Languages

[Me-Ike]

You're French! Of course, I should have known. I can see that by the mustache on your avatar! Good day to you, sir.

No, no. I'm one of the ugly, fat, sausage eating people you mentioned in another thread.

I feel a song coming on:

snip snip with a chainsaw

If I have that song stuck in my head now, you will answer to me!

The reason I asked is because I understand that it's illegal to display many of the symbols of the Nazi regime, outside of an educational context.

And while it had its moments, "Patterns of Force" wasn't exactly educational. It wasn't even a particularly good episode.

Seeing how Indiana Jones made my Swastika-ratio go through the roof, I'd say it's legal to show symbols without an educational context.

EDIT: Ah, already answered way better than I could.

Learning a language as different from English as Russian, it would be really helpful to have an interest in the language and culture itself. Otherwise it becomes hardly more than a chore.

I agree that learning Russian is quite challenging. But I found it a lot more rewarding than when I learned Spanish. I would say that knowing the culture, though, is a secondary concern. Russian is a language that's spoken across many many cultures in much the same was English is. There is no single Russian culture to know, and no one dialect/accent to adopt.

You're right, of course. It's just something that I personally found to be very helpful. French, for example, is a lovely language and culture, but it was always rather secondary to me. So I put a lot less effort into learning it. It's in the way you learn a language, I think. If you learn by studying the rules and speak by methodically applying them or if you, like I used to, just jump into it, try to get a feel for it, and let most rules be rules.
Of course there never is one culture to learn about; it was the same when I learned English. I used to be more interested in parts of the American culture than the British one. But there are always apsects which can draw you in and propel your learning curve forward.

I jokingly say that Italian is wonderful because I can say the most vulgar thing possible and people listening to me will think it sounds beautiful

Opera sung in Italian and French sounds wonderful.

English and German--not so much. It can be done, but it's just not the same.

Edit: Come to think of it, I have one recording of an opera that's sung in Danish--Andy Pape's Leonora Christine. That was pretty good, though not really outstanding.

Aw, but ... Freude schöner Götterfunken!
Yeah, I got nothing.

 

[trekkiedane]

I feel a song coming on:

snip snip with a chainsaw

If I have that song stuck in my head now, you will answer to me!

well, your people made this song stick in my head for the last thirtysome years!
Wanna join me in the NZ and "talk" 'bout it?

... Freude schöner Götterfunken!

Whenever I read that (not when I hear it, just when I read those three words) a certain Ralf König cartoon comes to mind

 

[Jim Gamma]

I speak English (natively), Spanish (not brilliantly), French (slowly though), Italian (though sometimes I mess up and use Spanish vocabulary, and most of the time get away with it), and a few words each of German and Norwegian. Spanish and Norwegian sound the nicest to me.

 

[Holdfast]

My Latin crumbled into dust years ago...

Sic transit lingua mundi, I guess, if you'll pardon the misquote...

I've forgotten the vast majority of the Latin I ever knew. Same for Greek (used to be moderately fluent in Modern). French I can still trot out a few stock phrases (again, was fairly fluent at one point) and I reckon I might remember a few words of German if pushed. I keep meaning to brush up my French, but never seem to find the time for it somehow.

I do still love the English language - all those years spent doing the Times Concise and dismally failing to do the Times Cryptic bore fruit...

... mostly in the form of really, really bad puns, it has to be admitted!

 

[Vulcan Princess]

I'm fluent in English (my native language), and I can muddle through in French. I read it better than I write or speak it. I'm generally able to get the gist of any Romance language if I'm reading it, but not if I'm listening. I can translate basic Latin phrases, but I don't know all the verb conjugations. I want to learn Spanish because there are a lot of Spanish speaking people where I live, and most jobs prefer someone who is bilingual.

Someday, I would like to learn Hebrew, Arabic, and Mandarin as well, but I don't know when I'll have the time.

 

[Me-Ike]

I had to sit through two years of Latin due to my majoring in English, but all that remains are some words and a certain twitch of the eye whenever I hear ablative.

lmao. Yeah, all I remember about Latin is that I spent so much time focusing on learning how to conjugate verbs and nouns that I forgot to actually memorize vocab, so I sucked at the tests when I actually had to translate something. Now I remember how to conjugate "to be" and a few other words that are useful for Italian.

BTW, my favorite language is still English, because it's very versatile. I think Italian sounds more beautiful, but English still can sound beautiful because we borrowed a lot of beautiful words from other languages.

Ugh, Latin translations. I also tried to guess the vocab most of the time, based on similar sounding German, English or French words. I once translated a text about people being killed in Pompeii ... my best friend, on the other hand, translated the same text as people having bad weather in Pompeii. Well, she was partially right.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on the beauty of English versatility. I even like its sound the most, I guess it's because I find the accents so very different and rich that you can practically choose whether to want to hear it spoken in a hard or a soft tone, sung or monotone, etc.

