The mistakes you've made

[Allie]

In order, I have formally studied German, Spanish, and Japanese, and in class one day, these three languages came together and left me mumbling and scratching my head.

There is a word in Japanese, a German loanword, arubaito. This is the Japanese representation of the German word arbeit (the verb is arbeiten with arbeit as the stem), meaning work. In Japanese it's slightly more narrow in meaning and specifically means part-time job, but at the time it was the only word the class knew for work. Some of you may also know the present-tense, first person, singular conjugation in Spanish is formed by attaching an o to the stem.

My Japanese professor asked me what I do after school, and I wanted to say, I work, which is, arubaito wo shimasu. I immediately said, arubaito, which my brain convinced me was the first person conjugation of the word meaning to work (arubait+o). I then just kind of trailed off and looked stupid for several seconds, but thankfully my instructor knew I knew Japanese well enough that I was probably just blanking for no reason, and he asked me a couple of extra questions before I properly answered his question.

A German borrowing, Japanese phonotactics, and Spanish conjugation were not my friends that day.

I've done that, though not in Japanese. But I always find myself wanting to attach the Spanish conjugation endings to random words, to make them into verbs.

[finlay]

I never really had much trouble pronouncing German; I had the best '?' in my class, to the best of my knowledge, although I was told it was verging on being an 'i'. A lot of others insisted on not pronouncing umlauts, as well, or just generally pronouncing it with an Anglicised or Scottish-ised accent. The best I can think of was my friend (who actually still does German, unlike me) who has an English accent and always pronounced er as [@:] or [@r\] before a vowel. I then told him it should be more like the English air (more like, not exactly like).
When I first started Latin, my teacher told us all that v should be pronounced w. Now nobody actually says it as w anymore, just as v. The Belgian girl in my Chemistry class was talking about Latin in passing and I said to her ego sum piscis (my favourite phrase). She didn't recognise it immediately and said that they pronounced it differently in Belgium. And there was once a French exchange student in our class who pronounced it slightly differently.

And when I used to study French and German I sometimes got a couple of words mixed up. For some reason the one I remember is the word for four, vier in German, quatre in French. For some reason I once thought of vier in a French context.

[Whimemsz]

Hmm...well, just the other day, we had a Spanish test, and in the cultura section, one of the questions was something like ?C?mo se llama vaqueros en Argentina? ("What are cowboys called in Argentina?"). The answer is gaucho, but for some unknown reason I answered with guagua. Which is the Cuban word for "bus."

And if I got any of the Spanish above wrong, I shall need to hit myself.

'Nos gustan <kill> a Jos?'

I really don't know enough Spanish to comment on this, but I will anyway. And then the native or fluent speakers can correct me .

That doesn't make much sense to me...do you mean queremos matar a Jos?? I think "we want" makes more sense than "we like."

[Delthayre]

Talking about &#12450;&#12523;&#12496;&#12452;&#12488; in Japanese class set off a bunch of German instincts that I had to fight to keep down.

I had the best German pronounciation in my class, in part because I was about the only one who tried to pronounce it rightly. I did tend to have problems with stress and <er> segments. The way I sometimes pronounce,"aber," sounds almost French. Those were a frustrating four years.

I've noticed in my Japanese class that most of the students round their u's and use approximate r's rather than preferring the more proper unrounded u and tapped r (at least that's what it sounds like to me).

[Soap]

I know I'm the one of the few people in my Spanish 101 class who can pronounce the Spanish correctly, but seeing as I've taken 6 years of Spanish already and this class is just one that I'm taking so I can get an easy A, that's not really anything that makes me feel proud of myself.

アルバイト

What does that mean??

[Whimemsz]

Ah, yes, pronunciation. There are several people, including myself, in my Spanish class who can truly pronounce Spanish quite well. Most of the other kids have improved a lot from when we started though.

The things I really have troble with are (stop)+r or r+(stop) combinations (e.g., traer).

[pharazon]

Ah, yes, pronunciation. There are several people, including myself, in my Spanish class who can truly pronounce Spanish quite well. Most of the other kids have improved a lot from when we started though.

