Language Translations for Creation

hexagon-13 :0 Omg Italian! I love the language :) And the country looks so beautiful! Thank you for your assistance and for being here :) Always nice to have more people wanting to help, though I'm not sure if this whole post IS helping anyone XD People might be messaging others for assistance but as long as the help is here, we're good! 

Are there any unusual phrases said in Italian that other countries might not have? 

Dez To be honest we're so full of idioms I don't know which one to pick  

 Right now I'm thinking of the many ways of saying "[To] stay doing nothing": "Stare a pettinare le bambole" ("Stay combing dolls"), "Stare a smacchiare i giaguari" ("Stay removing jaguars' spots"), "Stare a lucidare gli ottoni" ("Stay polishing brass")... 

The thing is, we tend to use many figures of speech when we talk, sometimes we even make them up on the spot and that's how we end up with multiple versions of the same phrase!

hexagon-13 Omg that's so cool! I never knew that. Must be fun, though, seeing all the different versions that could be made out of one phrase XD It's amazing to learn about these kinds of things. Thank you so much for sharing! :) If you ever want to share more, feel free to tell us anything you feel is important or interesting! 

Oh hi! I'm also Italian (don't talk about the beauty of the Country or language to me though, I really want to leave asap), and other than Italian, I can also provide some dialect from Bologna (which is a big deal, because honestly, there's so many dialects here and my one in particular has some words I literally can't avoid using, such as "rusco" which is either trash can or rubbish - it comes from a plant where people used to put their rubbish before actually getting rid of it -, and I need a lot of effort not to throw that term in the face of people from other zones, so it's fun times; or a little phrase that is very confusing to people from other parts of Italy is "dare il tiro" - to give the pull -, which means unlocking a door from distance by pressing on the button; it's said like this because once there was an actual thread instead of a button, and it stuck). I also know a little Latin, but mostly I can check if its declination makes sense more than the words themselves.

LeoLeonis Welcome! 

I'm super happy about the information you shared about your language. Little bits like that always make it interesting :) And I understand about wanting to leave a place that others find beautiful. It took me forever to get out of Florida XD But most people here want to live in Florida because it's "close to the beach and you can go there every day." Not as glorified as they make it out to be. 

Once again, thank you for sharing! I'll be sure to put you on the list :) Feel free to share anything else to us if you want to! 

Dez Oh I totally see! I imagine it's even tougher for people who actually don't like beaches all that much, I surely don't see the appeal myself!

You're welcome, thank you too! And a quick term which originated in the City, but is being popularized a lot in other zones too, even abroad (so much it has an English wikipedia page): an Umarell (from umarèl), an elderly man who typically stays around construction sites, gives a lot of unneded advice, is quick to judge those youngsters, will likely have an active life in supermarkets, political or historical festivals, telling about the good old days, get informed about other people's health, card games and bricolage; they'll likely be married to a zdaura, have grandchildren, a bike, a never used but well kept car, and spend lots of time in the basement.

In Norwegian, I believe "You can't handle the truth" would be "Du kan ikke takle sannheten." I only know a decent amount of the basics though so don't quote me on that, I can't translate large or complex bits of text

Definite articles ("the" in English) are added to the ends of nouns, which is why it seems like there's one less word in the Norwegian version. "Truth" is simply "sannhet", but if you add -en you can turn it into "the truth" (sannheten). Articles ("a/an" in English) however are always their own separate word. "A dog" would simply be "en hund"

There's a lot more that I can delve into with Norwegian, so if anyone is ever interested don't be afraid to ask!
Just be prepared for me to do a LOT of rambling

LeoLeonis XD omg!! I really love that, thank you so much for sharing that! That just made my whole day!!! 

AnonymousPumpkins Oh thank you very much for that!! En hund kinda reminds me of German a bit, but the rest seems rather different. That's interesting to know! 

And please do ramble XD I have no issues with this forum being filled with languages. It's what it's for! 

