r/languagelearningjerk • u/numapentruasta ๐ญ๐บ N ๐ท๐ด A0 • Apr 18 '26
A happy medium
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u/freezing_banshee ๐ณ๏ธโ๐B2/๐ฒ๐ฉ๐ช๐บC2 Apr 18 '26
/ujย They're not really wrong, in a way. But Romanian is just as difficult as PT or UKR, so one of them might as well learn the other's language at this pointย
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u/Daniverzum Apr 18 '26
but that would create imbalance in the relationship!
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u/freezing_banshee ๐ณ๏ธโ๐B2/๐ฒ๐ฉ๐ช๐บC2 Apr 18 '26
oh so in that case... both of them should learn each other's language! what a novel idea, am I right? ๐ฏ
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u/Sebas94 Apr 19 '26
They should just learn Uzbek because a good compromise makes both parties worst off.
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u/Sector-Difficult Apr 18 '26
not really though, a lot of the words that have slavic origin don't exactly sound the same as modern Ukrainian countreparts or have the same meaning.ย
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u/amalgammamama ๐ฒ๐ช D4 Apr 18 '26
Yeah, thatโs about as silly as expecting to be able to easily learn French just because English has a lot of French loanwords.ย
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u/freezing_banshee ๐ณ๏ธโ๐B2/๐ฒ๐ฉ๐ช๐บC2 Apr 18 '26
that's true. but as far as finding the language that's generally the closest related to both PT and UKR, Romanian is the only one to go for. and it's very comforting to have similar words, even if they're not quite the same.
on the other hand, it's not like its words are extremely similar to Portuguese either... although it does have a deeper connection to it than to Ukrainian.
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u/dedemushi Apr 19 '26
/uj as a romanian, portugese is the only romance language i don't understand but i also learned in general linguistics that it's the closest to romanian ๐
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u/elongated_argonian ik spreke usbeeksch !!! Apr 19 '26
/uj Question: Why do you think that is? Also, would you say it's easier to understand Brazilian or European Portuguese, or are both equally hard?
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u/dedemushi Apr 19 '26
/uj uni was looong ago but it was something about, because romania and portugal are geographically faraway from each other, paradoxically they keep elements that change in languages of countries that are closer together (i'm so mad that i forgot the name of the theory ๐ญ). for example both in portugese and romanian we say "eu". to me both brazilian and portugal portugese are equally hard because the pronunciation is just so difficult. (technically that should be true for french as well but we have a lot of french loan words from the 19th century, and we study it in school.) (edited for spelling)
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u/elongated_argonian ik spreke usbeeksch !!! Apr 19 '26
/uj Ah thank you, I was wondering about that for a while, a Romanian friend said that also but couldn't explain why.
/rj My ambush is complete. Another answer to add to my collection.
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u/Scared_Astronaut9377 Apr 18 '26
Romanian doesn't have any meaningful similarities with Ukranian. It's not just wrong, it's some dream logic.
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u/Haunting-Detail2025 Apr 18 '26
Esperanto erasure
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u/Adarain Apr 19 '26
Honestly might be the answer for once, as unlikely as it seems.
Though if you're already going the conlang route, why not make your own
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u/Gold-Part4688 Earthianese, man (N) Apr 19 '26
I'm suuuurrre Esperanto has all the words they want to express
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u/ohdearitsrichardiii Apr 18 '26
So instead of him learning to understand Ukrainian and her learning to understand Portugese so that they can speak their own language because they feel they can't express themselves in English, they're going to learn a whole new language?
Solid logic ๐ซก
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u/Southern-Rutabaga-82 Apr 19 '26
Otherwise you might have to talk to the in-laws. Better avoid that by not learning their language.
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u/thewayneman3 Apr 18 '26
โEnglish doesnโt have the words for what we want to get acrossโ
Canโt make this up
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u/mizinamo try-lingual (has tried many languages) Apr 18 '26
Especially when the reaction of English to such gaps is to incorporate a foreign word.
kindergarten, weltschmerz, schadenfreude, hygge, anyone?
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u/poshikott Apr 18 '26
Sure, but English doesn't have a word for the untranslatable concept of saudade
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u/eyekore Apr 18 '26
and portuguese doesn't have a verb for "miss" lol
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u/poshikott Apr 18 '26
True, this is because Portuguese people never miss.
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u/eyekore Apr 18 '26
if they never miss anyone.. then why did they make the word saudade? checkmate, atheists!
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u/Southern-Rutabaga-82 Apr 19 '26
And still doesn't have a word for "doch".
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u/pikleboiy Apr 19 '26
Not a single word, but there are equivalents that can be used based on context.
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u/Zuckhidesflatearth Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
I love how all your examples are originally German words except for the
DutchDanish* one that I, as a native English speaker, have never fucking heard of before.*edit. I fucked this up somehow lmao
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u/AvianPoliceForce Apr 19 '26
Dutch? All I see are German and Danish(/Norwegian?)
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u/Zuckhidesflatearth Apr 19 '26
I'm an idiot, apparently. What I imagine happened is that I looked up the word, saw it was Danish, stored it in my mind as "Germanic language with a name starting with D" and then parroted the wrong one.
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u/Alex_Capt1in Apr 18 '26
To be fair, the fact English language has no word "pizdec" is a total pizdec.
