The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

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tungemål
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby tungemål » Thu Nov 12, 2020 11:03 pm

Ladino seems to be simply Spanish written with another script.

Catalá:
How different are Catalá and Castellano really? I realise they are two different languages. It is often asked if we Scandinavians can understand each other languages, and we can, even though the languages are different. When a Castellano-speaker can't understand Catalá, is that because they are not willing to, or are the languages really too different? I am just throwing out some politically uncorrect questions here.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby jmar257 » Thu Nov 12, 2020 11:29 pm

tungemål wrote:Ladino seems to be simply Spanish written with another script.

It's pretty fun to go down the rabbit hole and see how much you can read if you know Spanish, I've done it before. If you've got a few differences memorized (Ladino retains the initial f in some words where Spanish has the h, think like Portuguese fazer vs. Spanish hacer) it's really easy. I recall reading/hearing somewhere that Ladino doesn't have as many loans from Hebrew as do other Hebrew-Jewish hybrid languages (is there a term for these? E.g. Yiddish, and I think there's one derived from French).

tungemål wrote:Catalá:
How different are Catalá and Castellano really? I realise they are two different languages. It is often asked if we Scandinavians can understand each other languages, and we can, even though the languages are different. When a Castellano-speaker can't understand Catalá, is that because they are not willing to, or are the languages really too different? I am just throwing out some politically uncorrect questions here.

Interested in a native speaker's response to this, especially since I haven't really done much Catalan listening. That said, I enjoy kind of doing the same thing I mentioned doing with Ladino above and trying to decipher it when I see it. I've read it in a few people's language logs here (Iversen's, but also another one or two) and I can understand it pretty well. That said, I recall someone explaining that Catalan's to go + verb is actually used to mean something in the past, and not the near future like in English and Spanish and French. So I could be thinking I understand and missing stuff like that, lol.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby Lysander » Thu Nov 12, 2020 11:34 pm

iguanamon wrote:Català
Thanks everyone for your replies. It's nice to be validated. The good thing about finally doing the course is I now understand what learners go through when they use Assimil. I will now be better able to advise beginners who have trouble with the course.

I'm now up to lesson 70 in the second wave of Assimil. It's more difficult because of my imperfect ability in French- especially more colloquial French, but I'm muddling through.

Español
With the big news this past week being about the recent US election, I'd rather get my news straight from the source, but I can still do it in Spanish. Associated Press en español; The New York Times en Español; El Nuevo (Miami) Herald and more locally from Puerto Rico Telenoticias Puerto Rico and for television from the US CNN en Español. All of these are more relevant to me in my own country than El País or RTVE. Even though I live under the US flag, with a post office, zipcode, ESPN, the US dollar, and all of that, I can't vote in US federal elections because I live in a US Territory- which for all practical intents and purposes, according to the UN, is a colony. If anyone wants to know why they can watch this video by Scouser (Liverpool native)/American John Oliver. In addition to being rather serious about the situation, he also makes the ridiculousness of it quite funny ("whacky stick"; :lol: ). Ironically, I as an 11th generation American, born and raised, who served in the US Army, whose ancestors fought in every war the country ever had, including the Revolution, cannot vote. My representative to the US Congress can't vote either in Congress. Every four years this situation is made naked and raw to all of us. We are essentially- "Americanos de la segunda"/Second class Americans. We do get to choose our own local government and pass local laws, but ultimately the US Congress can override any of our laws it doesn't like.

Most people don't think of the US as having an overseas "empire"... but we do, from the Caribbean to the Pacific. The French do too, but they call their former colonies "overseas departments". Their citizens have the right to vote in French national elections and have voting representation in the French legislature. The British still have island "British Overseas Territories", but they are more like the US in how they treat their citizens there- no vote or representation in the British parliament, though they do have the right to live in the UK. I don't know about the situation of the Netherlands' colonies in the Caribbean.

I was going to suggest "How to Hide an Empire" to you in one of your non-English languages, but I can only find it in German, haha.

On the topic of Assimil, I was going to wait until you completely finished for this question, but I think 70% done with the active wave is close enough.

What do you think about the utility of the active wave for learners? I suspect someone following your multi-track approach, especially the aspect of working concurrently on a second course with Assimil, may not get as much value out of the active wave and could skip it since they'd be replacing it with either another course or native materials. However, I did not want to make assumptions about your perspective on whether to bother with the active wave, so I welcome it if you are prepared to share!
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Thu Nov 12, 2020 11:53 pm

Thanks for stopping by, tungemål. Ladino is also called Djudeo-espanyol, it's relationship to Spanish is analogous to the relationship of Yiddish to German.

Can you make out this passage?
Edmund Cohen wrote:Un alhad una balabaya kodja boy, bivda de un haham brusali, henoza en su fustan mavi, asentada sovre un minder a la koche de su salon, resive su musafir, un kasap un poko kazikchi, ama de buen kiyafet, ke entrando belledea pishin kuti de teneke, al lado del mangal, para la sedaka, i ke mete dos groshes.

Djudeo-espanyol can be quite transparent for anyone who has learned Spanish, much of the time, and at other times, as above, it isn't. Mi traduksion al inglez:

"One Sunday a very tall housewife, widow of a scholarly rabbi, graceful in her blue dress, seated on a cushion on the living room sofa, receives her guest, a butcher who was a little skinny, but well dressed, who on entering noticed immediately the collection box, on the side of the grill, for charity, and put in two coins."

Here are words from Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic. Several common words in Ladino are very different from Spanish, like "fork" SP- tenedor; Ladino- piron: which comes from Greek. Still, having Spanish is a huge and massive help to learning Ladino.

As to Catalan. It is a similar language to Spanish, I wouldn't say they are mutually intelligible but perhaps a native speaker may like to comment. Ogrim would be a good person to answer this question since he is Norwegian and speaks both Catalan and Spanish. Most Catalan-speakers in Spain and Andorra live side by side with the Spanish language and the vast majority of Catalan-speakers are bilingual with Spanish.
tungemål wrote:How different are Catalá and Castellano really? I realise they are two different languages. It is often asked if we Scandinavians can understand each other languages, and we can, even though the languages are different. When a Castellano-speaker can't understand Catalá, is that because they are not willing to, or are the languages really too different? I am just throwing out some politically uncorrect incorrect questions here....

jmar257 wrote:...I recall someone explaining that Catalan's to go + verb is actually used to mean something in the past, and not the near future like in English and Spanish and French. So I could be thinking I understand and missing stuff like that...

Well, I obviously do not speak any Scandinavian languages. I have witnessed Portuguese monolinguals managing to get their points across to monolingual Spanish-speakers (and vice-versa) and also with Italians on a basic level.

I have a Catalan-speaking acquaintance who says Spanish-speakers see no point in learning Catalan and many make no effort to learn. I have seen this for myself in Barcelona. Yes, the languages are similar, but when Plats Bruts was shown in Spanish-speaking Spain, it was dubbed into Spanish, not subtitled. Spanish books are translated to Catalan and Catalan books are translated to Spanish.

Here's a recent example from my log of a book translated into Catalan from English. You can probably make it out to a large extent, but you will see the present tense of the verb "anar" used to indicate the past and several different words form Spanish- like "got" for glass instead of "vaso"; "beure" instead of "beber"; "vegada" for "vez"; "fer" for "hacer"; "anar" for "ir"; "feina" for "tarea/trabajo":
"Collita roja/Red Harvest" by Dashiell Hammet
Dashiell Hammet- Collita roja wrote:Catalan
Temps enrera havia preparat una o dues morts,
quan eren necessàries. Però aquesta és la primera
vegada que m'hi trobo entrampat. És aquesta
maleïda ciutat. Aquí, és que no pots anar de dret.
Al començament ja em vaig veure embolicat.
Quan el vell Elihu recorregué a mi no podia fer
altra cosa que enfrontar els malfactors l'un contra
l'altre. Vaig haver d'orientar el treball de la millor
manera que vaig saber. Què podia fer-hi si de la
millor manera volia dir arribar a una matança?
Altrament sense el suport d'Elihu la feina no podia
fer-se.
—Si no podies fer-hi res, per què carat et
lamentes, ara? Tu beu, i prou.
Em vaig beure la meitat del got i vaig sentir la
necessitat de continuar parlant
"I've arranged a killing or two in my time, when
they were necessary. But this is the first time I've
ever got the fever. It's this damned burg. You can't
go straight here. I got myself tangled at the
beginning. When old Elihu ran out on me there
was nothing I could do but try to set the boys
against each other. I had to swing the job the best
way I could. How could I help it if the best way
was bound to lead to a lot of killing? The job
couldn't be handled any other way without Elihu's
backing."
.
"Well, if you couldn't help it, what's the use of
making a lot of fuss over it? Drink your drink."
I drank half of it and felt the urge to talk some
more.

I can read French and Italian to a large extent, thanks to my other languages and my native English. I can't speak them and would get lost completely with idiomatic and colloquial speech. I wouldn't have a chance with slang.

