Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)

From: Jacques Guy (jguy_at_alphalink.com.au)
Date: 03/19/05 

Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 21:31:39 +1000

António Marques wrote:
> Jacques Guy wrote:

>> very nicely. On the other hand, I could barely understand Rumanian
>> (and I was fluent in Italian). I could, of sorts, but it was
>> quite an effort, with a lot of guessing. Much, much more difficult
>> and painful and time-consuming than reading Portuguese when you
>> know only Spanish.

> Why thank you - how great a time would you have understanding *spoken*
> portuguese?

Ho ho ho ho ho! I remember watching a Brazilian movie, many years ago.
I barely managed a few words. Towards the end, yes, I got better.
The movie was "A caravan rolidei". More recently, about two years ago
I watched another movie, bilingual. The protagonist, a musician,
spoke Brazilian, the people around him Spanish (the story took place
in Argentina). To my surprise, they seemed to have no major problems
understanding one another (the film was "O toque do oboe"). On the
other hand, my godfather's wife, who was Spanish, was adamant that
she could not understand a word of Portuguese. That seemed strange
to me at the time, since I could read Portuguese without much trouble,
knowing some Spanish. I guess that Portuguese is to Spanish as Danish is
to Swedish and French to Italian (and Romanian to Italian):
intelligibility is not reciprocal.

> From azi.md:
>
> Romanian (moldovan - even more slavic as it goes):
>
> Republica Moldova si Georgia au decis sa lupte impreuna impotriva
> separatismului
> 3 martie 2005
>
> Presedintele Georgiei, Mihail Saakasvili considera ca vizita sa la
> Chisinau va deschide noi perspective pentru relatiile moldo-georgiene si
> va contribui la rezolvarea conflictelor separatiste cu care se confrunta
> cele doua tari.

Well, no amount of Russian, Polish, Czech, or any Slavic
language is going to help you understand that!

> Portuguese translation:
[snip]
> I should point out that the portuguese isn't contrived at all.

M'a pas eu l'air non plus.

To me, reading the Romanian text is a major effort in deciphering
an unknown language, the knowledge that it is Romance making
it only just, just possible. If I sustained the effort for
twenty, fifty pages, yes, quite possibly, I might become familiar
enough with the correspondences between Romanian and other Romance
languages to become able to read it, not fluently, but less painfully.

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