Can you do a rolling 'R?'

Yup, I can. I'm Italian (Sicilian).

It took me three months, but I've finally mastered it. ^_^ I can even do the double rolling 'R' like in Arabic and Hebrew. :D

ghoklebutter

I learned spanish growing up, like everyone. But it wasn't until I started learning Russian that I actually learned to roll the R's. Every damn R in their language is rolled. It took a lonnggg time to get it down. Even longer than learning the base language...

Of course, well I am Mexican so...

Nope.

[QUOTE="ghoklebutter"]

It took me three months, but I've finally mastered it. ^_^ I can even do the double rolling 'R' like in Arabic and Hebrew. :D

realistic44

Not with a straight face, no.

Pretty easy, but I grew up around spanish.

yes.

I live in Spain, I have to be able to do it. :PxTheExploited

So, does Spain view Mexico (and othervery poor central/southAmerican countries)as a bastard step child? I mean, they are like your guys' attempt at aUSA/Canada that went horribly wrong. I mean, even the French have that annoying place in Canada and the Portugese have Brazil...which is semi-decent. Spain is such a beautiful country...what happened guys?

When I was a kid, there was a commercial for a pen called the "Rolling Writer" that I used to immitate just to amuse my parents. I didn't think twice about how easy it was for me to pick up until I got to high school and took Spanish, and saw just how much my cIassmates were struggling with the "r" and "rr."

it's the only R pronunciation variant in my language, so yes.

we don't have the english sort

it's the only R pronunciation variant in my language, so yes.

we don't have the english sort

[QUOTE="xTheExploited"]I live in Spain, I have to be able to do it. :PUltimoIce

So, does Spain view Mexico (and othervery poor central/southAmerican countries)as a bastard step child? I mean, they are like your guys' attempt at aUSA/Canada that went horribly wrong. I mean, even the French have that annoying place in Canada and the Portuguese have Brazil...which is semi-decent. Spain is such a beautiful country...what happened guys?

stop misspelling this word goddamn people

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

[QUOTE="xTheExploited"]I live in Spain, I have to be able to do it. :Pflordeceres

So, does Spain view Mexico (and othervery poor central/southAmerican countries)as a bastard step child? I mean, they are like your guys' attempt at aUSA/Canada that went horribly wrong. I mean, even the French have that annoying place in Canada and the Portuguese have Brazil...which is semi-decent. Spain is such a beautiful country...what happened guys?

stop misspelling this word goddamn people

[QUOTE="flordeceres"]

it's the only R pronunciation variant in my language, so yes.

we don't have the english sort

KrunkMastaX

portuguese

i would ask what's yours but it would be redundant

[QUOTE="flordeceres"]

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

So, does Spain view Mexico (and othervery poor central/southAmerican countries)as a bastard step child? I mean, they are like your guys' attempt at aUSA/Canada that went horribly wrong. I mean, even the French have that annoying place in Canada and the Portuguese have Brazil...which is semi-decent. Spain is such a beautiful country...what happened guys?

jimmyjammer69

stop misspelling this word goddamn people

no, it ain't

[QUOTE="jimmyjammer69"][QUOTE="flordeceres"]

stop misspelling this word goddamn people

flordeceres

no, it ain't

[QUOTE="KrunkMastaX"][QUOTE="flordeceres"]

it's the only R pronunciation variant in my language, so yes.

we don't have the english sort

portuguese

i would ask what's yours but it would be redundant

[QUOTE="flordeceres"]

[QUOTE="KrunkMastaX"] Whats your language?KrunkMastaX

portuguese

i would ask what's yours but it would be redundant

yeah but i wouldn't call it my favourite language, it can be profoundly beautiful written (e.g. If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall rest in the forest no more. J. R. R. Tolkien) but when spoken, the colloquial english of sorts, sounds rather ugly to me

i'm much more fond of french, which i'm additionally fluent in. it's quite a beautiful language.

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

[QUOTE="xTheExploited"]I live in Spain, I have to be able to do it. :Pflordeceres

So, does Spain view Mexico (and othervery poor central/southAmerican countries)as a bastard step child? I mean, they are like your guys' attempt at aUSA/Canada that went horribly wrong. I mean, even the French have that annoying place in Canada and the Portuguese have Brazil...which is semi-decent. Spain is such a beautiful country...what happened guys?

stop misspelling this word goddamn people

I understand your anger. But, I am allowed a typo every so often. Typing fast has its occasional consequences.

EDIT: PS - Someone answer the damn question!!

