Y'know Eve, I find language(s) SO interesting... as I said, my mother learned Polish at home first, then English second at school..... and here's another 'little story'.... we had neighbor's in Chicago who's last/surname was Theland. Pronounced: thee-land. For YEARS, I thought their name was TEE-land. Why? Because that's how my mother pronounced it. I found out later in life that there is no "th" sound in the Polish language, hence Pole's who say da or duh for the. Or dee for thee (church, religious word)... So, besides 'accents' there are English words that just aren't 'pronouncable' for many non english speaking people... and I've passed those little 'tips' on to Laura as well. Hugs back atcha! Noreen
Noreen, I have a feeling that the English language is the only one with the tongue against the teeth "TH" sound. Tamar no sarcasm intended...LOL
Otto was a truck driver the first years in Canada. His boss told him to go and get some Thumbtacks and Otto said: "Oh tumtacs" "No" said his boss "thumbtacks" Otto goes to the first hardware store he drove by, and asked for a box of thumbtacks. "What" said the store keeper, "show me on the shelve what you want, bloody DPs, don't know how to speak English". When Otto picked up a box of thumbtacks, the guy said:" aha, you want tumtacs.....LOL. Some much for new immigrants teaching one and other English. Otto tells this story many times. I would not be surprised if both of us do forget to pronounce the "TH" in the Thingemedig......LOL
Yes I do. However Dutch dreams stay Dutch, Canadian stay English. There is no mixing languages from on to the other. Although when Otto and I talk, and when I talk to my best friend Mieke, we do tend to mix the two languages and even come up with totally new words, we both seem to understand...LOL
English really is a strange language, to be sure! When you learn that Enlgish has 1000 or more ways to say one thing, and ... for instance, Spanish has only ONE word to describe the same thing! I LOVE the tumtacks story and will share that with my mom, who will LOVE it! Hugs, Noreen
When I was very little I had a Chinese friend I used to play with. Her mother could not speak English, so we would try to teach her to say my name "Ruth" (No, it isn't Gemini, but I feel like Gemini is my name because I use it more often and am called it more often. And I actually prefer it to my real name, at least with online friends.) She had no problem at all with the "th" sound... it was the "R" that was throwing her.... my name constantly came out "Luth" no matter how slowly and long Nancy and I spent trying to teach her to say it. *shrug* Ah well, it didn't matter... I knew who she was talking to. :o)
I've been reading the group as I can since I'm working lots of OT at work for the past week or so.
I've found this thread to be quite interesting, because I love languages myself, all kinds, natural, and artificial/constructed languages AKA conlangs. It's because I love to read fiction and sci fi, where they often use old languages or make up alien phrases, and some have even come up with complete constructed languages for their stories!
I also love different writing systems, been making up my own for secret writing for myself and with friends since as I was a very young child, family found and read my journal to each other in front of me just to humiliate me with it, so I decided never again and made up my very first writing system, which they never broke a single one of the dozen I created, not even the most simple ones!
Anyway, after remembering I wrote a story years back that had words I'd made up in it, that were used by my friends when we were writing with each other using the secret letters/codes I'd made up, I finally decided to flesh it out into a complete language and gave it its own unique writing system. I've been using it for 6 months now to write in my journal, went the total immersion route with it after coming up with a simple grammar structure, and I now know a good 3/4 of the words, and hope to know them all by the end of 1 year of use.
I'm not suggesting mine as an auxillary/international language (Esperanto, Interlingua, and others), as some have recommended theirs as a global language everyone should be taught, because I think there's just too much emphasis on one language group depending on the creator, but I'm having fun with it. I know mine was influenced by languages I ran into as a kid, Spanish, Russian, Norwegian, and of course English.
Anyway, the long-winded point is that a few months ago, I started dreaming in my own language. I even dreamed that someone was trying to break the writing system, thinking it was somehow used to write English, and I kept myself from telling them unless they found my language list, they'd never know what it was I wrote LOL.
If you're interested in learning more about conlangs, you can visit
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I've classified mine as a stealth language for now, because it continues to be written to keep things secret. It also could be classified as personal, but the original intent after the story was written was to use it for secret writing with friends.
Yeah, being downright cruel to each other is their idea of "fun" sometimes, but should anyone outside the family do something of that sort, they will gang up against "the outsider". I take family things with a grain of salt now, and I'm actually not upset anymore about what they did.
I've realized if they hadn't done that, I never would have become so fascinated with writing systems of other cultures or with making up my own. I have some purely for fun, like a smiley face one, took me a while to come up with enough symbols for that, and another purely for fun one inspired by zodiac signs. There's one that's truly cursive writing (the only one of its kind I've seen in created alphabets, even compared to the ones I've seen online claiming to be written cursive style) that was inspired by one of Tolkien's book covers when I was home sick and my sister gave me his books to read, and a couple of others that I still use on a regular basis. You can see the Tolkien inspired one on my site:
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I guess I do have ONE regret. Wish I had a camera on me the next timefamily tried to read my journal! Total shock and dismay!! Leah
Wow, that's really neat, Leah! I've save your site to my favorites, and will go back another time when I have more time (and am better rested to concentrate better) to decipher that note under the alphabet. I got the first two words right away... but I have a headache already and doing that now will only make my headache worse. I look forward to working it out though. :o)
Although my family were never cruel to each other or deliberately humiliated each other... we did have some verbal battles. Like your family though... only *we* are allowed to say things against each other. Actually for some of us who are closer than others (my brother and I), even other family members (sisters, cousins, etc) got pounced on for talking about the other one. In fact not all that long ago, my own son said something I didn't care for about my brother, and I was all over him in two seconds.... "That is MY brother and you will NOT talk about him like that!" He quickly apologized and told me he was only trying to make a point about something, and not really meaning to put him down in any way. Of course I would (and have done) defend Matthew like a mother lion protecting her young too... and he has done the same for me. :o)
I think one of the old Biblical languages had it... Didn't somebody use the ability to pronounce the word "shibboleth" as a way of telling whether someone was a foreigner?
Interesting idea :-) But it could get a little complicated, considering that the people in the UK use single and double quote marks in the opposite way from the way people in the USA use them. Skepticism, sarcasm, mild emphasis - mostly you have to get it from the way the words are being used; the quotemarks are just a hint.
Back in the 1950s-1970s, some people used what they called "quasi-quotes" in mimeographed newsletters they sent each other - it was something you could do easily on a typewriter but not so easily on a computer. (Well, you can, but it won't come out right on a newsgroup.) Under the quotemark, they would type the ~ symbol, and the meaning was that they had slightly paraphrased the idea so it wasn't exactly as the originator said it, but it was almost identical. Sometimes I do a version of it when I type my notes from a lecture (~"paraphrase"~). I think it is derived from a mathematical usage of two ~s, one above the other, to mean "approximately".
Els, your story brings back memories of my father who had a similar difficulty. I don't know if was due to his Norwegian heritage or a speech impediment. For example, I grew up hearing a swather (farm machine used to cut grain) called a "swatter".
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