The absurdity of language
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Please, show some examples :) Here we have a language very similar to portuguese, Galician language. In fact, there are a lot of people around here that pretend to make our language the same as portuguese, which I totally disagree because I believe they are just different languages.
OCid wrote: Please, show some examples See my answer just above :) OCid wrote: In fact, there are a lot of people around here that pretend to make our language the same as portuguese, which I totally disagree because I believe they are just different languages. We do the same here with Spanish, as a joke, we call it "Portunhol" (Português + Espanhol) (Portugues + Spanish)
It's not the fall that kills you: it's the sudden stop - Down by Law, Jim Jamursch (1986)
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OCid wrote: Please, show some examples See my answer just above :) OCid wrote: In fact, there are a lot of people around here that pretend to make our language the same as portuguese, which I totally disagree because I believe they are just different languages. We do the same here with Spanish, as a joke, we call it "Portunhol" (Português + Espanhol) (Portugues + Spanish)
It's not the fall that kills you: it's the sudden stop - Down by Law, Jim Jamursch (1986)
Daniel Turini wrote: We do the same here with Spanish, as a joke, we call it "Portunhol" (Português + Espanhol) (Portugues + Spanish) Yep, here we also say "Portunhol" or "Portuñol". However, most of the spanish people can't understand portuguese at all whilst Galician people can. The main difference between Portuguese and Gallego is not the grammar (they are essentially the same) but the accent. I have a lot of family in Rio de Janeiro, and we don't have trouble understanding one each other.
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Daniel Turini wrote: We do the same here with Spanish, as a joke, we call it "Portunhol" (Português + Espanhol) (Portugues + Spanish) Yep, here we also say "Portunhol" or "Portuñol". However, most of the spanish people can't understand portuguese at all whilst Galician people can. The main difference between Portuguese and Gallego is not the grammar (they are essentially the same) but the accent. I have a lot of family in Rio de Janeiro, and we don't have trouble understanding one each other.
OCid wrote: The main difference between Portuguese and Gallego is not the grammar (they are essentially the same) but the accent. Hmmm... I see, just like Java and C# :)
It's not the fall that kills you: it's the sudden stop - Down by Law, Jim Jamursch (1986)
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There is a funny story (by Mark Twain, I think) how to write the word 'Fish': Take the 'f'-sound from the word 'tough', take the 'i'-sound from the word 'women', take the 'sh'-sound from the word 'nation'. You will get - 'ghoti'.
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
here's another Twain, along the same lines: "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling: For example, in Year 1 that useless letter 'c' would be dropped to be replased either by 'k' or 's', and likewise 'x' would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which 'c' would be retained would be the 'ch' formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform 'w' spelling, so that 'which' and 'one' would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish 'y' replasing it with 'i' and Iear 4 might fiks the 'g/j' anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez 'c', 'y' and 'x' -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais 'ch', 'sh', and 'th' rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld." -c
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Who else wonders about how we manage to communicate at all ? Spoken languages are so convoluted and contradictoy its surprising they work ! Examples: Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana People asking "Are you OK ?" because they know you aren't.... Feel free to supply your own examples Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood? Marc Help! I'm an AI running around in someone's f*cked up universe simulator.
Sensitivity and ethnic diversity means celebrating difference, not hiding from it. - Christian Graus
Every line of code is a liability - Taka Muraoka
Microsoft deliberately adds arbitrary layers of complexity to make it difficult to deliver Windows features on non-Windows platforms--Microsoft's "Halloween files" -
here's another Twain, along the same lines: "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling: For example, in Year 1 that useless letter 'c' would be dropped to be replased either by 'k' or 's', and likewise 'x' would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which 'c' would be retained would be the 'ch' formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform 'w' spelling, so that 'which' and 'one' would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish 'y' replasing it with 'i' and Iear 4 might fiks the 'g/j' anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez 'c', 'y' and 'x' -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais 'ch', 'sh', and 'th' rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld." -c
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Something like this have been tried with the German spelling in the last years. After many comitee-meetings and sub-workgroups and ad-hoc task-forces and so on, a diluted standard came out. It is sufficiently different to constantly trigger the subconsious spelling-error warning bell while reading, yet does not go far enough to achieve a consistent spelling with a complete and minimal set of rules. In one word - a disaster. But I like the idea of a spelling that reflects the current use of a language. Thats why I hate french;)
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
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OCid wrote: The main difference between Portuguese and Gallego is not the grammar (they are essentially the same) but the accent. Hmmm... I see, just like Java and C# :)
It's not the fall that kills you: it's the sudden stop - Down by Law, Jim Jamursch (1986)
Daniel Turini wrote: I see, just like Java and C# Exactly:) In the beginning we had C (forgetting other languages such as ADA, FORTRAN, Pascal, ...) and then C++ -> Java -> C# Analogously, we had Latin -> Galego-Portuguese (or Portuguese-Galego, the order doesn't count) then they followed different but parallel routes and we got Portuguese and Galego.
