Quechua words

Greetings readers! Allin p'unchay! Today I'm gonna give you some vocab for Quechua, the most spoken language native to the Americas. Quechua is spoken by approximately 10 million people in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. It is the language from which we got the English words coco, condor, jerky, llama, and many others.
So here is a vocab list for you. Use it the next time you visit the Andes. Quechua words are written in light blue.

1=huq
2=iskay
3=kinsa
4=tawa
5=pisqa
6=suqta
7=qanchis
8=pusaq
9=isqun
10=chunka
Good morning=Wuynas diyas (taken from Spanish)
Good day=Allin p'unchay
Good afternoon=Wuynas tardis (also from Spanish)
Good evening/night=Allin tuta
Hello=Rimaykullayki
Goodbye=Huq kutikama
Please=Allichu
Thank you=Anaychayki
I=Nuqa
You=Qan
He/She=Pay
We (you, me, and them)=Nuqanchis
We (them and me)=Nuqayku
You (plural: "you guys", "y'all")=Qankuna
They=Paykuna
Yes=Ari
No=Mana
Do you speak Quechua?=Runasimita rimankichu?
Do you speak Spanish?=Kastillanuta rimankichu?
Do you speak English?=Inlista rimankichu?

Update

Hey all y'all. It's the wanna-be polyglot again. Just a little update on my language pursuits... I mentioned in an earlier post that i planned on taking French and Arabic at the Berlitz Language School in Portland. That plan fell through (logistics didn't work out), but I'm studying French and Arabic and Portland State University. They are both very interesting to say the least. They both challenge me but Arabic is far and away the most difficult language I have studied seriously. I'm also studying Spanish occasionally, either with the Rosetta Stone cds or from books. But really, who needs study aids for Spanish while living in or around Hillsboro, Oregon? If you live in this area you know precisely what I mean... Another language I have found interesting is Tetun, the official language of East Timor (useless in the United States unless you plan on a career as the U.S. ambassador to this tiny half-island country). So I try to study Tetun a bit in my not-so-frequent spare time. Well, finals are coming up so "Je doir etudier le francias et l'arabe." Until the next post.... ~AJPOLYGLOT

The Indo-Euro Lowdown

Hey. I promised info on language families and classification. Here is the lowdown on our own language family -- Indo-European. Sub-families are in red, sub-groups are in orange, and actual languages are in yellow.


Indo European

Germanic
West Germanic
Afrikaans Spoken mainly in South Africa and Namibia. About 7 million speakers.
Dutch Spoken in the Netherlands and parts of Africa and the Caribbean. 17 million speakers.
English Speakers are extremely widespread. Used on every continent. 309 million speakers.
Flemish Spoken in Belgium. 4 million speakers
Frisian Spoken in the Netherlands and Germany. About 1 million speakers.
German Spoken in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, other parts of Europe. 95 million speakers.
Yiddish Spoken by many Jews in eastern Europe and Israel. 3 million speakers.
North Germanic
Danish Spoken in Denmark. 5 million speakers.
Faeroese Spoken in the Faeroe Islands. 50,000 speakers.
Icelandic Spoken in Iceland. 300,000 speakers.
Norwegian Spoken in Norway. 4 million speakers.
Swedish Spoken in Sweden. 8 million speakers.

Romance
Catalan Spoken in northeastern Spain. 6 million speakers.
Corsican Spoken on the French island of Corsica. 402,000 speakers.
French Spoken in France, parts of Africa and the Pacific. 64 million speakers.
Galician Spoken in northwestern Spain. 3 million speakers.
Italian Spoken in Italy, San Marino, the Vatican, and Malta. 61 million speakers.
Latin Not spoken actively. Used by Catholic officials in the Vatican and around the world.
Portuguese Spoken in Portugal, Brazil, and parts of west Africa. 180 million speakers.
Rhaetian Spoken in northern Italy and southern Switzerland. About 400,000 speakers.
Romanian Spoken in Romania and Moldova. 24 million speakers.
Sardinian Spoken on the Italian island of Sardinia. 2 million speakers.
Sicilian Spoken on the Italian island of Sicily. 5 million speakers.
Spanish Spoken in Spain, much of Central and South America. 322 million speakers.

Slavic
Eastern Slavic
Belarussian Spoken in Belarus. 9 million speakers.
Russian Spoken in Russia and many other former Soviet nations. 145 million speakers.
Ukrainian Spoken in Ukraine. 40 million speakers.
Southern Slavic
Bulgarian Spoken in Bulgaria. 9 million speakers
Croatian Spoken in Croatia. 6 million speakers.
Macedonian Spoken in Macedonia. 2 million speakers.
Serbian Spoken in Serbia. 11 million speakers.
Slovene Spoken in Slovenia. 2 million speakers.
Western Slavic
Czech Spoken in the Czech Republic. 12 million speakers.
Slovak Spoken in Slovakia. 5 million speakers.
Sorbian Spoken in eastern Germany. About 40,000 speakers

Baltic
Latvian Spoken in Latvia. 1.5 million speakers.
Lithuanian Spoken in Lithuania. 3 million speakers.

