Spanish and French? I don't see many similarities at all... Spanish and Italian, however are pretty close. I can recognize a lot of Italian words that I see just based on my knowledge of Spanish, but I can't do much when it comes to French.
-Fantom
Printable View
Spanish and French? I don't see many similarities at all... Spanish and Italian, however are pretty close. I can recognize a lot of Italian words that I see just based on my knowledge of Spanish, but I can't do much when it comes to French.
-Fantom
I recognize a lot of Spanish words based on my impressive and vast knowledge of French :D
They are in the same language family anyway.
My Spanish friend says he understands French.Quote:
Originally Posted by fantom605
I doubt it, unless he studied French. What do you mean by he understands? He can understand when someone talks or can guess when he reads something?Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
Isn't Romanian and French Close? Closer than General Spanish is to French?
Actually many words have the same roots but that's it and doesn't necessary mean that I can understand Spanish.Quote:
Originally Posted by fantom605
translations.nm.ru, my hat's off to you, calling upon your skills at OCS; I could hardly believe my eyes when I read your post.
One small error, though, which I determined immediately as I pulled up my Paul Diels, Altkirchenslavische Grammatik, (1963, 2. Auflage) and looked it up. The infinitive is (I don't have a yat' here so I'll use ě), вěдěти, 1.sg. вěмь. (мягкий знак)
Also, noone mentioned it, probably because it's only males here who might recall this word, but we have the word ведьма. Ведь значит The Knower, согласишь?? (I do know what it means.)
доброй ночи!
kalinka_vinnie - азбука is closest to ABC. Actually the OCS word is буки that's the name of the letter, even though it seems to be plural.
Anyway, memorize this phrase, which "everyone" knows: аз да буки а там науки.
(носители рус. яз. пож исправьте, если ошибаюсь.)
and pices reminded me
>Азбука is just a literal translation of "alphabet".
What do you think might be the origin of the English word "alphabet". Might it be alpha beta αβ Hmmm. or alef bet? As I heard it from my former wife, her high school (in Chicago) ball game cheer was: alef bet gimmel dalet. Man, oh man, are we solid!
ok, I see now. аз means 'A' and not necessary 'I' and буки means 'B', just like Alphabet is alpha beta, the two first letters.
I just got confued with the аз = 'I' thing...
I'm cool! 8)
This is from an etymology dictionary.Quote:
Originally Posted by chaika
Quote:
1567 (implied in alphabetical), from L.L. alphabetum (Tertullian), from Gk. alphabetos, from alpha + beta, the first two letters of it, from Heb.-Phoen. aleph, pausal form of eleph "ox" + beth, lit. "house;" the letters so called because their shapes resembled or represented those objects. The Greeks added -a to the end of many Heb.-Phoenician letter names because Gk. words cannot end in most consonants.
Not really. Romanian is closer to Italian rather than French.Quote:
Originally Posted by djmihow
I expect written, because in French they don't pronounce half the letters in a word...Quote:
Originally Posted by Spiderkat
In Ukrainian they have:
Алфавіт - from Greek alpha, beta
Азбука - from Old Church Slavonic az, buki
Абетка - from Ukrainian a, be,
But, if you look at the whole alphabet:Quote:
Originally Posted by chaika
Г is called глаголи
Д is called добро
Е is called єсть
etc.
The names have meanings.
Sorry but you're wrong. Who told you that?Quote:
Originally Posted by TATY
What do you mean he's wrong? In saying that they don't pronounce half the letters in a word? That's right, as far as I'm concerned. For example, the -eaux ending, that sounds like "oh".Quote:
Originally Posted by Spiderkat
And just count to ten:
un
deux
trois
quatre
cinq
six
sept
huit
neuf
dix
Most of those have more than one useless letter. (not that english is any better, but anyway)
As you know almost all the words come from Latin or/and Greek and have a reason to have such spellings. Let me explain these you've mentioned above. But I agree some letters are silent, which by the way does not mean useless at all, and he quite exaggerated saying half the letters are not pronounced. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Platinum
Here's some simple explanations.
un - the n is needed because it becomes une, also u+n creates a nasal sound and comes from unus in Latin
deux - the silent x is needed and pronounced for words made of it (deuxi
[quote=Spiderkat]As you know almost all the words come from Latin or/and Greek and have a reason to have such spellings. Let me explain these you've mentioned above. But I agree some letters are silent, which by the way does not mean useless at all, and he quite exaggerated saying half the letters are not pronounced. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Platinum
Here's some simple explanations.
un - the n is needed because it becomes une, also u+n creates a nasal sound and comes from unus in Latin
deux - the silent x is needed and pronounced for words made of it (deuxi
You spell it "touchQuote:
Originally Posted by Platinum
You take people to litterally.Quote:
Originally Posted by Spiderkat
When I say "they don't pronounce half the letters", I don't actually mean half.
But there are lots of unpronounced letters (e.g. at the end of words).
Basically, I was saying, French isn't a phonetic language, so even though a French word may look like a Spanish word, a Spanish person may find it difficult to understand.