Member Countries and Known Languages

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ol bofosh
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by ol bofosh »

Brighton and Hove city, Sussex, SE England.

Accent description: a cross between RP and Cockney. Estuary English effectively.

Posher than Ron Weasley, hovering around Harry Potter, sometimes leaning towards Hermione Granger.
It was about time I changed this.

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the duke of nuke
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by the duke of nuke »

I was born in Hampshire and raised there with some breaks to live in Normandy, the South Bay Area, and Cambridge. Now, I'm 23 and I live in Leicestershire.
My surviving family are all English, but from different areas - my mum is from South Yorkshire and my dad from North Somerset (but of Welsh and Scouse extraction). My maternal grandfather was a Czech-Polish Jew born in Germany, and although his L1 was German he refused to speak it as an adult.

My L1 is English, and I speak something quite close to the English standard. People tend to say that I sound posh - but this has been muted by my time as a student at Cambridge, believe it or not, and my usual accent is now further from the standard and more like colloquial southern English English.
I don't have yod-dropping, and my /r/ is [ɹ]; about the only RP distinction I don't make is NORTH-CURE (both are /ɔː(r)/), although NEAR and SQUARE for me tend toward [ɪː] and [ɛː].
As for other non-standard features, I sometimes affricate /tr dr tj dj/ to something like [tʃɹ dʒɹ tʃ dʒ]; and I tend to glottalise syllable-final /p t k/, especially after short vowels, and sometimes to the extent of final /t/ becoming [ʔ].

I used to be converational in French, having gone to a French school for half a year, and had lessons from the age of about 9 to 16; these days I'm very rusty, although I can usually make sense of written French if I'm allowed to look up words! I also did GCSE German (although I can hardly say that I speak it).
Last edited by the duke of nuke on Mon Jun 23, 2014 9:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Tropylium »

Finnish. 29. I've lived my whole life in the Helsinki area, but I've picked up some Ostrobothnian dialect features from my mother's side of the family (hardly more than individual words).

My written English is regular confused for native if I don't specifically mention being Finnish. My speech, not so much.

I can also get by uncomfortably in Swedish and marginally in German; currently I'm learning bits of Hungarian and Northern Sami.
[ˌʔaɪsəˈpʰɻ̊ʷoʊpɪɫ ˈʔæɫkəɦɔɫ]

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by gaiusmarchaave »

Filipino, 19. L1 is Tagalog and L2 is English.

My father is fluent in Chavacano, a creole of Spanish in Philippines.

I have begun learning Russian (through library resources), and Portuguese and Spanish through Duolingo.

However, I might start learning Chavacano soon, since it is endangered.

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by hwhatting »

German / 49 / m

Born in the Rhine area and grown up in NW Germany (Eastern Frisia), so my German is a mix of Rhine / Ruhr features and Northern German features. Now I live on the Rhine again when in Germany, but I spend a lot of time on consulting jobs abroad.
Languages (besides German): pretty fluent in English and Russian; I get along in Polish, French, and Dutch; I can read Latin, Spanish, and Italian (in that order of competency) without looking into the dictionary too often; I have some practice in reading Ancient Greek (mostly NT Koine), some very basic Arabic (MSA and Lebanese), Kazakh, Turkish, and Uzbek; and as a speaker of Russian and Polish I'm able to read other Slavic languages.

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Pole, the
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Pole, the »

hwhatting wrote:German / 49 / m
L/A/S? Lel. :P
The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by hwhatting »

Pole, the wrote:
hwhatting wrote:German / 49 / m
L/A/S? Lel. :P
Nie rozumiem?

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Tesrin »

I'm English, born and raised in Durham (where my accent would commonly be described as Dunelmian) and now living in Bolton (where my accent is commonly described as Irish, because people here apparently haven't a clue what a Durham accent is).

Over the years I've learned the basics of Norwegian, Japanese, Welsh, French, German and Latin. I'm moderate at French and Norwegian and absolutely terrible at the rest of them. One day I'll have the time to sit down and learn them properly. I tried learning Klingon once but it didn't go well. Couldn't get my head around the mixed upper- and lower-case alphabet.

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by din »

hwhatting wrote:
Pole, the wrote:
hwhatting wrote:German / 49 / m
L/A/S? Lel. :P
Nie rozumiem?
"49 / m / Germany" would be the 'regular' order (Age/Sex/Location, rather than your L/A/S)
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by hwhatting »

I see. I hope I didn't confuse anybody.

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by jmcd »

I doubt you did; you just violated an arbitrary norm.

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Birdlang »

I am male. I am in school still. I speak english. I dropped out of Spanish because it was tough. I know a lot of languages by ear from listening to so much foreign music. I also can read a fair amount of languages, ranging from Albanian to romanized Pashto. But I don't understand them all well and have a lot of language knowledge. I am from the USA.
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by R.Rusanov »

Can you understand what birds are saying?
Slava, čĭstŭ, hrabrostĭ!

