Tell Similar Languages Apart: Difference between revisions

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(improved the vietnamese bit a little (Imported from MoinMoin))
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Revision as of 17:11, 21 September 2007

This page should help you to tell similar languages apart, even if you do no speak these languages.

Contents:

  • If you know some of these (or other) languages, please try to explain thier difference, come up with sentence-examples or straight up grammar rules that make the distinction between languages easier decipherable for those of us not speaking those languages.

Scandinavian Languages

How do I tell if something is Norwegian, Danish, or Swedish?

This is pretty much a touch and go case, but take for example the sentence: "Until night becomes day"

Danish: Indtil nat bliver dag
Norwegian: Til natt blir dag
Swedish: Tills natt blivit dag

Table of Pronouns and Articles

English (for comparison) Danish Norwegian Swedish
I jeg jeg jag
you du/De du du
he, she, it han, hun, den/det han, hun, den/det han, hon, den/det
we vi vi vi
you (plural) i/jer dere ni
they de/dem de/dem de/dom
them dem/dom
and og og och
a en/et en/ei/et en/ett
the den/det/-en/-et -en/-a/-et -en/-et
not ikke ikke inte

Note that scandinavian languages don't have a special word for "the", instead the noun in question gets modified by adding letters at the end. Example: dog, the dog (eng) -> hund, hunden (dan/swe/nor)

Furthermore it is worth noting that the Norwegians and Danes write with the vowels æ ø å, but the Swedes use ä ö å.

If you still have questions, you might ask users whose ModeratorLanguage is Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish.

East Asian Languages

How do I tell the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Indonesian?

Telling the difference between Chinese, Japanese and Korean isn't difficult if you know what to look for.

Chinese

Chinese is written entirely in Chinese characters (also known as han characters or hanzi in Chinese). These are the most complex fullwidth characters. If there's no hiragana, katakana or hangul used, it's highly likely that it's Chinese.

Japanese

Japanese also uses Chinese characters (known as kanji in Japanese), but hiragana and katakana are also used. Both hiragana and katakana only have 46 basic characters each, so you're more likely to see the same characters used more than once.

Korean

Korean now uses very few Chinese characters (none at all in North Korea) and it would be quite rare to find Korean CDs with Chinese characters. Instead, Korean uses hangul. Although the number of actual characters is rather high like with Chinese characters, hangul syllables are made up of letters in a way which is rather like playing Tetris with your letters. For example, ㅅ (s) and ㅏ (a) give 사 (sa) and adding ㅇ (ng) gives 상 (sang). (Can people see these OK? --Nikki)

The characters for the word "of" are usually rather common, they are 的, の and 의 in Chinese, Japanese and Korean respectively.

If you still have questions, you might ask users whose ModeratorLanguage is Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

This bit could do with some example sentences, but the only sentence I can do in all three is "My cat is black"... --Nikki

  • hmm. it would be neat if you added that sentence tough ;) ~mo

Vietnamese

Vietnamese is written in the latin alphabet with many accent marks and diacritics. Each word is generally fairly short and represents a single syllable.

Example: Một con vịt xoè ra hai cái cánh (the first verse of a childrens song by the same name).

Indonesian

Indonesian is also written in the latin alphabet but does not use accents or diacritics and the words tend to be longer.

Latin Languages

How do I tell if something is Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Catalan or Romanian?

French uses pronouns a lot more than Spanish. Below is a table with pronouns in latin languages. If you speak a latin language that is not in the table, please add it.

French can have a cedilla on the c (ç), an accute accent on e (é), a grave accent on a, e and u (à, è, ù) or a diaeresis or circumflex on any vowel (ä, ë, ï, ö, ü, â, ê, î, ô, û). Also, no verbs that I can think of end in -o (like the Spanish 1st person singular present tense).

Apart from grammar, distinguishing Italian could be quite simple: almost all (in fact all) words end with a vowel (a e i o u or à è ì ò ù). Words in other latin language often end differently.