Maybe you should learn Catalan now, or another romance language and see for yourself :)
Last edited by iguanamon on Fri Nov 13, 2020 2:08 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Fri Nov 13, 2020 1:07 am

Lysander wrote:I was going to suggest "How to Hide an Empire" to you in one of your non-English languages, but I can only find it in German, haha.

If you're interested, Doug Mack has a recent good book about the US Territories (Colonies)- The Not-Quite States of America that I highly recommend. Even though I live under this system imposed by the US and am quite familiar with it, I enjoyed reading about the other territories (colonies) with which I am not as knowledgeable.
Lysander wrote:On the topic of Assimil, I was going to wait until you completely finished for this question, but I think 70% done with the active wave is close enough.
What do you think about the utility of the active wave for learners? I suspect someone following your multi-track approach, especially the aspect of working concurrently on a second course with Assimil, may not get as much value out of the active wave and could skip it since they'd be replacing it with either another course or native materials. However, I did not want to make assumptions about your perspective on whether to bother with the active wave, so I welcome it if you are prepared to share!

I didn't go through the Assimil course to teach myself Catalan. I was already reading the language and listening. What I wanted out of Assimil was for it to teach me conversational language... which is why I chose the French base course over the Spanish base course. You're right, I could indeed skip the second wave... and I did think about it. I am going through with it for two reasons. One of the reasons is so that I can reinforce what I've learned already. I find Assimil to be insufficient in exercises and grammar and especially in repetition... all of which are by design. So, I think it will help me to get some more, needed repetition by doing the second wave. Secondly, if I don't finish the second wave, I won't be able to judge the course fairly. People will say "How can you criticize the course if you never finished the second wave?". So another few weeks with Assimil isn't going to kill me and I do think the repetition is helping with the conversational language. I think the course is a step above many of the commonly used courses. All courses have their faults. I wouldn't depend on Assimil alone.

My multi-track approach means that I am also learning from other sources, so, in fairness my doing the course is not a true judgement of its usefulness. It's hard to say what comes from where. I'd hear/see phrases in Plats Brut or my reading again in Assimil. I'd see/hear phrases from Assimil in my other resources. Plus, I speak related languages at a high level... which I'm grateful for because without them in my back pocket, I don't think I would have gotten as much out of the course as I did. Of course, I do believe that having self-learned a language already in itself is a huge, immeasurable help in learning the next one. It meant I wasn't afraid to start reading and watching/listening in the language. I knew what to expect and not to be devastated when I didn't understand everything.

Reverse translation has been a useful technique in language-learning for a long time, it's just harder for me to do from French, a language I don't speak but can understand a great deal. I am quite proud of myself when I get it right and not too disappointed when I don't. So, I'd say it's a worthwhile exercise, given Assimil's limitations.
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby jmar257 » Fri Nov 13, 2020 2:19 pm

iguanamon wrote:I can read French and Italian to a large extent, thanks to my other languages and my native English. I can't speak them and would get lost completely with idiomatic and colloquial speech. I wouldn't have a chance with slang.
I think I exaggerated a bit when I said I could understand Catalan "pretty well," more like I can get the gist, but yeah the fact that I've studied French helps a great deal. I stumbled upon a YouTube channel for Italian learners where a girl speaks Italian a bit slower and clearly for intermediates to help with listening comprehension and was surprised by how much I understood. Probably even more than I get reading it, and I've never done more the a Michel Thomas Basic course in Italian. Both that and Catalan are on my hit list some day...
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby Ogrim » Fri Nov 13, 2020 4:29 pm

tungemål wrote:How different are Catalá and Castellano really? I realise they are two different languages. It is often asked if we Scandinavians can understand each other languages, and we can, even though the languages are different. When a Castellano-speaker can't understand Catalá, is that because they are not willing to, or are the languages really too different? I am just throwing out some politically uncorrect questions here.



iguanamon wrote:As to Catalan. It is a similar language to Spanish, I wouldn't say they are mutually intelligible but perhaps a native speaker may like to comment. Ogrim would be a good person to answer this question since he is Norwegian and speaks both Catalan and Spanish. Most Catalan-speakers in Spain and Andorra live side by side with the Spanish language and the vast majority of Catalan-speakers are bilingual with Spanish.

I have a Catalan-speaking acquaintance who says Spanish-speakers see no point in learning Catalan and many make no effort to learn. I have seen this for myself in Barcelona. Yes, the languages are similar, but when Plats Bruts was shown in Spanish-speaking Spain, it was dubbed into Spanish, not subtitled. Spanish books are translated to Catalan and Catalan books are translated to Spanish.


