Monogram
 

Ihesus Hominum Salvator (IHS) : some say that it stands for In His Service, but the truth is something else.

IHESUS HOMINUM SALVATOR

Its in Latin meaning, Jesus, savior of mankind.

In Greek, Jesus was spelt like Ihesus.

Very Old english
 

These are the Nineth century Anglo Saxon alphabets. Note that K, W, Y are missing and there's a new letter after T and there's an alien looking S instead of Z! To sum up, I must assume that the English alphabets were less than 26 at that time.

In the next picture, taken from the Library of Minerva, Rome, 9th century, K, W, X, Y, Z are missing. Again, there is an extra S. I think this S was pronounced like Z and was later placed at the end, where Z is now.

Мамицу вам болесну свима педерчине изопачене што вас не побаци, но вас роди такве,све би ја вас од ува до ува разрезо

Speaking of languages this question comes to my mind......
Which country has the highest number of recognised laguages??
I think it is INDIA

I think that you are right, although I'm sure PRC is not far behind. I'm pretty sure that our esteemed and learned friend sesame will be able to give us a definitive answer, or perhaps Jenae may know.

Indian Languages
 

The Total number of Indian languages, that are still in use will add upto 1,500 or more. That is because there are very twisted dialects of the same language structure if you move to different regions of the same state. There are 28 states in all.

The languages recognised by the govt. and spoken by the majority (more than 10,000) may be summed up as 122. And since there are 28 states, there should be 28 official languages, one for each state!:p
Well, there are 29 Main languages. Urdu, the Royal language of the Muslim poets, is also an Indian language.

The national language is Hindi. The name India is derived from Hindusthan. Hindu + Sthan meaning the abode of Hindus. The word Hindu came from the river Sindhu (Indus), on whose basin, the Aryan civilization grew up. In my opinion, the national language should have been Sanskrit, since it is the mother of all Indian languages.

Indian languages have assimilated many words from foreign tongues. They include Persian, Arabic, Portuguese, English, French, Turkish, Chinese, Greek, Roman and Bactrian (Bakhtar) (remember the Bactrians, Greeks, Greco-Bactrians who came with Alexander 325 BC ? They opened up a trade route with ancient India. Thats how Gandhara style of Art flourished.)

Parece-me que não há "falantes" de português neste forum.
(It seems there's no portuguese speackers in this forum.) Could be from: Portugal, Brasil, Angola, Cabo Verde, São Tomé e Príncipe, Moçambique, Timor and all over the world where the "diaspora" is.

That's probably because this is an English site. People that come on here communicate in English. Any other language limits the number of people that are able to read what is posted; and why would anyone want to limit the number of people that can read what is posted?

Since I live in a Latinamerican country (Colombia) my mother tongue is Spanish. I majored in English Philology which is my passion, and hopefully will follow an specialization in English-Spanish translation. I also studied some French and Japanese.
As for French, Je le souvien encore. Je ne le parle pas, mais j'aime lire en Francais.
I have completely forgot all the Japanese I learnt.

i am actially not.

СИТЕ ВЕ САКАМ:hug:

Does it say Mazel Tov?

Mazel Tov: מזל טוב (good luck)
I think it's something like make peace, create peace or so. But I can't read a word. That's what google said me.

Thanx, sesame for the info....some bit of research there....:respect:

languages: one of my favorite non-TS topics
 

I can't believe I missed this thread for so long. I decided at a young age that I wanted to be a polyglot, and so languages became my academic specialty. I read some and read/speak others. When I was young, beginning at junior high school age, I spent a lot of time trying to teach myself to read new languages. I went on to study Classics as an undergraduate and then got a PhD in ancient studies, which meant learning most of the Canaanite/Semitic dialects of the ancient Near Eastern world (Akkadian, Hittite, Moabite, Phoenician, Chaldean, etc.), as well as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Sanskrit. I taught Ancient Greek and Latin at the university level. In addition, I have learned to speak and read German and French (fluently), and I'm reasonably proficient in Spanish and Italian. I can get by in Portuguese and Romanian, and lately I've been challenging myself with other Germanic languages (since English is a Germanic language, and I know German): these include Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, which I try to read on a regular basis. I've never learned any Asian languages, except for a bit of Vietnamese when I volunteered to teach English to immigrants from Vietnam a long time ago. They mostly spoke French, too, but I insisted on picking up some of their native language.