Table of Pronouns and Articles

English (for comparison) French Spanish Portuguese Italian Romanian
I je, me, moi, m' yo eu io eu
you tu, te, toi, t' tú, usted tu, você tu tu
he, she, it il, elle, se, s', lui él, ella ele, ela lui, lei, esso el, ea
we nous, on nos(otros) nós noi noi
you (plural) vous vos(otros), ustedes vós, vocês voi voi
they ils, elles ellos, ellas eles, elas loro, essi ei, ele
and et y e e şi
the le, la, les, l' el, los, la, las o, os, a, as il, lo, la, gli, l' -ul, -a, -i, -le
a un, une un, una um, uma un, uno, una un, o
not ne ... pas, n'... pas no não non nu

If you still have questions, you might ask users whose ModeratorLanguage is French, Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian,

Note that in Romanian the definite article is a suffix (like for scandinavian languages, see above), but it's similar to the articles of Italian. Also, it's often easy to spot romanian because it uses only normal latin letters together with 'ă', 'â', 'î', 'ş' and 'ţ' (Those are 'a' with breve, 'a' and 'i' with circumflex, and 's' and 't' with comma below, though cedilla is often used instead). A common preposition is 'în', meaning 'in' in English. Adjectives are usually after the nouns, and more often than not connected by prepositions or articles, like 'de', 'cu', 'al'.

Germanic Languages

How do I tell if something is German (German, Austrian, and Swiss), or Dutch?

Dutch is spoken in The Netherlands and the northern part of Belgium. It can be distinguished by the use of the words 'de' (de vrouw), 'het' (het huis) and 'een' (een persoon), meaning 'the' (the woman), 'the' (the house) and 'a' (a person) (or 'one' (one person)). It's not unusual for words to have more than 2 vowels in a row. e.g. 's Nachts na tweeën. Also the letter combination 'ij' is a tip for the text being dutch. More hints at CapitalizationStandardDutch.

Table of Pronouns and Articles

English (for comparison) German Dutch
I ich ik
you du jij, je, u
he, she, it er, sie, es hij, zij, het
we wir wij
you (plural) ihr jullie, u
they sie zij
and und en
the der, die, das de, het
a ein, eine een
not nicht niet

If you still have questions, you might ask users whose ModeratorLanguage is German or Dutch.

How do I tell Germanic languages from Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish...)? see Scandinavian Languages

Slavic Languages

How do I tell if something is Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian...?

Sorry, noone entered any help here, yet. Maybe the users with ModeratorLanguage/Czech, ModeratorLanguage/Polish, ModeratorLanguage/Russian, ModeratorLanguage/Slovak, and ModeratorLanguage/Slovenian can help.

Table of Pronouns and Articles

English (for comparison) Russian Russian (transliterated) Slovak Czech Serbian/Bosnian Cyrillic Serbian/Bosnian Latin and Croatian
I я ja / ya ja ја ja
you ты ti / ty ty ty ти ti
he, she, it он, она, оно on, ona, ono on, ona, ono on, ona, ono он, она, оно on, ona, ono
we мы mi / my my my ми mi
you (plural) вы vi / vy vy vy ви vi
they они oni oni oni они / оне / она oni / one / ona
and и / а i / a a a и / а i / a
the not used not used not used not used not used not used
a not used not used not used not used not used not used
not не ne nie ne не ne

Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Montenegrin

Serbian (and to a lesser extent Bosnian) use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, while Croatian only uses the Latin. WikiPedia has a large page on the differences between standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. Montenegrin is not currently listed as a separate language at MusicBrainz so should be listed as Serbian.


discussion: 

I propose we add the words 'love' 'to love' (they are different in alot of languages) and more times to the pronouns, I/me you/? we/us them/they ? he.she.it/him.her.it? and maybe owning pronouns too, (hers, his, our, mine etc) ~mo