ballp.it
Snakes In The Ball Pit => Yay, I get to talk about me! => Topic started by: September on January 12, 2014, 03:30:01 am
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What languages do you speak/want to speak and why? Because I'm a horrible gross language nerd.
I've got a decent grasp of Icelandic at the moment and have recently commenced attempting to learn Finnish. A few years back, I hit absolute rock bottom (again) and decided I was going to stop attempting to do anything useful with my life and learn Old Norse instead. So I did. Whoopee! And...that's kind of what I've been doing since. Making the jump to the modern spoken language of Icelandic is hard, especially when it's a bit difficult to find native speakers, but I'm doing alright and plan to study Icelandic as a second language at Háskóli Íslands when I can gather the funds/emotional stability. My accent is not a train wreck, my grammar is only moderately questionable, and my vocabulary is...okay, pretty weak, but whatever. I've got the important stuff in there. Icelandic is not so difficult. A bit tricky without a teacher, but definitely doable. It's got a fair amount in common with English, Germanic language and all. And I can, in fact, pronounce Eyjafjallajökull. There's a lot of overlap with Faroese, at least in its written form, so I might jet over to the Faroes a couple summers if I ever manage to get myself to Iceland. But Finnish is a whole different animal. Why did I ever think it was a good idea to step out of the safety of the Indo-European language tree? :(
Finnish grammar is like Chinese grammar plus a shitton of inflection. Alternatively, it's like German, if German did not give a flying beautiful fuck about word order and was twice as complicated. It is a uniquely gorgeous and earthy language, but learning it feels like sinking slowly into a bog. Every time I find a cognate loaned into the language (kulta, rengas, kuningas, prosentti) I weep with relief. One day I'll get past "En puhu suomea. Puhutteko ruotsia? Hitaasti, ole hyvä.". And maybe one day I'll get used to saying questions like vaguely speculative statements. But Finnish people I've interacted with through the internet seem much less...pissy about foreigners using their language than the Icelanders do. I guess "that was vaguely intelligible" is quite good for people learning Finnish, whereas Icelanders will anecdotally respond to a question with a grammar correction. And then answer in English. And then kick you in the shins.
Anyway, POST ABOUT WORDS WITH YOUR WORDS. Or tell me about your traumatizing second-language courses in school.
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As for Finnish, any effort you make to speak the language will be applauded by the Finns, who are used to nobody giving a fuck. It's a bitch and a half even to natives, especially since "good" Finnish is basically so artificial nobody actually uses it in real life.
I personally have been trying to brush up on my German and Japanese. It's getting really hard to find work on my field unless you have at least two major European languages, and anything Asian is always a plus. I should probably start up on my Chinese again, just in case.
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I am half assedly teaching myself Arabic and Russian. Still am not outside of basic pronunciation yet. I am really bad at that motivation thing. And because I am terrible at prioritizing, I'm probably going to put Korean on my plate some time in the near future.
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I speak English and Hebrew.
I studied a bit of Spanish and Arabic in school; I had a year and a half of Arabic, and half a year of Spanish. I know Spanish much much better than I do Arabic even though it's supposedly easy for Hebrew speakers to learn Arabic (the grammar is slightly less complex in Hebrew, and some verb and noun roots are either the same, or similar). I can pronounce most of the letters in Arabic correctly though, go me!
I want to pick either of those and improve them to a point I can more or less understand the language in writing.
I could learn Hungarian, because due to my grandma coming from Slovakia Upper Hungary, if I learn the language I can apply for citizenship.
As opposed to fantasy, I'm currently learning Israeli Sign Language due to my work situation. (It's pretty unintuitive, and quite damn useless outside of Israel, I'd rather learn American Sign Language)
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I have a BA in German and Applied Linguistics, and am studying Second Language Acquisition for my MA (the study of how adults acquire non-native languages). I can speak some elementary Spanish, but have been neglecting it somewhat.
Assuming my linguistics studies don't wholly consume me, it would be nice to get my Spanish up to a level where I could reasonably live in a Spanish-speaking country with it, and if we're really going for the high roller table, throwing a non-indo-european language into the mix (Korean or Japanese, I am thinking) would be nice.
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I have a BA in German and Applied Linguistics, and am studying Second Language Acquisition for my MA (the study of how adults acquire non-native languages).
Adept, January 12, 2014, 11:27:36 am
I'd be interested to hear the most successful methods for teaching languages to people who are out of those early learn-languages-easily years.
