Re: Rio de Janeiro (was: Re: Hello)

----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Leigh <thomas@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: Rio de Janeiro (was: Re: Hello)


> Jan heeft geschreven... (ha! ;-)
>
> > Hey Thomas, how many languages do you actually speak/write? This was
> > already the fourth or fifth in one week :)
>
> LOL! I know bits and pieces of lots, but honestly very few well. Sometimes
I
> stop and realise that I've actually studied and forgotten more languages
> than most people ever learn. But I imagine that's true of many people on
> CONLANG. I will, however, shamelessly take advantage of any opportunity to
> pull out my 5- or 10-word knowledge of any language, even if it's just to
> say "hello", "thank you" and "bye". :)
>
> If you want the full list of languages I've actually studied and acquired
> some degree of proficiency in at one point or another in my life, it would
> be as follows, in more or less chronological order: French, Latin,
Russian,
> Esperanto, Danish, Greek (modern), Turkish, Czech, Scottish Gaelic,
> Anglo-Saxon, Volapük, Manx Gaelic, Talossan, Persian, Cornish, Catalan,
> Spanish, and Portuguese.
 Amazing! I suppose you can remember the basic grammar points of the
languages you cannot speak very well, though... that's good


> Spanish I've never taken a class in, but there are so many people in the
US
> who speak it now that it's everywhere -- on the street, on the TV, on the
> radio, etc. -- that it's impossible not to just absorb some. I understand
a
> lot more than I can actually say, though.
>
I have a question for you, Thomas. You say you hear Spanish everywhere in
the US. I wonder if the Spanish native speakers in the US speak some kind of
"Spanglish", a "language" (if one can call it so) largely influenced by
English. Once I read that what they speak is sometimes far distant from what
people like me, living far away from the States, would normally say.
I give you an example: they say "vacunar la carpeta" meaning "to vacuum the
carpet", but this phrase can only cause laughter to a speaker of REAL
Spanish... because "vacunar" means "to vaccinate" and "carpeta" means
"looseleaf notebook". So, "vacunar la carpeta" means "to vaccinate the
looseleaf notebook". Whereas "to vacuum the carpet" is "aspirar la
alfombra"...
There are a lot of examples like this, as far as I know...
Have you heard of Spanglish?


Santiago

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