Diferenças e semelhanças entre as línguas.

After a few days studying languages, I have noticed quite a few similarities and also some palpable differences among them. So I am going to start explaining these aspects from the two languages that I am studying more often: German and English.

Because both English and German share the same origin, you may find some words that have the same spelling and sometimes even almost the same pronunciation. For each example given the English sentence will come first.  

I am Alison.

Ich bin Alison.

Here the two sentences look very similar in terms of grammatical structure, though the pronunciation of every word is different. If you found this example similar, have a look at this one.

My name is...

Mein Name ist...

Then you stop to think „Hey, is that easy to learn German?“ Well, for English speakers or for someone who already speak it, learning German will certainly not be a stepping stone, especially if you like learning languages like me. But now look at this example.

But now I want that the whole world can understand me.

Aber jetzt will ich, dass alle Welt mich zu verstehen kann.

So, what do you think now? If we’d translate word by word from German into English it’d be like: But now want I that the whole world me to understand can. Well, it would not be a good thing to listen, right? Yeah, the word order is actually the tricky part of it all. So, English and German may be a little similar in some parts like vocabulary and pronunciation, but when it comes to grammar structure they do not look like the same at all.

Bem, agora vou falar um pouco na minha querida língua materna, porque quero compará-la com o espanhol.

Da mesma forma que inglês e alemão tem uma mesma origem, o português e o espanhol também tem uma mesma raiz. Ambas as línguas são derivadas do chamado latim vulgar. Outras línguas que compartilham essa mesma raiz são o Francês e o italiano. Costumo brincar dizendo que o português e o espanhol são como duas irmãs que saíram de casa para seguirem rumos diferentes.

Realmente se um espanhol estiver falando com um brasileiro, e ele falar devagar não haverá tanto problema na comunicação, algo que não seria possível entre um alemão e um espanhol. Porém, esta proximidade entre as línguas pode nos causa uma falsa impressão que nós brasileiros, ou falantes do português, não precisamos estudar o espanhol. Para ilustrar o que estou falando, dê só uma olhada no seguinte texto.

De repente apareció un hombre pelado (careca) con el saco (jaqueta) lleno de polvo (pó) que le dijo si podía compartir la cena con él. La niña, aunque muy asustada, le preguntó su apellido (sobrenome). Él le respondió que su apellido era Chaves, pero que era más conocido por el sobrenombre (apelido) Pepe.

As palavras pelado, saco, polvo, apellido, sobrenombre apesar de existirem em português, com algumas poucas diferenças na escrita, seus significados são bem diferentes de uma língua para outra.

In spite of the “speakble” languages like Spanish, English and Portuguese, there are also other ones that seem to be near impossible to speak, like Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Japanese etc.

When I say “speakble” I am only considering the fact that they do not use European letters in their alphabet. Russian is an Eastern Slavonic language and they use the Cyrillic system in its alphabet, so in order to speak the language you have to know the sounds of the letters. Well, they are 33, just look at them.

А, Б, В, Г, Д, Е, Ё, Ж, З, И, Й, К, Л, М, Н, О, П, Р, С, Т, У, Ф, Х, Ц, Ч, Ш, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь, Э, Ю, Я

Okay, we are talking about the differences and the similarities about the languages, well at this point you might be thinking “So Russian has nothing to do with any of the above languages, right? Well, I don’t know how or why but yet they do have some similarities after all. For example, the words: проблема (problem), кaфе (café), хакер (hacker) sounds pretty familiar, right? Actually there are plenty of words from Italian, French or German, so you have an advantage if you know any of these languages already. 

But one thing I found interesting about the way the Russian language works, because they are very direct in speaking, they really don’t beat around the bush. For example:

Я студент. (male)

Я студентка. (female)

Translating it into English, we’d have “I student” though in English it would not be right. They use neither a verb nor an article to pass the same message.

However, it does not matter how similar or different a language may be, we have to remember not to disrespect these differences or to junge any one of them by saying that one language is superior or better than the other.

Okay, that’s it for today. I hope you like it J see you all next time.

Danke schön und auf wiedersehen.

Muchas gracias y ¡hasta pronto!

Спасибо и до свидания.