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| 849 Beiträge - Forum Junkie
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Ok Guys..I have to post something about the Language I'm learning and speaking and sometimes thinking at the moment.
Its a text of another's exchangestudents' history teachers daughter ;-)
So
The Origins of the Estonian Language
I just celebrated my fifth year in Estonia and my fifth fruitless year
trying to figure out how to correctly speak Estonian. I mean really, it
wouldn't be so bad if Estonians weren't so smug about it. Oh, they will
congratulate you on your good Estonian even if you can speak a few
words, but deep inside they really don't want you to learn it! They are so happy with their secret code and you can see it every time someone asks you: "Oh, are you learning to speak Estonian?" Then comes the sly grin. The, "You've got a snowball's chance in hell
of learning OUR language," grin.
This is quickly replaced by a faked look of concern as they say: "Oh,
it's a very difficult language isn't it?"
After this, I think they go off and laugh uncontrollably and give
high-fives to other Estonians, but I haven't actually seen it happen.
Consequently, I have decided to write an expose on the Estonian
language. One time I sent my brother a tape of Estonian language and he
asked me if Estonians have an obsession with sex. There is terviseks
and ostmiseks and kasutamiseks, teadmiseks, parandamiseks and
armastamiseks. All kinds of "seks". That, plus the fact that after
five years, little kids still laugh when I speak Estonian, has made me
decide to tell all.
The real story behind why Estonian is the way it is. A long time ago,
about 1000 or 1100 AD, three Estonian guys were sitting around the
campfire. Their names were Jaan, Toivo and Kalev. It was winter time
and they were bored. Jaan spoke first, "Ya know Toivo, what we need is
a new language".
"d**n stright!" said Toivo, "Talkin' this way is gettin' boring and
besides everybody almost understands us. We need a language that's sooo
crazy, soooooo complicated that nobody will ever understands what's
going on!".
As the idea picked up steam, Kalev piped up, "Lets do it this way, that
you can't say he or she. That way you won't know if your talkin' about
a man or woman. Also, we gotta think up names for people that give no
clue to foreigners about their gender, names that change with the
grammar so you never know what to call somebody !"
Toivo nodded in approval. "Yeah," he said thoughtfully, "that's it.
Then we can eliminate the future tense. Think of trying to ask someone
out on date when you can't say the right name, whether it's a boy or
girl or when it is going to happen!"
Jaan, the smart one, was thinking in more technical terms already.
"OK, let's make it this way, that when you learn a noun, you don't have
to learn just one word but FOURTEEN. Yeah and instead of just saying
that you are going to or from something, you have to change the noun in
some weird way."
Now Toivo was excited and spilled his beer. "Yeah Yeah! And ... and
... the nouns can't change the same way, let's make like, a hundred
different spelling groups that all change in different ways!"
This appealed to Kalev who added slyly, "Ya wanna make it real hard, a
real nut-buster? Let's make it so all adjectives change, too. In
boring old English, you say 'five small, red houses', 'small, red
houses' and 'many small, red houses'. Small and red always stay the
same but in our new language? Whoaaaa Nellie!"
They exchange high fives all around and cracked a few beers. After
that they started practicing how to say 'Oh, you're learning Estonian'
without busting up laughing.
That's how Estonian came to be, honestly!
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| Beitrag vom 20.02.2006 - 21:37 |
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Zulu The Preacher, Ambasciatore di speranza |
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Well, I got you on this one, buddy. If that is really the way that language is, well, that must suck like there was no tomorrow. Eh well, having said that, those guys either had serious problems with drug addiction or were made that way, whereas the last one would really suck some more. For them, at least. :so_true:
Der Post wurde 1 mal editiert, zuletzt von Zulu The Preacher, Ambasciatore di speranza am 21.02.2006 - 08:33.
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| Beitrag vom 20.02.2006 - 22:36 |
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| 826 Beiträge - Forum Junkie
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Verry funny and very interesting indeed! :so_true:
Well, I would be interested in if there really isn't a future tense, how do you actually speak about the future?
Maybe you could give some examples in english or try do describe it. Thank you!
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| Beitrag vom 21.02.2006 - 11:25 |
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| 849 Beiträge - Forum Junkie
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Well about the furute tense....we are not using it either really in german to... you say 'ich gehe morgen ins Kino' and not so often 'ich werde morgen ins kino gehen.'
Its pretty the same, but only that the fututre tense is not existing.
But its not sooo hard... only that some words are really strangly changing and so...but german is also a hard language ;-)
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| Beitrag vom 21.02.2006 - 17:07 |
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| 826 Beiträge - Forum Junkie
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Allright, so you have to add a date or description of time (like tomorrow) to express what you are talking about.
Well, stupid things about the german language: Some american friends of mine told me, that it seems rather strange to them to say "der Tisch", 'cause a thing can't be male. Stupid Germans we are, huh? 
Der Post wurde 1 mal editiert, zuletzt von Timon am 21.02.2006 - 18:54.
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| Beitrag vom 21.02.2006 - 18:53 |
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Yes,the german language can be very stupid.
We have got a very lot of synoniems,so there can be many problems.But i say to you:
The french language is very complicaded,too.
Perhamps i`m going to start a topic with this chapter
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| Beitrag vom 21.02.2006 - 19:06 |
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| 1190 Beiträge - Hirngeschädigter
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I forgot to post a comment about this: Very amusing story! :so_true: I can imagine how complicated it must be! When I read a book about the Elvish language (the language thought up by J.R.R. Tolkien for "Lord of the Rings", for those who don't know), it said that many other languages influenced Tolkien. One of those, I believe, was Finnish, which is pretty close to Estonian, I think. Like in Estonian, you have to learn a noun fourteen times, in Finnish, you have to learn it fifteen times!! There are complicated languages in this world!
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| Beitrag vom 22.02.2006 - 17:32 |
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| 849 Beiträge - Forum Junkie
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ähhm... thats a bit wrong in the text, because you only have to learn a word 3 times...the first three cases..the rest is regulary then... its only that there are 14 cases...Hungarian is also related to Estonian and Finnish and there are about 20 cases i think..weven a hungarian guy didnt know how many cases there are in his language ;-)
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| Beitrag vom 22.02.2006 - 18:09 |
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| 1190 Beiträge - Hirngeschädigter
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Oh, I see. Well, I've got a Hungarian dictionary (I bought it when I went to Hungary for a week, just out of interest), but I never really used it, because it's really a complicated language. And most people understood German where we went. Anyways, there's a little chapter about grammar, I don't know how to count those cases, there are about 16, it seems. Most of them are "where from" and "where to" things.
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| Beitrag vom 22.02.2006 - 22:09 |
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