Where are we from ?

To Elrond : you're french right? You do know that I am just kidding, do you? It is a popular joke about France in our country that it would be such a lovely country if it weren't for it's inhabitants. About Afghanistan they say the same but not joking. This french joke about us was too much however : belgian terrorist . I can't find a larger picture, though I've seen it already.

To JeffB : sorry for nuking Canada. :D Yesterday was the premiere of "South Park The Movie" on television. The song "Blame Canada" is probably still stuck in my mind. :D And as far as Quebec is concerned : good for you! I hope one day Belgium will split up too in Flanders and Wallony. I do not like to pay money for 9 (!!!!) governments in my country.

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And I hope your radical "world-domination-first-change-plan" will not harm anyone and will not be considered badly by our two gentlemens that are moderators in here.

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I hope they can see I'm not seriously trying to achieve world domination. I just would like to react this way since I think a lot of people are being very chauvinist and want to get their country not in the Others list. You can't blame some: if Ireland is in the list, so should at least Pakistan. No offence, but how many inhabitants does Ireland have? Compare that to Pakistan. I already mentioned in a previous post that I feared a lot of people would want their country in the list.

Thanks for sparing Luxembourg :p

Hum... but if France wouldn't exist, we would have a sea-border with the mediterranian sea. I can already imagine myself lying on the beach in southern Luxembourg ;)

Although... if Belgium wouldn't exist, we would have a much longer shore-line :p

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Originally posted by Yves M


If it helps you, I currently live in Madrid ;) But I'd still like to vote for Luxembourg :p

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:D
And... can't you lie? :)

Still 93 votes !!! :(

- Sonu

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Originally posted by Simon666


S : Sweden : They're neutral. So are the Swiss, but they delivered us Sabena. Don't like their banks either.

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Uhmmm.... S: Spain :D :D :D
:p

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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It seems that you are a Cimperialis fan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHO'S NOT?

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:p

well...you should know about "Lothar The Great" - I annoied him a lot. And there have been a couple of people who would likely have killed me if they could...


Stopped at 93???!!! Quick, let me spam some private messages!....

Ok, I'll have to go back to Sweden, then, since Luxembourg is too small to host all the exiled french people.
Or, do you change the frontier also?? As this 'luxembourgeois' thinks? Will it be the Luxembourg Riviera, or better the Lux Riviera! :) How do we call the inhabitant of Luxembourg in english??? please help me here.

For O isn't there Ouganda or is it Uganda in english?

Ozbekistan doesn't exist? Oural? Any of the russian state, I guess at least one starts with an O.

I didn't know this story about the belgian terrorrist. hihihi! :-) But it's like the norvegian for the swedish, or the english for the scottish (or is it the opposite), well a lof of countries are making fun of their neighbours.

Can you just consider one thing? I know french are not nice, and they barely speak english. But they are improving, first! :) in english. Young people are better in english now. Worse in french, but they have to balance... :)
The second thing is a French that has travelled is not the same! :) Look at Elrond, look at me, aren't we nice?? :))

And at least our country is called the same (or begins with the same letter at least) in all the other languages!! That should count for a better communication in the world... :))))

Ok I stop here. :)

Marina
international french :-D

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Young people are better in english now. Worse in french, but they have to balance...

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Je dois admettre que mon francais n'est plus très bon. Mais depuis que j'ai terminé mes études, je n'ai eu presque aucun contact avec cette langue. Sur l'internet, on parle l'anglais, le plupart des films sont en anglais etc. Donc ce n'est pas vraiment ma faute. Probablement la même chose est applicable pour des gens jeunes.

I have to admit that my french is not that good. But since I've finished my studies, I've nearly had no contact any more with this language. On the internet, people speak english, the majority of films is english and so on. So it is not really my fault. Probably the same goes for young people.

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... well a lof of countries are making fun of their neighbours.

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Est-ce que vous savez pourquoi on n'a pas de feu d'artifice a Euro Disney? Parce-que chaques fois qu'on l'utilise, les francais veulent s'avouer vaincus. :D

Why don't they have fireworks at Euro Disney? Because every time they shoot them off, the French try to surrender. :D

OK sorry, when I said people, I meant French people :)

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Originally posted by irona20


:D
And... can't you lie? :)

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But... but... it's true ;)

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Marina Vaillant
As this 'luxembourgeois' thinks? Will it be the Luxembourg Riviera, or better the Lux Riviera! How do we call the inhabitant of Luxembourg in english??? please help me here.

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I would call myself a "Luxembourger", but then again that might not be true, since I've never seen a reliable source using this designation. What is interesting though is that "Luxembourgish" is only the name of the language and not the adjective. You would say "the Luxembourg people" for example ;)

And... I think as long as you speak french well, french people will be nice to you. It also makes a big difference whether you're in Paris or one of the smaller cities or towns.

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And at least our country is called the same (or begins with the same letter at least) in all the other languages!! That should count for a better communication in the world... :)))

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Hum, then again, "U.S." is the same everywhere, except in France where you guys like to change everything ;)

Don't worry, we like you french people :p

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Originally posted by Yves M
Hum, then again, "U.S." is the same everywhere, except in France where you guys like to change everything ;)

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I believe the spanish for US will be EU (like in french):
Estados Unidos
Etats Unis

I don't think we are the only one changing names.

Do english people say all names the same way that people from China, or Russia, or even France say it? Not always.

For example english for Bretagne is Brittany :eek:

But it's true we like to change (almost) everything, that's more fun. We can laugh at foreign people and they don't know it ;)

the funniest thing is that Austria is called in Austria Österreich and there is in no other language a word for it that seems to be a little simmiliar. All are like Austria, Austrich or so.

I think that's very simmilar to Deutschland (Germany), isnt it?

It would be very interesting, why the German speaking countries have such unique words for their countries.

a nother thing i recognized:

EU is European Union in German and sure not US

Ha, yes, right... Hum, I'll have to be more careful mith my examples :p

What about NATO which is OTAN in French... I'm not aware of any countries doing translation on this, even in China. I have to say though that Quebec is worse with its "hot dog" = "chien chaud" and other oddities ;)

As far as laughing at foreign people without them knowing about it goes, nothing beats Luxembourgish ;) Well, then again maybe "breton" (what do you call that in English ?) has even fewer speakers... not sure ;)

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Originally posted by Ungi another thing i recognized:

EU is European Union in German and sure not US

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In French we have UE for that (union europeenne). We like to change things :p

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Originally posted by Ungi
a nother thing i recognized:

EU is European Union in German and sure not US

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Yes, the french are confusing us here ;)

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the funniest thing is that Austria is called in Austria Österreich and there is in no other language a word for it that seems to be a little similiar

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Maybe Luxembourgish doesn't qualify, but we call it "Eistreich".

Actually the worst is translating names of cities... I tried to tell spanish people about Bordeaux and they told me it's Bordeos here. Genf - Genève - Geneva... why ? :confused:

you are a very very strange nation!!! :p
but i like it to be a little bit strange, but i dont know why i am not called jean luc? :confused: :cool:

With soon 120 posts and more than 1500 views, this thread will probably establish a new record. And we are now at 99 votes. Just one to go. Which country will do the job???

Well, it's a no-contest ;) The US will win. Then again, if we didn't have Japan in the list, we could insert maybe a small tiny Luxembourg... That would at least get one vote :p

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Originally posted by Elrond


I believe the spanish for US will be EU (like in french):
Estados Unidos
Etats Unis

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In Spanish:

Estados Unidos -> EEUU :D

I think French and Spanish are very similar... we say too:
OTAN
UE (Union Europea)

:D

if luxembourg gets a place in the poll, austria should also get one!! i know at least 3 members from the beautiful alps country!! :) :) :) :D :D :D

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The funniest thing is that Austria is called in Austria Österreich and there is in no other language a word for it that seems to be a little simmiliar. All are like Austria, Austrich or so. I think that's very simmilar to Deutschland (Germany), isnt it?

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Dutch is a language that is very close to German (or Deutsch). The Dutch name for Deutschland is Duitsland. So the pronunciation is very similar. The Dutch name for Osterreich is Oostenrijk, again, the pronunciation is close. I thought Germans and Austrians knew this, but you disappoint me. :mad:

Bye the way, if we are going to discuss strange names for countries in other countries, in the US they call both Iraq and Afghanistan toast. :D

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Originally posted by Ungi
if luxembourg gets a place in the poll, austria should also get one!! i know at least 3 members from the beautiful alps country!! :) :) :) :D :D :D

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Ok, let's ditch Japan and Mexico to include Austria and Luxembourg, how does that sound ? ;)

Simon, I think in most Germanic languages Austria will be something like "Osterreich" and Germany along the lines of "Deutschland". Anybody knows Danish, Swedish or Norwegian ? :D

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in the US they call both Iraq and Afghanistan toast.

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Well I would say they would call them the foreign countries, since apart from the States, they are the only other countries in the world... :rolleyes:

France is in California, since they have beaches and wine, right ?
Germany is in Michigan since they make cars
China is in New York, I've been there
Russia is all over the place, but they hide most of the time, since they are a mafia
England is near Boston
Spain is in Florida, but they are actually gaining ground and you can find them everywhere...
Luxembourg ? That's some kind of occult guild of high-street bankers who launder money for Spain and Russia.
Canada is the northern-most State of the US.

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I thought Germans and Austrians knew this, but you disappoint me.

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I know it but in this half minute, where i wrote this post i didnt think about it.

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Ok, let's ditch Japan and Mexico to include Austria and Luxembourg, how does that sound ?

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Who talks to the Moderator, should i or do you want to do it??

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Simon, I think in most Germanic languages Austria will be something like "Osterreich" and Germany along the lines of "Deutschland". Anybody knows Danish, Swedish or Norwegian?

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As far as I remember from highschool, Dutch, Engish (!)and German are Germanic languages, French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian and so Romanic languages and Danish, Swedish and Norwegian Scandinavian languages. So your claim is incorrect. It may however be that in Scandinavian languages "Deutschland" and "Osterreich" will be similar, but I wouldn't know.

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Luxembourg ? That's some kind of occult guild of high-street bankers who launder money for Spain and Russia.

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You're analysis is pretty funny. We know better, Luxembourg is a cult guild of high-street bankers who keep money from tax-evaders of our country - as well as from many others in Europe. :D Bye the way, I keep asking myself, is Luetzeburgs - I do not know the exact name by heart - an official language or is that French and is it just a dialect? Do you speak it? Is it more Germanic or Romanic?

Hum, I wouldn't know about english being germanic... The grammar maybe, but the french influence in english is huge.

Yes, well, but scandinavian languages share a common root with germanic languages. It shows when you are trying to read a norwegian newspaper and you only know german ;)

Thing is that these don't necessarily reflect all of a language's specifics. For example, even though German is a barbaric language (from the view of the Romans ;)) it has adopted the case structure from latin, which many latin languages lack.

[ups, this got posted twice :/]

Ha in Norwegian, Germany is called tyskland, which is remotely close to Deutschland

...101 Votes!!!

Congratulations. Lets go home and drink a beer! :D :D :D :D :D :D :rolleyes:

EEUU, oh yes, you double because it's plural.. great! :-)

I knew how "breton" was called for having seen breton cheese somewhere in Sweden... But I forgot.
Breton people call themselves Brezhoneg (or maybe this one is the language i keep on mistaking those two), I tell you that for your cultural knowledge :)

I like the differences in other countries, they make the tourists smile, sometimes get angry ("how come this post office is so long and going so slow?"), but also have nice surprises.
But always a lot to tell when they are back home.
Is there any Swede here?? I have a lot to tell about Sweden! ;-)

We French are not changing all the names, compared to Spain where no english word is welcome! ;-) All is translated. At least it was still a few years ago. We (french) keep some names in english. But there is no reason why an international association should have a name (sigle : only letters) only meaning something in english.

Where it gets funny is computer speaking (I'm not out of the subject here with you). Where ISO is OSI in French, and of course OSI is ISO. I keep mistaking which one is the normalizing association, and which is the layer model :) Depending on which language I speak, it keeps changing, so I always say both. The OSI/ISO model... and nobody complains :)

About towns, I try to call the towns in their original names (the name their inhabitants give them), but I can't always. I would seem snob to talk about London not calling it Londres in french.

I should learn to post shorter messages...

Marina

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Hum, I wouldn't know about english being germanic... The grammar maybe, but the french influence in english is huge. Yes, well, but scandinavian languages share a common root with germanic languages. It shows when you are trying to read a norwegian newspaper and you only know german

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Well all European languages share a common Indo-European root. But English is as far as I remember a Germanic language. But ofcourse, English - and even German - has a lot in common with French. The only languages in Europe that are not Indo-European are Bask and - not 100% sure - Maltese.

Norwegian: mor
English : mother
French : mutter
Dutch : moeder
Roman : mater
Russian : motyuer

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Originally posted by Ungi
Who talks to the Moderator, should i or do you want to do it??

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You do it, I think I'm losing my credibility here :) Hehe, Ungi, yes, 101 votes :)

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Bye the way, I keep asking myself, is Luetzeburgs - I do not know the exact name by heart - an official language or is that French and is it just a dialect? Do you speak it? Is it more Germanic or Romanic?

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Letzebuergesch, but I'm not sure about the current spelling (we change spelling every five years, and people don't complain as they did in Germany :p)
It is an official language recognized by the UN. Luxembourg has two official languages : French and Luxembourgish (like switzerland has three) Of course I speak it :) It's a language that's very much alive, as opposed to many "small" languages in the EU where people have to lobby to get it into everyday use again. It is definitely germanic, although tainted with many french words. The official name of the language is "West-Mosel Fränkish", which means its a Frankish (the barabrians who used to live here :p) from west of the river Mosel. It used to be spoken in an area about three times as big as the current Luxembourg, but French imperialism has eradicated it from northern France. In Belgium and Germany there are still a few older people who speak an anicent version of Luxembourgish though.

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Originally posted by Yves M

Simon, I think in most Germanic languages Austria will be something like "Osterreich" and Germany along the lines of "Deutschland". Anybody knows Danish, Swedish or Norwegian ? :D

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Germany name in Swedish is Tyskland !!! Why?? I have no idea!! :) language is Tysk, och Tyskerna are the inhabitants. :)
France is Frankrike, french male is Fransk whereas french female is Fransyska :)

I guess other nordic language (except Suomi : Finland language) will have close names for Germany.

Marina

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The only languages in Europe that are not Indo-European are Bask and - not 100% sure - Maltese.

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I think finnish and some eastern european (is it Hungarian ?) also have a different root. But yes, you are right this might all come from the common indo-european root. Then again, country names are usually much younger than this, so it is strange to have such differences.

I think the reason for Germany having such a huge difference in its translations is that everybody traced it back to something different. germani is the name in latin already, so english does have a perfectly valid reason to use this. allemani is also a latin word as far as I can remember. Where "deutsch" comes from though, I don't know.

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Where it gets funny is computer speaking (I'm not out of the subject here with you). Where ISO is OSI in French, and of course OSI is ISO. I keep mistaking which one is the normalizing association, and which is the layer model Depending on which language I speak, it keeps changing, so I always say both. The OSI/ISO model... and nobody complains

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A nightmare ! ;)

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About towns, I try to call the towns in their original names (the name their inhabitants give them), but I can't always. I would seem snob to talk about London not calling it Londres in french.

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I don't know about this one, I always try to use the "localized version" of the city's name. I know people use "Bejing" instead of "Pékin" in french, but I don't tend to use it. Let's keep it all multicultural and confusing :p

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Originally posted by Simon666

Norwegian: mor
English : mother
French : mutter --> mère
Dutch : moeder
Roman : mater
Russian : motyuer

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mutter does not exist in french.
In Swedish it's mor also, like norwegian.
When I forst drove to Sweden, across Germany, I thought Ausfart was a very popular city where a lot of roads were leading to (a bit like Roma!). Then I realized it meant "way out" :)
Anyway, then I was in Sweden, and I learnt the language, and the second time I drove there, I understood the signs saying different kinds of messages! I think indeed Sweden has a lot of roots in German. But, if German people gets the vocabulary quite fast, the grammar is close to french's, and allow the verb to keep the same form in all subjects kinds (I mean : I do, you do, they do ==> Jag gör, du gör, de gör), which is close to english :)

End of lesson :)

Marina

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Originally posted by Marina Vaillant

France is Frankrike, french male is Fransk whereas french female is Fransyska :)

I guess other nordic language (except Suomi : Finland language) will have close names for Germany.

Marina

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Funny, in Luxembourg, Francisca is a girl's name ;) (I guess in many other parts of the world too).

Hey, maybe you can tell us which eastern european language shares a root with Suomi ?

you are right.

the german grammar is not very easy to learn.

one thing is the article.

it is for example
- der Vogel (bird -> male)
- die Schwalbe (swallow -> female)
- das Tier (animal -> neutrum)

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When I forst drove to Sweden, across Germany, I thought Ausfart was a very popular city where a lot of roads were leading to (a bit like Roma!). Then I realized it meant "way out"

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Nice one :) In Spain I was wondering why there weren't any rest areas on the highway when there was a sign indicating there here you could change your smell, somebody had to tell me that "cambio de sentido" only meant that you could change direction ;)

I don't know, Yves. But in game rules, for products bought in scandinavia, the only unreadable is the Finland section, with suomi :)
Maybe in Iceland ...

I never studied languages, all I tell is what I experienced. :)

Fransyska would be pronounced more like Fran-sus-ka since the y is special in Sweden :)
They have a lot of french words too because of their royal family, which comes from a french general of Napoleon who was given to them as a king once... Bernadotte. :) The royal family speak french :)


Marina

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Hey, maybe you can tell us which eastern european language shares a root with Suomi ?

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i think Suomi is a slawian language. like the balitsh languages, or czech.

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Originally posted by Ungi
it is for example
- der Vogel (bird -> male)
- die Schwalbe (swallow -> female)
- das Tier (animal -> neutrum)

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Das deutch Sprache sein schwer Sprache :p

Another difficulty (at least for me) used to be the s-z and the rules for comma-placement. What can be confusing as well is the use of capitals for nouns or sometimes even other tokens ;)

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Originally posted by Ungi


i think Suomi is a slawian language. like the balitsh languages, or czech.

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Ok, I edit myself, since I was wrong :p

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In all, about 23 million people speak the languages of the Finno-Ugrian language family. However, many of the languages are tiny: apart from Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian, they are all threatened minority tongues whose territories lie within the Russian Federation.

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here is the source

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Das deutch Sprache sein schwer Sprache

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You are so right.

I'm very happy that I dont have to learn German. English is difficult enough!!

Originally: Die Deutsche Sprache ist eine schwere Sprache.
or if we want to kid someone who should know it better.
Deutsche Sprache, schwere Sprache

Dutch translation:
- der Vogel : de vogel
- die Schwalbe : de zwaluw
- das Tier : het dier

German would be easy to learn for us if it weren't for the cases. In Dutch you don't have those, you have only de/het instead of der/die/das.

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French : mutter --> mère

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You should be intelligent enough to know that I intended to write the French and the German and forgot something in between. The three official languages in Belgium or Dutch, French and German, I've been learned all three at school, though my German s*c*s really bad.

but i thought Dutch is very simmilar to German, isnt it.

In my region of Austria (southern Lower Austria) are lots of Dutch guests in holiday. And some sentences they say could be interpreted so, that we also understand it. I must say the eastern Austrian dialect is sometimes harder to understand than our dutch guests!

This thread will be closed. Instead of sticking to the original topic, you folks are actually discussing boring languages. Such kinds of discussions will hinder advertising revenues and will turn an already-boring forum like this into a ghost town.

If you folks like to participate in formal/informal discission and exchange your views using the buggy Microsoft Exchange Server XP, please join those mailing lists that has such topics.

Now, the thing is : it seems I'm the one and only, sole single Singaporean here who's pretty active at making threads and helping everyone like mad, eh? Remember the 100 posts I made to this guy who dunno how to code a more powerful version Microsoft Word 2002?
Also, last night, I created a full working version(with source code) of Microsoft Project 2002 for this 34 year old man who dunno how to make a push-button work.
Kinda extreme, but I'm a really helpful guy.

Now, can someone else continue this thread with a formal, more meaningful and political discussion of gurls in social life, political life, and such?
Maybe we can start the discussion of what gurls are and how they work, and how to debug them when they crash suddendly.
And probably, we can conclude with a overview of the roles that gurls play in Web Services, GML-stye.(**** Markup Language)

Thank you for your interest. :cool: :cool:
(oh God! why am I so cool?????) :D

I can be intelligent but not know everything. i'm sorry I don't speak German so I could not guess. I only wondered where you got your "mutter" from.

Since now a lot of people read this thread :), I did not want to leave wrong information for granted. :)

Marina

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but i thought Dutch is very simmilar to German, isnt it.

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It is. It is not difficult to make ourself understood by Germans, but speaking it correctly - correct gender (der/die/das), correct case, correct tenses - requires even so a lot of effort.

As far as Marina is concerned: I have the impression that you take it as an insult. I apologize in that case. I should replace 'you should be intelligent enough to understand' with 'if you considered it in more detail'.

Another language that has been kind of forgotten here is Gaelic.

I don't know what is the root of it but even if there are only a few people fighting for it in french Bretagne :p, it's very alive here in Ireland. You won't hear much of it if you come around Dublin, but a lot of people speak it in their everyday live in west Ireland. And it's an official language as much as English. :)

Unfortunately, the only Irish that has been around seems to have disappeared since Ireland was not in the voting list at that time :eek:

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By Cimperiali:
well...you should know about "Lothar The Great" - I annoied him a lot. And there

have been a couple of people who would likely have killed me if they could...

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I know about Lothar:

http://www.codeguru.com/forum/showth...501&perpage=10

But, what is the annoyed and kill stuff? Sorry if my post harm you or anything, I don't want to annoy you, just to say people Cimperiali is a respected guru that help me improve my programming skills, that all... ;)

Oh and maybe I should private you... that thread is starting to be confusing!!! :D

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I have to say though that Quebec is worse with its "hot dog" = "chien chaud" and

other oddities

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Other oddities? Are you talking about Poutine... What? Does hot dog do not exist in USA or anywhere in the world? It's not Québec copyright.... (I think... ?) We don't call Hot Dog "Chien Chaud", but we all, while children, ask "Why it is call hot dog? Is that thing is from a dog ........ " :D

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Where ISO is OSI in French, and of course OSI is ISO. I keep mistaking which one is the normalizing association, and which is the layer model Depending on which language I speak, it keeps changing, so I always say both. The OSI/ISO model... and nobody complains

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Oh don't remember me of that... I hate these ISO OSI french english stuff... why translate these, why don't keep the original name? !

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Post by Xeon:
This thread will be closed. Instead of sticking to the original topic, you folks are actually discussing boring languages. Such kinds of discussions will hinder advertising revenues and will turn an already-boring forum like this into a ghost town.

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I tend to agree with Xeon, you can talk about the langages, but the thread has 4 pages in more than yesterday, and is plenty of long borings messages. Well, not so boring but it's pretty hard to follow what you are saying, and I would like more people to post instead of always the same, but anyways.. "And you JeffB, why are you posting?" ... "JeffB: Huh?..., ehhh..., " :D

I really don't want Brad Jones to post a third and definitive message in that thread...

Edit:
Of these lines are out of control!

JeffB - now 107 votes, 1400+ views, 14 pages