Celtic
Goidelic
Irish Spoken in parts of Ireland. 355,000 speakers.
Manx Nearly extinct, but spoken by about 80 people on the Isle of Man.
Scottish Spoken in parts of Scotland. 63,000 speakers.
Brythonic
Breton Spoken in northwestern France. About 1 million speakers.
Cornish Spoken in the British region of Cornwall. 600 speakers.
Welsh Spoken in Wales. 520,000 speakers.

Hellenic
Greek Spoken mainly in Greece and Cyprus. 13 million speakers.

Indo-Iranian
Indo-Aryan
Assamese Spoken in western India. 15 million speakers.
Bengali Spoken in Bengladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. 171 million speakers.
Bihari Spoken in northeastern India. 48 million speakers.
Dhivehi Spoken in the Maldives. 300,000 speakers.
Gujarati Spoken in western central India. 46 million speakers.
Hindi Spoken mainly in India. 180 million speakers.
Konkani Spoken in southeastern India. 8 million speakers.
Marathi Spoken in western central India. 68 million speakers.
Oriya Spoken in eastern central India. 32 million speakers.
Punjabi Spoken in India and Pakistan. 90 million speakers.
Rajasthani Spoken in India. about 80 million speakers.
Sanskrit Spoken by many scholars across India. 200,000 fluent speakers.
Sindhi Spoken in India and Pakistan. 21 million speakers.
Sinhala Spoken in Sri Lanka. 13 million speakers.
Urdu Spoken in India and Pakistan. 61 million speakers.
Iranian
Baluchi Spoken in Pakistan. 7 million speakers.
Farsi Persian Spoken in Iran and Afghanistan. 32 million speakers.
Kurdish Spoken by Kurds scattered over much of the Middle East. 16 million speakers.
Osettic Spoken in Russia and Georgia (the nation, not the U.S. state). 700,000 speakers.
Pashto Spoken in Pakistan and Afghanistan. 21 million speakers.
Tajik Spoken in Tajikistan. 4 million speakers.

Other
Albanian Spoken in Albania. 5 million speakers.
Armenian Spoken mainly in Armenia. 7 million speakers.

Say Hello to Europe

Hola. Bonjour. Guten Tag. Find them all (plus 32 others) below. This should enable you to greet people in their native language almost anywhere in Europe. Missing (regrettably) are Breton (spoken in northwestern France), Corsican (from the French island of Corsica, Napolean's birthplace), Galician (dominant in northwestern Spain), Sardinian (of Sardinia, an Italian island), and a few others. I will try to at least gather the information for these four languages mentioned. I have given the phonetic pronunciation of the greetings first, followed by the actual spelling. So here is your key to greeting Europe...

Albanian/toon-gyah-tyeh-tah/Tungjatjeta
Basque/kai-shoh/Kaixo
Bulgarian/zdrah-vay-teh/Здравейте
Catalan/oh-luh/Hola
Croatian-Serbian/zdrah-voh/Zdravo
Czech/dob-ree dehn/Dobrý den
Danish/ghor-da/Goddag
Dutch/dahkh/Dag
Estonian/te-rre/Tere
Færoese/huh-loh/Halló
Finnish/tehrr-veh/Terve
French/bõh-zhoor/Bonjour
German/goo-tin tahk/Guten Tag
Greek /yi-a sas/Γειά σας
Hungarian/yoh nah-poht kee-vah-nohk/Jó napot kívánok
Icelandic/hah-loh/Halló
Irish/dee-uh gwit/Dia duit
Italian/bwohn-zhoor-noh/Buongiorno
Latvian/svayks/svay-kuh (m/f)/Sveiks/Sveika
Lithuanian/svay-ki/Sveiki
Macedonian/zdrah-voh/Здраво
Maltese/bahn-joo/Bonġu
Norwegian/gud-dahg/Goddag
Polish/djen doh-bri/Dzień dobry
Portuguese/oh-lah/Olá
Romanian/bu-nuh zi-uah/Bună ziua
Russian/zdrahst-vooy-tyeh/Здравствуйте
Scottish/feh-skur mah (in afternoon)/Feasgar math
Slovak/doh-bree dien/Dobrý deň
Slovene/pohz-drahw-lyei-neh/Pozdravljeni
Spanish/oh-lah/Hola
Swedish/hay/Hej
Turkish/mehr-hah-bah/Merhaba
Ukrainian/doh-bri dehn/Добрий день
Welsh/shoo mai/Sut mae

Some quick notes on pronunciation:
1. I have tried to make the pronunciation key as natural for English speakers as possible. So go with your gut feeling on how to pronounce most of the letters. The letter "a" as pronounced as in "bat" unless it is followed by an "h." An "i" is always pronounced as in "bit." The letter "u" is pronounced as in "put" unless it is followed by an "h." The consonant combination "kh" is like the "ch" in the Scottish word "Loch." You will often hear this sound if you listen to speakers of German, Russian, or Arabic. The combination "zh" is as the "s" in "measure."
2. The letters in italics in the pronunciations show you which syllable to stress (emphasize) in the word.
3. The symbol "õ" that I have used in the French pronunciation is an aspirated "o." Just make an "oh" sound through your nose, and you will be very close.
4. In the Latvian example, the first greeting mentioned is used to greet a male, and the second is used to greet a female.

