Knowing Many Languages Can Be Slightly Problematic

Warning, under the Universal law of common decency and "don't waste my time" rule, I must inform you that this article may contain personnal opinions, basic history and geography lessons and a lot of parentheses (like these, because I like them (a lot)).

I do can speak English - nothing wrong with that, given the fact that this very sentence is written in English.

I can speak Turkish too - now that's not boring. By the power of generalizing 95% of the population of Earth, I can tell what kind of basic facts you may know or associate with Turkey. I hope you are aware that the German video game/tech demo developer Crytek was founded by 3 Turkish brothers. Yeah? The Mount&Blade series is also developed by the Turkish developer TaleWorlds. You may also have heard of those instant diabetes pills, known as Turkish delight.

And now we come to Bulgarian - I do know that language too. But do you even know where Bulgaria is? A quick Bing search would bring (or would it?) information about a tiny country in the Balkans. Hold on now, don't feel bad because you've never heard of these two exotic terms "Bulgaria" and "Balkans", because after reading this whole big mess you will be able to go to the comments section bellow and say in all caps "Now I know that a Bulgarian has created the computer"... uhm - I have to admit, that was a quick pot-shot at your limited knowledge about the unknown wonders Bulgaria is responsible for, but let's trace back and get on the topic of me.

I... something

What all of these facts have to do with me? "A guy on Internet can speak 3 languages, so?" you might say, not being aware how boring your life is with the only language you know - English. After answering few simple questions together, you and I will realize how different we are.

Question 1: Do you ever question what you say?

My answer: I do. I do a lot. Knowing more than 2 languages and having a name "Halid Yusein" does make you wonder about all sorts of stuff (to which we will get later).

Your answer:_______________________________________________________________________.

Question 2: Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you giggle after speaking language A in an enviroment with people who speak language B?

My answer: Often, very often (we will get to the reasons later as well).

Your answer:______________________________________________________________________.

There are some extra security questions, but these should be enough. Different combinations of answers yield different types of boring personalities.

By this point I should explain my background to further cement my future and past arguments.

My name is Halid Yusein (yes, it does) and I'm from Bulgaria. I know, I'm completely aware that the names "Bulgaria" and "Halid" aren't compatible, but what can I say - I didn't chose my name, did I?

Yes, you've guessed it right - Halid Yusein is a Turkish name, "and at the same time you are born in Bulgaria? How is this possible?" The answer is simple - I didn't manage to choose my parents either. I know, this makes me a bit of a noob, but one can't have everything, right?

History is written by the winners

In order to understand why someone with the name of a terrorist would be born in a Christian country like Bulgaria we must know a little bit of history.

Here goes nothing: Back in the medieval times Bulgaria was a major player in the Balkans, but with the fall of the East Roman Empire and the rise of those pesky Turks, it was endangered, attacked and eventually captured by the new Ottoman Empire by the end of the 14th century.

As you can imagine those Turkish sultans weren't going to leave Bulgaria in the hand of some Christians, so some rich guys moved in to own the new and fresh land.

5 centuries later we find ourselves in 1878 and the liberation of Bulgaria. With the help of few centuries long hate between the Russian and Ottoman empire, Bulgaria was freed with the help of Ruskis and the big influence of Russian politics over Bulgaria started.

The next 100 years are marked with the rise of communism in Bulgaria; Russian ideals had a big influence over Bulgarian matters and even then, we somehow ended up siding with The Third Reich... Twice! First time - because why not? Second time - because the "we didn't have choice" bullshit excuse.

After The Second World War we were forgiven by the USSR or something and we joined their side until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Do you see a pattern here?

Fun fact #1:Even when most of Bulgaria's existence has been completely irrelevant to everybody in the world, during the Cold War it was the biggest manufacturer of high-tech electronics and the Pravets computers for the Eastern side of the Iron Curtain.

Extra facts: Today Bulgaria is proud only with two things: that it produces high quality rose oil and that it's one of the few places on Earth where yoghurt can be made the way it's supposed to (traditional Bulgarian yoghurt is waaaay better than any other peasantry BS I've tried).

And then wouldn't you know it, Bulgaria was reminded, somehow, about the horrible things that happened to them few hundred year ago - Ottomans tried to ban Christianity and force Islam into their culture. The new government after the collapse of USSR tried to change the names of everybody to Bulgarian, forcefully - dem good, old tactics!

Because you see, there are some villages that are inhabited only by people who identify themselves as Turkish - they speak Turkish (which I will come to in a bit), they watch Turkish television and even teach the Turkish language in schools, alongside Bulgarian of course.

And then some Turkish people were pissed off of that someone tried to change their names to Bulgarian and eventually Bulgaria did so, but the final result was... well, not so surprising. Massive hordes of Turkish people fled into nearby Turkey, in hope of not being discriminated. Two of those families were my fathers and mothers. My mother's did came back quickly, after that little issue with changing the names ceased, but it took time for my father's family (not to mention the fact that one of his brothers is still enjoying his life there).

Fun fact #2:A great deal of terrorism was involved to change the policy Bulgaria tried to force into it's own population. Later, one of those terrorists became the leader of the Turkish party in Bulgaria. I know - it's funny!

Clarification: The author of this article is not associated with Bulgarian-Turkish or any other terrorist groups in any shape or form.