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I've ostensibly mastered English and can speak Spanish well enough to get by after 5+ years of it in high school, a summer in Paraguay and a lot of jobs with Spanish-speaking coworkers. There was also the brief period where I tried to learn Quenya but I try to forget that time as much as possible.
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As for Finnish, any effort you make to speak the language will be applauded by the Finns, who are used to nobody giving a fuck. It's a bitch and a half even to natives, especially since "good" Finnish is basically so artificial nobody actually uses it in real life. montrith, January 12, 2014, 05:43:11 am
I figure it'd probably be difficult to get into a situation where I couldn't communicate in English, but I'll have an ace up my sleeve. I've witnessed firsthand the "shouting in English because the native doesn't understand" thing when I went to Italy with my parents, and it was so horrifying that I think it scarred me a little. I find it hard to imagine visiting a country now without learning at least a handful of words. I've already got "joo" and "niinku", so that's like 40% of spoken Finnish right there. :D
And half the the items in this Finnish grammar have a note like "this verb-form is basically useless, but here it is anyway". What is the potential mood for? When you're writing poetry and you need an extra syllable, and not a whole lot otherwise.
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i'm canadian and took french up to grade 12. i really enjoyed it and did well in the courses but i'm awful at holding a conversation or understanding colloquial language... i can read academic journals perfectly well but not forum posts. i live in a predominantly anglo area and don't get many opportunities to speak the language in real life, so i've recently started going to a local french meetup. it's pretty nice, but also awkward because i'm the youngest person there by at least 5 years...
i picked up some german from being obsessed with industrial music when i was younger. my pronunciation and vocabulary is pretty good but i never paid much attention to the grammar. Rilke is nice.
i tried to learn finnish last year and gave up after a week. what a ridiculous language... i couldn't get the hang of the pronunciation or the grammar. for example, to say you have a car you'd say "minulla on auto" which would literally translate to something like "me-at is a car". then you learn that the spoken form of the language is completely different from the written form! i have immense respect for anyone who actually dedicates themselves to learning this language. i'm curious to know whether finns find english as weird as we find finnish.
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I know tiny amounts of Finnish and Japanese, and less-tiny amounts of Spanish, French, and Italian. I can follow basic conversations but can't really speak any of them. At one time I was running a language blog but I lost interest in updating it pretty quickly and I suspect that it came across as being really idiotic anyway (but it's on a somewhat clever domain name that I don't want to give up even though I have no idea what else to do with it).
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I can say "fuck" in Polish.
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I speak English, and I can say random phrases in random other languages. If you ever need someone to count to ten in Spanish (and only Spanish), you can count on me.
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Ich kann Deutsch, aber night gut. Ich hat ein jahre im Gymnasium Deutsche gelernt.
I wish I knew German muuuuuuuuch better than I do.
A Finn, perfect English, also German, Chinese and Japanese!
montrith, January 12, 2014, 05:43:11 am
I envy, admire and despise you.
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I've already got "joo" and "niinku", so that's like 40% of spoken Finnish right there. :D
All you need is "tota", "että" and "vittu" and you're fluent!
i'm curious to know whether finns find english as weird as we find finnish.
We pretty much start learning English at kindergarten, so we don't really think of it as that weird. As a linguist though, I can offer my personal opinion that English is a fucked up language.
EDIT: I envy, admire and despise you.
Just keep reminding yourself that it's not as impressive as it sounds. Half of those I can barely use to complain about my luggage being lost.
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As a linguist though, I can offer my personal opinion that English is a fucked up language.
montrith, January 13, 2014, 03:17:42 am
It's a little like some Whole Languages lunatic put German in a blender, sprinkled in some French, blended it for a few seconds and still had chunks left.
And also the Whole Languages nutter was a sloppy drunk who couldn't get anything right, so there's more exceptions than rules.
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It's a little like some Whole Languages lunatic put German in a blender, sprinkled in some French, blended it for a few seconds and still had chunks left.
And also the Whole Languages nutter was a sloppy drunk who couldn't get anything right, so there's more exceptions than rules.
Fizzlebang the Wise, January 13, 2014, 03:35:23 am
"I'd love to make a sensible language, but I can't do anything with these lobster hands!"
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So is English the bitcoin of language?
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No, because people actually use English. Bam! Sick Bitcoin burn!
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No, because people actually use English. Bam! Sick Bitcoin burn!
Runic, January 13, 2014, 06:20:46 pm
Oh Runic, people use Bitcoins! They're great for laundering money, and if you'd like to buy something completely illegal over the internet from the comfort of your home, there's nothing better! So English could be the bitcoin of languages if it was the official language of buying heroin and child pornography over the internet!
