Languages

... said:

"On" when used in books means "one" as in "one should clean one's room". "On" when used colloquially means "we". I was reading this one French book and it's amazing how often they use "on" instead of "nous". So basically, in informal language "on" substitutes "nous". When speaking with any level of formality, "on" just means "one" and you should use "nous".

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And it conjugates the same as "il" and "elle", right? That makes more sense now.

Why does it seem that English has such a more simple system of conjugating verbs than other languages? In French, the verb pretty much changes with each pronoun, at least in the present tense, but in English, most verbs stay similar to the "infinitive" (to (verb)).

the languages have different morphologies. French seems to be pretty fusional (or at least Latin definitely is) which means endings change and include a lot of information (gender, number, whatever) while English is less fusional and more analytical which means there are words like "to" and "of" instead of including them in endings.

put simply, I guess.

In other news, English prepositions have always been the hardest part at the language with me for learn.

speak four languages fluently, have not a single clue of the names of any tense or how to conjugate anything yet still make no mistakes while speaking and writing
feels good man

I have a feeling my usual strategy won't work with Russian though.

Dannichu said:

I see your wacky, unpronouncable languages and raise you Welsh.

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You don't know our vowel sounds yet.

Who cares about your vowel sounds, the Gs are the real killers.

Them and the ch's. Same sound. Very confusing.

Gender pronouns are the worst part of Hebrew. :[ Bleurgh. Not because it's difficult but because of, you know, it's needlessness and that I hate being referred to as a specific gender and bleeeeh.

I hate Hebrew. Sigh.

English. That's it. I have taken almost twelve years of basic Spanish/Spanish I thanks to constantly changing schools and teachers, all of who felt the need to start over every single time because they weren't the ones who taught us the last five iterations of Spanish I etc.. I was one of the best in my class but only because I actually made an effort to pay attention, and I still learned nothing and forgot most of it when I graduated high school. (I probably remember a bit more than I give myself credit for, but I never have any reason to practice or keep up with it. :( )

There was also German in 7th and 8th grade, but the rest of the class never paid attention there, either, and the teacher spent more time yelling at them and knocking over desks and breaking doors than teaching us anything. I remember absolutely nothing about German aside from how to count to twelve, maybe a little higher than that on a good day. This is a slight problem because I'm kind of hoping to spend a quarter abroad in Berlin if we can afford it. I imagine it won't be a huge problem if I'm less fluent than a native two-year-old because it's an art program and all, but still, I'd feel bad. :(

I would actually rather learn some other language, or at least something else in addition to those, but I've been too lazy to attempt self-teaching or even self-reteaching. More :(

You don't know what unpronounceable is until you've seen the Caucasian languages.

Geogrian: ვწითლდები (vts'itldebi)
meaning "I blush." I think I'd blush trying to say that in front of a native Georgian.

And don't get me started on Salish.
Here's a Nuxálk word: xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓, meaning "he had had a brunchberry plant"
no freaking vowels

Pentimento said:

Gender pronouns are the worst part of Hebrew. :[ Bleurgh. Not because it's difficult but because of, you know, it's needlessness and that I hate being referred to as a specific gender and bleeeeh.

I hate Hebrew. Sigh.

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Shalom and good luck with that.

I know about 10 words in Hebrew. That's that.

... said:

Geogrian: ვწითლდები (vts'itldebi)
meaning "I blush." I think I'd blush trying to say that in front of a native Georgian.

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Georgian is fucking gorgeous. hnnngh. look at that alphabet. it's some Lord of the Rings shit.

Watershed said:

Shalom and good luck with that.

I know about 10 words in Hebrew. That's that.

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Eh, I'm fluent in Hebrew, but I wish I could swap it for a more useful language. I mean, no one really speaks Hebrew outside of Israel. So boring.

Right then. Effective immediately, gendered pronouns have been replaced with hair-coloured pronouns. One for people with light hair, one for people with dark hair and one for gingers. You must fit yourself into one of these arbitrary categories (but, by god, you'd better pick the right one if you don't want to be laughed out of the room). If you're grey, you pick the one you like most. If you're bald, you're not a real person and don't deserve a pronoun.

Yo hablo espanol, sort of. I'm horrible at speaking and composing sentences, but I can translate, listen and read pretty well.

And I'm familiar with a bit of latin.

Dannichu said:

Right then. Effective immediately, gendered pronouns have been replaced with hair-coloured pronouns. One for people with light hair, one for people with dark hair and one for gingers. You must fit yourself into one of these arbitrary categories (but, by god, you'd better pick the right one if you don't want to be laughed out of the room). If you're grey, you pick the one you like most. If you're bald, you're not a real person and don't deserve a pronoun.