After a little while I was born and because Bulgaria is a shit hole, we moved in to the not-so-shit-hole called The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

A mutant

As stated above, my origins are from the 'ol good Ottoman Empires emigrants to the Balkans.

After this sweet little story I've told you your question "WTF are you then? Bulgarian-Turkish? Turkish? Or just Bulgarian?" is totally justifiable. Over the years a lot of people have proposed to me different theories of what I'm. Some say it's all about the paperwork, others as to whatever I identify myself as. I've given people a lot of different explanations, but today I will be honest with you.

Yes, my gran-gran-gran-grandparents are from the Ottoman Empire; yes, I'm from one of these little villages where they believe they are Turkish; and no - my child isn't half English. In fact I identify myself as someone with Turkish blood in his veins, but with a lot of Bulgarian culture, living in England.

And if after all of this someone still insists that I'm Bulgarian, well - the biggest and most obvious proof that I'm not is that I don't look like one. It's the same as when most people can distinguish English from Americans, some people can do the same with Chinese and Japanese - I can do it with Turkish and Bulgarian people. It's actually pretty easy.

Is this graspable? Or even wrong, in any way? Because enough people seem to be confused by my name; my answer to the question "Where are you from?" and the fact that I can't be bothered to explain all of this to everybody.

Challenge Accepted!

And now it's time for the real educational part of this article. It's time for me to explain to you the mighty Bulgarian language and the lack of wonders it carries with itself.

Let's start with the second to most confusing thing about it - the alphabet. Bulgarian is using the Cyrillic alphabet, which means those of you who use the Latin won't understand even a word of it.

And let's be completely honest here - watching people botch your native language/alphabet is amusing. Let's start with an example: DayZ and the location it's set in - Chernarus. It's a fictional part of Russia and following logic, all of it's signs are in Russian, which also uses the Cyrillic alphabet.

"Черногорск" for example in English is Chernogorsk. It's the funniest thing when people say the first letter "Ч" is 4 and question why anybody would put a number in their alphabet.

If we want to get specific with the whole Bulgarian/Russian/Cyrillic nonsense we have to dabble in in a deeper manner. There are some letters that look and are pronounced the same way as in Latin, but others? Nope, absolutely no!

One last thing to note right now is that Cyrillic is pronounce-what-you-see, NOT pronounce-this-by-some-obscure-reasons-to-outsiders.

Hold on to your temporal lobe:

"A" is simply "A", but

"B" is "Б" - notice the difference? If you write "B" in Bulgarian it's actually "V" - yes, made to totally confuse me, and you! Moving along -

"C" - we don't have "C" per say, because this letter works in weird manners in English - you can use it for "cat" or "sincere" or "delicious chocolate". If you write "C" in Bulgarian it becomes "S";

"D" is "Д", no - I want to correct myself - What the fuck is that? It's like a TV on a table or a spider monster thing-y! It's bizarre! Wait! I know what it looks like - a drone from Space Invaders!

"E" is "E" - easy enough!

"F" is "Ф" - I don't know about you, but it looks like an onion to me...

"G" is "Г" - I know, it's easy to think that it's a broken "T";

"H" is "Х" - no, it's not "X" (eks), the only letter that has less words that start with it than "Q". But if you write "H" in Bulgarian it becomes "N". We don't have "X"(eks);

"I" is "И" - yes, it's a mirrored "N". It's pronounced as "E" (information);

"J" is "ДЖ" - I know, it's 2 letters and cheat-y. But note that it's not part of the alphabet;

"K" is "К" - do you see the beautiful curves it has - take that Latin alphabet!

"L" is "Л" - it's like a skateboard ramp;

"M" is "М" - It's easy, I know!

"N" - we covered this one, check "H";

"O" is "О" - this letters seems like it's written the same way in a lot of languages and alphabets;

"P" is "П" - yeah, it's easy to think that someone has, again, made a mistake and changed "Л" (L). If you write "P" in Bulgarian it's actually "R" as in "rock", no - not "Я", which we will cover later;

"Q" is "we don't have that". More to the point - what were you thinking English? Why couldn't you just say "kyu"? How many words are there with "Q"? Two? "Quebec" and "queen". Shame on you English!

"R" - already covered at "P";

"S" - see "C";

"T" is "Т" - thank God we have another easy letter to remember, ha?

"U" is "У" - I know, I know - it looks like a small "Y" (y), don't need to scream and yell about it - it's another "misunderstanding";

"V" - look for "B";

"W" - we don't have that one, but we use the closest letter that replicates it - "У" (U), we are so clever, aren't we?

"X" - see "H";

"Y" is "Й" - *sigh*, what can I say - we had to have one of these letters with little things above them. The strange thing about it is when we say the alphabet we call this letter "shortened Y", the ultra-mega fact is that there is no "long Y"!!! - [RATED 'R' FOR RETARDED];

"Z" is "З" - no, no and no! - as much as I would like it to be different... it's actually the number 3. All 8 Bulgarians that are reading this - let's be honest guys and gals - it's the number "3" and we've fucked that one up. To all other nations out there - yes, the number "3" is written the same way in Bulgaria and yet, we have to deal with this BS.

