Showing posts with label Papiamentu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Papiamentu. Show all posts

April 27, 2007

Language Families

Very direct and interesting language family breakdown from Freelang.net. I've put in bold and commented in red on the languages I've dabbled in or am especially interested in learning. I've put comments in orange next to languages I feel a lesser but still viable connection with. I've put comments in normal text if I have anything else I feel like saying. Then I've bolded those comments if I refuse to learn the language for whatever made up reason I have in my head. :P Yeah, I'm kind of a freak.


Linguistically, I'm well on my way to conquering Western, Southern, and Northern Europe. ;)


Indo-European family

  • Indo-Iranian group
    • Indic branch
    • Iranian branch
      • KURDISH - Turkey
      • PERSIAN - Iran This would be fun. It's already taught me the "Q" from Hell...
  • Greek group
      • GREEK - Greece I learned some for my trip to Greece. It's okay...
  • Italic (Latin) group
      • CATALAN - Spain From what I've heard, it's cool Spanish. I'd be interested...
      • FRENCH - France (Say no to French!)
      • ITALIAN - Italy I LOVE Italian! It's Spanish but more beautiful! Learned some for Italy.
      • LATIN - extinct Latin 5 Next Year! Latin's the best dead language ever!
      • OCCITAN - France
      • PORTUGUESE - Portugal I can read it.
      • (BRAZILIAN) PORTUGUESE - Brazil I can read it.
      • ROMANIAN - Romania
      • SPANISH - Spain Spanish 5 Next Year! I do love my Spanish, my first second language.
  • Celtic group
    • Brittonic branch
      • CORNISH - United Kingdom Like "Cornish Pixies!" Yeah, that's all.
      • WELSH - United Kingdom This would be my number one choice from the Celtic group.
    • Gaelic branch
      • IRISH GAELIC - Ireland Another "If I have too much free time I'lll learn a bit" lang...
      • MANX - United Kingdom Cool Name.
      • SCOTTISH GAELIC - United Kingdom Irish is better. Come on.
  • Germanic group
    • Western branch
      • AFRIKAANS - South Africa
      • AMERICAN - U.S.A. Speak it! W00t!
      • DUTCH - Netherlands I can almost read it. It's very familiar.
      • GERMAN - Germany I'm taking this in school and want to focus on it in college.
      • OLD ENGLISH - extinct Similar to Old Norse...
    • Northern branch
      • DANISH - Denmark Yeah, Danes and I are sort of mutually intelligible... :P
      • FAROESE - Denmark This is like Norwegian but cooler! Not quite as scary as Icelandic.
      • ICELANDIC - Iceland This would be fun. It's like Norwegian on crack. Ja sounds great.
      • NORWEGIAN - Norway I've had an infatuation with this for a while.
      • OLD GUTNISH - extinct
      • OLD NORSE - extinct Heheh... Well... This is just useful. You know.
      • SWEDISH - Sweden Yeah, Swedes and I are sort of mutually intelligible... :P
    • Eastern branch
      • GOTHIC - extinct Tolkien liked this one! And I used to think Emo's spoke it...
  • Baltic group
      • LATVIAN - Latvia
      • LITHUANIAN - Lithuania I can order drinks in Lithuanian! But that's all... :P
  • Slavic group
    • Western branch
    • Southern branch
    • Eastern branch
      • RUSSIAN - Russia (Say no to Slavik)
      • UKRAINIAN - Ukraine Okay, if I had to learn *1* Slavik language...
  • Armenian group
  • Albanian group
  • Constructed languages
      • ESPERANTO - constructed (Say no to Esperanto!)

Basque family

      • BASQUE - Spain If I ever have way too much free time.... Remind me...

Dravidian family

Uralic family

  • Finno-Ugric group
    • Finnish branch
      • ESTONIAN - Estonia
      • FINNISH - Finland For Liisa, Tolkien, and my own linguistic insanity...
    • Hungarian branch

Altaic family

Japanese family

      • JAPANESE - Japan Yay Japanese! Pretty colours, good food, video games...

Korean family

Sino-Tibetan family

Austro-Asiatic family

Afro-Asiatic family

Nilo-Saharan family

Niger-Congo family

  • Bantu branch
      • GBARI - Nigeria
      • KINYARWANDA - Rwanda I love the name of this one...
      • SWAHILI - Tanzania Swahili wouldn't kill me.
      • ZULU - South Africa Neither would Zulu.
  • Kwa group
      • YORUBA - Nigeria We just learned about the Yoruba!!!

Austronesian family

  • Malayo-Polynesian group
      • INDONESIAN - Indonesia This is supposed to be really easy. I wouldn't mind dabbling...

Andamanese family

Creole

  • English based
  • French based
  • Portuguese based
      • PAPIAMENTO - Netherlands Antilles Papiamentu is kind of the best ever. And so easy!

Amerindian family

Eskimo-Aleut family

  • Inuit group
      • INUIT - Canada I randomly know some words of this for names. Amaroq means wolf.

New Freelang Dictionaries!

Freelang is this awesome free program that lets you keep dictionaries on you're computer. There are currently ninety languages you can load, and you can 'create' your own. Theoretically you could use the program for a conlang or to make flashcards for any subject... You could even start a 'stack' for words you've learned yourself in a certain foreign language class. It's kind of my favourite program ever.

http://www.freelang.net/dictionary/index.html

Anyhow, I just checked it today, and I realized that they added several new languages! I swear, this update was made just for me. The new languages include Old Norse and Old Nahuatl (!), Papiamentu(!!) and Faroese (!!!).

Old Norse is just plain useful. Old Nahuatl is just so much fun! I used the Nahuatl dictionary all the time - I didn't even know they had records of Old Nahuatl!

Papiamentu is also really exciting. It's a pigdin sort of language only spoken on the ABC islands in the Carribean. Those just happen to be my all time favourite vacation spot, and the home of our new family friends, the Chatleins. We met their daughter Natasha on the plane ride in last year, and the two of us got to talking (much about Papiamentu, which being a Romantic-Germanic hybrid interested me). She ended up inviting us to her families house for Christmas, which was really an amazing experience. The locals there go MAD if you speak Papiamentu... saying "How are you?" to the maids made them giggle or, alternatively, smile bigger than Missourians ever do. And when I said "Merry Christmas" on the way to the ice machine, I found 5 of them whispering and waiting for me! :P They were thrilled to death. And a dictionary means I can actually learn some for next time...

Faroese... Wow, this was how I became convinced they made this dictionary for me. I recently bought a crappy program with 107 languages, all 'phrasebook style', with another 30 languages thrown in 'flashcard style'. I bought the whole program because Faroese was one of the 'flashcard style' languages, and the only result for "Faroese" on amazon. I've wanted to taste Faroese ever since hearing Ormurin Langi... and just as with Papiamentu... a dictionary opens many doors.

Whee! I'm so excited! Honestly, try Freelang even if you just want it for a school course or something.