European day of languages!

[bambino]

"Happy" new European day of languages people!!!!!!!!!

Today is a big day for us (people who like languages)...

I don't know for your cities, but in Croatia, in Zagreb we had the really cool and interesting day. In the centre of the city, on one square, all embassies put their own "stand"(this word is taken from German) with their language, so you could find there interesting stuff about language, country, people and so on....

Also, you could fill some quiz about languages and countries and the first price was the language course to the country you wanna study its language. The second price was studying language in Zagreb at some course and..hm...i don't remember for the rest....

Oh, i forgot to mention the biggest event of the day. There was a tent, where native speakers (teachers) taught you for 25 minutes almost every European language. Of course i was there, whole day full of pleasure....
We recieved so many gifts from teachers, especially from Poland. They were awsome!!! First of all, we all got Polish course, a little dictionary, and 2 guys are studying Polish at the university of Zagreb so they got the biiiiig dictionary. From Frenchman we got also a little course book, Hungarians gave us fruit and we had to learn their names etc...........

If you have seen anything similar to that in your town, please share with me what was your day like?!

[kokoyaya]

Day of languages is 365 days a year for me

[bambino]

Yeah for me too , but still, i don't see those things a lot during the year....do you? I think this is the second year of the day of European languages...

[Olivier]

Day of languages is 365 days a year for me

Still, Toulouse too organized something at the House of Europe on Place St-Etienne: I was there and I tried to fill in a quiz with the sentence "I've got it on the tip of my tongue" in all UE languages (including new member states), you had to tell which is which and prizes were free language courses, they will tell you in a few days if you have won. Most languages could be told from the diacritics (cedilla, macron etc) and finally my biggest problem was Czech vs Slovak - bambino, was I right to choose that the beginning "I have" is mam in Slovak (closest to imam in Slovenian) and mat in Czech (closest to mie,c' in Polish) ? (the other big problem was Danish vs Swedish but a Swede was there and told me )
-- Olivier

[Nephilim]

i never heard of such a thing in Paris...could've been a great opportunity to meet people - INTERESTING people !

Olivier, in slovak, "to have" is " mat' "; in czech " mít " and in polish " mac " with an "accent aigu" on the C if u have questions about those languages, feel free to ask! :o)

[bambino]

Well Olivier, I'm not from Slovenia...I'm from Croatia. Nephilim answered you correctly. By the way, Nephilim how come you know such things about Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Polish...??? Strange, but congratulations!

Well I find stupid to learn only languages that are in EU or the new members...In Zagreb it was the same thing. I wanted to see how Icelandic looks like, but obviously it was impossible because Iceland isn't in the EU. That sucks!!!
On the other side, Croatia will enter to the EU on 2007 and we're still not the member, but I've heard that Croatian was taught in 5 big European countries. Weird...

[Olivier]

Yes bambino, it was only languages of next-year EU members, no Romanian or Bulgarian on that quiz... (I can imagine Bulgarian - too easy to identify unless it is in a Latin transcript like Greek was: "eho mia lexis..." )

i never heard of such a thing in Paris...could've been a great opportunity to meet people - INTERESTING people !

The House of Europe there also had a Fête des langues

Olivier, in slovak, "to have" is " mat' "; in czech " mít " and in polish " mac " with an "accent aigu" on the C if u have questions about those languages, feel free to ask! :o)

Thanks, the question was the first word of that phrase, "I have" (... the word on the tongue) = "mam" and "mat" in Czech and Slovak but which was which?

-- Olivier

PS: what are nephilim, nafal is fall but is it fallen demons or something similar?

[Nephilim]

By the way, Nephilim how come you know such things about Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Polish...??? Strange, but congratulations!

I was born in slovakia...and at this time I'm learning my 10th language...so it is indeed true that when you speak several languages, it's a lot easier to learn other ones...i.e., I speak fluently only czech and slovak, but I understand perfectly all the other slavic languages like polish, serbo-croatian, russian, ukrainian, and so on...the same with the other families of languages (french, romanian and spanish help me understand very well italian, portuguese, brazilian, latin, etc...)

Thanks, the question was the first word of that phrase, "I have" (... the word on the tongue) = "mam" and "mat" in Czech and Slovak but which was which?

mat' = to have, in slovak
mít = to have, in czech
mám = I have, in both CZ and SK

PS: what are nephilim, nafal is fall but is it fallen demons or something similar?

to put it in a nutshell, a Nephilim is a fallen angel; according to the apocryphic Book of Henoch...if u want details, read what I wrote about it in the french part of the forum

any questions?

[Olivier]

mat' = to have, in slovak
mít = to have, in czech
mám = I have, in both CZ and SK

Oh, so one was "I have" and the other "to have", thanks... but I got it wrong for which was mat', I will not win
-- Olivier

[anabelle]

Olivier, in slovak, "to have" is " mat' "; in czech " mít " and in polish " mac " with an "accent aigu" on the C if u have questions about those languages, feel free to ask! :o)

to make it clear: „to have” in polish is “mieć” , “ i have” = “mam”

[Nephilim]

sh*t... ^___^ oh well, maybe I should've been going to my polish lessons from time to time, after all

[foryoureyesonly]

"Happy" new European day of languages people!!!!!!!!!

'European day of languages' or 'day of European languages'. I think you meant the latter.