I have to take up iguanamon's invitation of course :) . I am not a native speaker of Spanish, but as I've been using it every single day for the last 30 years of my life I guess my Spanish is OK. 8-) Just to make it clear, Catalan and Spanish are far from being as close as the Scandinavian languages are to each other. There are multiple phonological, morphological and grammatical differences between the two, which makes mutual intelligibility difficult. So for a Spanish speaker to understand Catalan he/she will have to make an effort to learn the language, at least to the point that they know the basic differences which make understanding difficult.

Of course, Spanish is the bigger language of the two, which means that for a lot of historical reasons Catalans have had to learn Spanish, and even if you live in Catalunya it is hard to avoid Spanish on an everyday basis. It is not so the other way around. If you live in Madrid, Sevilla, Bilbao or Burgos, you can go through life without hardly ever hearing a word of Catalan. Then there are the political tensions, which I won't go into here, but which have resulted in Catalan being looked down at by certain people in the rest of Spain. Let's also not forget that not so many decades ago, the vast majority of non-Catalan (or Basque or Galician) Spaniards were monolingual, and much more effort has been put into teaching English (and to some extent French) than into teaching the regional languages of Spain. I believe that today there is some mention of them in the school curriculum, but nothing like serious education unless you live in one of the bilingual regions.

In TV news nowadays they've stopped having Spanish voice-over when Catalan politicians speak their language, but they normally provide subtitles in Spanish, and TV series and films are dubbed. Novels written in Catalan are translated into Spanish (often by the authors themselves), but lately more and more Spanish novels are translated into Catalan as well.

It is certainly easy for a Spanish-speaker to learn to understand Catalan (speaking it well is another matter), it won't take that much of an effort, but very few seem to think it is worthwhile, they rather try to improve their English. Spanish-speakers living in Catalunya (or Valencia or the Baleares) may have a stronger incentive to learn the language, but that again will depend on their personal circumstances. For example, to access a job in the public sector in these Comunidades Autónomas you will need to demonstrate at least a B2 level in the language if Spanish is your first language. In many other jobs in the private sector or as self-employed you can get along without Catalan, in Barcelona, and certainly in Valencia and touristy places in the Baleares.

I could say a lot more but I will stop here - after all it is iguanamon's log, not a thread about Catalan vs. Spanish. ;)
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby guyome » Fri Nov 13, 2020 7:15 pm

iguanamon wrote:I've been reading a lot in Solitreo lately, an account of a Turkish Sephardic immigrant to New York in the early 1900's.
Sounds interesting, I hope you'll post more about it !

A few questions/suggestions:
fuersa, direktamente, dishendo lo ke keren i pensan, i por
strength, directly, saying what they want and what they think and of
siguro kontando kon resivirlo i ke todos van a eskucharles.
course counting on being received and that everyone will listen to them.
No importa ke eyos son—kual es la palavra?—godros;
It doesn't matter who/what they are- what's the word?- big shots;
"...counting on receiving it [=what they want and think]...It doesn't matter that they are- what's the word?- fat/big/thick;"
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby iguanamon » Fri Nov 13, 2020 10:33 pm

guyome wrote:...Sounds interesting, I hope you'll post more about it !

A few questions/suggestions:
fuersa, direktamente, dishendo lo ke keren i pensan, i por
strength, directly, saying what they want and what they think and of
siguro kontando kon resivirlo i ke todos van a eskucharles.
course counting on being received and that everyone will listen to them.
No importa ke eyos son—kual es la palavra?—godros;
It doesn't matter who/what they are- what's the word?- big shots;
"...counting on receiving it [=what they want and think]...It doesn't matter that they are- what's the word?- fat/big/thick;"

You're right Guyome, it's probably "counting on receiving it" and definite;y "that they are" . I thought about translating "godro" as "fat", but I thought the word was more metaphorical than literal as in English with "fat cat" especially when prefaced by "kual es la palavra" so that's why I went with "big shot". Perhaps he was being literal with his word choice, I don't know. In Spanish a "fat cat/big shot" could be "un pez gordo". That's what I get for rushing a translation. Glad I'm not a professional translator!
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Re: The iguana's tale- Portuguese, Spanish, Haitian Creole and Ladino

Postby guyome » Sat Nov 14, 2020 8:45 am

The part about the wind made me think godro could have its literal meaning: there's no wind able to move them since they're big. But that's just my feeling. As you say, I'm sometimes glad I don't have to translate these texts for a living :D
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