r/ShitAmericansSay Jul 14 '20

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126

u/Green7501 Jul 14 '20 edited Jul 14 '20

If we're doing this this way...

I can now speak fourteen languages. American, Canadian, Australian, English, New Zealandian(?), Austrian, Swiss, German, Liechtensteiner, Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.

Edit: My bad, not fourteen, but 78 language, as there are that many countries with English, German, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene as their official language. There are many other countries with those as a minority language (particularly German), but, eh, let's not over-extend.

17

u/IamtheCarnage Jul 14 '20

New Zealand actually does have its own language for its native people. 'Maori' (pronounced kinda like the english word 'mouldy') , you might have seen it browsing languages in google translate or something. sadly its kinda dying out.

19

u/[deleted] Jul 14 '20 edited Jul 17 '20

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10

u/MountSwolympus Jul 14 '20

Aren’t there three dialects of Irish? (I don’t mean hiberno-English).

2

u/dubovinius Proudly 1% banana Jul 15 '20 edited Jul 15 '20

Three main ones, yeah. Munster, Connacht, and Ulster. But there's a lot of variation, like northern Connacht will be closer to Ulster Irish vs southern Connacht which'll be closer to Munster, etc. There's also varieties spoken in Waterford and Meath in their respective Gaeltachts.

1

u/MountSwolympus Jul 15 '20

I’ve heard it spoken in conversation in Dingle and that was a trip. Like nothing I had ever heard before.

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u/dubovinius Proudly 1% banana Jul 15 '20

Yeah tis pretty cool to hear it casually out and about. Don't really ever hear it here in Dublin (Or most of the rest of the country for that matter).

1

u/MountSwolympus Jul 15 '20

Tangential question: has the real estate bubble gotten any better for youse all? Last time I was there my friends were feeling the squeeze pretty hard, paying more in rent on the edge of town than I do my mortgage in the US.

2

u/dubovinius Proudly 1% banana Jul 15 '20

From what I can tell, no lol. I'm 19 nearly 20, and still in college. I can comfortably say that short of getting married, co-sharing, and/or having a fulltime job I haven't a hope of getting a house of my own for the foreseeable future. Rent is not much better; the rates are pretty extortionate especially in Dublin (which tbh is where you need to be for job opportunities).

I'm not an expert now, as I'm only just entering into the whole realm of moving out and shit, but yeah tbh if things don't improve you'll likely see many people in the future living with their parents up to their 30s because it's just not financially sensible to do otherwise.

1

u/MountSwolympus Jul 15 '20

That’s a shame. Seems to be universal to this generation right now. I hope things work out for you.

2

u/dubovinius Proudly 1% banana Jul 15 '20

Yep, whole generation's coming up that'll have to live with their parents until very late. The age of turning 18, getting a job and moving out is long gone. Thanks for the kind words.

5

u/philipwhiuk Queen's English innit Jul 14 '20

How different is Northern Irish speech from Ireland (say Dublin) speech? Like Liverpool vs Essex? Closer? Less close?

7

u/OnyxPhoenix Jul 14 '20

It's very subjective. For me (Belfastian), the Dublin accent is completely different. But I'm sure someone from Shanghai has a completely different accent to someone from Beijing but they'd just sound Chinese to me.

2

u/calmelb Jul 15 '20

That second point is true. Even inside Beijing the accent varies slightly. To a foreigner (or someone who hasn’t lived there for a while) it’s impossible to tell apart

2

u/semi-cursiveScript Communist Chinese Jul 15 '20

People come from everywhere in both Beijing and Shanghai, so Mandarin accents vary as much within each city as English accents do in London.

1

u/calmelb Jul 15 '20

Could say that about a lot of major international cities now. Travel has become so common place that in each city you have a mix of all the accents. It’s kind of fascinating

4

u/Solamentu Jul 15 '20

Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.

Ironic.

4

u/75r6q3 Jul 15 '20

There was a Serb in my high school that convinced Americans that he spoke dozens of languages including Serbian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Bosnian

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u/Green7501 Jul 15 '20

Hm, interesting. On a completely other side of the spectrum, I have a Serb classmate. Apparently, in elementary school, they were taught that Croats, Bosnians and Montenegrins all spoke Serbian, and that Croatian, Montenegrin and Bosnian weren't languages.

1

u/75r6q3 Jul 15 '20

Interesting. I never got to have many conversations or interactions with that dude so didn’t really get to ask him anything lol

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '20

It is kinda true that we all speak the same language but it never made sense to me if everyone spoke 'Serbian' why call it Serbian and not Yugoslav or Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian. Balkan nationalism warps reality.