Language Translations for Creation

Celexia No no you're right! I had forgotten to add that you're a native speaker @-@ I'm so sorry, I'll fix that right away...

Freki That's a long time! And don't worry, I promise you that even native English speakers have no idea what they're doing most of the time lmao. Comas are especially confusing since there are so many rules to them. To most of us, as long as we understand you, it's good enough XD

At least something and I try my best. No worries. XD

Dez - you can put me on the list for translating to and from Esperanto!  Not a common language, perhaps, but it gets used in sci-fi from time to time, and you never know when someone will come along with Red Dwarf fan-characters, or some other sci-fi world of their own creation that uses it.

Aietra :0 Awesome! I'll be sure to add you. Double checking, but is it Esperanto to English and vice versa? Want to make sure that if there's any other languages you know I can list those as well!

I'm curious how it's used in sci-fi? :0 I'm not familiar with the language so I'd be interested if you can tell me a bit about it!

Just posting here to bookmark for future reference and woah what a helpful thing to do!

Dez - yep, Esperanto to English and vice versa.  Although I could probably also do French to Esperanto and Spanish to Esperanto - wouldn't be confident enough to list vice-versa for those, though.

Certainly, I can geek out about Esperanto to you!  :D  It's a constructed language, that was made in the 1880s with the premise that everyone worldwide learn it as their second language, so that everyone has a neutral way to communicate. The idea being that people working together internationally don't necessarily have one side being at any disadvantage (for example, a Spanish company and a Chinese company doing business together communicating in Spanish naturally puts the Spanish company in a position of privilege - both companies doing business in Esperanto removes that, and removes any political implications of using, say, English), and helps to avoid smaller minority languages from being swallowed up by bigger, more dominant languages (historically, Eastern European Jewish communities used to use it this way, speaking their own dialect of Yiddish among themselves and Esperanto to other communities of different dialects or more widespread languages).  

Anyway, it took a big hit during WWII and almost faded into obscurity, but it's still around today, spoken mostly by people who think it's still a good idea for one reason or another (its original purpose as an auxiliary language, or for travel and tourism, or beneficial effects on brain development in children (think of it as the language-learning equivalent of teaching kids to play the recorder - it's super easy to learn, very logical, with rules that can be applied to other more complex languages), or for the history of it).  Or by massive language nerds like me, who learned it because it was fun and I enjoy expressing myself creatively in it.

It gets used in sci-fi and fantasy from time to time, often as a substitute for an "alien" language, or the language of a fictional country - it's obscure enough that not many people will already know it, and it's neutral - it doesn't belong to any country/culture - so it can be used without any implications of appropriation or stereotyping or anything.  I think Superman and Danny Phantom used it like this.  In "Red Dwarf", it was the international language of space travel in the 23rd century, and one of the running jokes was one of the main characters' futile attempts to learn it and failing miserably (it's supposed to take just a few weeks to get to speaking proficiency; this character had been studying it for about 20 years).  Signage around the ship and some names, documents, greetings, background jokes or hints of plot foreshadowing were in Esperanto.  Which, to someone who speaks the language, is especially entertaining!

Aietra :0 Holy sh- that's incredible! I had no idea there was something like that, thank you for informing me! And thanks for providing examples! It sounds like a very fun language XD It's always nice when you get those nice little details in media. This was such a delightful read. I'll go ahead and list you down for Esperanto --> EN and vice versa :) If anything comes up I'm sure it'll be listed as well. :)

OverlyOptimistic Thanks for showing an interest! It might not be extremely active, but if anyone needs it for anything, at least it's here! :)

Dez - you are most welcome!  ^_^  Any time, and happy to inform, entertain and help!

This is such a nice idea! I speak both Russian and Ukrainian, would be happy to help with either!

Enel Awesome, thanks so much! Quick question: if anyone has questions about culture as well, such as foods and all, would you be able to assist? My roommate and I have gotten into trying different foods from around the world and we have some Asian stores that sell loads of Korean items. Our issue is that...sometimes they're not translated ._.' Or it's hard to figure out what it's used for. Would you mind if we contacted you for anything like this if it's something you would know? We try to research everything first, but if we have nowhere else to go...Definitely wouldn't want to pester you too much XD

Mereka :0 Oh I think you're our first Ukrainian speaker! Thank you so much for assisting! If you don't mind me asking, I believe Ukraine is considered a country that speaks similarly to Russia? Could you tell me what kind of differences there are since you speak both? :0 I enjoy being educated on things like this :)

Dez Sure, I'll be happy to!

I'd say the main difference is the pronunciation. Ukrainian vowels tend to be more open, think 'e' in memory vs yesterday. While both sounds are present in either language, the first one is more common in Ukrainian and the second in Russian. Same goes for 'ee', but I don't know if English has an open version of that. For the consonants, they're basically the same (or at least I can't think of anything notable at the moment), except that the Russian 'Г' is pronounced like the English 'g' in google, but the Ukrainian one sounds more like 'h'. It's actually a pretty common way to tell if a person speaking Russian is from Ukraine, because we tend to pronounce it like 'h' in Russian too.

Also, the vocabularies are pretty different. Ukrainian has a lot of words shared with Polish. The language is actually about as close to Polish as it is to Russian. The primary reason it's thought to be closer to Russian is that the majority of the population is bilingual and mostly speak Russian, especially is their daily lives. Which means that when they do speak Ukrainian, it sounds like a mix of the two (and often is) because they don't have much practise. And I don't say this to be rude, I'm kinda guilty of this too. I speak Ukrainian a bit slower than Russian because I have a harder time picking words.

Mereka Oh wow, thanks so much for the information! Honestly I had no idea it was close to Polish :0 Would have never guessed! You explained things very well so thank you for taking your time to do so! Imma try to pay more attention to this now whenever I watch videos   Do you think that Ukraine might be slowly losing their own language? Like their original language? Or do you think it's still strong? I know some cultures have lost a lot of their own language and culture due to many different things in the past.

Dez I'm glad you found it interesting! :D

And that is definitely something a lot of people are concerned about. Though there has been a push in the recent years to speak more Ukrainian. Because of everything that happened in 2014, people are now very sceptical of anything having to do with Russia, including and especially the language, which is now a very significant part of our political discussion.