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I can curse in Japanese and understand about every third word if someone's speaking to me.
I can greet people, thank them, and count to ten in French and about the same in Spanish.
And I can thank people and tell them to go to hell and/or call them the son of a prostitute in Hebrew. Also, I can read Hebrew, but that doesn't mean I have any idea what I'm reading most of the time.
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I am always jealous of people who can read/write/speak/understand non-romance languages! I can speak Spanish and read very basic French, Italian, and Portuguese, but anything beyond that would take a bit of work. I learned the Hebrew alphabet in one of my Biblical exegesis classes (cooler than it sounds, I promise), but that was almost ten years ago...
I have a linguist friend who chose to take two years of Finnish in college - turns out Minnesota is a great place for Finns, who knew? I always wish I had the guts she did. I'm just lazy, so I stuck with Spanish, the easiest of languages! Luckily it comes in handy when you work in restaurants.
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And I can thank people and tell them to go to hell and/or call them the son of a prostitute in Hebrew. Also, I can read Hebrew, but that doesn't mean I have any idea what I'm reading most of the time.
sherlockian, January 14, 2014, 04:42:58 pm
Is that with or without the diacritic marks? Hebrew is generally written without "nikkud" which are the diacritic marks that tell you how to pronounce the word. So if you aren't a native speaker and you're trying to read something that isn't the bible or written for little kids, good fucking luck.
Also, good luck reading someone's Hebrew handwriting.
You know what? Here, have a comparison between print and non-print forms in my shitty handwriting.
http://i.imgur.com/qsU7dfz.jpg (ignore the asterisk looking mark in the bottom half)
vs.
http://i.imgur.com/80d7Imn.jpg
The pangram translates into something along the lines of "In a blink of an eye we'll clone you a bloodthirsty midget, hold on tight!" (It's worth noting that I fucked it up, there are two 'Vav's instead of one, one is superfluous)
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I have a BA in German and Applied Linguistics, and am studying Second Language Acquisition for my MA (the study of how adults acquire non-native languages).
Adept, January 12, 2014, 11:27:36 am
I'd be interested to hear the most successful methods for teaching languages to people who are out of those early learn-languages-easily years.Isfahan, January 12, 2014, 12:24:48 pm
I want to give this a proper response, but it's going to require digging into some of my class notes for last semester. I'll see if I can dig up some key citations to illustrate my points, too. The gist of it is going to be that the best teaching methodologies are going to include the explicit teaching of grammar, but mostly be focused on the ability to fill communicative needs.
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In order of capacity: English, French, Malay, Mandarin. My characters suck because I don't write enough though. I also run a casual biweekly 'let's learn Latin and drink' gathering so I guess I know some Latin as well? Well enough to be able to tell a few jokes, not well enough to actually talk to someone.
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And I can thank people and tell them to go to hell and/or call them the son of a prostitute in Hebrew. Also, I can read Hebrew, but that doesn't mean I have any idea what I'm reading most of the time.
sherlockian, January 14, 2014, 04:42:58 pm
Is that with or without the diacritic marks? Hebrew is generally written without "nikkud" which are the diacritic marks that tell you how to pronounce the word. So if you aren't a native speaker and you're trying to read something that isn't the bible or written for little kids, good fucking luck.
Also, good luck reading someone's Hebrew handwriting.
You know what? Here, have a comparison between print and non-print forms in my shitty handwriting.
http://i.imgur.com/qsU7dfz.jpg (ignore the asterisk looking mark in the bottom half)
vs.
http://i.imgur.com/80d7Imn.jpg
A Meat, January 15, 2014, 04:17:38 am
Your script is clearer, though I'm worse at reading Hebrew script than print. And I pretty much suck at reading without the nikkud, because I don't know enough Hebrew to be able to fill in the sounds from context. I learned it at a shitty Sunday morning temple class, mostly for reading prayer, so, yeah, my Hebrew sucks for everything except occasionally thanking people or telling someone the numerical code for the restroom at work in Hebrew.
(I learned my small vocabulary of swear words on Birthright, because what's the point of Birthright if you don't get to learn how to curse people out?)
On the up side of language acquisition, I learned today that enough high school French has stuck with me that I can actually understand terrible French puns!
Comment s'appelle un chien qui vend des medicaments?
Un pharmachien.
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I have a BA in German and Applied Linguistics, and am studying Second Language Acquisition for my MA (the study of how adults acquire non-native languages).
Adept, January 12, 2014, 11:27:36 am
I'd be interested to hear the most successful methods for teaching languages to people who are out of those early learn-languages-easily years.Isfahan, January 12, 2014, 12:24:48 pm
The short answer to your question is that an effective language teaching program will make heavy use of what is known as communicative practice - types of exercises that mirror real-life communication in one form or another - interspersed with periods of explicit information about how the grammar of a given language functions, feedback on what you're doing right and what you need to change, and the presentation of conversational models, vocabulary, and phrases that are or could potentially be of use or interest to the students. It seems to be a finding in the field of SLA that skills learned in activities that more closely resemble real-life scenarios translate better to real-world use of the language than do skills acquired in grammar drills. Simultaneously, it seems that feedback and knowledge of rules can help one to make stronger gains from this practice than would simply happen 'through osmosis' otherwise.
It is also worth noting that at the end of the day, the most effective form of teaching is the one that best meets your needs as a learner. The above suggestion assumes you just want general communicative competence - however, if you specifically need English so you can meet with business clients and hash out a business agreement, then job-specific training that focuses on situations and communicative contexts that you will run into in a business environment will be more beneficial than general-communication courses. Similarly, the type of language training that certain members of the armed forces will receive is necessarily much more focused on immediate communicative needs, and necessarily must be more focused than general classes to be more efficient (this was particularly the case in WWII, I am told, where the need for lots of people to understand very basic sentences in a variety of languages was the order of the day. Today, the DoD is slanted in the opposite direction - they need extremely talented individuals who can speak some difficult and very obscure languages at an extraordinarily high level of proficiency, for intelligence purposes.)
I kind of went overboard with my response and did a small essay on the reasons why a mixed communicative-and-rules classroom is more effective than either grammar drill or pure-communicative (no grammar) models. It delves into a bit of cognitive psychology and the nature of knowledge. Looking at what came out, it seemed a bit spammy for this thread, so I decided I should finally step up to the plate and make a Shared Expertise thread. If you want to see a much more elaborate breakdown of what I just said, feel free to check it out. My full, wall-of-text response is on the second post of the thread:
Adept: Second Language Acquisition (Applied Linguistics) (http://ballp.it/index.php?topic=972.0)
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I got partway through a semester of Arabic before my sadbrains kicked in and I had to drop the remainder of the semester, so I can usually pronounce words written in the script, but I can't really speak much of it. The worst of my problems seem to be over though, so I'd like to eventually start that up again.
Since I noticed somebody in this thread/Adept's thread mention ASL, I don't use it or have any real plans to learn it, but I do have a link to what seems like a pretty good website on it. It uses frames, so it's not mobile-friendly.
http://lifeprint.com/index.htm
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I'm a huge language geek, too! I speak English natively, then German at an advanced level (been studying for like 6-7 years), Spanish at a roughly conversational level (I work in restaurants and so my Spanish has improved a ridiculous amount in the last couple years) and ASL at an advanced level (I'm studying to be an interpreter as we speak!) I'm also a heritage speaker of Yiddish and because it's a language on the German dialect continuum I can speak it pretty well. I used to speak semi-decent Hebrew but I don't really have anywhere to use it these days so it's kind of fallen into disrepair.
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I have to learn Greek because I want to study the Balkans in modern history for grad school. Is Modern Greek hard? How does it compare to Ancient Greek? My other option is to become a Byzantinist and that required two years of hard Ancient Greek and Latin study, which would take up most of my time over the next two years. Do any of you have any experience with Greek?
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I have now learned enough kitchen and conversational Spanish to tell my co-workers (who have been pestering me about not having a boyfriend for going on four months non-stop) that I'm gay. Given, the word I learned for it has connotations much closer to "dyke", but it got the point across.
Progress!
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I have to learn Greek because I want to study the Balkans in modern history for grad school. Is Modern Greek hard? How does it compare to Ancient Greek? My other option is to become a Byzantinist and that required two years of hard Ancient Greek and Latin study, which would take up most of my time over the next two years. Do any of you have any experience with Greek?
Smoking Crow, February 16, 2014, 08:57:08 pm
"Malakas" (mah-lahk-ahs) means "wanker", and that's all you need. No, really.
That's all the Greek I know at this point, I have forgotten almost everything I know. Not that I was ever any skilled in Greek beyond tourist-level.
Languages I know in descending order of competence: Norwegian, English, Swedish, Danish, French, German, Glorious Nipponese, Russian (I can't read it at all, Cyrillic is too far out). Note that my level of competence with German, Japanese and Russian is limited to stock phrases.
Edit: Wow, these are some shitty sentences! Don't write while you're tired, self.
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I think you remembered the important part of Greek.