Quick question!
How do I remove myself from the list? I've tried, think I followed the directions correctly, as they were posted, but am still receiving emails from the list. While I appreciate the wonderful exchanges, I kinda feel I'm not too much to offer at this time.
Regards,
AJ
From: Andy Amago <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Are they synonymous?
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:57:10 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
Russian now has huge quantities of English words. It's very annoying actually. I have books from before the collapse of the SU and the words will be mostly Russian. Read BBC Russian today and if a Russian word and an English word are equally available, as often as not they'll use the English word and Russianize it. That doesn't mean that all someone has to do is learn the letters and they can read Russian. Certainly they'll never understand it spoken. The declensions, syntax etc. are very different, and most words are still Russian (whatever than means, like whatever English means). My husband is at the moment reading a thing on Brazil nuts from the Brazilian rainforest, and he sounded out the Portugese word for Brazil nut. I instantly heard the Russian word for chestnut (but without the 'sh' sound). Small world, isn't it?
-----Original Message-----
>From: Andreas Ramos <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Jan 27, 2007 8:43 PM
>To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Are they synonymous?
>
>> 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
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------
>To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
>digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
