exolinguist | Re: Would Lingua Franca Nova help me?

• Autor: exolinguist
• Tema: Re: Would Lingua Franca Nova help me?
• Data: 2002-10-11 21:06
• Mesaje: 325 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

--- In LinguaFrancaNova@y..., "P Bjorn Madsen" <europidgin@y...>
wrote:

> How much will a person who know LFN be able to understand? And how
much will the "natives" ;-) understand if a person speak LFN?
>
> Bjorn

That's an interesting question, for sure. I speak Spanish, French, and
Italian, and can also read and understand Catalán. I understood almost
all of Lingua Franca Nova without studying it (though I found it
rather ungramatical). A person speaking only one of those Romance
languages would probably understand 70-80%, I would guess. But the
Romance languages are often pretty similar, anyway. For example, I
know people who have traveled all over Italy speaking only Catalán.
And when my wife and I first arrived in Italy, she bought a train
ticket in Genova and came back to tell me that she was "speaking
Italian." I knew that she didn't speak Italian--she was actually
speaking Spanish with an Italian accent! They understood. One time in
Barcelona some Italian tourists were watching the famous Sardana dance
on the steps of the cathedral, done by three groups. The woman called
out to her husband, in Italian, "come over here, this group is
better." All of the people (Cataláns) in the group she was talking
about smiled, because what she said in Italian was also perfectly
understandable to Catalán speakers. That's why a Romance-based
international language can be so useful.

--Don