But this is not the end! Nope, because while the English alphabet is made from only 26 letters (even with it's unnecessary "Q", "W" and "X") the Bulgarian alphabet has the impressive amount of 30 letters.

Here is the rest of the Bulgarian alphabet, where some of them are useful and others utterly pointless:

"Ж" is "ZH" - no guys, it's not a bug on your screen, it's just the fact that this letter has 6 legs. Bulgarian example: the name "Желязков" (zhelyaskov) (Hi mate!), English example: "treasure" - that ending with "-sure" (not "shur");

"Ц" is "TS" - what are you saying? Another letter that looks like the number 4? Bulgarian example: *laughs inside, because... casual racism* "царевица" (tsarevitsa) (translation: corn);

"Ч" is "CH" - yes, you finally know what the first letter of "chocolate" looks like, oops, it's actually the one below;

"Ш" is "SH" - yes, we, the pesky nation, known as Bulgaria, have changed "chocolate" to "shokolad" (шоколад) - we are evil and are not afraid to show it to others AND the fact that we've chosen "Ш" to look like a comb;

"Щ" is "SHT" - yes you are right - we are that pretentios that adding a little wiggle at end of "Ш" actually adds "T" to "SH" and creates a brand new letter. Example : "ще" (shte) (will) - as in "will delete this article when I realize how bad it is";

"Ъ" is "U" - not "YU" but "U", like "turn". This time we didn't mirror whole a letter (like "N"), but only a part of "Б" (B) - we are so original!

"ь" is "Y" - it's pretty much the same as "Й", but you can't use it at the start of words, because ancient-tribal-rules;

"Ю" is "YU" - pretty much "you". Combined example: English "menU" in Bulgarian is "менЮ" - note that it's pronounced and written the same way, the differences are cosmetic;

"Я" is "YA" - and never, ever "R"! I know it's our fault that we've stolen this letter too, mirrored it and called it something completely different, but can't you forgive us, please?

+3 Communication Skill Points Acquired!

And now we basically come to the source of my hate towards the Bulgarian language. The following is probably the bane of every language, but is Bulgarian's nonetheless - grammar.

It's complicated, it's outdated, it's difficult and it's unnecessarily very complicated. Why? Because it has so many rules and nitty-gritty details attached to it. If someone wanted to learn it, he probably would go mad, depressed and eventually to the kitchen for some ice cream.

All of the complications with adjectives and verbs, with their thousands of forms are what makes this language very hard to learn. You think irregular verbs in English are silly? You've seen nothing. Every single adjective has at least 3 forms and verbs many more. You have to account every single time for their correct form.

Piece of turkey meat

Now that we've reached this point you probably expect of me to make fun out of the Turkish language as well. Much to your surprise (or delight, if you don't hate me already) I was never given any sort of official Turkish education. All of my reading and speaking skills are from watching TV.

Compared to Bulgarian, Turkish is maybe too simple. There is simply no he/she/it. It's based on context and one simple "o" solves all of their problems.

In it's core, Turkish is relatively easy to learn. While it's roots are in Arabic and other languages from central Asia, for some reason, now it uses the Latin alphabet. But it has flaws, like the ridiculous amount of postfixes verbs can have. Shall we get into some examples?

The most simple form of "go" in Turkish is "git". The "i" in it is read as "e". If you can read github.com - the "git" bit is read the same as the "git" (go) from Turkish.

And if we want to say "I will go" it gets the postfix "-eceğim". Which is read as "ejeyim". Then the "git" changes to "gid" and we add "-eceğim" and it becomes "gideceğim". At this point you can actually leave this word as it is and it will mean "I will go", but you can add "ben" (not a name), which means "me" or "I" before "will go" and will mean the same.

If this has been hard for you to grasp, prepare yourself for the next example. Instead of evolving the verb "git" a little bit, I will just mutate it to "gitmeyebilirmiyiz". Indeed - WTF?!? This monstrosity of "git-me-ye-bi-lir-mi-yiz" simply means "Can we not go?"

One positive thing about Turkish I want to mention is that there are some very short and convenient words. Like "ip" (not "intellectual property" or "Internet protocol") = "rope".

There are also some words with 3 meanings at the same time, like "yüz". Now, don't get putt off of that "ü" letter. I'm sure you've seen it in German and more or less, it's pronounced the same way.

"yüz" means "swim", "hundred" (100) and "face" at the same time. That is so neat, isn't it now Stanley?

One last thing I want to show you about Turkish are its 3 (or 2, depending on how you look at things) extra vowels:

"I" is actually not a small "L"(l) or large "I"(i). Notice how it's shorter than small "L" and pretty much the same as Latin "I"(ay). What is missing form the picture is a dot, which would transform it to "İ" - capital "I" (English "ay"). Are you confused yet? It's a sure thing I can't explain myself! It's used as the "U" from "turn";

"Ö" is pretty complicated to explain. Please ask your nearest coworker for its proper pronunciation. If you are alone, sad and don't have relatives nearby, try this neat trick - position your mouth to say "O", but lower the tip of your tongue and there you go, you just said "Ö";

"Ü" is a letter I mentioned few lines above and is present in other European alphabets. One example that would demonstrate the previous and this letter simultaneously is "ölüm" - "death".