I have quite good Japanese fluency!

日本語はすきです！:p

To further confuse you all
 

Dear all, after having lived in Malaysia, i have been exposed to malay, (both versions spoken in malaysia as well as indonesia), thai, chinese, indian (several dialects) and some other european languages. Nevertheless, i shall gloat about being able to speak any one of the above mentioned languages. I can only manage my life, food, shopping, etc needs if i were to be stuck in these places. However, i would like to share with you the main reason why i could not learn chinese. There are 4 main dialects of chinese language (dialect but each is completely different from the other) and the official version, which is called Mandarin Chinese. In general chinese language has roughly about 2000 characters, and each character is an equivalent of a "word" in our so called western understanding. However each character has 4 inntonations (ways of reading/pronounciation). Each pronounciation would mean something completely different. Furthermore, there are four dialects - Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien, Teo Chew, which each has 2000 characters with 4 inntonations. In order to be able to fully speak Chinese (or consider yourself to be fully able to speak chinese) the formula goes as such:

(Mandarin X 2000 characters X 4 intonations)+(cantonese X 2000 characters X 4 intonations)+(Hakka X 2000 characters X 4 intonations)+(Hokkien X 2000 characters X 4 intonations)+(Teo Chew X 2000 characters X 4 intonations) = God Knows What....

I don't really know what is the outcome of this formula, however, if i am not mistaken, the equivalent of "tea" from Japan to Greece (including all other countries in between) is "chay" or a very similar pronounciation of "cha"...

I've picked up a few books and audio CD's to try to brush up on my French. I took three years of French in high school, but I don't remember a whole lot of it, and I was NEVER good at hearing the language spoken.

I'd like to try to gain some French fluency so I can be more competent should I emigrate to Canada or France someday, something I have seriously considered.

I took French for six years in school and never really learned very much. A lot of the fault lies in the method of teaching languages in school. I learned more French in a few months out in the working world than I ever learned in the classroom. My hat is off to anyone that can learn any second language.

Oh no! Our polar bear has become a frog!



Just kidding! ;)

Nope, not really. I can barely speak any French at all.

I got 50% in Grade 9 and then that was it for me since it was no longer mantatory to take.;)

nessuno parla italiano?
nobody speaks Italian?

watashi wa nihongo chotto o hanashimasu.

Succulent Tongues
 

What will you opine about someone who can speak 5 other languages besides vernacular? Eh, eh, eh, Monsieur Papa Bear? :p

My first language is German but I prefer to speak English. I tried to learn Russian when i was younger but i screwed up :(

You can speak two languages. That is still pretty good!:respect:

I'm fluent in Elvish and Klingon.

Then you need to get out more. :lol:

I gotta hit the conventions and bring home an Elven maiden.

I wanna be the "Lord of her Ring". ;) lol

Yeah, I remember when I had my first beer. :lol:

Thanks to you, sir.
But I think English and German arent?t that hard to learn. There are languages like Japanese, Mandarin...you have to learn the "letters", the speech and the gestures. Thats a lot to handle :)

I have long argued with my students and others that German is the easiest language for English speakers to learn. In America, most young people think it is Spanish. But English is a Germanic language, and approximately 60% of English derives directly from Germany. I found it very easy to learn German and now speak and read fluently.

I do agree with you, smc. I found German very easy to pick up. The sentence structure is so similar that I was able to form correct sentences without having to think about it. It didn't take long for me to be able to think in German and when speaking or listening to German I never had to mentally translate between English and German to carry on a conversation.

Of all the dialects in German I like the Vorarlberg, Austria dialect the best. It is very easy to understand and native speakers speak slowly and clearly, enunciating their words.

Did you compared it to Dutch, Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish (also Germanic based), but the grammar could be more similar to English.
Or only compared with World languages, witch wouldn?t exclude Dutch.

I read Dutch, which is in the West Germanic sub-group of Germanic languages, and thus most closely related to German and English. I find Dutch difficult to speak because of the odd, rounded vowel sounds; whenever I try, I sound really off. I also read Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish with varying degrees of proficiency, and can speak Swedish after I'm in Sweden for a few days (or my Stockholm friends visit). These are Germanic languages in the sub-group of North Germanic languages, also known as Nordic languages.