Never having been in a school language class, I've wondered: how much pronunciation do they teach? Do they teach allophones and such, or do people just say [edad] for 'edad' (i.e. rather than [eD_oaD_o])?

The things I really have troble with are (stop)+r or r+(stop) combinations (e.g., traer).

Really? Because the r is tapped?

[Soap]

I still use the American r\ for Spanish <r> in some positions, especially word-final. Personally I think there has to be a small vowel before and after every /4/ or /r/, so in Andanese I made it a rule that <r> has to have vowels on both sides (the rn in my sig is a retroflex n).

[Allie]

I have trouble with a lot of sounds in Spanish, even though I've been doing it for 6 years. But the stop + r combinations are difficult for me. And the final o, for some reason, I can never pronounce properly.

[Mael_Duin]

[]

[monoglot]

アルバイト

What does that mean??

That is the Japanese katakana for the word arubaito we mentioned above.

As for killing or reveling in the accidental death of poor Jos?, "We want Jos? to die would be," "Queremos que muera Jos?." "We want that Jos? die" (subjunctive). "We want to kill Jos?" would be "Queremos matar a Jos?."

[Delthayre]

アルバイト

What does that mean??

That is the Japanese katakana for the word arubaito we mentioned above.

I think he originally saw it as a sequence of symbols and numbers (which is what it displays as in my post), but it somehow corrected to display the kana when he quoted.

My Japanese IME has been misbehaving a lot.

[Drydic]

As for killing or reveling in the accidental death of poor Jos?, "We want Jos? to die would be," "Queremos que muera Jos?." "We want that Jos? die" (subjunctive). "We want to kill Jos?" would be "Queremos matar a Jos?."

That's it! I said Queremos morir a Jos?, and I meant to say matar. Stupid Latin-raised brain.

And it wouldn't be so accidental.

[monoglot]

My least favorite Spanish instructor was named Jos?. I sense a conspiracy. I didn't want to kill my instructor, I just wanted to be very truant.

[Drydic]

My least favorite Spanish instructor was named Jos?. I sense a conspiracy. I didn't want to kill my instructor, I just wanted to be very truant.

Well, we didn't really want to kill him...it was all good natured stuff. He was one of the best teachers I've had.

What really sucked about it was I was a Senior stuck in a class of Sophmores. Gad.

[Nuntar]

I still use the American r\ for Spanish <r> in some positions, especially word-final. Personally I think there has to be a small vowel before and after every /4/ or /r/, so in Andanese I made it a rule that <r> has to have vowels on both sides (the rn in my sig is a retroflex n).

Do you mean there has to be a small vowel before and after /4/ and /r/ in Spanish, or that it's impossible to pronounce them without? Ar?ndron has plenty of stop+/4/ clusters, and I don't find them difficult to pronounce. /r/ must have vowels on both sides, though, unless it's word-initial.

[Soap]

I think there's a small vowel there, yeah. I also think there's a small vowel between the k and t in ktuvok and similar words, though. I don't know if I'm correct or not.

[vec]

Well, my only mistake is that I haven't been focused enough to really learn Indonesian. I'll have to go there to learn the language

[linguoboy]

I still use the American r\ for Spanish <r> in some positions, especially word-final. Personally I think there has to be a small vowel before and after every /4/ or /r/, so in Andanese I made it a rule that <r> has to have vowels on both sides (the rn in my sig is a retroflex n).

Actually, a lot of native speakers have trouble with /r/ in these positions, too--at least judging by the widespread tendency in colloquial Caribbean Spanish to replace it with [l] or [5]. I especially associate it with speakers from [pwEltor:iko].

[Jipí]

Just wanted to say this - as the native speaker I am ... (I'm not going to get notified):

ex. I would often say things akin to, "Ich du liebst.," instead of "Ich liebst du."

Ack! That's wrong wrong wrong! It's "Ich liebe dich." - see, "du" is an accusative object here, and the accusative equivalent of "du" is "dich"!

Other times, the error could be akin to, "T?tete er ich " rather than, "Ich t?tete er.

That's "Ich t?tete ihn." or "Ich habe ihn get?tet." "er" is also accusative, so it must be "ihn".

As a more minor problem, it took me a long time to adapt to using werden to form the future tense, rather than the modal will, which I tended toward as it resembled the English use.

Actually, in daily speech, you only use present and past forms. Future is in most of the cases expressed by present + something that makes clear you will or plan to do it.

Irregular verbs were a general nuisance, but none so much as nehmen. I never did learn that one properly.

nehmen, nahm, genommen

What about "Konjunktiv I" and II? I guess this isn't easy, too - or the statual passive and the actional passive (Zustands- and Vorgangspassiv)...

Code: Select all

     | Nominative | Genitive      | Dative        | Accusative
---------------------------------------------------------------
1sg  | ich        | mein          | mir           | mich
2sg  | du         | dein          | dir           | dich
3sg  | er/sie/es  | sein/ihr/sein | ihm/ihr/ihm   | sich
---------------------------------------------------------------
1pl  | wir        | unser         | uns           | uns
2pl  | ihr        | euer          | euch          | euch
3pl  | sie        | ihr           | ihnen         | sich

Where there are three words in one row, it's m/f/n.
ACC + "selbst" = dative (like Engl. myself, yourself, himself...)

Code: Select all

           |  m  |  f  |  n 
-----------------------------
Nominative | der | die | das
Genitive   | des | der | des
Dative     | dem | der | dem
Accusative | den | die | das

[Delthayre]

Heh, I could never get the hange of accusative pronouns.

Actually, in daily speech, you only use present and past forms. Future is in most of the cases expressed by present + something that makes clear you will or plan to do it.

Damn, they (teachers) never even mentioned that.

What about "Konjunktiv I" and II? I guess this isn't easy, too - or the statual passive and the actional passive (Zusatands- and Vorgangspassiv)...

Konjunctiv I and II you and Hwhatting explained to me a few months ago, but I've never even heard of that passive distinction.

[Whimemsz]

Ah, yes, pronunciation. There are several people, including myself, in my Spanish class who can truly pronounce Spanish quite well. Most of the other kids have improved a lot from when we started though.

Never having been in a school language class, I've wondered: how much pronunciation do they teach? Do they teach allophones and such, or do people just say [edad] for 'edad' (i.e. rather than [eD_oaD_o])?

No, my teacher doesn't mention that sort of thing, but when she speaks Spanish in class (which is what she often does), she pronounces it that way. Plus our textbook does mention the allophones and such. I'll note, for the record, that I pronounce "edad" as [eDa], I think.

The things I really have troble with are (stop)+r or r+(stop) combinations (e.g., traer).

Really? Because the r is tapped?

Yes. I can't manage to quickle switch from a stop (especially one of the dental ones!) to /r/ or vice-versa.

[con quesa]

Plus our textbook does mention the allophones and such.

We don't go over allophones in my class (by the way, could someone explain what the deal is with "b" and "v"? I think "b" is /b/ and "v" is /B/, but I'm not sure about that). I am in Spanish 1 though, so perhaps we learn that later.

do people just say [edad] for 'edad'

Yep. Like I said, we don't learn about the allophones. In fact, I just discovered that sometimes <d> is /D/ earlier today, by reading ahead in my Spanish book.

One of the mistakes I frequently make is screwing up accents over the letter a (?). In Spanish, an accent over a vowel means the syllable is stressed (and therefore the a isn't made into a schwa" So "est?" /Esta/ is different from "esta" /Est@/. However, in my conlang Saimiar, ? represents a schwa! So when I hear "esta", I think the final "a" should be ? because it's a schwa sound.

[Nuntar]

b, v ? like the b in box /b/; after a vowel, l, or r, it is between English w and v, like v but only with the two lips rather than the lower teeth on the upper lip

[Soap]

The letter "a" should never be a schwa in American Spanish. Maybe in Europe it is that way in some dialects. As for b and v, I think they are both the same: /b/, except /B/ intervocalically. <d> and <g> follow the same patterns: they are stops, but change to fricatives between vowels.