Here are few more extra facts about Turkish you might care about after reading them:

Even when Turkey did adopt the Latin alphabet and have brought in many foreign words since then, they use their own words to describe months. But that's probably because Turkey is predominantly occupied by Muslims, and they never cared about what non-Muslim people said;

One thing that has happened in the past few decades (they feel more like centuries) is that Turkish (and Bulgarian) have adopted a lot of foreign words (from German, English, French, etc.). A lot of countries do that, because new technologies and practices that they haven't invented and more importantly, haven't named are brought to them.

And for some reason Turkish has decided to botch foreign words that have multiple consonants next to each other, like "stress". Turkish people don't (or maybe can't) pronounce "str-" like you just did. They add an extra "I" (that "U" from "turn") between "s" and "t". I have no idea why they do that. I have no problems pronouncing it the way it is. I'm happy that Bulgarians aren't such monsters though.

Idioms are always the cherry of these trees

I love idioms. They are the best way to have a laugh and poke at any language known to every lady and gentleman.

Most of them are idiotic and don't even try to follow common logic, but are nonetheless something I want you to see. Here are some phrases, strange sayings and chants too.

One thing I can't explain about English is its obsession with cakes:

"takes the cake", "sells like hot cakes" and "piece of cake" all sound like everybody eats cakes 'round 'ear.

You might say "You are so stupid, that's just a saying". You are wrong and I'm going to rub your nose in by saying that there is a saying in Bulgarian - "sells like warm bread", which is justified by our culture of eating a lot of bread.

One funny and rather violent idiom from Turkish is "crack and explode", which is said in a situation where someone insists on you to give away a secret that you know and you respond by saying the phrase, in hope the subject starts behaving appropriately. The original phrase has a rime to it, which is from where the charm comes from - "çatla da patla". It is a rare phrase and usually people that are difficult to deal with use it (childish individuals).

Here is an English idiom that used to drive me crazy: "under the weather" (being sick). God, it's awful!

Another one that gets me bent out of shape is "break a leg". For someone whose first and second language weren't English, that one really confused me for a long time while watching Dexter. Why would you wish to someone break his leg? And then the other person responds kindly to that!? Thank you English, for confusing the hell out of me and many others.

Not again!

The second to last feature of tonight will be related to the second question I asked you a while ago:

"Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you giggle after speaking language A in an environment with people who speak language B?"

The main aspect of this question is that when your family (and probably you) are too lazy to speak English on the bus, hilarity ensures. There are some really weird parallels between English/Turkish/Bulgarian that have put me on difficult positions.

Like when you travel and a continuous hill comes, it puts the vehicle you are traveling in in a funny position, therefore there comes a moment and you wonder "Why is it taking so long to traverse this hill?". That is something pretty normal to do and say, but not in an environment and situation when you are just too lazy to say it in English, but rather Turkish.

If you say it out loud, you might get in trouble, like me. Because the word "hill" would be replaced by "dik", yeah, not a word you want to say out loud in public. The opposite is possible too. When people speak English and say they are sick, which would transform that to "sik" - "dick" in Turkish.

Exactly, these are dick jokes, but I've never asked for them, nor ever wanted them. They are there, because there are visible parallels between languages, we want them or not.

There are hundreds of words that mean something completely different in some other language. I guarantee you that if you sit down and think about it enough, you will actually see them. It doesn't take much to do so.

Like "bit", which means 2 things in English and 3 things in Turkish:

"8 bits of information make 1 byte" and "I didn't like this bit of the show".

But if we talk about Turkish, it becomes:

"bit" as in "over, be done with it", "empty" and "bit" - "head louse".

I dare you to tell me that this isn't confusing! Or maybe I'm bad at switching between languages and interpreting things as they are. Having fuck ups like this for years and then starting to forget your first and then second language really makes you doubt if you are insane or not.

As much as I may despise western imperialism (hardy-durr), I'm happy that the English language has appeared as a dominant one, as opposed to Bulgarian and we are all trying to learn it. If you think about it though, it doesn't matter which language is dominant or where it's from - having to learn only one and then being able to speak with almost everybody (I say that because of Russians stubbornness) is actually the real benefit to our civilization.

Long live dominant language, whichever you might be!

Whot d' fock haf' y'a dan'?

And you know the worst part about all of this - this article that tries to be funny, my confused (probably damaged) brain and your justified anger? In the grand scheme, this is all meaningless. Ultimately no one, other than me and my sister, who has similar experience, will ever get this article. I wrote it for my sanity - I've wanted to say all of this and much more for as long as I can remember.

What only matters is that I'm happy now and the hope inside me that this article may have putted a smile on your lovely face as well.

Damn, I've got to go to an appointment but I'm totally going to read this later.

@brendan: No problem. The article won't go anywhere. :)

yo come el gato

du bist hasslich

i am bad at languages

Long read but as you said

Seriously though, the ability to speak or understand several languages is a great skill. I'm hailing from a small Scandinavian country with only 5.6 mil people so to function in this global world have I learned: English and German, to the point were i can follow a conversation with a native speaker. Enough French to get by. Basic Russian, Cyrillic to some time to grasp though. Some Arabic and Pashto, what the speak in South Afghanistan.

I am English and I speak only English, unless you count the 10 or so French words I know. I think people who speak multiple languages are fucking awesome. Having never needed to learn another language (because my native one is so wide spread obviously. Thanks, British colonialism!) it blows my mind to think there are people who speak 3+.