Dez Norwegian is similar to German cause it's in the same family group! English, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic are all Germanic languages. So knowing one makes learning the others a bit easier, it's easier for an English speaker to learn say Swedish than Russian. Finnish though isn't in this group, it's a Uralic language alongside Estonian and Hungarian

Also some good things to keep in mind for anyone who ever wants to incorporate Norwegian into a story or character:

1. Norwegian, like French and German, has gendered words. However, you can't guess a words gender based on how it's spelt. The best way to learn the genders of words is to treat the article and noun as one word. Don't learn just "hund," learn "en hund." It'll save you a lot of grief later. Norwegian claims to have three genders but honestly you can get away with using only two (masculine and neuter) 90% of the time. Some words require you to use feminine articles but there's not that many
2. It follows the "V2" rule. Basically, the verb must go in the second spot of a sentence (this doesn't mean that it has to be the second word though). In English it's perfectly fine to say "Here I am," but you CANNOT write "Her jeg er" in Norwegian. It's "Her er jeg." The V2 rule doesn't apply to yes/no questions though, because Norwegian doesn't use the word "do" like English does. You would write "Do you live in Norway?" as "Bor du i Norge?" (literally "live you in Norway?")
3. Adjectives take on the gender of the noun they're describing
4. Possessives are interesting to say in the least. A possessive pronoun can go before or after a noun but the noun changes depending on how you write a sentence. If the pronoun is before the noun, the noun doesn't change. Ex. Hans bil (his car). But if you wish to put the pronoun after the noun, the noun must take on its definite form. Ex. Bilen hans (pay attention to the -en). Putting the possessive pronoun before the noun is often seen as formal or poetic 

AnonymousPumpkins :0 Holy crap, that's a lot of fantastic information! Thank you so much for explaining some things! You'd be such a great teacher :) I also had no idea there were that many Germanic languages and some countries seemed unexpected. 

I attempted German once before and did fairly well for awhile, even though the gendered words made no sense. But from what I heard, they really don't XD You just learn them that way. I had to seriously look up why Mädchen was neuter and not feminine. Languages are so interesting, especially when you start looking through the etymology of their words. I advise looking up some information on the word "portmanteau" because it's so interesting to read about XD

But an honestly curious question: does this mean most of the Germanic countries understand one another or are there still language barriers? 

Dez Aww thank you, hearing you say that I'd be a great teacher is really flattering! I studied German for a while myself but I got out of it once I started Norwegian. Let me just say that I'm finding Norwegian to be quite a bit easier so far askjasdkk

And to answer your question, no Germanic countries do not automatically understand each other. There's a lot of loan words and similar grammar between all of them but every one of those languages are their own unique language and barriers still exist. A Swedish person cannot understand Norwegian unless they study it, despite Swedish and Norwegian being pretty similar languages. Funny enough, if you learn Norwegian first it makes learning both Danish and Swedish easier if you want know all three

Dez and AnonymousPumpkins I actually think this is valid for all languages from the same family! Knowing English does somewhat help me recognize some words from other Germanic languages for instance, but there's no way I can actually understand them; and even closer, I still can somewhat understand some words in other neo-Latin languages (French, Spanish, Portoguese, Romanian...) and recognize some patterns, but if I can't read the written version then I am completely clueless. Such different cultures couldn't have too similar languages! But I also think it depends on every person, for instance I still can't understand spoken French at all despite 3 years of studying it, while some people almost immediately pick up on Spanish after reading a few pages in it - though this is true to learning languages in general!

AnonymousPumpkins You DEFINITELY would be good at teaching :) You explain details very thoroughly and emphasize on the important parts. That's highly important in learning I think, especially to those who struggle to learn (like I do). Thank you for answering my questions and explaining further! I'd love to hear the differences in all the dialects and regions of the Germanic languages to see how they differ. 

LeoLeonis I can agree that English helps with German, and a couple of other languages too, though I think that's because it's a mashup of other languages XD I also understand the spoken part! I can't understand some English speakers at times, let alone other languages! They speak so fast, so fluently, and they know colloquial differences and slang that you can't really learn unless you're immersed in it. 

Oh I should probably clarify that I'm studying Bokmål. Norwegian has two written forms, Bokmål and Nynorsk, and Bokmål is the far more common version (about 90% of the population uses it I believe). So if you wanna put me on the list for basic Norwegian, please state that it's Bokmål Norwegian! 

Every country has their own dialects and there's way too many to list from even a single country. Arguably you could say that I myself speak a dialect of English because I'm Canadian, Canadian English isn't the exact same as American English (mostly because of idioms, slang and how we spell things but even how we pronounce things can be a little jarring to some people). Canadian English can be broken down even further into regional differences. Cause lemme just say that a Newfie doesn't sound like someone from the prairies pfft

AnonymousPumpkins Oh, thank you for clarifying! I'll be sure to add you then :) 

I understand the English differences XD I have a friend from the UK and we were going over the different ways of saying things, but also what we call things. For example, we call the glass covering on a car a "windshield" but they call it a "windscreen." We call the back of a car a "trunk" but they call it a "boot." It's very fun trying to think of what's different XD

If you know of any Canadian English differences from American English I'd love to hear them!