Cats at home
- Thread starter Sonntag
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Well I am no expert in kyrillic, but I think that it is somehow like greek letters, which means that the language could be written with latin letters without problems as the letters literally mean the same, they just look different (for example, the russian CCCP (these are kyrillic letters) means SSSR, the kyrillic C is the latin S, the P the R and so on. I think the language has some special letters, too, but so has German, Danish and so on, ß, Ø, å, æ, ä are not real latin letters, either.
This means that Sputnik is correct, as the russian letters are translated 1:1 into latin letters.
Indeed, the same thing applies to Japanese (my sister is learning Japanese). The japanese language could be written in Latin letters without problems, in fact in the last century, japanese people had a vote whether to adapt our latin letters or keep their own letters. Understandable, they chose to keep their identity, so japanese is written with several thousand symbols (you need 800 to read a newspaper)
Originally posted by Manjana
Only 800? I read something of 4000. Doesn't matter.
Also it is really so that it was just translated...that's everything I wanted to know. Thanks
Well there are much more than 800, but as far as I know thats the number required to read a newspaper... But to learn Japanese good enough, you'll have to learn several thousand...
Well even if languages like French, Spanish etc seem to be completely different, it is amazing how close they are to each other. All European languages are based on latin and are using virtually the same grammar (of course there are differences, but they are not that big compared to lets say Chinese grammar, which is completely different), therefore English seems to be very easy for most people of European origin (I am German and have learned Danish in 6 months and English at school, as well as a bit French. These languages are very close to each other, even though one doesn't see this at once.)
Asian people usually have much bigger problems learning English, as they lack the cultural (grammar, sentence structure etc) background . Therefore it one should not claim that English is that easy. It is for Europeans, but Asians have problems with it.
Not all european languages are from latin origin. For examble Finno-Ugric language family's real origin haven't been revealed, but they are not definetly latin based. Go and look http://www.finland.fi finnish section and try to understand it with skills in german, english or sweden 
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.Well, finnish, hungarian and Turkish are the one and only exception of the rule, as are some small languages like gaelic and so on. Eastern European languages also have a bit of a different origin, but all other languages have.Originally posted by Hammar
Not all european languages are from latin origin. For examble Finno-Ugric language family's real origin haven't been revealed, but they are not definetly latin based. Go and look http://www.finland.fi finnish section and try to understand it with skills in german, english or sweden
as for Finnish, well I know it is different from Swedish/Danish/Norwegian, and I think it is funny why the language survived, as it is fairly isolated from the rest of the surrounding languages
Bob McDob
Better Health Through Less Flavor
There's a language called Esperanto developed by this Polish or Czech guy in the 19th century (you may have heard of it if you read the Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison). I believe it was designed for ease of learning by all peoples as a second language. Interestingly enough, it uses the Latin alphabet.
And while Chinese may be an exceedingly difficult language to learn to read (at least, it seems like it from what I hear), the good thing about it is that once you learn it, you can exchange letters with ANY chinese reader, no matter what language they speak), because the characters represent ideas (like "house") instead of sounds from the spoken language. At least, that's how I understand it.
And while Chinese may be an exceedingly difficult language to learn to read (at least, it seems like it from what I hear), the good thing about it is that once you learn it, you can exchange letters with ANY chinese reader, no matter what language they speak), because the characters represent ideas (like "house") instead of sounds from the spoken language. At least, that's how I understand it.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Err... no
. You survived because you were out of Hitler's range, and the Russians weren't particularly interested in taking your entire country - just a few bits and pieces, which they did take. Then of course Hitler attacked Russia, and thus you got a break. It's all about location, location, location . You're out of the way so there's just no point invading .Well, Stalin really wasn't interested only few eastern areas, he was trying to take whole country just they did in Polland and around East-Europe. And, yes. We were allied with germans. But the help was weapons and machines. And service for that they were allowed to use our east border for attack. And our leader's were still making they own decissions. That was deal with devil, but only option because soviets were again bombing our cities.
Quarto
Unknown Enemy
Oh, I wasn't criticising the decision to ally with the Germans. Still, I don't think that the Russians would have continued fighting against you even if you hadn't allied with the Germans. The Russians had to use all their resources and more just to stop the German offensive.