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The light-haired pronoun "aub" is from Early Modern English auburn "brown, reddish brown" from Middle English aubourne, abron, abroune, abrune "light brown, yellowish brown, blond", alteration (due to conflation with Middle English brun "brown") of earlier auborne "yellowish-white, flaxen" from Old French auborne, alborne "blond, flaxen, off-white" from Medieval Latin alburnus "whitish" from Latin albus "white"

The dark haired pronoun is "der" from Old English deorc, from Proto-Germanic *derk, from either Proto-Indo-European *dʰer- (“to besmirch”) or Proto-Indo-European *derg- (“red”); perhaps both, with the latter being derived from the former.

The ginger pronoun can be "au" or "de" depending on the region (the former is considered 'official' and used by people with Received Pronunciation and General American accents, but the actual usage varies much more) due to "auburn" and "*derg-" meaning a variation of red or red-haired color.

The proposed but never implemented grey-haired pronoun is "blut" (t silent) from Old French blond, blont, of Germanic origin, from Frankish blund (“a mixed color between golden and light-brown”), from Proto-Germanic blund (“mixed, blinding”), from Proto Indo European bhlendh (“to become turbid, see badly, go blind”). "Blu" is sometimes used by people with strawberry blonde, or dark red hair.

Collective pronoun is "fea" (U.S.A.) or "feax" (U.K., Australia), from blondenfeax (“grey-haired”), Old English blandan (“to mix”).

So fea all, I am blu, how about all of you?

I approve heavily

My hair is Asian-colored, but that's a bit beside the point of talking about languages.

I've collected a few language qualifications. I passed the JLPT N4, but I estimate that my current level is about JLPT N3. I'm aiming the the JLPT N2 next year's December. As for Latin... if any one of you are familiar with the National Latin Exam, I got one of those Dictionary awards. 8D

Minkow said:

Also should I take Chinese as a course or learn Italian? Because while I speak Mandarin very fluently, I'm practically illiterate, yet Italian seems pretty hard. '~'

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Do you have faith in memorizing boatloads of Chinese characters? If you don't, go for Italian. Italian shouldn't be that bad; it's a fairly straightforward language, but this is coming from the viewpoint of a Latin student here.

Also, English is as difficult as... ugh. I hate it. Most people here have been saying English is easy. For a second language, it really isn't. For instance, you can't say "there is many people"- it's "there are many people", and I get that wrong constantly. Swim goes to swum; faint and feint are pronounced the same; fly goes to flew; slay goes to slew; eat goes to ate. WHERE IS THE LOGIC IN THIS? NONE.

And we have so many uneccesary vocabulary words. What is a synod? Declamatory, abstruse, bombastic, verisimilitude, inflammable (which means the same as flammable), and several others.

Chinese was a language probably invented by an old, old man who had too much baijiu. But, funnily enough, it's so simple that... it's great. No conjugation. You tell the time when things happened by context or stating the time. "I don't understand" literally goes to "I hear not understand" or "I see not understand", and it is a four-syllable, efficient, quick sentence. 我真的很愛中文。我因該要把它學好一點，但是沒有時間。很可惜。

Japanese sounds beautiful. It really does. However, it uses two phonetic "alphabets", if you will- syllabaries, to be exist. And then it tries to use Chinese characters. The result is a linguistic mess. One kanji, or chinese character, can have as many as 10 different pronunciations depending on context. 日本語は本当にすごく非合理的な言語です。私は日本語の発音が大好きで、文法もよく分かる気がして、でも漢字の様々のばかげたな読み方が本当に嫌いです。

I wish to learn Korean as well. Will find time sometime. But, I am near-fluent in Chinese, Japanese, and English.

Ah, sorry about not having much time to learn Chinese, and I agree, highly isolating languages are neat.

Anyway, I think the different readings of kanji are not unreasonable, but interesting, as you can have a lot of symbolism in just one word. Its really quite fascinating.

Pentimento said:

Eh, I'm fluent in Hebrew, but I wish I could swap it for a more useful language. I mean, no one really speaks Hebrew outside of Israel. So boring.

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some Jews outside of Israel speak it. My girlfriend speaks Hebrew as well, and she's only been to Israel three times. But since Jews are a bit rare nowadays I see what you mean. I don't think she's exactly fluent (or so she says - but I think she'd pick it up quickly as she already speaks four other languages fluently, and she understands basic Dutch).

Pity that ensured the only things I know are "ani ohev otakh" which is the male version of I love you iirc and "laila tov".