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Birdlang »

R.Rusanov wrote:Can you understand what birds are saying?
No. But I made a language for the alien ones in my conworld. There are three families, one triconsonental roots, one agglutinative, one polysynthetic. But I think birds are saying things sometimes, but that might be because my brain is a little crazy sometimes,
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Birdlang »

R.Rusanov wrote:Born in the Balkans, moved to New Orleans (LA) at 6. Picked up standard english at school, with a few local features like "y'all", l-velarization, the cot-caught merger, æ > ɛə, etc. Now I'm studying in Baton Rouge. Trying to diversify my accent somewhat. Hope it works... Gonna study in Manchester next year. That will be interesting

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1qTzUDtHjrz
What country?
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Nannalu »

Rather surprised I never did this.

24, m, UK

I'm an Australian with a Finnish family. My L1 is English but I am fluent in Afrikaans (to some degree anyway, it's getting a bit rusty at the mo'. I understand a smattering of Finnish and Swedish here and there but definitely not to the degree that I knew as a child. I've tried re-learning Finnish but I don't have the time at the moment and I feel the best option would be to relocate to Helsinki (which I don't have the money for). I've studied a few languages here and there but the ones that stand out to me the most are Italian, Berber languages (specifically Tamasheq Tuareg and Tamaziɣt Tarifit), Yucatec, and I've had a good dive into the pool of Circassian (poetic, aye?).
I have a good amount of readability in Spanish and Italian and pieces of French. I can usually catch on to bits of Dutch too from my Afrikaans.
næn:älʉː

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Birdlang »

Nannalu wrote:Rather surprised I never did this.

24, m, UK

I'm an Australian with a Finnish family. My L1 is English but I am fluent in Afrikaans (to some degree anyway, it's getting a bit rusty at the mo'. I understand a smattering of Finnish and Swedish here and there but definitely not to the degree that I knew as a child. I've tried re-learning Finnish but I don't have the time at the moment and I feel the best option would be to relocate to Helsinki (which I don't have the money for). I've studied a few languages here and there but the ones that stand out to me the most are Italian, Berber languages (specifically Tamasheq Tuareg and Tamaziɣt Tarifit), Yucatec, and I've had a good dive into the pool of Circassian (poetic, aye?).
I have a good amount of readability in Spanish and Italian and pieces of French. I can usually catch on to bits of Dutch too from my Afrikaans.
Cool. Tamazight is pretty interesting having the only true alphabet in the Middle East and North Africa.
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Nesescosac »

Nannalu wrote:Yucatec
Yaan a tsikbal in wéetel!
I did have a bizarrely similar (to the original poster's) accident about four years ago, in which I slipped over a cookie and somehow twisted my ankle so far that it broke
What kind of cookie?
Aeetlrcreejl > Kicgan Vekei > me /ne.ses.tso.sats/

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Nannalu »

Nesescosac wrote:
Nannalu wrote:Yucatec
Yaan a tsikbal in wéetel!
How did I know you were gonna reply?! Now I need to brush up on my Maya!
næn:älʉː

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Birdlang »

Nesescosac wrote:
Nannalu wrote:Yucatec
Yaan a tsikbal in wéetel!
What does this mean, and why does stress have to be marked on that word, or is it tone???
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Birdlang »

the duke of nuke wrote:I was born in Hampshire and raised there with some breaks to live in Normandy, the South Bay Area, and Cambridge. Now, I'm 23 and I live in Leicestershire.
My surviving family are all English, but from different areas - my mum is from South Yorkshire and my dad from North Somerset (but of Welsh and Scouse extraction). My maternal grandfather was a Czech-Polish Jew born in Germany, and although his L1 was German he refused to speak it as an adult.

My L1 is English, and I speak something quite close to the English standard. People tend to say that I sound posh - but this has been muted by my time as a student at Cambridge, believe it or not, and my usual accent is now further from the standard and more like colloquial southern English English.
I don't have yod-dropping, and my /r/ is [ɹ]; about the only RP distinction I don't make is NORTH-CURE (both are /ɔː(r)/), although NEAR and SQUARE for me tend toward [ɪː] and [ɛː].
As for other non-standard features, I sometimes affricate /tr dr tj dj/ to something like [tʃɹ dʒɹ tʃ dʒ]; and I tend to glottalise syllable-final /p t k/, especially after short vowels, and sometimes to the extent of final /t/ becoming [ʔ].

I used to be converational in French, having gone to a French school for half a year, and had lessons from the age of about 9 to 16; these days I'm very rusty, although I can usually make sense of written French if I'm allowed to look up words! I also did GCSE German (although I can hardly say that I speak it).
Isn't Scouse the English dialect with 22 vowels?
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Yiuel Raumbesrairc »

Citizenship : Canada, technically a Resident of Quebec
Residency : Japan
Age and Gender : 29, male
Languages : English (native, but see text), French (native, first language), Esperanto (fluent), Japanese (fluent, N1), Spanish (greetings) and Swedish (greetings)

I was born in a small town, in Northern Ontario, and lived the first few months of my life in the northern marshes of monstrous flies in a small military base. I moved twice in Ontaro, until 6 years old.