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Here in Waterford we say "Well" to people when we walk past them in the street... it's a cool little word because it basically means the following: "Hey, How are you? The weather is . Nice to see you. Talk to you again soon." all rolled into one word... it does comepletely confuse outsiders though when you walk by and say well... they thing it's a question that needs answering or that your angry... :rolleyes: Regards, Brian Dela :-)
Run naked in the snow until you're sweating like a stuck pig and can't seem to catch your breath. When the flu becomes pneumonia, they can cure that with a shot. - Roger WrightBrian Delahunty wrote: Waterford Southern Ireland? That would explain much:-D
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
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Chris Austin wrote: Is it much like Spanish The sound of most words is very similar, but the syntax rules are completely different. And that's the insane part about learning Portuguese. German is in some way similar in that part. As a native English speaker, you'll learn that: 1. No upper case in the middle of the phrases. Like "I", or "English" or "Tuesday". 2. Things have sex. Isn't obvious that glasses are male and tables are female? Isn't obvious that a monitor is male but the screen is female? 3. The "nh" phonem. It's the same of the Spanish "ñ", like in "El Niño" but some native English speakers pronounce it in a way that some Portuguese speakers ROTFL. 4. You'll learn that when you see a sign "puxe" (pronounced push), you need to pull something. 5. You'll learn that if I say "eu pretendo", I intend to do something, not pretend. 6. ALL verbs have variations (up to 50 subtle variations, depending on the verb). The variations depend on the time and the person you are referring to. The most similar thing in the English language is the "to be" verb, with: I am You/We are He/She/it is I/He/She Was You/We were There you have 5 variations of the "to be" verb. But in Portuguese, the same verb has about 50 variations ("conjugações"), with no obvious logic. You have accented chars, like "lâmpada" (lamp), with rules to specify how to use them. For every rule, hundreds of exceptions. Some words have exactly the same sound, like "concerto" (concert) and "conserto" (fix), but are obviously different. The rules are so insane and there are so many exceptions that the Portuguese teachers spend hours arguing with each other which way is the right way. All of this have an advantage: for art, like music and poetry, this makes the Portuguese language something very beautyful and pleasant to be heard.
It's not the fall that kills you: it's the sudden stop - Down by Law, Jim Jamursch (1986)
You summed up quite well the portuguese language ,too damn rules, exceptions and variations ... :suss: Daniel Turini wrote: All of this have an advantage: for art, like music and poetry, this makes the Portuguese language something very beautyful and pleasant to be heard. Couldn't agree more :cool: Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9 Remember just because a good thing comes to an end, doesn't mean that the next one can't be better.-Chris Meech
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Daniel Turini wrote: We do the same here with Spanish, as a joke, we call it "Portunhol" (Português + Espanhol) (Portugues + Spanish) Yep, here we also say "Portunhol" or "Portuñol". However, most of the spanish people can't understand portuguese at all whilst Galician people can. The main difference between Portuguese and Gallego is not the grammar (they are essentially the same) but the accent. I have a lot of family in Rio de Janeiro, and we don't have trouble understanding one each other.
OCid wrote: However, most of the spanish people can't understand portuguese at all whilst Galician people can. The main difference between Portuguese and Gallego is not the grammar (they are essentially the same) but the accent. Yeah! Galego is so incredibily similar to portuguese that I understand 99.99 % of it and the rest I deduct from the context :cool: Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9 Remember just because a good thing comes to an end, doesn't mean that the next one can't be better.-Chris Meech
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Please, show some examples :) Here we have a language very similar to portuguese, Galician language. In fact, there are a lot of people around here that pretend to make our language the same as portuguese, which I totally disagree because I believe they are just different languages.
OCid wrote: In fact, there are a lot of people around here that pretend to make our language the same as portuguese I know that Portugal and Galiza have a special connection , but despite the similiarity between the languages , they're different :confused: Why pretend to be part of the portuguese language ??? Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9 Remember just because a good thing comes to an end, doesn't mean that the next one can't be better.-Chris Meech
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Are you OK ?
Yes, and thanks for asking ;P Just trying to get some non war non sport posts going, get the lounge to chill out a bit :cool: Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
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OCid wrote: In fact, there are a lot of people around here that pretend to make our language the same as portuguese I know that Portugal and Galiza have a special connection , but despite the similiarity between the languages , they're different :confused: Why pretend to be part of the portuguese language ??? Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9 Remember just because a good thing comes to an end, doesn't mean that the next one can't be better.-Chris Meech
Joao Vaz wrote: I know that Portugal and Galiza have a special connection , but despite the similiarity between the languages , they're different Totally agree! I can understand the portuguese more easily if itcames from the north of Portugal. I really have difficulties with the portuguese at the south. Joao Vaz wrote: Why pretend to be part of the portuguese language ??? Cause they hate everything that has to do with Spain. Portuguese is more different than "standard" galego if you compare it to spanish. So they prefer to go to the extreme. These guys are independentists, the same as many people at the Basque Country.
