What languages do you know or want to know.

[kernriver 4]

It's similar with slovenian and croatian.

Slovenian zahod=west, croatian zahod=toilet. :D

Croats, like Slovakians, say "zapad" for west.

BTW, I speak croatian (and all the other similar languages from the Balkans), and english. I understand slovenian and macedonian very well.

I'd like to learn spanish and as much Slav languages as possible, primarily czech and russian.

[vilas 477]

false-friends words are in many languages

not only zapad/zachod

laska ;) hehe ;)

krawat (tie in Polish, carpet in Russian), divan (carpet in Polish, afair sofa in Russian;)

worst is example i will remember to the end of life,

in Slavic patetic means something great, something strong in emotions etc. but once upon a time i told other person that his screens are pathetic

i thought about patetyczny, i had no idea it is false-friend word :|

person was angry and had no idea why the hell

the same is for skin colors, those are also false friends cause "Black" in Polish is abusive

just life finger gesture , some fingers in Europe means OKay, but in Greece "fu*** your ass",

shaking head in one country is for YES, in other the same shaking is for NO

[sudayev 27]

That reminds me of JFK in berlin when he said " Ich bin ein Berliner" He wanted to say I'm a citizen of Berlin! While Berliner in local speech is a popular name for... jelly donut :) But Kennedy didn't know that ;)

[Serclaes 0]

But it also means citizen of berlin :)

[sudayev 27]

Probebly every thinking man did understand his message. Nevertheless as remember from school we don't use article before stating the place of origin e.g. Ich bin Deutsche, Ich bin Amerikaner, Ich bin Russe.

Thus you cant say 'Ich bin ein Amerikaner' if you want to say 'I'm American'. Article 'ein' indicate nouns or non human beings. Do you know what "Amerikaner" also means ? A black and white icing cookie :D Ich bin ein Amerikaner - I'm a cookie.

[Serclaes 0]

Well yes and no. You can add the article for emphasis. Like "I am one of the Berliners". I think it's like in english you can say "I'm an American" pr just leave the "an" out.

But don't ask me about grammar though. I just speak the languages :)

Also it might be that I never made the link to the pastry because where I come from it's not called Berliner.

Amerikaner is actually one of my favorite pastries. ^^

[ProfTournesol 956]

But don't ask me about grammar though. I just speak the languages :)

But that's exactly the point he's making : grammatical faults while speaking.

[batto 17]

日本語 馬鹿 !!!

[Serclaes 0]

But that's exactly the point he's making : grammatical faults while speaking.

Except that it's correct for both meanings :)

[-martin- 10]

Zapad and Zachod aren't the only ones...

But just so there is no confusion, Zapad and Zachod do actually mean the same thing logically, it’s just that we apply them in a different logic.

In Slavic the words mean this:

Za-chod – in/behind go

Za-pad – in/behind fall

So when referring to the sun you can say:

Zachod – the sun went in/behind

Zapad – the sun fell in/behind

But in Czech you can also go (in) to the toilet which you do a lot during the day… so the toilet is commonly called Zachod (place where you go).

Czech and Russian have this strange relationship of giving the same word opposite meaning :D

Czech - English................Russian - English

Páchneš - You stink ............ Pachneš -You smell nice

Ůžasné - Amazing ............ Užasnо - Horrible

Zapoměl - I forgot ............ Zapomnil - I rememberred

Or this one,

In Macedonian "Luk" means garlic, in Russian it means "Onion".

Edited March 8, 2012 by -Martin-

[vilas 477]

yes, it is problematic, some people from different slavic nations can "understand" each other, cause words really sound similar and finally... be offended in 10% of cases, cause it happened to be, that the same sounding words were opposite in meaning ;)

when i hear Serb, Slovenian, Slovakian (not only Russian) TV i "think" i understand it clearly , till there will be another false-friend word ;)

in begining i thought that Czech and Slovak are most root-slavic languages, cause Russian, Polish have a lot of words from German language ,

another funny thing - i found some time ago scientific researches on hindu-european language, hehehehe, the oldest words that function till today (for 5000 years or 10000 years) are dirty words now ( yeb-hat' for copulation), i was so happy to say that i use indo-european words from ice-era ;)

but indo-european language (the oldest language in Europe ???) should also be functioning in India (btw. do we have the same roots) ?

also what is causing mess are words changing through history,

in past Kobeta was dirty word, now it is woman, Dzhyvka is now prostitute but in past it woman (the same as evolution of words connected with Black which changing from "normal" to offensive , when you will take dictionary from 60s, 70s )

i just do not understand how it happens that word which was offensive 200 years ago is not now but oppossite, now word normal in past i offensive now, i wonder if someone would give us travel in time and we would be woken up in year 2431, than we could hear "revolver is long barrel scoped rife" "machinegun is light handgun for selt defense"

i know that words in centuries are evolving, but i cannot understand why on period of few centuries "divka" took neaning of "kobeta" and "kobeta" took neaning of "dyvka"

do you have such situations in your French, English, German, Italian etc languages?

