Random sentences in foreign languages

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AA - your post reminds me of seeing the Rosetta stone in the British Museum a few years back, that was a memorable experience. Want to go back to ogle the Mesopatamian artefacts some more.

Phrases used at school on a random basis:
'Du bist ein Spiegelei'
(you are a fried egg)

Wo ist der Strassenbahnhaltestelle?
(where is the tram stop?)
(got to love those compound words... like playing a game of sardines with descriptors)

Ah, mon petit chou!
(is a real phrase, literally 'my little cabbage', but chou used as endearing form of 'cute', so used by parents of children)

Not cabbage

It's as in chou à la crème !

Or shuu cream in Japanese as I just learned

Last edited by zena4 on 29 Jan 2011, 1:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

Nire bizitza gorrotatzen dut.

Mmm, ich habe mein Lunch gerade essen, aber jetzt bin ich ein bisschen hungrig wieder mal.

(très savoureux!)

"Quand on ne sait pas se servir d'une kalachnikov, on s'abstient."

"Déchu, déchu, déchu."
Avec l'akchant overniat ah ah.

"Déchu, archi-déchu" dit l'archiduchesse.

Et voilà.





Ah ah.

Uill, chan eil mi cinnteach ach tha mi a' smaointinn gu bhiel cus Frangais ann anns an còmhradh seo! 'S e beagan Gàidhlig a tha dìth air!

The Jutlandish dialect of Danish is the only language, I know of, where you can make a sentence using only wowels:

Æ æ u' å æ ø u' i æ å
to standard Danish (rigsdansk): Jeg er ude på øen ude i åen
English: i'm out on the island out in the creek (not 100% correct )

If my memory isn't faulty, the above sentence is part of a song.
Jutlandish, especially Southern Jutlandish has grammar that is quite similar to English (for instance: æ = the).

Bonus Low German sentence:

Mann in der tønd' und der flu' in der nachtpott'
Danish: Manden i tønden og fluen i natpotten
English: Man in the barrel and the fly in the loo

The sentence above is usually uttered as an English speaker would saw "wow"... the "fly in the loo" part is usually used to uplift the sentence to something similar to "holy sh*t". Low German is essentially German and Danish mixed together.

Wow, Jutlandic must sound even worse than Danish.

Woot, I understood almost all that. Something like: "Well, I'm not sure, but I think that there is too much French in this thread/discussion! I must add a little Gaelic!"

Although I thought "think" was "smaoineachadh", isn't it? Maybe I really should start learning Scottish Gaelic again...


Allow me to give more language trivia:

Often in Basque, a sentence will be almost the exact opposite order of an English sentence.

"Donostiatik datorren papera bestea hartu dugu."

Translation: We received the other paper that comes from San Sebastian (Donostia)

A direct translation is:
From-San Sebatian that-comes paper the-other received we.

If you read the direct translation backwards, it's the exact same order as grammatically correct English! This causes much trouble for learners of many other languages, but I think it's awesome.

The song is : Og mi' navn er Knud (And my name is Knud), by De Nattergale.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmOctr7O0gs

Enjoy, all of you!

(And Dunbots, no, I don't think Jutlandic sounds worse than Danish, maybe even better, but listen and judge for yourself. )

Here is a translation:

And my name is Knud, I have been thrown out.
I have left, I have gone away.

For my wife has taken one called Vagn.
He was my best friend, I'll sure miss him.

And she has taken the children and the sofa corner,
so now I only have my tractor and my dog. Woof, woof, woof!

I am out in the creek, out on the island.
My tractor stopped, and my dog is dead.

But never mind, I'm going to badminton,
for now I want to be a world mushroom.

(Mushroom is "champignon" in Danish, so they mix it up with "champion".)

I listened to that song, and the all vowel part sounds ridiculous. Are they a comedy group or something? It seems like it.

Smaoin is the verb, and smaoineachadh is the more common verbal noun form. Smaointinn is an alternative verbal noun form. Gaelic is like that--there's variance in certain forms. You'll see and hear Tha mi a' smaoineachadh too.

'S e beagan Gàidhlig a tha dìth air would translate into coherent English as "It needs a little Gaelic."

There's different ways to say "I must add a little Gaelic (to it)" but one easy way is Feumaidh mi cur beagan Gàidhlig ris.


Co-dhiù no co-dheth, ma e do roghainn thu a' Gàidhlig a dh' ionnsachadh a-rithist, bidh sin math air mo shon! Tha mi a' smaointinn gu bheil mi leam fhìn agus a tha ag ionnsachadh Gaidhlig aig WP.

Ah ok, I see. I didn't understand much of this though. "Anyway or ____, if you choose to learn Gaelic again, it would be good on my ____! I think that I with myself and that is learning Gaelic on WP." The last sentence makes no sense at all to me.

Beno, ez nago ziur, baina uste dut hizketa hau frantses gehiegi daukala! Euskara pixka bat behar du!

Your sentences, but in my favorite language, Basque. Both Scottish and Irish Gaelic take forever to say anything.

Yeah, it sounds funny... fortunately not all the Jutlandic is like that, only if you deliberately try to coin a sentence with vowels only.

Yes, De Nattergale ("The Nightingales") are a comedy group. They are / were very popular in Denmark, but I'm not sure they exist as a group anymore.

Their biggest succes might be the Christmas calendar TV-series "The Julekalender" (The Christmas Calendar). In that, some of the characters were some pixies who spoke a language that was English and Jutlandic mixed up.

Co-dhiù no co-dheth = kind of a longer version of co-dhiù, and means more or less the same thing. It's sort of like "Either way" or "one way or another" in English. It's not really translatable.

air mo shon = this is airson , which means more like "for the sake of" in English, with the possessive pronoun mo stuck in it. It means "for my sake." You can do this with all the possessive pronouns: air do shon, for your sake; air a shon, for its/his sake; air ar son, for their sake, etc. Amusing side note: when spoken, air mo shon (for my sake) sounds very much like air mo thòn (on my ass), but context usually makes it clear what you mean!

That second sentence uses agus in its more fluid form. In Gaelic, agus/is/'s doesn't have as rigid of meaning as "and" does in English. It can be used to stick two concepts together in a sentence and the listener infers the meaning from context. In that sense, agus can cover many conjunctions and connecting phrases in the English.

Bha agam ri dol a dh'obair is mi cho tinn ris a' chù means literally in English "I had to go to work and I as sick as a dog." But with the implied meaning of agus here, the Gaelic listener understands this as "I had to go to work even though I am as sick as a dog."

So, Tha mi a' smaointinn gu bheil mi leam fhìn agus a tha ag ionnsachadh Gaidhlig aig WP translates literally as "I think I am by myself/alone and who is learning Gaelic at WP." But the Gaelic understanding of that is "I think I'm the only one who is learning Gaelic at WP."

Ojalá supiera más idiomas.