[lit-ideas] Re: Are they synonymous?
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:43:19 -0800
Portuguese has always troubled me ... It's supposed to be thoroughly
understandable by anyone who speaks Spanish...
I've been to Portugal several times. If both sides speak slowly and use simple sentences in
plain context, Spanish and Portugese speakers can mostly understand each other. But I can't
understand a movie in Portugese.
The same with Italian. I've been to Italy many times and I just speak simple Spanish. It
works.
Romanian is also a Romantic language. I was with a bunch of Romanians one time and they were
talking and I suddenly realized I could understand them. It's related to Spanish/Italian.
But speaking Spanish doesn't mean you can talk with any Latino. Often, I barely understand
Mexicans. They use so much slang. I've watched Argentinian movies and I miss perhaps half of
it, due to local slang. Colombians seem to speak entirely in slang. One of the things that
really surprised me is that Spaniards generally don't speak Spanish. Only Madrileños speak
Castellano. Everyone else speaks the local dialects of their province, such as Catalan.
Those are difficult to understand in spoken conversation.
If you speak either Danish, you can understand Norwegian and Swedish. Amusingly, Norwegians
and Swedes can't understand Danish pronunciation. They are really annoyed by the refusal of
Danes to speak properly.
Back to the Latino/Hispanic issue: I've never heard Latinos refer to themselves as
"Hispanicos" in Spanish. They say Latino. They'll use the phrase in English for the benefit
of Mr. Kite.
Polyglots don't talk about whether they speak German or Dutch. They say they speak the
family, such as Germanic, or Romantic, or the region, such as "she speaks Northern
European". If you're fluent in German, Danish, and English, then it's fairly easy to read
newspapers in Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian. My cousins in the Hague noticed I read the local
papers every morning and discussed events with them.
yrs,
andreas
www.andreas.com
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