Let me ask English speaker about languages!!?

Question

Im a Japanese speaker.
Let me ask something to English speaker.

Can you listen other latin-originated languages such as Spanish, German, French??

You dont have to understand them at all.
Just Id like to ask if English speaker can catch words of those languages.

Im making little progress in listening English.

Thank you in advance

Answer 1

Yes. When I listen to other languages such as Spanish, German and French, I do recognize words here and there. (Especially in French, because I studied it for about four years.) But the English language was mostly derived from these other languages and many of our root words are taken from their words. There is no real connection from Japanese to English, as far as your words making up the roots of our words. I'm sure it must be much harder to learn English and to listen for words in conversation that you are familiar with. Good luck to you.

Answer 2

There are times when a word in one language will be similar, both in form and meaning, to a word in another language. Such similarities are called "cognates". These occur more frequently between languages that are of the same language family. For example, English, German and Dutch are examples of "Germanic" languages, whereas French, Spanish and Portuguese are examples of "Romance" languages.

For example, take the word "grass". In Dutch it is "gras" and in German it is "Gras" (note the capital G; in German all nouns begin with a capital letter).

French, Spanish and Portuguese have cognates such as "ici" (French), "aquí" (Spanish) and "aqui" (Portuguese), all of which mean "here". These are slightly different, however, because the C in French "ici" has an S sound and the Q in the other languages has a K sound. But imagine the C in "ici" to have a K sound and you can easily see that they came from a common root.

This isn't always the case, however. Many languages borrow from others. Take the word "window", for example. Since English, German and Dutch are Germanic languages, you might expect the German and Dutch words to be similar, but they aren't. They're "Fenster" in German and "venster" in Dutch, which are cognates to French "fenêtre".

Answer 3

Yes, an English speaker can sometimes catch a word or two in another European language, though that's often because the word was borrowed from English in the first place, or because they were coined off the same Greek or Latin root.

Listening to a foreign language is probably the hardest part. Good luck!

Answer 4

I've studied Latin, Italian ,and Spanish.
I can read many words in French, but may not understand the translation or pronunciation.

Sometimes, the translation is the opposite or entirely different from English. This is true in many languages.

Some few words in German are familiar, but not many for me.

The biggest problem for most in listening to a foreign language is that most native speakers speak too fast. One has to slow down to become more intelligible, until ones ear becomes accustomed to the word/sound.

Answer 5

German yes because it is a related language,(Germanic). Spanish and french not so much as they are in a different class,(Romantic).
Though there are similar words in all 4 of these languages. Much of English is comprised of words from many different languages.
By the way you are doing pretty good at writing in English. Better than a lot of English speaking people on here.

Answer 6

English is my native language, and I've been taught German and Spanish. I still find it surprising how many words are very similar not just from English to German (or Spanish), but from German to Spanish! Here's a quick example:
English: cheese (cheez)
German: kaese (kay-zuh)
Spanish: queso (kay-so)

The Spanish and German are VERY similarly pronounced whereas the English word isn't even close to the same sound.

Older languages such as Spanish, German and French (and also Italian, etc.) are the parents of English. You might say English is a stolen language!

So yes--I find many similarities, and I find it fascinating!

Answer 7

I know it must be very hard for you to comprehend the English language as you are a Japanese. Japanese and Chinese and Korean
have similarities esp in their characters. The only difference is in the accent. Now Spanish which is a beautiful language is similar to Italian. German and French and Russian have some similarities . Hebrew and Arabaic have similarities.

But if you know Latin , you'll have a little advantage as latin is the root of most languages. I'm referring to the European countries. Definitely not the orient or Asian languages. Most medical and legal terms and medications derived from latin.

Now,English is a more universal language. So it's to your great advantage to learn it.However, as it's common with the other languages, there is a big diffence between the written and formal english and the conversational english.The latter has a lot of colloquial or slang terms which might really confused you. You are in for a cultural shock.

I came from a non-english speaking country but our medium of instruction was in English. I speak English, Spanish and Chinese and Tagalog . which i learned from comics or cartoons There are 87 dialects where I come from. If you're interested and motivated to learn, in time you will. Like somebody over here advised you,to watch more English TV shows. Unlike in Japan where most of the TV shows are in Japanese.At least it was like that when I was there.,several yrs. back.

If you encounter a difficult or unfamiliar word ,make sure you look it up in the internet or dictionary. Buy a reference book or manual of conversational English. Keep it handy with you at all times. Borrow CD's from the library on how to speak , pronunciate and enunciate in english . Associate with a lot of English speaking friends and ask them to be patient with you.Keep in touch as well with your Japanese friends so you won't lose your Japanese accent. Hopefully, they won't speak too fast. I tend to speak fast due to the Spanish influence.

English is supposed to have derived from the British settlers and has been corrupted thru the years from diff races and accents.Take the Hawaiians for instance who are considered Americans.There are a lot of Japanese in Hawaii as I'm sure your're aware. They have their own language as well as english. Wait till you try to decipher what the southerners try to say. Their English is very incomprehensible at times due to their heavy accent.

I hope I help you somehow. Arigato gozaymas

Answer 8

It is difficult to hear individual words at first.
Here is some advice, which helped me when learning another language:

Listen to a lot of English and then listen some more.
Listen to songs with English lyrics.
Watch cartoons in English.
Watch Japanese television shows/movies that have been dubbed into English (not subtitled, but dubbed).
Speak with others who speak English as a second language - they usually speak more slowly, so it is easier to hear the breaks between words.
Ask English speakers to speak more slowly.

I hope these tips help.

Answer 9

Hi! I am an English-speaker but also speak some French and Russian so yes, I pick up on a lot of cognates and similar-sounding words from other languages.

Answer 10

Mostly, I can't tell where one word starts and another begins. They just run together, unless I recognize the word.

Try getting books on cd in English. Buy the book that goes with it. That way, you can read as the narrator speaks. It will help you follow along.