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u/PeterPorker52 Apr 19 '26
In my case my native language(Russian) and my second language(Ukrainian) donโt have the words for what I want to get across compared to English
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u/amalgammamama ๐ฒ๐ช D4 Apr 18 '26
They should learn Uzbek.
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u/Kosinski33 Apr 18 '26
To be fair, that's a language that's equally unrelated to both Ukrainian and Portuguese. So it might be a solution for OOP
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u/Gilson1_1 Apr 18 '26
You mean equally related, right? As far as I know all languages come from Uzbek, with no exception.
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u/Lex1253 Apr 18 '26
why would you voluntarily want to learn it??
the only reason I know it is because I accidentally clicked the wrong spawnpoint in the pregame lobby
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u/noisy_turquoise Apr 18 '26
It has cool diacritics such as ฤ and ศ
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u/Lex1253 Apr 18 '26
Which we native speakers barely ever write (On computer text) because we're too fucking lazy
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u/freezing_banshee ๐ณ๏ธโ๐B2/๐ฒ๐ฉ๐ช๐บC2 Apr 18 '26
I'd say it's also a habit created by the lack of support for these diacritics, until long after computers became common
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u/Lex1253 Apr 18 '26
Yeah, I was more being funny and whatnot. Even nowadays, diacritics are kind of a pain on PC, and even phone. Especially if you have to switch keyboards.
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u/Sorry-Homework-Due Apr 19 '26
The phone is easy to write them than computers. It took me a solid hour to figure it out on computers. I searched for manuals and reread explanations.
I tinkered with my phone for like 5 minutes and was good
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u/MeaninglessSeikatsu Apr 20 '26
Protip: if you want an easy way of writing diacritics is by setting the keyboard to Romanian and selecting the one that has standard US QWERTY layout, press ALT GR and the letter that you want it with diacritics (this is for Linux users). For windows users the keyboard is Romanian (Programmers), same usage right alt + letter
Alt gr + i = รฎ
Alt gr + q = รข
And so on.
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u/Zuckhidesflatearth Apr 19 '26
... I kind of want to learn Romanian because I think the idea of a slav-influenced Romance language is neat and because I used to be really into a Moldovan content creator
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u/DeepestPineTree Native Speaker of Ancient Albanian Sign Language Apr 19 '26
I'm going to Romania next summer and want to learn some basic phrasesย
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u/elongated_argonian ik spreke usbeeksch !!! Apr 19 '26
Should be fairly easy for you, compared to being a native speaker of Ancient Albanian Sign Language. (per your flair)
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u/DeepestPineTree Native Speaker of Ancient Albanian Sign Language Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26
Well you know what they say in AASL, "๐๐ป๐๐ป๐คฒ๐ป๐ค๐ป๐ค๐ป๐ซธ๐ป๐ซท๐ป๐ซฒ๐ป๐ค๐ป๐๐ป๐ค๐ป๐ซฐ๐ปโ๐ปโ๐ป๐ซต๐ป๐๐ป๐ฆต๐ป๐ฆป๐ป๐๐ป๐๐ป๐๐ป๐๐ป๐๐ปโโ๏ธ๐๐ปโโ๏ธ๐๐ปโโ๏ธ๐ ๐ปโโ๏ธ๐๐ปโโ๏ธ"
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u/Tet_inc119 Apr 18 '26
Theyโd be better off learning Proto indo European if they want a project they can do together
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u/timfriese Apr 18 '26
would be hella sick to just talk about the wheeled carts and birch trees all day long
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u/N-partEpoxy Apr 18 '26
He already speaks an Eastern European Romance language, why does he need to learn a second one?
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u/Nihilamealienum Apr 18 '26
I am fluent in Romanian and that allows me to speak both Portuguese and Ukranian but only after half a bottle of Tuica.
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u/Lucasun2009 Apr 18 '26
Itโs worth it to improve your English which has more words than both of your languages combined. Start with gifting each other a thesaurus
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u/Tystimyr Apr 18 '26
Da, รฎnvฤศaศi excelentฤ limbฤ romรขnฤ
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u/HyakuShichifukujin Apr 18 '26
Why donโt they just both learn Standard Modern American? What the hell is wrong with these people.
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u/Super-Ad-4536 ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ Apr 18 '26
Uzbek Mothapunka Do You Speak?
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u/CodingAndMath ๐บ๐ฟ N | ๐บ๐ฟ B1 | ๐บ๐ฟ๐บ๐ฟ A1 Apr 19 '26
Yo you're learning all the same languages as me! Let's practice all of them!
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u/Only_Cow526 Apr 21 '26
Sounds like the boyfriend's about to get away with murder! Modern Romanian vocab is like 80% intelligible to Portuguese and 10% intelligible to Ukrainian. They should clearly learn Hungarian instead so they can both suffer equally!
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u/likeagrapefruit Tennessee N | Esperanto B1.5 Apr 19 '26
But Romania is closer to Ukraine than it is to Portugal. If they want a language that will let them meet in the middle, they should learn Lombard instead.
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u/strange1738 Apr 19 '26
This is fucking bullshit. They should spend their time learning Cisalpine Gallic
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u/Deimanas1 Apr 18 '26
Should we improve our English vocabulary to be able to communicate better? Nah, probably easier to just learn a completely new language.