@t_wester: That's great. When I said meaningless, I meant me being extremely sarcastic and overwhelmingly silly with this article. I know it's a great skill to have and its benefits are limitless.

@planetfunksquad:Well, we all know words from other languages. Though it's funny how almost every time, the first words we learn are actually the bad ones. I think it's a defensive mechanism.

@halidyusein: Yeah, you're right about the bad words. I know three words in Polish. All bad ones haha.

i know my german is a little rusty but thats not very nice calling people hässlich

i know where your from :) velkommen, and you should properly also add Norwegian to the list. at least enough to get by.

The phenomena you describe are very common among polyglots. False cognates, or words which sound similar but have different meanings ie, your dik-dick example. And 'crossing the wires' thinking of a word/grammatical structure of one language while speaking another. It makes life more fun!

I am an Englishman who learnt German whilst living in Vienna. I am now living in the Netherlands and my brain just says: "FOREIGN. SPEAK GERMAN. THE FOREIGN THING YOU KNOW". The superficial similarity between the two languages doesn't help!

Man. I want to be bilingual.

You think bulgarian is complicated ... well try to learn Castillian spanish (or what you would commonly know as spanish) ... we have about 3 completely and utterly useless verb tenses that I dont even know why we have them in the first place ;) or just ask any gringo out there and see them trying to speak it properly (it always crack me up) ... aslo a funny fact about spanish it is indeed spoken trhough most of noeth_central and south america but you know each country has its own coloquialisms that means different things in all those countries .... even some being rather rude in one but totally ok in others and we speak the exact same language. It is really funny if you ask me and in case you wonder officially the spanish alphabet has 29 letters and we also have ñ ... ah so special it is that usually the internet cant handle it whatsoever XD....

To end this I did know of Bulgaria ... you are rigth next to Rumania ^^

I love hearing people talk about the relationships between languages. Your blog was very interesting and quite funny. I know tiny fractions of French and Spanish, as well as a moderately larger fraction of Japanese. I love languages, because they're all so damn weird. There's always phrases that sound like complete nonsense when translated, and by looking at a culture's language it usually puts everything else about their culture in a neat perspective. I've always been fascinated by this sort of stuff. One day, I wanna get into Cyrillic and Arabic and other sorts of crazy languages, but I don't know if my brain will be able to deal with all of it without exploding.

That was a great read. Thanks a lot for taking the time to write it up. I've always been very interested in languages.

I speak German, English and French, but the latter one not very well. I'm currently aspiring to become a translator and depending on if I can pull it off, also interpreter. I would definitely love to learn an entirely different language though. This school also offers introduction courses for Arabic, Japanese and Russian. Not interested in Japanese actually, but the other two I would love to learn.

I just don't know if I'm good enough to make it!

I love languages. I'm not great at learning them ( I think I should be better ) but it's my favourite hobby by far. I'm a native English speaker but I'm conversational in Chinese and Korean. I still find myself throwing in Chinese words when I'm speaking Korean more than I replace words I don't know with English. I'd be really interested to know why English isn't my go-to 'patch' when I speak Korean

@cramsy: Doesn't Korean use a lot of Chinese loanwords, similar to Japanese? The pronunciation is a altered, but the meaning is more or less the same.

Yeah you're totally right they are really similar in some areas. That's what I thought, it's just that I'm obviously WAY more confident speaking English than I am Chinese. Funny how the brain works

I do not know about western people, but being Indian you need to speak atleast 3 languages. One is your mother tongue ( Bengali in my case) English and Hindi. Depending on where you live and what language is most commonly used, there can be very very embarrassing situations having to translate them from one to the other.

Learning other languages is the hardest thing I ever learnt, so eventually I had to call it quits. Always jealous of those who can speak more than one though, given I'm surrounded by 'em every day.

Mange tak, Yeah I could add Norwegian and Swedish, but whenever i meet a fellow Scandinavian we usually end up speaking English after some time.

It can be very beneficial when when people don't know you speak their language. Ex I once meet two German girls and we started a conversation in English, but they would talk to each other in German. From their conversation I gathered that one had a boyfriend, the other was single and interested :)

this was a very interesting read,thanks for this post.

@nasar7: It makes it mostly fun, if you don't think about it obsessively, like me. :D

@gregorygold:Yeah, Europe is so small and with so much little nations and cultures that I find it very interesting how some languages sound very familiar, but you actually don't understand anything. Some say Bulgarians can understand a word or two from Russian and Serbian, but Russians wouldn't understand Serbian and vice-versa. Bulgarian and Macedonian are almost identical, the same is with Ukrainian and Russian AND Spanish and Portuguese. I'm sure someone will disagree with me, and rightfully so, but that's what I heard. :D

@aetheldod: I didn't know that about the different meanings in different countries. That's interesting.

@supermike6: It certainly takes practice to learn it. Fuck the theory and everything - just find someone who knows the language you want to learn and speak it with him. It's the easiest way.

@LunarJetman: Thank you for reading this! It really means a lot. I've been actually writing this for few months. I took my time with it - I made sure I said a lot.