[QUOTE="KrunkMastaX"][QUOTE="flordeceres"]

portuguese

i would ask what's yours but it would be redundant

flordeceres

yeah but i wouldn't call it my favourite language, it can be profoundly beautiful written (e.g. If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall rest in the forest no more. J. R. R. Tolkien) but when spoken, the colloquial english of sorts, sounds rather ugly to me

i'm much more fond of french, which i'm additionally fluent in. it's quite a beautiful language.

Eu sou Gringo.

Actually, I have always been fond of Italian and Russian (I only have actaully learned Russian out of the two). I know Spanish fluently, but that is a very ugly language. I think French sounds too fruity. It is too cliche to sound beautiful to me.

I will agree English sounds ugly. But it's supposed to. Count out the syllables in the words you type, almost every one will be one syllable. English is about efficiency and bluntness, not about beauty.

written (e.g. If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall rest in the forest no more. J. R. R. Tolkien) but when spoken, the colloquial english of sorts, sounds rather ugly to me

i'm much more fond of french, which i'm additionally fluent in. it's quite a beautiful language.

flordeceres

Well english is a "bastard" language. Haha.

[QUOTE="flordeceres"]

written (e.g. If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall rest in the forest no more. J. R. R. Tolkien) but when spoken, the colloquial english of sorts, sounds rather ugly to me

i'm much more fond of french, which i'm additionally fluent in. it's quite a beautiful language.

KrunkMastaX

Well english is a "bastard" language. Haha.

:) French. Also my spanish teacher was an ass to me because I cant roll my tongue. She told me people in spain have to cut the thing under their tongues to roll it. Truth flor?

[QUOTE="KrunkMastaX"]

[QUOTE="flordeceres"]

written (e.g. If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall rest in the forest no more. J. R. R. Tolkien) but when spoken, the colloquial english of sorts, sounds rather ugly to me

i'm much more fond of french, which i'm additionally fluent in. it's quite a beautiful language.

hiitsmeiggi

Well english is a "bastard" language. Haha.

:) French. Also my spanish teacher was an ass to me because I cant roll my tongue. She told me people in spain have to cut the thing under their tongues to roll it. Truth flor?

your teacher is either very ignorant or likes to mess around with you guys

no, it's not true. you can't roll your tongue because you weren't taught to. with much practice, you'll get there

Eu sou Gringo.

Actually, I have always been fond of Italian and Russian (I only have actaully learned Russian out of the two). I know Spanish fluently, but that is a very ugly language. I think French sounds too fruity. It is too cliche to sound beautiful to me.

I will agree English sounds ugly. But it's supposed to. Count out the syllables in the words you type, almost every one will be one syllable. English is about efficiency and bluntness, not about beauty.

UltimoIce

liked that inicial bit. nice :

italian, it's a big no to me. it transcends far too much from the roots of latin for me to find it a nice language.

russian however, it is quite an interesting language and i have shown interest in learning it, albeit being an extremely abstract one. and yes, you have a point in what you say. it's simplicity and efficiency is what makes it the global language, really.

[QUOTE="flordeceres"]

[QUOTE="KrunkMastaX"] English. :P So I guess english was your second language then?UltimoIce

yeah but i wouldn't call it my favourite language, it can be profoundly beautiful written (e.g. If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall rest in the forest no more. J. R. R. Tolkien) but when spoken, the colloquial english of sorts, sounds rather ugly to me

i'm much more fond of french, which i'm additionally fluent in. it's quite a beautiful language.

Eu sou Gringo.

Actually, I have always been fond of Italian and Russian (I only have actaully learned Russian out of the two). I know Spanish fluently, but that is a very ugly language. I think French sounds too fruity. It is too cliche to sound beautiful to me.

I will agree English sounds ugly. But it's supposed to. Count out the syllables in the words you type, almost every one will be one syllable. English is about efficiency and bluntness, not about beauty.

I take offence at that, and if they were here today I'm sure that Shakespeare, Milton and similar titans of world literature would agree.

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

Eu sou Gringo.

Actually, I have always been fond of Italian and Russian (I only have actaully learned Russian out of the two). I know Spanish fluently, but that is a very ugly language. I think French sounds too fruity. It is too cliche to sound beautiful to me.

I will agree English sounds ugly. But it's supposed to. Count out the syllables in the words you type, almost every one will be one syllable. English is about efficiency and bluntness, not about beauty.

flordeceres

liked that inicial bit. nice :

italian, it's a big no to me. it transcends far too much from the roots of latin for me to find it a nice language.

russian however, it is quite an interesting language and i have shown interest in learning it, albeit being an extremely abstract one. and yes, you have a point in what you say. it's simplicity and efficiency is what makes it the global language, really.

