What do you love about your language?
On International Translation Day we celebrate foreign languages and the importance of people being able to communicate abroad. Our translators, of course, are well aware of this and they can tell you about the benefits of speaking another language. However, we thought it would be nice to devote today’s topic to mother tongues. We’ve asked our communication professionals to share their thoughts, love and appreciation for their mother tongue. Our questions:
What is most unique about your language?
What is your favorite expression?
Why do you love your mother tongue?
The love for their language is defined by the small peculiarities and often untranslatable expressions.
It makes sense that appreciation for mother tongues is based on the littlest things that make it unique. We’ve gathered our translators’ favorite words, quotes and expressions and concluded that their love is found in the linguistic details.
What is most unique…
DUTCH: “In Dutch it is the way we are small and influenced by many languages, and still maintain our own identity.”
ENGLISH: “For English it’s the way it is omnipresent. Every language in this world has expressions with origins either in English, or “transported” by the English language. The language is therefore richer than any other language and has the ability to reach out. It is not the most beautiful language… I am in love with French…”
JAPANESE: “One of the most unique issue is that we use three kinds of letters every day; “Kanji” (Chinese characters) for many nouns, verbs and adjectives, “Hiragana” for particles and etc. and “Katakana” for foreign names and etc.”
DUTCH: “What I heard from foreigners is that they are afraid of Dutch people because they are talking so loudly. Abroad you only need a half word to hear if someone is Dutch, all though he/she is (trying) to speak an other language.”
CHINESE: “Beautiful and poetic, each character is a picture full of and inspires imagination.”
FRENCH: “The exceptions to the rules”
ROMANIAN: “Diacritics”
DUTCH: “Its texture (tissue, fabric, weave). To me my language feels solid and dry, like oakwood or raw cotton.”
ENGLISH: “English is a composite language made up of words with Latin, Germanic, and Greek roots; consequently, it’s easy to choose ‘just the right word’.”
SWEDISH: “It’s quite informal and has no different levels of speech according to whom you are speaking to.”
ITALIAN: “It’s a cliché, but its musicality.”
DUTCH: “I really like the number of dialects you can find in such a small country.”
BULGARIAN: “The fact that it is written in the Cyrillic alphabet.”
DUTCH: “The relationship with two other great languages, English and German”
SWEDISH: “We have one sound, “sje”, that we just can’t agree how to spell – there are at least 65 different ways to spell it: http://ow.ly/p7U4p (Swedish)
ARABIC: “It is a universal & unique Language.”
ENGLISH: “The limerick”
DUTCH: “We have many proverbs and expressions related to the weather (Dutch are famous for weather complaints!) and water (very typical is our never ending fight against the water).”
Your favorite expression…
SWEDISH: “Sol ute, sol inne, sol i hjärta, sol i sinne” – Sun outside, sun inside, sun in the heart, sun in the mind.
ROMANIAN: “Ce tie nu-ti place, altuia nu face.” – Don’t do to other people what you don’t like to be done to you.
ENGLISH: “I think it pisses God off if you walk past the colour purple and not notice.” –It means you should appreciate the little things that cross your path, like a flower or a smile.
DUTCH: “Doe wel en zie niet om.” – Do good things and don’t look back (don’t take it back or reflect too much or doubt the good you have done).
ARABIC: “Perseverance is the key of all success.”
ENGLISH: “Nothing is certain but death and taxation.” – We can not escape neither death nor taxes.
CHINESE: 飲水思源. – Think of the source while drinking the water; be appreciated what brings one to the present stage/status/happiness.
DUTCH: “Er is geen groter lijden dan het lijden dat men vreest.” – There is no greater suffering than the suffering one fears.
BULGARIAN: “Каквото повикало, такова се обадило.” – What goes around, comes back around.
ITALIAN: “Fatti una padellata d’affaracci tuoi!” – It means, “Mind your own business!” Literally, “Cook yourself a pan of your own flipping business!”
JAPANESE: “Dame de motomoto”. – It means “Give it try. You will loose nothing.” Japanese: ダメで元々
DUTCH: “De domste boeren hebben de dikste aardappels.” – The luck is with the dumbest
FRENCH: “En France on vit pour manger, aux Pays Bas on mange pour vivre.” – In France people live to eat, in Holland people eat to live.
ENGLISH: “All’s well that ends well” – Regardless how how much turmoil there is in the process, if the end result is positive, the experience can be considered positive.
DUTCH: “Wat je zegt moet waar zijn, maar de waarheid hoeft niet altijd gezegd te worden.” (Herman Helsloot) – Be honest in what you tell, but don’t always tell what you honestly think
ITALIAN: “Attaccare un bottone a qualcuno” (To sew on a button to someone), that is: to talk endlessly to someone who doesn’t really want to listen to you
DUTCH: “Zoveel hoofden, zoveel zinnen” – So many men, so many minds.
CHINESE: ‘‘A foreign language is a windowpane, through which you can see a new world.”
SWEDISH: “Det är ingen ko på isen.” – Literally it means: There is no cow on the ice. Saying that there is no reason to worry, at least not yet. No hurry.
I love my language because…
DUTCH: “Every day i’m learning something new.”
SWEDISH: “It’s a singing language where intonation is important, while still full of crisp consonant clusters. It’s a very old language that has seamlessly embraced an abundance of foreign words.”
ITALIAN: “I love the way it sounds. When I am abroad and speak Italian, everybody looks at me and smile (I believe it’s not only for the beauty of my language though, but also because Italians tend to speak a bit too loud.)”
DUTCH: “All the things you can do with it! Bend it, crush it, squeeze it, cut it into pieces. Everything actually!”
CHINESE: “Chinese language is used by the most people in the world. It has a history of thousands of years with little changes. I can read the books written over 3,000 years ago.”
DUTCH: “I love the friendly, short, sober, objective way we speak, lacking any form of politeness or courtesy.”
ENGLISH: “I love the variety in accents.”
ITALIAN: “It sounds easy and manageable, but its grammar rules (especially verbs) are hellishly hard to grasp and apply. I like that, it implies subtlety and sophistication.”
SWEDISH: “I live in a foreign country, and I love the freedom of being able to speak with friends and family without people around understanding. (Although, everywhere you travel in the world, you are bound to meet Swedish people – travel loving people indeed!).”
SPANISH: “The richness of it, deriving from Latin and Greek borrowings, and a Germanic base.”
BULGARIAN: “It is a language that sounds harsh and strong, like it has a character and it does.”
ENGLISH: “Although it’s not the prettiest sounding language, I love the depth and flexibility of expression that English offers. Functioning like a room with two doors, in one direction English opens onto the world of Germanic languages and in the other onto the world of Latin languages; all of that with a relatively simple grammar and no gendered nouns to memorize!”
JAPANESE: “The beautiful pronunciation and uniqueness; for example some expressions are separated into female and male, or there are several levels in speech about politeness.”
DUTCH: “In comparison to other language- speakers, for Dutch-speakers it is relatively easy to learn other languages.”
CHINESE: “The fuzziness of certain words that open to multiple interpretation!”
FRENCH: “To see the way people talk one language differently, with all sorts of accents, with new words from the new generation, with mistakes that are said so often that they almost become normal language,…”
DUTCH: “The possibility to explain anything in the tiniest detail.”
ARABIC: “It is the Language of Quran. It is easy and nice.”
ROMANIAN: “The music in it.”