@cramsy: Man, I wish I knew Chinese too! As far as I know Chinese people can understand a little bit of Korean, but not Japanese. Or was it the other way around? You know - I think you are one of the few who is going to survive the Great Chinese Campaign, that will unite the whole Earth under China. You... clever bastard! :D

@s80007:Yeah, a lot of comedians poke fun at languages, particularly Indian. Firstly because.... well, let's be honest - Indian accent is rad and secondly India is uprising as a country and we are going to experience many more of these situations. :)

@bollard: Watch out man - they are talking behind you! :D That's what we all do - talk behind people who don't belong in our little secret, somewhat obvious, conversations! :D :D

@t_wester:That's cute!

@halidyusein: I knew it!

What did you find hardest about learning Chinese? The vast majority of complaints I hear involve trouble with grasping the four basic tones. As a native speaker, this is super surprising since that's the first thing most curricula teach because it's by far the easiest aspect of the Chinese language. I mean, homophones and stroke orders? I'm in fluent Chinese and FUCK THAT SHIT.

A few paragraphs in and you're already claiming you're better than me. Good stuff.

@zomgfruitbunnies said:

@cramsy said:

@zomgfruitbunnies said: @cramsy: Doesn't Korean use a lot of Chinese loanwords, similar to Japanese? The pronunciation is a altered, but the meaning is more or less the same.

Yeah you're totally right they are really similar in some areas. That's what I thought, it's just that I'm obviously WAY more confident speaking English than I am Chinese. Funny how the brain works

What did you find hardest about learning Chinese? The vast majority of complaints I hear involve trouble with grasping the four basic tones. As a native speaker, this is super surprising since that's the first thing most curricula teach because it's by far the easiest aspect of the Chinese language. I mean, homophones and stroke orders? I'm in fluent Chinese and FUCK THAT SHIT.

Hardest thing was writing by far. I had to sit down and write a character 100ish times until I had a decent grasp on it...which was hell. It didn't help that I thought handwriting was a total waste of time as I was texting friends in Chinese for practice anyway. But I guess it did help me understand the pieces of each character and what they mean.

Speaking wasn't too bad. There were a few times I'd have to just brute-force-it and try each of the tones with a word until it registered with whoever I was talking to which is always funny. I'm by no means fluent and the only practice I get now is with the Chinese girls in my Korean class :( I'll get back to it some day for sure

Did you grow up with Chinese speaking parents or study the language? I'm so jealous of those with bilingual parents!

@halidyusein said:@cramsy: Man, I wish I knew Chinese too! As far as I know Chinese people can understand a little bit of Korean, but not Japanese. Or was it the other way around? You know - I think you are one of the few who is going to survive the Great Chinese Campaign, that will unite the whole Earth under China. You... clever bastard! :D

Umm I'm not too sure. I'm a white dude, but as far as I've seen the three languages have a lot in common. A word like 'park' is really similar in Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Korean: 공원 (Gong won)

Chinese: 公园 (Gōngyuán)

Japanese: 公園 (While it doesn't sound the same (I don't think...) the Characters are very similar to Chinese)

I found Chinese and English grammar to be pretty similar in some places which made it a lot easier. I'd think starting with Japanese or Korean would be even more difficult than Chinese, honestly.

From what I've heard. Japanese and Korean grammar rules and sentence structure are very similar. The Japanese students in my Korean classes just destroy me and pick up things so quickly.

I'll save you a spot during the time of the middle kingdom ;)

@cramsy: Actual Chinese handwriting is probably the worst thing I've had to deal with in terms of understanding what is written (the next worse thing is probably a doctor's handwriting). I'm working in China right now, and sometimes when my co-workers hand me something handwritten I look at them and go "What fucking dogshit did you just scribble on this piece of paper?"

Conversational Chinese is a lot easier than Japanese, and probably Korean, as well, because grammar is optional. Context is king, and as long as you don't fuck up too badly, people will understand you just fine. Written Chinese is a whole different story, however. Screw up the sentence structure and it gets really awkward really fast.

I was born in Shanghai, and what is understood as "Mandarin Chinese" these days is, in fact, the predominant dialect in Northeastern China. I grew up speaking the Shanghai dialect, which is classified as a southern dialect. It shares basic linguistic frameworks with other Chinese dialects but has a profoundly different lexicon and pronunciations. A prominent feature of the Shanghai dialect that it shares with other southern dialects (like Cantonese) is the mostly flat position of the tongue when enunciating. As a result, southerners typically don't have the characteristic "rolled-up tongue" stereotype often associated with Chinese. Children back then never spoke Mandarin Chinese until upon entering elementary school. Local dialects were banned in schools and breaking the rule could potentially result in corporal punishment (I know because I did it a few times). Nowadays, the government is backpedaling on their language policies in an effort to "preserve local cultural heritage," but mostly it's for the sake of tourism. The damage is already done, however, as most of my younger cousins can hardly even speak authentic Shanghaiese.

My Japanese education mostly came from my aunt, who worked for a Japanese firm back in the late '80s, hence spoke fluent Japanese. My parents were pretty for this until I started getting shit in school from classmates and teachers who thought I had Japanese blood because I would occasionally use the Japanese pronunciations for things since the two languages partially share the same writing system (anti-Japanese sentiments were well and alive back then. Thanks, propaganda!). I moved to Canada at age ten, and learning English wasn't all that hard thanks to the mandatory language programs in the public school system. I picked up Japanese again in high school and ran with it all the way till graduation. My Japanese has gotten pretty rusty over the years due to disuse, but I can still understand things at a passable level.

TL;DR - languages are cool. Learn them!

@zomgfruitbunnies: I don't want to get too political, but I had two Chinese classmates here, in England. They were cousins and they said they were from close proximity to Beijing. They told me that Taiwan is part of China, which I'm not sure if it is. As far as I know China refuses to acknowledge Taiwan's independence and probably teaches people that Taiwan is part of China. I'm just curious what is the deal with that.

Taiwan and China are like the deal with the hundreds of islands in Aegean sea where Turkey and Greece refuse to split them up. I mean look at Cyprus. :D

@halidyusein: Having been down in the trenches of both sides of this debate, I can safely say with confidence that the vast majority of people don't give two shits and just want to live in peace. That doesn't mean there aren't problems. The issue on the mainland side is one of arrogance, characterized by belittling and derogatory remarks toward the Taiwanese and the notion that the island can be taken any time by military force. The Taiwanese side sees the mainland government as some sort of evil dictatorship akin to Soviet Russia and North Korea as a result of constant fear mongering by the media and party politicians interested in fanning nationalistic vitriol for votes.

All of this goes away, however, at a personal level. Sure, twenty years ago I got some shit from a few Taiwanese kids because I was a mainlander, but my Taiwanese buddies also stood up for me and vice versa. I work in Shanghai today and meet plenty of Taiwanese people and we're all good friends. Whenever the issue of Taiwanese independence or reunification comes up, we just laugh about it because both sides of the current rhetoric is dumb as dicks and we all know it. It's all politics and semantics.

Yet, there seems to be a resurgence of animosity among the younger generation of the two sides. Maybe it's because the internet made verbal mudslinging so much easier, there's a lot of hate filled, almost racist bullshit being toss around by both sides on message boards and blogs. It's honestly disheartening to see something like this happen when we've seemingly made some progress in the last ten years.

Guess it's still too early to hope for some form of reconciliation.

EDIT: Sorry to end on such a downer! Promise there will be some on-topic, linguistic stuff on Taiwan, tomorrow! I don't speak a lick of Hokkien but I sure will write some shit about it!

@zomgfruitbunnies: Sounds bad. And what you said about this new wave of hatred that seems to be uprising because of Internet - I agree. Internet has done so much good stuff, but it also has helped some stuff like that to happen, to the level of these' days gaming controversy.

• こんにちは (as written in hiragana aka 平仮名 (as written in kanji))
• konnichiwa
• hello (good afternoon to be specific)

Other languages and countries and cultures are great, and I would strongly recommend learning and knowing about stuff that comes from places that you are not from. It can be fun and interesting!

Just like your opening post was, @halidyusein!

(I like parentheses, too!)

• ありがとうございました (as written in hiragana)
• arigatou gozaimashita
• thank you (polite, past tense)

I can identify I'm fluent in English, Spanish, and French. From those languages like Haitian Creole, Italian and Portuguese open up to be understandable, to a degree. I will add though my mental process is weird in the context that in speaking terms I think in English, and deal with numbers almost exclusively in Spanish.

For me though I totally get the mutant analogy. Because even though I was born in the US and raised by Dominican parents, I still get pegged as someone of Arabic ancestry. Go figure.

Your explanation of the Cyrillic alphabet would probably go better if you mentioned the Greek alphabet, which most English speakers are casually familiar with from math and science classes and the fraternity system. I think you ended up with Greek letters thanks to the Byzantine empire and the Eastern orthodox church there, but I'm hazy on Russian history before 1800 or so.

@fattony12000: Yes, ありがとうございました for reading! :D
Btw, that is pretty long just for saying "thank you".

Благодаря - "Blagodarya" - Bulgarian "Thanks";Teşekkürler - "Teshekurler" Turkish "Thanks".

@mannymar: That's interesting as well. I think someone has learned a language when he/she can think in that language. Because when you start learning one, you just translate everything to the new one. After a while it becomes a second nature.

@veektarius: Indeed, Cyrillic was created because Bulgaria wanted to be cocky and they just got letters and what not from nearby cultures. I didn't write about the Greek alphabet, because I'm not familiar with it.

As a dedicated linguist, I approve of all of this.

I plan to learn some ancient futhark just in case I get the opportunity to hammer a "* was here" into a suitable spot in a foreign country, blow someone's mind in the far future when they turn over a rock in a forest.

This is a very interesting post made by you bro. thanks for spending time sharing this.

@jhajha: No problem man, it was my pleasure to write this. :)

This fell back to the second page, but because I promised, here's a little something on the languages of Taiwan:

The official language of modern Taiwan/The Republic of China is Mandarin Chinese, but much like the mainland, its linguistic landscape is a diverse one. The main spoken language of the island is Taiwanese Hokkien, often simply referred to as "Taiwanese." While there is debate on whether Taiwanese Hokkien is directly related to Chinese or belong to another independent language family, the current general academic consensus recognizes it as an offshoot of mainland Hokkien, the local language spoken in and around the Chinese province of Fujian. Due to interactions with the Dutch, Portuguese, and Japanese, Taiwanese Hokkien has incorporated a number of loanwords and differs from mainland Hokkien in significant ways despite still being mutually intelligible to some degree.

