Trivia (6 Viewers)

vitoria_Ally

Senior Member
Jul 14, 2002
7,232
++ [ originally posted by Erik ] ++


Yes, German. People speak this language (as a second language) in Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia.
I went to these countries and I always spoke German there because most people didn't speak (much of) English.
I heard German is the second language in every European nation south-east from Germany (the Balcans etc.) but I don't know that for sure because I've never been to ALL of these countries.
Thank you for explanation :)
I was a bit surprised cause I was thinking about 2 countries you've mentioned: Czech Republic and Slovakia. I always had to use mixture of Polish and their languages to talk, cause people I met didn't talk in English too well and in German at all :confused: But I can say that only about these 2 countries.
Apparently we met very different people :)

Oh, but I'm saying it because I read in a British newspaper article that it was researched which European language was the most difficult one to learn for foreigners and Dutch was the winner.
Mind you, it's only one investigation so I suppose they could be wrong...
Oh dear, we really use different sources in this matter :)
Few years ago I read some scholarly article about languages of the world. Some scientists made a research to compare a degree of difficulty many languages. And honestly I rememeber only first and second place, cause I was interested in Polish there. First was one of Chinese dialects, but I don't rememeber how it's called. And second was Polish. They compared many characteristics of languages and this second place was caused by mainly tho things: specific gramma and very difficult pronunciation.
Gramma - cause we conjugate/decline almost everything. We don't conjugate/decline only few parts of speech like prepositions, conjunctions - but this is obviously. And we do it with more than 99% words of our language. And of course there are tons of rules to conjugate/decline words, but most of conjugations or declinations are just irregular. And pronunciation - we just rustle. Some words are impossible to pronounce by foreigners - cause of very difficult few sounds put together.
But this is what I've read - not checked ;) and I don't rememeber things about Dutch - but I was reading mainly about first and second place.
 

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Martin

Senior Member
Dec 31, 2000
56,913
++ [ originally posted by nina ] ++
I wouldn't exactly say that german language is the ugliest ... how about the nordic ones? It sounds like they are braking their tounges speaking them.

The most beautiful: spanish :touched:
The sexiest: french
The most interesting: japanese
All in the eye (or ears) of the beholder then. I like Norwegian, Swedish is cool and Danish is just really special ( :rolleyes: ) with their wacky pronounciation (even though in writing it's 90% like Norwegian). I liked most of the Slavic languages I've heard cause there's often a relation to Polish in the pronounciation.

Coolest : 1) French, 2) Italian, 3) English
Least attractive : German, Dutch ( :angel: )

I've also come to appreciate Spanish a bit more, but not Portuguese.

Btw DJ, Cantonese is :cool: :D
 

Slagathor

Bedpan racing champion
Jul 25, 2001
22,708
++ [ originally posted by vitoria ] ++
Thank you for explanation :)
I was a bit surprised cause I was thinking about 2 countries you've mentioned: Czech Republic and Slovakia. I always had to use mixture of Polish and their languages to talk, cause people I met didn't talk in English too well and in German at all :confused: But I can say that only about these 2 countries.
Apparently we met very different people :)
That's probably it - I have a habit of running into the weirdest people! :D On my experience I always had to use German in Eastern-Europe, hence my theory :)

Oh dear, we really use different sources in this matter :)
Few years ago I read some scholarly article about languages of the world. Some scientists made a research to compare a degree of difficulty many languages. And honestly I rememeber only first and second place, cause I was interested in Polish there. First was one of Chinese dialects, but I don't rememeber how it's called. And second was Polish. They compared many characteristics of languages and this second place was caused by mainly tho things: specific gramma and very difficult pronunciation.
Gramma - cause we conjugate/decline almost everything. We don't conjugate/decline only few parts of speech like prepositions, conjunctions - but this is obviously. And we do it with more than 99% words of our language. And of course there are tons of rules to conjugate/decline words, but most of conjugations or declinations are just irregular. And pronunciation - we just rustle. Some words are impossible to pronounce by foreigners - cause of very difficult few sounds put together.
But this is what I've read - not checked ;) and I don't rememeber things about Dutch - but I was reading mainly about first and second place.
That DOES sound very complicated! I'd like some professors to investigate the differences between Polish and Dutch now!! That should be interesting...
Dutch was found so difficult because we have 'Fälle' like in German (you know, die, der, das etc.) but we don't have rules for them. Also, we have so many vowel combinations (au, ei, eu, oe, ai, ui, ee, aa, oo, uu and many more) who all have different pronunciations.
There are no rules to Dutch pronunciation in general either, the character 'e' for example may sound like the German 'e' when combined with a 't' but it can sound like an English 'e' when combined with a 'c' etc etc etc.
Then we also put dots and stripes on top of characters (é, ä, etc)

And there's MUCH more... :stress: :D

But like I said, some professor should really compare Polish and Dutch!
 

vitoria_Ally

Senior Member
Jul 14, 2002
7,232
++ [ originally posted by Erik ] ++


That's probably it - I have a habit of running into the weirdest people! :D On my experience I always had to use German in Eastern-Europe, hence my theory :)

That DOES sound very complicated! I'd like some professors to investigate the differences between Polish and Dutch now!! That should be interesting...
Dutch was found so difficult because we have 'Fälle' like in German (you know, die, der, das etc.) but we don't have rules for them. Also, we have so many vowel combinations (au, ei, eu, oe, ai, ui, ee, aa, oo, uu and many more) who all have different pronunciations.
There are no rules to Dutch pronunciation in general either, the character 'e' for example may sound like the German 'e' when combined with a 't' but it can sound like an English 'e' when combined with a 'c' etc etc etc.
Then we also put dots and stripes on top of characters (é, ä, etc)

And there's MUCH more... :stress: :D

But like I said, some professor should really compare Polish and Dutch!
And THAT sounds difficult as well! And it would be really interesting: such comparition between our languages :)
 

vitoria_Ally

Senior Member
Jul 14, 2002
7,232
++ [ originally posted by Alex ] ++


How about you and vitoria? :D;)
Sure: can you imagine me and Erik sitting and saying all the time:
Yes but we have this thing bad, oh no but we have that thing worse ... and we would say such things thousand times :D;)
But like Erik said: not my thing as well :)
 

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