive both these languages. But the other Celtic languages are still quite alive, although Scottish Gaelic is very threatened due to the small number of children learning it from their family and native communities.

As for you question about whether we should conserve minority languages, the answer is a resounding yes. Why? Because languages are storehouses of human experience and cultures, unique to a specific people. Languages preserve and pass on knowledge of a people that can't be summed up in a history book, especially one written in a different language. Death of a language, anywhere in the world, is an irretrievable loss.

Back to topic:

I speak German, and on a good day, French. I can speak a little Gaelic, enough to carry on a conversation with a fluent speaker. But because I've been spending so much time with learning Gaelic, I'm forgetting my German and French. It takes me some time to get my brain back in gear with German or French. And for some reason, it's harder with French.

I can say a few things modern Greek, Spanish, Italian Arabic and Yiddish.

In the past I've also studied Latin, Ancient Greek, and biblical Hebrew as well.