Mandarin Chinese became the official language of Taiwan after the Kuomintang fled the mainland after losing the civil war against the CCP in 1945. Much like its mainland counterpart, the KMT pushed heavily for Mandarin integration in schools. The effort was only moderately successful due to local resistance. Today, with the exception of members of the older generation, the majority of Taiwanese people can speak Mandarin fluently. Taiwanese Mandarin differs in subtle ways from Mainland Mandarin, particularly in vocabulary and pronunciation of certain words (for example, the character 和, meaning "[to be] with," is pronounced hé in PRC Mandarin, and hàn in RoC Mandarin). Since Mandarin is the official language used for all formal occasions and in higher education, it is associated with sophistication and higher social status. It is spoken most commonly in the northern metropolitan areas like Taipei, while Taiwanese Hokkien and other indigenous (the "formosan languages" of the aboriginal tribes, and Hakka, another dialect) languages dominate the south.

Note: Taiwanese Chinese is written with traditional Chinese script (also used in Hong Kong and Macau), as opposed to the simplified version used in the PRC. The difference is purely visual; there are no characters in one system that does not have a corresponding character in the other.

i am a cunning linguist

I think many of us can actually relate to this in our own ways. Language is something I care a lot about, and the many languages(both fully different languages and assorted versions of a language) we speak can be problematic at times.

When I first learned English, I found great difficulty with formal English and how it is actual spoken. Perception is tied a lot to how someone speaks and not just what they mean. So, there has always been that conflict between the formal and casual.

For most English speakers(at least in America), casual, informal English is your first language which you picked up from your parents, and then teachers attempted to train people on formalizing their English. For me, I didn't pick up casual English from anyone; so, I began from a place of a teacher helping me learn formal English. Which, unfortunately, meant a lot of people thinking I was snooty or looking down on them with the way I spoke. It was another thing that made me feel like an outsider.

Then, over time, I made an effort to pick up on idioms like you mentioned, and I added in vocabulary which fit better with casual, even regional interaction. So, being in Texas, I eventually incorporated slang like "yall" and more contractions into my conversations until it just became second nature to me. It has taken quite some time, but I think I have come to strike a decent balance with how I speak English.

Still, the formal vs informal often feels like a conflict of languages, and in many ways, they are different ways to communicate. I also still have some interference in my head regarding the language I originally spoke, but by and large, the big one is the quirky conflict between formal and casual language.

@zomgfruitbunnies: Your case is very similar to what it is with Bulgarian and Macedonian. There is a great debate as to how much Macedonia has a culture of its own and what not. There are regular Interwebz debates as to who can prove better their little worthless agenda that nobody cares about. I haven't researched much into it, because I feel like most of Bulgaria's history has been written by historians with nationalistic agenda. Sometime languages and cultures become so nebulous that it's impossible to trace what is what.

@truthtellah: I feel ya'. Being an outsider and having diverse cultural origin can be disheartening when trying to get into another environment. A lot of people of colour who are new to America or powerful European countries find difficulties breaking that point of shame. Your case is lighter, but I know what you are talking about. Stay stronk! :D

@halidyusein: Here is the thing, the comedy Indian accent is a way no one speaks in India :) There are so many locations ( India is HUGE ) and the accents vary like crazy. Even while speaking hindi say you go to the south, where most do not speak hindi. Even if they do it sounds bizzare ! But, the 'urban' youth of the cosmopolitan cities speak in a way that is much more influenced by the west. The funniest bit is that where I live, Delhi when most ( youngsters including me ) speak hindi, we do it with a silly english accent :) Its just the Dilli way of speaking.

@halidyusein: I am of turkish origin and live in Romania. I don't speak any turkish though. I do however know a decent amount of mandarin since I will be working in Shanghai next year. So I guess I kinda know 3 languages too?

I was gonna visit Turkey last year but the situation was messed up with all the protests.

@truthtellah: For some reason I got used to say dude and bro alot while speaking english and also swearing like a mother so I kinda sound like I came from the mid 90s. And I do it without noticing, thats the worst part. Like I was talking to this foreign girl and at one point I said "Fuck me, its cold!".

Oh no, two women love me, my wallet is too small for my fifties, and my diamond shoes are too tight!

I don't know how to respond to any of this.

Heh, it is quite long winded isn't it! But that's one of the things with Japanese; I wasn't just saying "thanks!", with that particular phrase it was more like me saying "thank you very much for doing that thing for me!" (and speaking to you in a respectful manner/tone).

@s80007: Oh yeah, I'm pretty sure the accents vary. Even in small countries like the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, soon to be changed and Bulgaria accents exist.

@zamolxes: I mean - Romanian, Mandarin and... oh yeah - English! :D I've been in Turkey, Istanbul, but haven't visited Romania at all - and it's always been so close to me.

And yes, languages can be contagious. These days a lot of people just use "OK" in Bulgaria, instead of "dobre".

@fattony12000: That's better. But I wouldn't say "ありがとうございました" is that much shorter than "'thank you very much for doing that thing for me!' (and speaking to you in a respectful manner/tone)." Ok, Ok, I give up - Japanese rocks and kicks ass! :D