Yeah, I used to play competitive Age of Empires. A lot of Brazilians play that. Thus, I have a pretty good comprehension of a lot of derogatory words in PortugUese...especially referring to white people.

I can, easily.

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

[QUOTE="flordeceres"]

yeah but i wouldn't call it my favourite language, it can be profoundly beautiful written (e.g. If thou hearest the cry of the gull on the shore, thy heart shall rest in the forest no more. J. R. R. Tolkien) but when spoken, the colloquial english of sorts, sounds rather ugly to me

i'm much more fond of french, which i'm additionally fluent in. it's quite a beautiful language.

Business_Fun

Eu sou Gringo.

Actually, I have always been fond of Italian and Russian (I only have actaully learned Russian out of the two). I know Spanish fluently, but that is a very ugly language. I think French sounds too fruity. It is too cliche to sound beautiful to me.

I will agree English sounds ugly. But it's supposed to. Count out the syllables in the words you type, almost every one will be one syllable. English is about efficiency and bluntness, not about beauty.

I take offence at that, and if they were here today I'm sure that Shakespeare, Milton and similar titans of world literature would agree.

Let me explain something to you. English is the love child of a lot of different languages. One of the more prominent dialects is Anglo-Saxon. Specifically, that's where all our one syllable words come from. That's why our curse words sound like poo.

Conversely, we have a lot of beautiful languages in the mix as well. So making English sound good is less about creating poetic sentences, and more about using our words that DON'T derive from Anglo-Saxon. But English, for its part, is very very ugly.

[QUOTE="Business_Fun"]

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

Eu sou Gringo.

Actually, I have always been fond of Italian and Russian (I only have actaully learned Russian out of the two). I know Spanish fluently, but that is a very ugly language. I think French sounds too fruity. It is too cliche to sound beautiful to me.

I will agree English sounds ugly. But it's supposed to. Count out the syllables in the words you type, almost every one will be one syllable. English is about efficiency and bluntness, not about beauty.

UltimoIce

I take offence at that, and if they were here today I'm sure that Shakespeare, Milton and similar titans of world literature would agree.

Let me explain something to you. English is the love child of a lot of different languages. One of the more prominent dialects is Anglo-Saxon. Specifically, that's where all our one syllable words come from. That's why our curse words sound like poo.

Conversely, we have a lot of beautiful languages in the mix as well. So making English sound good is less about creating poetic sentences, and more about using our words that DON'T derive from Anglo-Saxon. But English, for its part, is very very ugly.

And I still say you're flat damn wrong. The bedrock of the language, Old English (I'll skirt around your dismissing 'Anglo-Saxon' as a 'dialect') has a beauty equal to any other tongue. Read something like Beowulf or the Battle of Maldon in the original text; the words are like chunks of purest northern ice, as sharp and cold and immediate as they were centuries ago, like the European winter captured in ink. The sheer gall of you taking this priceless linguistic and literary heritage and sneering at what you perceive to be its ugliness (ugliness!) is - well, it makes the bile rise in my gullet.

I can roll my Rs. I just have always been able to.

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

[QUOTE="Business_Fun"]

I take offence at that, and if they were here today I'm sure that Shakespeare, Milton and similar titans of world literature would agree.

Business_Fun

Let me explain something to you. English is the love child of a lot of different languages. One of the more prominent dialects is Anglo-Saxon. Specifically, that's where all our one syllable words come from. That's why our curse words sound like poo.

Conversely, we have a lot of beautiful languages in the mix as well. So making English sound good is less about creating poetic sentences, and more about using our words that DON'T derive from Anglo-Saxon. But English, for its part, is very very ugly.

And I still say you're flat damn wrong. The bedrock of the language, Old English (I'll skirt around your dismissing 'Anglo-Saxon' as a 'dialect') has a beauty equal to any other tongue. Read something like Beowulf or the Battle of Maldon in the original text; the words are like chunks of purest northern ice, as sharp and cold and immediate as they were centuries ago, like the European winter captured in ink. The sheer gall of you taking this priceless linguistic and literary heritage and sneering at what you perceive to be its ugliness (ugliness!) is - well, it makes the bile rise in my gullet.

Just because someone has a way of provoking emotion through imagery, doesn't mean that the language used to describe it is anything more than ugly. I mean, now you are just comparing apples and oranges.

Furthermore, even if the language is flowery, you are comparing it to the rest of English, which is not so flowery. That's like saying, "Hey, that bulldog over there is so fricking beautiful...compared to all the hairless cats I own." Your definition of beauty in the English language is relative to what you know about the English language.

Rolling is the way we Greeks pronounce our Rs. =)

Although its funny that, the last 4-5 years sometimes my tongue seems reluctant to roll the Rs on rare occassions. I dont know why for sure. Maybe because I am not talking to people generally (and that means I dont speak Greek as much as I used to).

No. I think I've got a slight short tongue. th3warr1or

If you can pronounce words like "throw", "thanks", "theory" etc successfuly (seeing how the position of the tongue in the 'th' sound is much further to the front than a rolling R) then you should have no problem in regards to ...tongue length.

Its about getting used to it. Thats the difficulty. The rolling R is as much a unique sound to, say, English, as the English R is to Greeks. I'm not sure but it might be an alternant phoneme.

[QUOTE="Business_Fun"]

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

Let me explain something to you. English is the love child of a lot of different languages. One of the more prominent dialects is Anglo-Saxon. Specifically, that's where all our one syllable words come from. That's why our curse words sound like poo.

Conversely, we have a lot of beautiful languages in the mix as well. So making English sound good is less about creating poetic sentences, and more about using our words that DON'T derive from Anglo-Saxon. But English, for its part, is very very ugly.

UltimoIce

And I still say you're flat damn wrong. The bedrock of the language, Old English (I'll skirt around your dismissing 'Anglo-Saxon' as a 'dialect') has a beauty equal to any other tongue. Read something like Beowulf or the Battle of Maldon in the original text; the words are like chunks of purest northern ice, as sharp and cold and immediate as they were centuries ago, like the European winter captured in ink. The sheer gall of you taking this priceless linguistic and literary heritage and sneering at what you perceive to be its ugliness (ugliness!) is - well, it makes the bile rise in my gullet.

Just because someone has a way of provoking emotion through imagery, doesn't mean that the language used to describe it is anything more than ugly. I mean, now you are just comparing apples and oranges.

Furthermore, even if the language is flowery, you are comparing it to the rest of English, which is not so flowery. That's like saying, "Hey, that bulldog over there is so fricking beautiful...compared to all the hairless cats I own." Your definition of beauty in the English language is relative to what you know about the English language.

If anything, isnt use that makes a language beautiful? If a poet could not master Greek and write an epic poem who would have perceived Ancient Greek as a beautiful language?

Or if Greece had no philosophers, and thus no philosophical linguistic incentives, how would the language -through its use- become one of the languages that is now called or at least perceived as a "language of philosophy"?

Bottomline: much of a language's advantages/disadvantages are determined by its use.

Furthermore it would be silly to connect notions of complexity/length of words etc with beauty. There is beauty out of every trait. A language can be beautiful through its simplicity/bluntness etc just as much as a language can be beautiful through its complexity.

Its subjective, not so much because our opinions vary about it but because language itself is not an "objective" tool. It is meant to serve the mindset and worldview of the people who speak it.

Surrrrrrrrrre can.

[QUOTE="UltimoIce"]

[QUOTE="Business_Fun"]

And I still say you're flat damn wrong. The bedrock of the language, Old English (I'll skirt around your dismissing 'Anglo-Saxon' as a 'dialect') has a beauty equal to any other tongue. Read something like Beowulf or the Battle of Maldon in the original text; the words are like chunks of purest northern ice, as sharp and cold and immediate as they were centuries ago, like the European winter captured in ink. The sheer gall of you taking this priceless linguistic and literary heritage and sneering at what you perceive to be its ugliness (ugliness!) is - well, it makes the bile rise in my gullet.

Teenaged

Just because someone has a way of provoking emotion through imagery, doesn't mean that the language used to describe it is anything more than ugly. I mean, now you are just comparing apples and oranges.

Furthermore, even if the language is flowery, you are comparing it to the rest of English, which is not so flowery. That's like saying, "Hey, that bulldog over there is so fricking beautiful...compared to all the hairless cats I own." Your definition of beauty in the English language is relative to what you know about the English language.

Furthermore it would be silly to connect notions of complexity/length of words etc with beauty. There is beauty out of every trait. A language can be beautiful through its simplicity/bluntness etc just as much as a language can be beautiful through its complexity.

Absolutely. What irritated me about UltimoIce's post was the blunt assertion that English, or at any rate the Old English foundation, is 'very very ugly'. As though a committee were formed, and made an exhaustive study, and published it's results for all to see and none to contest. He/she does not find this aspect of English aesthetically pleasing. Very good. In which case let him or her make it known that it's a personal opinion and not turn it into a sweeping statement that is just blood in the water to those who would disagree.

All of which, I suppose, I could have been a little more restrained in voicing :)