This explains my proficiency in English; until 6, I was actually more comfortable in English than any other language. I acquired my English with my neighborhood friends who were mostly English anyway. But, as it happens, my parents were both Québécois, and we moved to francophone Quebec when I started my second grade. French eventually became my main language, though it took over 11 years to actually acquire Quebec French completely (as demonstrated by my usage of sacres; I started to use them at 17 years old, uncommon enough to shock my friends, both ways). So I am native in two languages, French and English. However, I never went to an English school, and I didn't practice much of my life. My longest stay in an English-speaking environment, after moving to Quebec, has been 2 months of babysitting my cousins in British Columbia.

Over my years in Japan, it seems I reacquired my English pronunciation; I especially lost the Quebec French giveaway of pronouncing "th" as /t/ or /d/. (How did I do it? Probably through all the phonetic correction I did with my English students... the irony.) Last week, I was able to easily pass as a native; a girl, quite professional English native English teacher, with whom I spoke over an hour, was unable to detect my French accent. (She was shocked when she learned it was my second language, and that I would misplace accents on words that I had only ever read.) My accent, excluding those stress mistakes, is General American. (I do not have the common Canadian feature, and I do not use Eh?; I do use its Quebec French equivalent of Han?) The most regionalized accent I was said to have from people was an nondescript accent from Oregon or New York Hipster. (I am not sure the second one is a good thing, though)

My French accent is Montreal Basilectal French. I have all the features of the modern Montreal standard, including its vocalic harmony. I do sound a little bit formal, but this is probably due to my education by a teacher who focused on a more normative form of Quebec French. I can speak pure Joual with my father: a non-Canadian francophone won't understand anything out of it. I can put on a false Hex French accent as needed, or use Academic French.

I have just passed the highest level of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test; most Japanese would describe my Japanese as near Native. I can pass as a native over the phone, some of my friends must remind themselves that Japanese is only my fourth language. I am not however fully native, and I'd still have a lot more to read and watch and listen before I can really say that. That being said, because I am most probably going back to Quebec within the year, it may stall. (Then again, it may not. I'll probably watch some Japanese anime and read some manga in the original language just because I can.)

Otherwise, I can say a few things in Swedish (interestingly, my pronunciation is not bad for a beginner) and Spanish; I am fully fluent in Esperanto (let's keep it to this) and I have notions of Chinese and Swahili.
Last edited by Yiuel Raumbesrairc on Sat Feb 14, 2015 12:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by Nesescosac »

Birdlang wrote:
Nesescosac wrote:
Nannalu wrote:Yucatec
Yaan a tsikbal in wéetel!
What does this mean, and why does stress have to be marked on that word, or is it tone???
"You should talk with me!"

It's tone.
I did have a bizarrely similar (to the original poster's) accident about four years ago, in which I slipped over a cookie and somehow twisted my ankle so far that it broke
What kind of cookie?
Aeetlrcreejl > Kicgan Vekei > me /ne.ses.tso.sats/

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by sirdanilot »

Tropylium wrote: Ostrobothnian
What?

-----
L1 is Dutch. We spoke standard Dutch at home, but at school and other surroundings I have also learned the regional dialect of my area, Zeeuws (which is a lower-franconian dialect). Old people talking 'authentic' Zeeuws are sometimes hardly intelligible for standard Dutch speakers who are never exposed to dialects, though it's easy to get used to. I would classify Zeeuws more as a social code for myself than a full 2nd language, since it is only used in certain social situations. But for many people it functions as a true 2nd language; they completely switch to Zeeuws when around family and they have only a small Zeeuws accent in their Dutch, so it's completely separated. This is not so for me.

In addition, due to family relations I can speak Brazilian Portuguese. However it is very rusty and I do not speak correctly at all, and writing is very difficult for me. My skills increase every time I go to Brazil but then they decrease again.

I have learned English to fluency mainly because of immersion (tv, games, internet....). We also get English at school and of course that has helped me significantly in my writing skills and further improve my English.

Further passing knowledge of languages: French, a dutch-german 'pidgin' to communicate with people when in Germany (I don't really know german very well but if you are in germany you do need to communicate and most people do not speak English), Arabic (MSA), Biblical Hebrew, Latin.

I have studied the structure of many languages as a linguist but saying I speak even a bit in any of them would be a lie usually.

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Re: Member Countries and Known Languages

Post by sirdanilot »

It surprises me that a reasonably large amount of people here are monolingual in English with only passing knowledge of other languages. I think being a linguist is very hard if you only know one language. It's hard enough if you know only two related languages (english and dutch)...

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