NationStates Jolt Archive

A strange thing.

The sentence "I VITELLI DEI ROMANI SONO BELLI" makes sense both in italian and in latin (never mind punctuation and capitals).

I, VITELLI, DEI ROMANI SONO BELLI in latin means: Go, Vitellius, following the war-call of the Roman god.

I VITELLI DEI ROMANI SONO BELLI in italian means: The veals of the Romans are handsome.

Do you know any other sentence that makes sense in more than one language?

A strange thing.

The sentence "I VITELLI DEI ROMANI SONO BELLI" makes sense both in italian and in latin (never mind punctuation and capitals).

I, VITELLI, DEI ROMANI SONO BELLI in latin means: Go, Vitellius, following the war-call of the Roman god.

I VITELLI DEI ROMANI SONO BELLI in italian means: The veals of the Romans are handsome.

Do you know any other sentence that makes sense in more than one language?

Nope. But Thai and English share the same verb 'to die'

In b4 Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo, etc.

Look it up, it's a valid sentence with a string of like half a dozen buffalos.

In b4 Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo, etc.

Look it up, it's a valid sentence with a string of like half a dozen buffalos.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

To translate, replace Buffalo (the city) with London, buffalo (the animal) with cat, and buffalo (the action) with scratch.
London cats London cats scratch scratch London cats

In other words, London cats, who other London cats scratch, themselves scratch London cats.

I know a joke that works in 2 languages, both in german and in dutch :)

I know a joke that works in 2 languages, both in german and in dutch :)

well, tell it:p

No, the dutch version doesn't work when typed, only when told, stupid -dt :)

Typ it it German then:rolleyes: :p

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." amazingly works in American English, Canadian English, British English, Australian English... :p

Typ it it German then:rolleyes: :p

My german spelling is not that well, when talking I can easily make mistakes without noticing, when writing I tend to look at every word and just wonder if it's correct or not and then it will take me hours and hours and hou...

My german spelling is not that well, when talking I can easily make mistakes without noticing, when writing I tend to look at every word and just wonder if it's correct or not and then it will take me hours and hours and hou...
... not to mention that we will point and laugh. http://i.imdb.com/Photos/CMSIcons/emoticons/basic2/yes.gif

ETA: Hey, why isn't the smiley displayed? It was there in the beginning and now it's gone. *pouts*

... not to mention that we will point and laugh. http://i.imdb.com/Photos/CMSIcons/emoticons/basic2/yes.gif

Sssh. don't tell him:p

Warum kann ein Seerauber keine Cirkel machen?

Er must pi raten :D

Warum kann ein Seerauber keine Cirkel machen?

Er must pi raten :D
:p

Warum kann ein Seerauber keine Cirkel machen?

Er must pi raten :D

Words fail me.

Just be happy I didn't tell it in dutch ;)

You will be able to construct many examples using two closely related languages, especially if you ignore the (vitally important, but try to explain that to an anglophone) accents, spacing, capitals, punctuation, etcetera.

Likely candidate language pairs are, indeed, Latin and Italian, Czech and Slowak, Norwegian and Danish, Dutch and Friesian, German and Lëtzebuergesch, Russian and Ukrainian, Spanish and Catalan, Serbian and Croatian, and of course Bulgarian and Macedonian (which, according to some sources, share about 100% vocabulary and grammar :D ).

But then comes the next step: try to construct an example where the sentence really means something in both languages, instead of being a meaningless string of words that can be interpreted as a sentence. Oh, and while you're at it, try one without having to resort to inserting names to replace non-matching words... ;)

Caesar adsum iam forte, Brutus adarat, Caesar sic in omnibus, Brutus sic inat.

Un singe de boue est un jouet pour l'hiver.

how about..


hasta la vista baby

Warum kann ein Seerauber keine Cirkel machen?

Er must pi raten :D
:rolleyes:

......:p Thats so lame its funny. Why didnt you just say it in Dutch, it will look better. (Everyone knows Dutch looks better than German)

Dutch and Friesian, German and Lëtzebuergesch

That doesn't make much sense.

Just be happy I didn't tell it in dutch ;)You mean that wasn't Dutch? It did look like misspelled German afterall, so I thought it was :p

Polish polish polish.

Polish polish polish.

Well now, that is just awkward for that second pole.