Language vs. Dialect

Some more essential knowledge about languages...



I'm sure you have heard the two separate terms "language" and "dialect." You may have wondered what the heck the difference is between the meanings of the two words. I am here to clear things up a bit for you.



Linguists have a tough time clearly defining the difference between the two terms, but I will give you some loose guidelines on distinguishing between a language and a dialect.



The definition of this difference is made a little easier by means of a little thing called "mutual intelligibility." If two forms of speech are mutually intelligible, this means that speakers of both varieties can understand one another. If mutual intelligibility exists between two types of speech, they can usually be considered dialects of the same language. For example, I can understand an Englishman quite well. This is because American English and British English are dialects of the same language. But when two people do not understand each other's speech at all, they most likely speak two separate languages. I cannot understand a German speaker. Even though German is in the same language family as English (more on language families later), it is not a dialect of English. It is a totally separate language.



Some exceptions to this rule exist, complicating our tidy little definition.

Sometimes a language is defined by political or cultural boundaries. One example is that of the Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish languages. The three languages are practically mutually intelligible. Speakers of Danish can understand most of what speakers of the other two languages are saying. So these three are all be considered dialects of the same language, right? Nope. Because of political boundaries (they are the dominant languages of three different countries), they are all considered different languages. This is also a case of national identity (a Swede would rather say "I speak Swedish" than "I speak the Swedish variety of Scandinavian"). Here are some more examples of separate languages that we should (arguably) consider dialects of the same language:

Russian/Ukrainian/Belarussian

Romanian/Moldovan

Spanish/Catalan

Italian/Sicilian

Croatian/Serbian/Bosnian



This also works in reverse. I have found some instances in which, due to their very unique vocabularies, dialects should perhaps count as a totally separate languages instead. Here are some examples:

Hassaniya Arabic (spoken in Mauritania)

Moroccan Arabic (Morocco)

Pitcairn English, also called Pitkern (Pitcairn Islands)


I know there are other good examples out there; but those are the ones I could name off the top of my head.

So I hope this helps you to understand exactly (or remotely) what a dialect is, versus what a language is. That is the first thing you should take from this. But the second most useful bit in here is this: If you want to learn Arabic for a trip to Egypt, don't learn it from a Mauritanian -- they speak Hassaniya, not Arabic.

A good joke

I have a lot of Spanish homework this weekend, but that won't stop me from posting and attempting to put on smiles on faces. Here's a decent language joke I read earlier this week...

What do you call a person who speaks multiple languages? -- Multilingual (or polyglot as some would have it ;-)

What do you call a person who speaks two languages? --Bilingual

What do you call a person who speaks only one language?


Wait for it...






An American!

Hope that made you chuckle...

Starting Rundown...

Here is a little info you should know about languages. If you have the same multilingual ambitions as I do, this should help you decide which languages to learn. You will also find out how to greet people in nine different languages.

Number of living languages in the world: 6,912

Language with the most speakers worldwide: Mandarin Chinese (873 million)

Language with fewest speakers worldwide: It's a tossup. About 50 different languages have only one native speaker remaining.

Most widely spoken language: English (main or official language in 63 countries)

Top 10 languages with most native speakers (Source: The World Alamanac 2008)
Rank/Language/Hub Country/No. of speakers/Greeting
1. Mandarin Chinese/China/873 million/Ni hao (knee-how)
2. Spanish/Spain/322 million/Hola (oh-la)/
3. English/United Kingdom/309 million/Hello (duhh!)
4. Arabic*/Egypt/205 million/Assalam aleykum
5. Hindi/India/180 million/Namaste (nah-mah-stay)
6. Portuguese/Portugal/177 million/Ola (oh-la, same as Spanish)
7. Bengali/Bangladesh/171 million/Nomoskar (no-moh-scar)
8. Russian/Russia/145 million/Zdrastvuytye (zdrahst-vooy-tyeh)
9. Japanese/Japan/122 million/Kon-nichiwa (cohn nee-chee-wa)
10. German/Germany/95 million/Guten Tag (goo-tin tahg)

*Note: The World Almanac splits Arabic into sixteen dialects. The diiferent dialects can collectively claim to have around 205 million speakers worldwide.

Foreign...Not so foreign

Hey all. Ajpolyglot again. I mentioned that this blog would be on languages. I figured "languages" should mean "language" in general. This should include info on foreign languages as well as the scoop on our own language -- English. I have already told of my interests and ambitions regarding foreign languages, and I am fairly well versed (so to speak) on their usage. But what about English? Well... I've taken a few writing classes, but I figured I'd enlist the help of a friend who is as much into the English language as I am into foreign languages. You can tell by looking at his profile. He has a lot of favorite books, including Shakespeare stuff. Now that is English for ya... So without further delay, I introduce you to Roy, the English guy.