[Tonci87 163]

Yes, meaning of words change, they do it all the time.

[-martin- 10]

do you have such situations in your French, English, German, Italian etc languages?

Of course, just look in to some older English poems or songs. A very famous example is the word is "gay", which used to mean "happy" but has now turned in to a word which refers to homosexual men, mostly as a taunt. However the word is now changing again, anyone who comes in to contact with teenagers should know that the word is now regularly used to say that something is not good, not appealing etc...

(I know that some members here my live an alternate life style, so I'd just like to say that I didn't mean any offence by this to anyone who is homosexual :) )

[vilas 477]

ethymology and such things are interesting

cause it means that reading text from 2-3 centuries before we may not understand it properly :O

i just don't understand what are reasons that words change meaning so much in period of 2-3 centuries,

how about languages of Nations that last for many hundreds of years ? French, Italian ? they exist in literature since early middle-ages, do they also change meaning of words across years ?

[PELHAM 10]

Esperanto? I used to know a fluent speaker - she could talk to at least 6 other people and they understood each other perfectly lol

[onlyrazor 11]

yes, it is problematic, some people from different slavic nations can "understand" each other, cause words really sound similar and finally... be offended in 10% of cases, cause it happened to be, that the same sounding words were opposite in meaning ;)

Yeah, I heard about that. Some Slovak lady got offended in Croatia when the police officer said something which turned out to be the Slovak word for 'cock'. Awkward...

[-martin- 10]

i just don't understand what are reasons that words change meaning so much in period of 2-3 centuries,

how about languages of Nations that last for many hundreds of years ? French, Italian ? they exist in literature since early middle-ages, do they also change meaning of words across years ?

Well, there are probably as many reasons as there are words for this, but to sum it up, words change because, people change, kingdoms change and times change.

[PELHAM 10]

Try telling a spanish person "tengo calor!" You may politely be told to say "hizo calor \ hace calor" (that is if you don't get a slap to the face or worse).

Both are perfectly correct it's just they have different colloquial meanings.

Edited March 10, 2012 by PELHAM

[rangerpl 13]

Thanks to ArmA 2 i know how to swear in Czech.

[furomeshineru 10]

My mother language is japanese.

I want to learn Russian and Ukrainian. I feel Ukrainian pronunciation is very cute in Japanese language sense. that is 超ã‹ã‚ã„ã„（chou kawaii）

However, my english capability is too poor. So i must learn Engilish more...:p

[THX-1338 10]

At last time i learning some Latin phrases. Of course, usually this language learning medicine students ( because their patients must got accustomed to "dead" language :D), and i'm not from their "alma mater", but just this very useful for memory training. Besides, it's very useful, when you want to add some pathos:D

lingua latina non verpa canina est :cool:

cause Russian, Polish have a lot of words from German language ,

Not only. The history of nation have an influence. For example, Russia took his religion from East Roman Empire, was under Mongolian feet 250 ears, that's why lot of russian words was taken from greek (like "krovaty, "vor") and mongolian ("saray","bazar") languages. The long wars and trading with Turkey gived their words too.

At the all, the russian alphabet - the greek alphabet with addons :D.

With Slavic nations one of the most funny story at the world - the common language base, but very hard division by culture and religion, because we live on civilization's boards. And all wanted to build their "common" empire with different degree of activity (with their nation lead, of course). That's why we fighting with Poland third century, but taking the Berlin together :D

[Tonci87 163]

Yes the slavics origins are quite funny. I did some research on this and read some books. It seems that the croatian people have their origin in the region today known as poland. There was a croatian empire until many of the people decided to search for a better place. They found the most beautifull place of earth where croatia is today and formed a Kingdom there. At this time there were two croatian kingdoms, the white croatian kingdom in the polish region and the red kingdom where croatia is today. the white kingdom crumbeld and the people mixed with germans and slavs from the Don region. That explains why the polish and the croatian languages have so much in common. The russian language seem to be based on this old croatian language too but people aren´t sure about that.

[vilas 477]

i wonder if we had such indo-european language thousands years ago, does it mean that Hindu (people of India) are our far far far cousins ?

i read some time ago article proving that indo-european language gave etymology to both Hindu and European languages

[sudayev 27]

This image show the 'heart' of Indo-Euro thing, this isnt exact location. Some say Black Sea region, some say today Iran, nevertheless the cradle is situated somewhere between Black Sea and modern day Iran. By the way the Hindus culture is much older then ours.

[onlyrazor 11]

You know, I've been thinking - I've been playing so many games that involve shooting (evil commie) Russkies for so long that I could probably command a tank with the line snippets I learned from Arma.

On the other hand, three years of German lessons and I still don't understand people. Something wrong with that :p