Well now, that is just awkward for that second pole.

:D

"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog." amazingly works in American English, Canadian English, British English, Australian English... :p


I assume you were aiming for the sentance with all 26 letters in it, in which case it is 'jumps' not 'jumped'. You want that 's'.

Polish polish Polish polish

That works too.

Two latin palindromes:

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

(aka the Sator square)

En giro torte sol ciclos et rotor igne.
(a strange latin, but latin)

Dutch and Friesian

English and Friesian too.

Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Friese
Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is guod Ingelsk en guod Frysk.

You will be able to construct many examples using two closely related languages, especially if you ignore the (vitally important, but try to explain that to an anglophone) accents, spacing, capitals, punctuation, etcetera.

Likely candidate language pairs are, indeed, Latin and Italian, Czech and Slowak, Norwegian and Danish, Dutch and Friesian, German and Lëtzebuergesch, Russian and Ukrainian, Spanish and Catalan, Serbian and Croatian, and of course Bulgarian and Macedonian (which, according to some sources, share about 100% vocabulary and grammar :D ).

But then comes the next step: try to construct an example where the sentence really means something in both languages, instead of being a meaningless string of words that can be interpreted as a sentence. Oh, and while you're at it, try one without having to resort to inserting names to replace non-matching words... ;)

I know that this is going to reveal my disturbing ignorance here, but one of my linguistics professors when we were doing language planning told us that Serbian and Croatian were the same language, but that one of them changed the spelling of some words to make it less like the other. But morphologically, syntactically, phonologically, and lexically they were pretty much identical. Is that true?

English and Friesian too.

Butter, bread and green cheese is good English and good Friese
Bûter, brea en griene tsiis is guod Ingelsk en guod Frysk.I don't think "guod" is correct. Not what you're looking for anyway..

And it doesn't really sound the same; interpretable, sure, but that's a different criterion.

Anyway, "Stop!" works as a wellformed sentence in most germanic languages.

I know that this is going to reveal my disturbing ignorance here, but one of my linguistics professors when we were doing language planning told us that Serbian and Croatian were the same language, but that one of them changed the spelling of some words to make it less like the other. But morphologically, syntactically, phonologically, and lexically they were pretty much identical. Is that true?

Yes.

Politically, they're separate languages.

But phonetically, phonologically, morphologically, etc, they are the same language.

I know that this is going to reveal my disturbing ignorance here, but one of my linguistics professors when we were doing language planning told us that Serbian and Croatian were the same language, but that one of them changed the spelling of some words to make it less like the other. But morphologically, syntactically, phonologically, and lexically they were pretty much identical. Is that true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_standard_Serbian%2C_Croatian_and_Bosnian

I know it's wikipedia, but.. still. :) It shows the basic differences. Bascally you will get different answers depending on who you ask.

Myself, as a speaker of serbo-croatian, do not see them as seperate languages, instead just as regional dialects. I, for example, don't speak the "standard" serbian of serbia proper. Instead I speak a version of serbian from the Krajina region in Republika Srpska (the serb republic in BiH) which sounds more like bosnian or croatian, yet it's accepted as serbian while bosnian and croatian are not.

It's too complicated, unless you are from the region. :p Hence why I just call it all serbo-croatian even though there are some major differences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_standard_Serbian%2C_Croatian_and_Bosnian

I know it's wikipedia, but.. still. :) It shows the basic differences. Bascally you will get different answers depending on who you ask.

Myself, as a speaker of serbo-croatian, do not see them as seperate languages, instead just as regional dialects. I, for example, don't speak the "standard" serbian of serbia proper. Instead I speak a version of serbian from the Krajina region in Republika Srpska (the serb republic in BiH) which sounds more like bosnian or croatian, yet it's accepted as serbian while bosnian and croatian are not.

It's too complicated, unless you are from the region. :p Hence why I just call it all serbo-croatian even though there are some major differences.

Yeah 3 of my friends (1 Bosnian, 1 Serbian, 1 Croatian) tried to explain it to me once, but yeah, it was really complicated. I think it was worse because we were all 13 at the time. I'd asked, "How come, if you're all from different countries, and speak different languages, you can all understand each other?" We gave up eventually.

Thanks for all the effort though. Makes things a lot clearer. :fluffle: