In America - Spanish, French, and other 'ese's or 'ish' es

Yiddish and Hebrew are completly different languages. As different as English and Chinese

I mean, I heard that it was similar in style to Hebrew, like Ladino which I mentioned it in connection with. I heard that the vocabulary/grammar and so forth was more like German, as the vocabulary/grammar of Ladino is more like Spanish.

But I haven't studied it, so what can I say.

I answered that question too, Craven. I don't think those are really grammar differences I was looking for that seems, as I said, more of a style/usage issue. If the present tense or the perfect tenses were contructed in a completely different way (as some tenses are in ebonics) than I would consider that more of a difference.

You're right about Old English though - I was thinking of something more recent - like before all the vowels changed.

Old English is a bit like Dutch sometimes. We had to read some in school and I could read it but when I showed it to an english person he had no idea what it meant. I'll see if I can find a nice example

Doris

When you go to this site, for example,

Language Tree

and scroll down to 'Germanic' > 'West Germanic' ... you'll see, why :wink:

thank you, I love this tree!

Weird though, that english and dutch are in the same branch and swedish, danish e.d. are in another one, while swedish seems to me closer to dutch than english...

Thanks for the tree, Walter -- i rather suspected that Frisian would be the common connection.

Bread, butter and green cheese . . .

I feel that everyone is entitled to their opinion. I could definately understand being mad about the instruction booklet. That's pretty tough.
But I find languages to be very interesting. And knowing other languages and cultures gives you a whole new perspective of things and allows you to meet so many people. I love that there are so many cultures and languages. It mixes things up and keeps them interesting.
A lot of people have your husband's mindset. The simple truth is: everything would be a lot easier if there were just one universal language. And English is almost becoming the language of business and trade around the world, it seems.
I wouldn't try to force a change of his opinion, though. It would probably just make him angry.

Check that you have the following items:

Undersøk at du har følgende gjenstander:
(Make sure that you have the following objects)

Sjekk at du har disse tingene:
(Check that you have these things)

What kind of Norwegian do they speak in Minnesota though... Like 19th century Norwegian, or a really modern variant? I'd be really interested to know.

On another note, I wholeheartedly agree that dialects and languages are just two words describing the same thing. Some guy named Chlewey said about the Scandinavian languages, "Swedish, Norwegian and Danish are actually the same language. It's just that the Norwegians can't spell it, and the Danes can't pronounce it." I guess the same concepts hold true for a whole plethora of languages.

Everyone in Canada speaks french or english, we all learn the language off the back of cereal boxes and shampoo bottles.
Half of the schools in my city teach language immersion courses. Regardless of background a second language is something everyone should have.

As for British English and American - there are many differences
spelling, pronunciation, grammar and word usage. For educated people there really is no discernable difference. But how many british movies come with subtitles now to decipher spoken english?

Ricardo Tizon, I believe the reason for not using filipino is purely a business decision. Whoever spends the money gets the translations. The philippines may have 90 million people but purchasing power means more than population.