Calling all language lovers!

[Gauchita]

I'll shamelessly plug a friend's blog here because it's great!

If you're interested in language, etymology, linguistics, etc, head this way.

She's an etymology addict (and doesn't mind me saying so ) and is teaching the rest of us a lot, so thank you Alex

alexpolistigers.wordpress.com/

Some of my Turkish letters work (ö, ü, ç) because they are also in other languages like German and French, I suppose.

Some others don't (i without dot, g with a bar, s with a tail) which is why I had to write Tanri. If that letter was indeed 'i', it wouldn't conform to vowel harmony.

I don't agree with any of that, LRD.

You mean, you don't have that experience, or you don't think the interpretation makes sense? Or something else?

Turkish is fascinating, btw. Is it right that it's part of the earliest branch that split off from Indo-European? I think I heard that - if it is, maybe that is why it's remained relatively unchanged over time (if it's somehow very stable, perhaps)?

Interpretation doesn't make sense. When you are truly fluent in a language, you think in it. So, by definition, you don't translate from another language.

This is more marked the more different the languages are. You might get away with translating some things in your head between French & English, for example, but you can't possibly translate between languages as different as Turkish & English and Japanese & English as you speak.

You learn these languages without translating them in your mind and you become fluent in them without ever translating between them. As you learn new words in them from context, you don't find out which words they correspond to in the other language because you are not translating and many of the words/concepts can't even be easily translated.

So when you are asked to translate years down the line, you struggle.

Did you read my posts?

I think you're saying what I'm saying about why translating is difficult, but as I said, I'm not fluent. Not even close.

I said that I think British people have a tendency to think bilingualism (trilingualism, etc.) are difficult because they look at someone like my DH (who is fluent) struggling to translate between English and Russian, and they confuse this with a lack of fluency.

How are we not agreeing?

I'm sure I'm not being terribly coherent, btw, cos I was excited finding this thread.

No, Turkish is not an Indo-European language, either.

It was considered within the Ural-Altaic languages, but that language family is disputed these days. I'm not sure about the most recent classification. It might be Altaic.

Take a look at that page that Alexpoli linked to.

I can't imagine British people in general confusing translation skills with fluency, either.

Surely, when they see your DH speak in Russian they realise that he is fluent? Especially if your DH is Russian, I can't see how anyone can doubt his fluency in Russian, regardless of whether or not he can translate well to English.

It might well just be the people I know, that's true.

Usually people don't get much chance to see DH speaking Russian, because his family aren't over her. SIL has had the same experience with German, though she is actually much better at translating than DH is, because she does it a lot in her day-to-day life.

Thanks for the info about Turkish - really interesting.

Ah, I was thinking of Anatolian.

For example, proto-Indo-European mehter has led to mother (English), mutter (German), mat (Russian), madar (Persian), and matka (Polish).

In Turkish, mother is anne (un-neh).

This comparison between Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Turkish, and Mongolian is interesting.

That is fascinating.

I was reading a book recently about which sounds are most likely to turn into which other sounds (like vinum to wine, or pater to father), so I wonder how far back people could reconstruct to find the ultimate common roots.

'Amma' means mother in some languages (I forget which), and sounds almost like halfway between the Turkish and the IE versions, but I expect that is just far too simplistic a comment.

GoodToBetter and Alex, thanks for your replies (and sorry for a very late one from me!)

I mainly just wonder whether this is something that should worry me or whether it's normal.

She also learns French at school, I forgot to mention, and oddly enough she seems to pronounce FR much better and more easily than SP

People who listen to us talking (in a shop for example) always look - and generally smile - as she speaks EN to me and I reply in SP. It must sound a bit strange to those 'outside'.

She 'interprets' everything, though. If I ask her to tell something to DH, for example, she says exactly the same thing I told her but in EN. It's fascinating.

I saw this today:

The Weirdest Languages

... And thought alexpoli in particular would be interested in the World Atlas Of Language Structures

Thanks, Cote I've bookmarked that for a proper look later. It does look interesting. Sorry to take so long to come back to you - I've been away on holiday and only just come back.

According to my reference sources, Turkish is now viewed as a member of the Altaic family, they don't use the Ural bit any more. Subject to the next major theory, of course!

Hullo everyone,

We've had a suggestion to move this to the shiney new linguistics topic, and it seems like a good fit, so we've going to move it now.

Thank you!