I would say from my own experience that Danish is the easiest of the North Germanic languages, because Danish strikes me as the closest to German of these particular languages, both grammatically and syntactically. Of the North Germanic languages, Danish and Swedish share a similar sub-sub-group generally called East Scandinavian. Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese are in the West Scandinavian branch, further removed from the original German.

Icelandic is an interesting case, because while it is Germanic in vocabulary, it has an inflectional grammar that's like Latin and even more like Old English.

You can probably tell that languages are of great interest to me. :)

I read once that up to the widespread use of printing presses, when spelling was becoming standardized, that Dutch used to be considered a dialect of German.

I don't want to start an argument here about which is considered a language in its own right as the Dutch will claim, and rightly so, that Dutch is a language and not a dialect. There is also Frisian which I have heard some Dutch say is a dialect, but the Frisians will say that it is a language. I once saw a program on German television in which everyone was speaking Frisian. At first I thought that I was listening to English.

I have had the same experience with Frisian. It sounds very much like English. I won't take a position on the Dutch language or dialect question, but direct your attention -- just to muddy the waters -- to the question of Flemish. :rolleyes:

Frisian is spoken in Netherlands, German and Denmark, and is close to Scots.
Wouldn?t that make Dutch and Danish as easy as German to learn? (if you didn?t leaned German first)

I for one had always problems with languages, I wish they were more logic and simple, but that would make them less interesting.

You are muddying the waters, smc. I have known and worked with a great many Dutch and Flemish people. I would say that Flemish is only slightly different than Dutch, not even enough of a difference to call it a dialect. My Dutch friends, in my experience, would agree with me. My Flemish friends would disagree. I really don't want to take a side on this question and as I have a great deal of respect for all of the Dutch and Flemish friends that I have. I have been to both Holland and Belgium and I liked both countries. I did however often find Dutch and Flemish hard to follow.

I can't see that Frisian is close to Scots. Frisian is a Germanic language and Scots belongs to the Celtic family.

I feel like such a troglodyte reading through this thread.:blush:

That was my point precisely. I didn't express an opinion but only pointed a light on the Dutch/Flemish question. My experience is also the same with Dutch and Flemish people viz. how they would characterize their languages.

I am resisting the temptation to write this post in a language other than English. Here, shadows, are some possible new avatars for you, offered with my best wishes. :lol:

Frisian sounds very similar to English. I can speak it too, but I prefer to speak Westphalian. Has anyone of you heard Saxon so far? Its the funniest German dialect :)

"Funniest" is definitely the right word for Saxonian, although my friends in Dresden would not appreciate that characterization.

The last time I was in Germany, I visited them and late one night we were on Theaterplatz, in front of the Semperoper or the Zwinger museum (I can't remember for sure). There was a guy dressed as one of the Saxony kings, doing a street show. He had torchbearers and even his "wenchy" mistress by his side. He was doing a comedy show about Bavarians. He explained how he had sent his ambassadors to Munich to help them, and they reported back to him about the Bavarians: "they are rolling in the muddy streets all the time, fighting," and "they drink their beer out of barrels with handles on them." I was in Dresden with another friend, from Munich, and she had to help me understand the thick Saxonian of his speaking (she also taught at the university in Dresden, part-time, and had come to understand the dialect quite well). It was really funny: as she helped me with the parts I couldn't understand, and realized the insults, she became more and more agitated until she shouted out something in Saxonian that was a real insult to the king. One of his guards came at her with his lance, menacingly, and then everyone cracked up laughing!

I?m ungifted in speeches, for me, a middle strong dialect sounds like a different language, so I can only say what people told me or ask the internet. I even can?t remember if I ever heard someone speaking (Lowland) Scots.

answers.yahoo.com

Wikipedia Frisian_languages

mamalisa.com

I think ila's two points, both of which I agree with, are that a) Frisian sounds like English, and b) it is not considered a part of the Germanic family but is a Celtic language. These classifications are made on a basis that takes the sound of the language into consideration only marginally, if at all.

When I referred to Scottish I actually meant Gaelic which is not accurate since lowland Scots is descended from Old English. Gaelic is part of the Celtic languages, but is not called Scottish. Rather it is often referred to as Scottish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, and Highland Gaelic. Reference is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic

While those are very nice pictures and worthy of consideration for Avatarhood, I will be sticking with the one I am currently using.;):)

Thanks for the funny pics, though.;):respect: