Greetings!

[jazzpurist]

Allrighty, I guess the greetings thread is the one where I should put this.

I am saying goodbye to the forums. I will still stalk it to read if Jocke has anything to say (that's why I registered in the first place), but I'm not going to post anything anymore. I have read through conversations here and over in the Swedish forum and I feel so totally misplaced here, that it's better for me to stop being active. I guess I shouldn't have started posting in the first place.

Thanks for all the fish. (:

[Oktjabrj]

Allrighty, I guess the greetings thread is the one where I should put this.

I am saying goodbye to the forums. I will still stalk it to read if Jocke has anything to say (that's why I registered in the first place), but I'm not going to post anything anymore. I have read through conversations here and over in the Swedish forum and I feel so totally misplaced here, that it's better for me to stop being active. I guess I shouldn't have started posting in the first place.

Thanks for all the fish. (:

There is definitely something fishy about this! ):

[Reina]

Allrighty, I guess the greetings thread is the one where I should put this.

I am saying goodbye to the forums. I will still stalk it to read if Jocke has anything to say (that's why I registered in the first place), but I'm not going to post anything anymore. I have read through conversations here and over in the Swedish forum and I feel so totally misplaced here, that it's better for me to stop being active. I guess I shouldn't have started posting in the first place.

Thanks for all the fish. (:

Pity to see you go

[stjärnor]

Yeah, sad that you feel like you don't fit in here. Remember, we're all here because we love kent, that's all that matters. Everyone is welcome x

[timegirl]

I've heard Finnish is tricky to learn. I'm sure I remember my Swedish teacher saying it was related to Hungarian in some way. As a native English speaker and knowing some Swedish, I see no familiarities with Finnish- there's almost nothing I can understand when I see any Finnish.

Sorry for the late reply, been busy with working and sickness. Actually, Finnish and Hungarian are quite far from each other, they separated... not sure, but must be more than 1000 years ago. I have been neglecting Finnish recently because of the above mentioned reasons but it sounds much closer to Swedish than to Hungarian for me.

[timegirl]

Allrighty, I guess the greetings thread is the one where I should put this.

I am saying goodbye to the forums. I will still stalk it to read if Jocke has anything to say (that's why I registered in the first place), but I'm not going to post anything anymore. I have read through conversations here and over in the Swedish forum and I feel so totally misplaced here, that it's better for me to stop being active. I guess I shouldn't have started posting in the first place.

Thanks for all the fish. (:

Well... I can't replace you, but we're still here. And if you keep helping me with Swedish, one day I'll post in those threads *hugs*

[Reina]

Sorry for the late reply, been busy with working and sickness. Actually, Finnish and Hungarian are quite far from each other, they separated... not sure, but must be more than 1000 years ago. I have been neglecting Finnish recently because of the above mentioned reasons but it sounds much closer to Swedish than to Hungarian for me.

Linguistically speaking, Finnish is closer to Hungarian than to Swedish, but I think it was even over 4000 years ago they separated. They can't understand each other at all and the similarities are hard to find without actually studying linguistics. There are quite some similarities in the grammar though, if I remember correctly, and both Hungarian and Finnish grammar are very difficult to learn.

You can compare it with Germanic languages, say Swedish and English, but those 'separated' much less long ago. Sorry for my language nerdyness.... I was just surprised that you think Swedish and Finnish sound similar in any way, because they are unrelated and Finnish is completely not understandable to Swedes. Maybe it's the large amount of loan words?

[namokab]

Thank you! The only big problem with Swedish is that I want to learn everything at once but it takes time and I'm a bit impatient. It's such a beautiful language - the only other I love this much is Finnish (and that obsession started with music too).

Then I think you will love "finlandssvenska", i.e. Swedish with a Finnish accent (listen e.g. to the Finnish song "När jag blundar" in the ESC 2012). Just visited Hungary for the first time this summer and was a bit amazed how different the language is compared to everything else. You have a lot of letters with "pricks" on top, as we use to joke in Swedish English (prickar means dots in Swe).

The foreign part of the forum is nice. Pity that I as a swede feel a bit misplaced here.

[stjärnor]

That was a nice song, and I remember I could understand her singing more than a usual first listen at a swedish song.

Ok, to the swedes, and this will probably sound silly, but when I hear a French person speaking english, I can tell pretty much straight away that they're French because of the way the speak english (ze instead of 'th', for example), the same with Italians, and I can tell when it's a Scandinavian speaking english (that's very nice!), so although you might not hear as many english speakers speaking swedish as I do other nationalities speaking english, what do we sound like to you? What are the vocal the 'give-aways' or clues that the person speaking to you is an english speaker?

One thing I have to remember when I speak swedish (and this might just be for my scottish accent, which says it differently from english accents) is that I have to place my 'a's further back in my mouth. 'A' naturally comes out from the front of my mouth, and a swedish 'a' comes from the back, almost at the throat. I say 't' with the tongue is touching the roof of my mouth, and Swedish has it with the tongue touching the back of your front teeth.

Oh, and Timegirl, welcome back And Namokab, kent & being able to speak english in some form is what joins us all in here, you are more than welcome to join us!

[stjärnor]

And I forgot to mention the other language of Scotland, Scottish Gaelic, of which I know nothing. It's not compulsory taught in schools, unlike Welsh is now, and it's mainly used in the Outer Hebrides and some northern areas of the country. Although the area of Glasgow I live in apparently has a large proportion of Gaelic speakers (compared to the rest of the city), I imagine very few people would use it day to day outside the home- as non-gaelic people wouldn't understand it. It resembles nothing of english, and the pronunciation is something I don't quite follow either...

Here's a pic of a sign at one of the main railway stations, if english was removed, I'd be lost!

799px-WelcomeToQueenStreetFailteGuSraidNaBanrighinn_Glasgow.jpg

[namokab]

Tack stjärnor!

Hard to explain how UK/americans speak Swedish. At least it's quite obvious when they say things like "jag cän praata litte svennska" (it sounds very american in the accent and it would be easy to imitate for a swede).

Gaelic definitely qualifies in the strange languages of Europe together with Basque and maybe some other.

[stjärnor]

There is actually no word for either yes or no in gaelic. That's just weird to me! Apparently you just repeat the verb with either a positive or negative response:
"Are you hungry" = "I am" or "I'm not"

When you see it written down, it doesn't look so crazy, but I find it amazing that a language evolved to not have the most basic of words!

[Reina]

Ok, to the swedes, and this will probably sound silly, but when I hear a French person speaking english, I can tell pretty much straight away that they're French because of the way the speak english (ze instead of 'th', for example), the same with Italians, and I can tell when it's a Scandinavian speaking english (that's very nice!), so although you might not hear as many english speakers speaking swedish as I do other nationalities speaking english, what do we sound like to you? What are the vocal the 'give-aways' or clues that the person speaking to you is an english speaker?

I'm not a Swede as you know so forgive me for answering without being asked anything But for me, English speakers are the easiest to recognize when they're speaking Swedish, together with Finnish people. I can't explain exactly what it is that makes that accent so easy to recognize, but there's something at least Namokab explained it pretty well with that sentence. The r is often very recognizable too.

And stjärnor, that was so weird, a language without yes or no. However, people from northern Sweden don't have a word for 'yes' either. They simply suck in some air and think that's sufficient

Hm, I guess I'm misplaced anywhere on this forum. I've lived here for too long to look at Sweden with 'foreigner's eyes', but I'm not a 'real Swede' either. Maybe if we from the English forum all start showing ourselves a little more around the Swedish part, they'll get to know us and have a look in here too? After all, it's a kent forum and we all like kent, that should be enough shouldn't it?

[stjärnor]

I have recently been sticking my head into the chat thread over there (and hoping they don't laugh at my swedish spelling, I know that's probably not as good as it used to be ), although it's tricky right now as there's not so much kent stuff to chat about.

Laughing at your northern swedish comment, although I don't have any experience of this, I can just imagine the gesture!

I've never actually heard myself speaking Swedish, since I can't bear to listen to my voice in english either (it's so squeaky!). As our swedish courses were 'adult vocational' you finished each level with a 'pass' or a 'not passed yet' (oh how politically correct, no one ever fails!) and the teacher didn't grade/ test us against each other.

[timegirl]

I'm back, again (been sick and overworked, can't wait for the holidays to kick off tomorrow evening). Well, the thing is, Swedish and Finnish sound similar to me. Lots of nice vowels in words (: (oh how much I love niohundranittionio, for example) I know they're not related (or very very distant relatives at best), but still, they sound a bit similar. Otherwise yes, Hungarian and Finnish were separated ages ago so they're very different. But I wouldn't say Hungarian grammar is so difficult (OK, it's my first language, so I should shut up), apart from that vowel thingy which I don't remember now what it's called in English, sorry. But hey, there are technically 12 tenses in English, while we only use 3...

And oh yes, I'm definitely planning to stick my nose into the Swedish part of the forum, I just need to learn the language faster - which hopefully will happen now that I'm gonna have some free time (: