Here are a couple of useful language-related websites I came across today:
BePolyglot
Provides a systematic way to learn four Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. It contains a detailed comparison of the grammars of these languages, highlights similarities and differences in vocabularly and shows how to convert words between languages.
It’s intended for those who want to improve their knowledge of one or more Romance languages, as well as for anyone interested in comparative linguistics and Romance languages. To access the full content of the site, you have to subscribe, which costs $4.95 per month or $19.90 per year.
Does anyone know of similar sites for other language families?
Kanji Converter
This site converts Japanese kanji into hiragana, katakana and/or romaji. It also gives information about the words in English.
I usually know or can guess what Japanese kanji mean and know how to pronounce them in Mandarin, but don’t always know how to pronounce them in Japanese, so this site is very useful for me.
Dear Sir,
in what language is the translation of your epigraph written?
Yours respectfully,
Attila S.
My guess is that it’s Czech. It’s so similar to Russian that I would’ve recognized it out of context. “nikoga” rather than “nikogda” seems a little strange, though.
This week, the translation of ‘one language is never enough’ is in Bulgarian. I have translations of this phrase into quite a few other languages, but not Czech yet, which would be something like ‘jeden jazyk není nikdy dostatečný’.
Can you provide translations into any other languages?
Do you accept constructed languages?
In Danish it is:
“Ét sprog er aldrig nok”
Ett språk är aldrig nog.
Joseph – constructed languages are acceptable as well.
In Armenian (with questionable spelling):
Մեկ լէզու երբէք չի բաւեր:
Meg lezu yerpek chi paver.
Or, alternatively:
Մեկ լէզու երբէք բաւական չէ:
Meg lezu yerpek pavagan cheh.
In Russian (probably an overly literal translation):
Один язык никогда не хватает.
Odin yasik nikogda nye khvataet.
Egy nyelv sosem elég. (Hungarian)
Eine Sprache ist niemals genug. (German, if you don’t already have it.)
Una lingua numquam satis est. (Latin)
O singură limbă nu ajunge niciodată. (Romanian)
An ziár netúer nisče sie. (Ozhdik)
In Portuguese, of course (as if you didn’t already know):
Uma língua nunca basta.
to Simon:
‘jeden jazyk není nikdy dostatečný’.
Well, I, as a native speaker, would say “(jen) jeden jazyk nikdy nestačí / jeden jazyk není nikdy dost”. I find it quite difficult to explain but “dostatečný” insinuates that something is sufficient (e.g. a due proof to sentence someone or oil reserves).
I’m happy to provide a translation of this phrase in Latvian:
“Ar vienu valodu nekad nepietiek.” Curiously enough, this sentence doesn’t have any letters with diacritical marks, although Latvian has plenty of those.
P.S. This is my first post here.
“One language is never enough”:
Hebrew: שפה אחת לעולם לא מספיק
Spanish: Un idioma nunca es suficiente
Here’s the Omniglot motto in my constructed language Sarga:
“Fin sarga tölt nepën joacaru.”
Info about the language is at Langmaker.
In Italian the sentence is: “una sola lingua non è mai abbastanza”.
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