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Joao Vaz wrote: I know that Portugal and Galiza have a special connection , but despite the similiarity between the languages , they're different Totally agree! I can understand the portuguese more easily if itcames from the north of Portugal. I really have difficulties with the portuguese at the south. Joao Vaz wrote: Why pretend to be part of the portuguese language ??? Cause they hate everything that has to do with Spain. Portuguese is more different than "standard" galego if you compare it to spanish. So they prefer to go to the extreme. These guys are independentists, the same as many people at the Basque Country.
OCid wrote: I can understand the portuguese more easily if itcames from the north of Portugal. I really have difficulties with the portuguese at the south. Why north ? The south people as I (I'm from Lisbon) talk more faster ??? Or it's a matter of accent ? OCid wrote: Portuguese is more different than "standard" galego if you compare it to spanish. So they prefer to go to the extreme. and OCid wrote: These guys are independentists, the same as many people at the Basque Country. These 2 things don't mix well :wtf: , if they are independentists they shouldn't try to correlate the language with portuguese ,only if they wanna make part of Portugal, but that doesn't make any sense at all :confused: Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9 Remember just because a good thing comes to an end, doesn't mean that the next one can't be better.-Chris Meech
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Who else wonders about how we manage to communicate at all ? Spoken languages are so convoluted and contradictoy its surprising they work ! Examples: Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana People asking "Are you OK ?" because they know you aren't.... Feel free to supply your own examples Elaine :rose: The tigress is here :-D
Heh. Try writing AI code to understand language. Pretty much everyone is familiar with the traditional problems of mapping language to meaning, such as a translation of "The whiskey was good but the meat was rotten" from "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." I ran into this myself when working on an AI for a game. I had it set up so that things could have properties with values. For example, a table could have a color property, and the value of that property might be green. You could say, "The table was green" and it would translate that to an internal meaning. (table property=color value=green). Now, suppose someone says "This peach is good." What does that mean? You may think you understood what I just said, but do you? Was I referring to the taste, the ripeness, the color, the nutritional value? Just what property does 'good' modify? You don't know. For that matter, I myself may not know. It may just be a general impression culled from a combination of what I value in peaches. Seems like with natural language, you can't really assign a meaning to a sentence, you just bind the words to the object and when you want to ask if a peach is good, you have a match even when you don't what good refers to. Language is a very difficult thing to put into words. - Voltaire Dave Goodman dgoodman@infoway.com www.dkgoodman.com "Actio sequitur esse."
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Spoken languages are better than the alternative. Remember when they banished all mimes to France? :P Actually, I think punctuation is to blame. -- If it starts to make sense, you're in a cult.
Actually, I think punctuation is to blame Well, not in Russian. If you didn't type comma or period - it's catastrophe. Sorry, I can't give an example - there's no equivalent in English... Well, I'll try - "Killed not living". But it's very rude example and, in Russian, much more significant. Respectfully, Strika Sepultura in my heart, can`t take it away... (Max Cavalera)
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OCid wrote: I can understand the portuguese more easily if itcames from the north of Portugal. I really have difficulties with the portuguese at the south. Why north ? The south people as I (I'm from Lisbon) talk more faster ??? Or it's a matter of accent ? OCid wrote: Portuguese is more different than "standard" galego if you compare it to spanish. So they prefer to go to the extreme. and OCid wrote: These guys are independentists, the same as many people at the Basque Country. These 2 things don't mix well :wtf: , if they are independentists they shouldn't try to correlate the language with portuguese ,only if they wanna make part of Portugal, but that doesn't make any sense at all :confused: Cheers,Joao Vaz And if your dream is to care for your family, to put food on the table, to provide them with an education and a good home, then maybe suffering through an endless, pointless, boring job will seem to have purpose. And you will realize how even a rock can change the world, simply by remaining obstinately stationary.-Shog9 Remember just because a good thing comes to an end, doesn't mean that the next one can't be better.-Chris Meech
Joao Vaz wrote: Why north ? The south people as I (I'm from Lisbon) talk more faster ??? Or it's a matter of accent ? I think it's a matter of accent. I've been in Lisbon two years ago, really nice city:) I'm from Santiago de Compostela, do you know it? Joao Vaz wrote: These 2 things don't mix well , if they are independentists they shouldn't try to correlate the language with portuguese ,only if they wanna make part of Portugal, but that doesn't make any sense at all Yes, it's very weird. They're indeed independentists so they don't want to join to Portugal, but they want galego to be the same as Portuguese.
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Brian Delahunty wrote: Waterford Southern Ireland? That would explain much:-D
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
Yup :-) Regards, Brian Dela :-)