Marduk wrote:I think anyone who has even the slightest inclination or aptitude should learn additional languages. Learning to speak Spanish was one of the best things I ever did. Now I'm working on French. If and when I speak French fairly fluently, then it will be on to Italian/Portuguese. (I figure sticking in the same family of languages will make it far easier.)
See, I've preferred to hop around language sub-families. I figure that it would be boring (not to mention confusing!) to study languages that were too closely related. Plus, studying languages in 4 different I-E subfamilies has been useful at work, because my Russian knowledge means that I can also work with Ukrainian and Belorussian materials, my German has helped with Dutch, my French has helped with Italian and Spanish, etc.
Katya, I seriously think that if we knew each other in real life, we could be friends. I am fairly fluent in Spanish, could be pretty good at German if you gave me a couple days, and am currently learning Chinese. I think it's really interesting to see the relationships in all the languages. It's also interesting to see how differently the grammar structure has developed. In fact, I think I'm going to go ask the board a question kind of pertaining to languages right now. Then I'll come back here and hope Katya has some more input.
Marduk wrote:I think anyone who has even the slightest inclination or aptitude should learn additional languages. Learning to speak Spanish was one of the best things I ever did. Now I'm working on French. If and when I speak French fairly fluently, then it will be on to Italian/Portuguese. (I figure sticking in the same family of languages will make it far easier.)
See, I've preferred to hop around language sub-families. I figure that it would be boring (not to mention confusing!) to study languages that were too closely related. Plus, studying languages in 4 different I-E subfamilies has been useful at work, because my Russian knowledge means that I can also work with Ukrainian and Belorussian materials, my German has helped with Dutch, my French has helped with Italian and Spanish, etc.
Katya, I seriously think that if we knew each other in real life, we could be friends. I am fairly fluent in Spanish, could be pretty good at German if you gave me a couple days, and am currently learning Chinese. I think it's really interesting to see the relationships in all the languages. It's also interesting to see how differently the grammar structure has developed. In fact, I think I'm going to go ask the board a question kind of pertaining to languages right now. Then I'll come back here and hope Katya has some more input.
But Katya, I really do think we could be friends.
We could invent our own German/Chinese pidgin . . .
Katya wrote:We could invent our own German/Chinese pidgin . . .
My cousin and his companion used to speak to each other Chinese pig latin while he was on his mission. Apparently it was absolutely unintelligible to people because Chinese people don't think in terms of first letters--they think in terms of whole sounds. It was an unbreakable code that allowed them to talk about people in public without fear.
Or you could just opt to mix German and Chinese like you suggested. That would be a weird sounding language, I do declare.
My mother and her brother came up with something that would at least confuse people - he once asked her a question in German, and she answered in Japanese. He got all the way across the street before even he realized that they'd spoken two different languages.
The Epistler was quite honestly knocked on her ethereal behind by the sheer logic of this.
My roommates and I one day had a conversation in three different languages. One girl in German, one in Spanish, and one in French. None of us claim fluency in any language other than English. That was a fun day.
As for my natural aptitude. I can crochet. As in the first project I ever crocheted is a twin size afghan made with an I hook and a hybrid stitch loosely based on triple crochet.
Katya wrote:We could invent our own German/Chinese pidgin . . .
My cousin and his companion used to speak to each other Chinese pig latin while he was on his mission. Apparently it was absolutely unintelligible to people because Chinese people don't think in terms of first letters--they think in terms of whole sounds.
Huh. That makes sense in terms of Chinese being logographic, although you'd think anyone who'd learned Bopomofo (phonetic Chinese) would be able to figure it out, eventually.
Whoa, you guys. Is pidgin pronounced like pigeon? I'm familiar with the word, but I always read it in my head as pigdin, and pronounced it like...pig-din. And then today I was wondering why such smart people were misspelling the same word the same way, so I looked it up and realized I had been wrong all my life.
This is like the time I found out that earnest means serious, not eager. It's so weird.
My mother is actually really good at arranging things like day camps. She once planned the activities for a three-day family camp, couldn't even be there to run the thing, and was still recommended to be hired to run Cub Scout camps. However, while she does a very good job, planning these things really stresses her out, so she does them very very rarely.
The Epistler was quite honestly knocked on her ethereal behind by the sheer logic of this.
