http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=1230353

Hi all,

I'm not sure if this is the best section in which to post this, as it's arguably off-topic, and not a question so much as a request for help.

I've created this website golux.atwebpages.com for hosting a project I call "Polyglot" using Perl CGI for all of the scripting. It's my attempt to learn a single English sentence:

"When I wake up in the morning, your beautiful smile is the first + thing I want to see"

in as many foreign languages as possible. You can read more about this project by clicking on "Goal" at the top of the website page.

One of the things I'm finding helpful with this project is getting friends, colleagues and acquaintances who are fluent in another language to provide me with voice recordings of the sentence in their native language. I can then upload it to my site, and use it for practicing.

I do have some fluency in German, French and Japanese, and a few other languages/alphabets to a lesser extent, but I'm unable to read Arabic, Hebrew, and some of the other "exotic" alphabets (some of which read "right-to-left"). For that reason, I also like to have a native speaker first verify that the translation I've found on the Internet (Google Translate or another source) is a valid translation.

In my quest to meet people from other cultures I've made some truly interesting friendships. One of my closest friends, Sunil, I met less than a year ago, and he kindly gave me the male voice recording for the Nepali voice. Since we first met, I was privileged to go trekking in the Himalayas with him and his friends, and as a result met many other people (from Nepal and other cultures) along the way, some of whom also taught me a lot about their own languages. One of these new friends emailed me just this morning saying she could provide a recording of the Arabic female voice.

So my request is a straightforward one -- if your first language is something other than English, and you'd be interested in providing a sample recording of your voice for my page, please send me a message here and I can give you instructions on how to make recordings of your voice to add to my collection.

Thanks for reading!

say  substr+lc crypt(qw $i3 SI$),4,5

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: [OT] Recruiting Non-English Speakers for a Perl-based Web Project
by Eily (Monsignor) on Feb 22, 2019 at 09:36 UTC

    Nice project!

    And ++ for the use of thy for T-V distinction. It's not used for Irish though, but the pronoun "do" which is the singular "your" is used in the sentence. And "ba mhaith liom" is the idiomatic expression for "I would like" but "ba" is "would be", "mhaith" is "good" and "liom" is "with me".

    Speaking of possessive pronouns, I'm surprised by the lack of them in Finnish, I would expect the use of the suffix -si (hymysi). And as far as I know pronunciation of voyels is very constant in Finnish, and does not depend of their position in the word, and should therefore be transliterated consistently. I'd write "hümü" for "hymy" (don't double the m, since consonnant length is significant in Finnish) and leave "nähdä" unchanged (to be consistent with herään).

    I am a native (or a even a good) speaker of neither of those two languages :P (and you already have French covered :) )

      Hi Eily,

      Thanks for your comments, and for the Finnish suggestions which I've updated the page with.

      Et j'espère que tu me pardonneras if I poke fun at your "consonnant length is significant in Finnish" as you accidentally misspelled "consonant" with too many consonants :-)

      I'm not very familiar with Finnish, other than being told years ago by a Russian friend from Estonia that, Finland and Estonia being so close in proximity, the languages Finnish and Estonian are easily understandable by both populations. It's one of those cool things about languages, and prompted me to include language family considerations on the page, as studying languages from related families is very helpful.

      Another example is Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian, the voices for which were provided by a friend and coworker who speaks the first two, while his wife speaks Ukrainian -- it's very apparent how similar they are when the three are viewed together.

      Oh, and I just saw in my email that my Jordanian friend has provided audio for the Arabic, so I'll be updating that shortly. Edit: Arabic now added!

      say  substr+lc crypt(qw $i3 SI$),4,5

        Et j'espère que tu me pardonneras if I poke fun at your "consonnant length is significant in Finnish" as you accidentally misspelled "consonant" with too many consonants :-)
        Yup, trop de consonnes :P.

        My understanding about Finnish and Estonian was rather that it was obvious that they are languages from the same family, but that they're not more mutually understandable than French and Italian would be. One of the differences is that writing and pronunciation have remained pretty rigid in the main Finnish (by opposition to the familiar/spoken versions), while Estonian has undergone some of the transformations you see in other languages (where sounds are approximated, or lost, like Going to > Gonna, Want to > Wanna).

        If you want similar languages I would advise looking at Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. With Icelandic closer to the old Norse, and the last three being basically sister languages (:P). One of the funny things about Norwegian (well, one flavour of it), is that it has kept the Danish spelling of words even when the pronunciation matches Swedish more closely. So in some cases, it looks like Danish but sounds like Swedish :D .

        Speaking of language trees, you can look at Minna Sundberg's work (well, that page specifically, but the whole comic is pretty good :) ). Where you can see that Finnish, isn't even on the same tree as other european languages :)

        Edit: my friend in Finland just confirmed, it should be hymysi rather than just hymy (to have the "thy" meaning).

Re: [OT] Recruiting Non-English Speakers for a Perl-based Web Project
by Eily (Monsignor) on Feb 22, 2019 at 15:39 UTC

    I just saw the Scots entry (which I didn't look at at first because I don't know much about it), and it's the wrong language. That's actually Scottish Gaelic, while Scots would look much more like English (being a germanic language rather than celtic), what you have there is very close to Irish (easiest way to tell the difference: the direction of the accents, ácute for Irish and gràve for Scottish Gaelic)

      Hi Eily,

      Thank you for yet another correction!

      Probably it's not that I have the wrong language so much as that I mislabeled it. Wikipedia confirms what you said, that it's Scottish Gaelic, also called "Scots Gaelic" or even "Gaelic". I'll rename it as "Gaelic" to be correct.

      I notice that I've got the wrong language family info for it as well, which will take a little time to correct. Edit: now updated. And that makes sense that it's got the same language family as Irish:   Indo-European > Celtic > Goidelic.

      Cheers, golux

      say  substr+lc crypt(qw $i3 SI$),4,5
Re: [OT] Recruiting Non-English Speakers for a Perl-based Web Project
by holli (Abbot) on May 22, 2019 at 08:42 UTC
    This guy wrote a lovesong in 85 languages and performs them all =) The first 5 minutes are german and german dialects, the international part comes after that.


    holli

    You can lead your users to water, but alas, you cannot drown them.
Re: [OT] Recruiting Non-English Speakers for a Perl-based Web Project
by reisinge (Hermit) on Feb 25, 2019 at 11:15 UTC

    I can help with Slovak.

    hic abundant leones