If I have that song stuck in my head now, you will answer to me!

well, your people made this song stick in my head for the last thirtysome years!
Wanna join me in the NZ and "talk" 'bout it?

Well, it's not like we were allowed to send soldiers around anymore, so we had to think of something.
But I will not give in to your aggressive behavior. I'm totally above that. I am also a wuss.

... mostly in the form of really, really bad puns, it has to be admitted!

It's the richest and most beautiful (and richest) thing the English language has ever bestowed upon us. (Rich.)

 

[trekkiedane]

well, your people made this song stick in my head for the last thirtysome years!
Wanna join me in the NZ and "talk" 'bout it?

Well, it's not like we were allowed to send soldiers around anymore, so we had to think of something.
But I will not give in to your aggressive behavior. I'm totally above that. I am also a wuss.

so... we have something (apart from that stupid song) in common; let's go have a drink instead

ETA: BTW: I get it now! -it's a Schimanski-stache!

 

[An Officer]

Language is a very interesting window into the world, I am bilingual myself and am aware of the different perspective a new language is capable of creating... there are some concepts that simply cannot be explained in English and vice-versa. I would dearly love to be able to speak more languages, Italian and French to begin with. I am just not that dedicated however. I have to be thrown in at the deep end first.

 

[Kestra]

I speak Bengali in my sleep and sometimes in my mind. Otherwise it's always English.

I'm gaining a better understanding of Hindi, but I've forgotten a lot of Spanish and Latin.

 

[trekkiedane]

^As spoken in Bangladesh and India?

-I never knew! -fascinating!

I mostly dream in Anglo. -not so weird when you consider that most of my daily interaction with other people happens right here though.

 

[Neeka Keet]

Spanish is my native tongue but I'm fluent in English(obviously). I also understand and speak a little French.

As for accents in Spanish nothing can beat an Argentine accent and for the lulz a Cuban accent is always great. In English the many accents of Britain and Ireland are to my liking and there's something endearing about southern accents. My French isn't advanced enough to tell apart one accent from another.

 

[Kestra]

^As spoken in Bangladesh and India?

-I never knew! -fascinating!

I mostly dream in Anglo. -not so weird when you consider that most of my daily interaction with other people happens right here though.

Yeah, I'm a Bengali-American. Born and raised here by Bengali parents. I understand the spoken language fluently but was too self-conscious as a child to speak it, so I've always spoken in English. Sometimes words come to me first in Bengali though, especially foods, and I have to think of the English word in my head before speaking.

My husband is American but recognizes enough Bengali to know that I'm sometimes speaking it in my sleep. So odd!

Hindi and Bengali have many similarities, so my understanding of Bengali combined with watching Hindi movies and travelling to India have increased my understanding of the language slightly.

 

[trekkiedane]

^As spoken in Bangladesh and India?

-I never knew! -fascinating!

I mostly dream in Anglo. -not so weird when you consider that most of my daily interaction with other people happens right here though.

Yeah, I'm a Bengali-American. Born and raised here by Bengali parents. I understand the spoken language fluently but was too self-conscious as a child to speak it, so I've always spoken in English. Sometimes words come to me first in Bengali though, especially foods, and I have to think of the English word in my head before speaking.

My husband is American but recognizes enough Bengali to know that I'm sometimes speaking it in my sleep. So odd!

Hindi and Bengali have many similarities, so my understanding of Bengali combined with watching Hindi movies and travelling to India have increased my understanding of the language slightly.

I'm truly fascinated by this kind of 'extreme bi-culturalism'(?); I mean, I'm partly German (one grandparent) -but that's just the neighbouring country, nothing exotic (by comparison) and I think it must be exiting to have two cultures to 'belong to' -especially when they're so different!

 

[Kestra]

I'm truly fascinated by this kind of 'extreme bi-culturalism'(?); I mean, I'm partly German (one grandparent) -but that's just the neighbouring country, nothing exotic (by comparison) and I think it must be exiting to have two cultures to 'belong to' -especially when they're so different!

If by exciting you mean it in the awkward childhood-pulled between two worlds-constant identity crisis sort of way ... then yes, it's been exciting.

I'm mostly joking. For all my issues, I feel lucky to have my cultural heritage and I think it's a large part of who I am. And more importantly, I can pass on any cultural identity issues to any children I might have, as they would then have the added benefit of being biracial.

Everything aside, feel free to PM me if you have any questions about anything. I don't want to derail the thread too much, but I'm pretty open to talking about my experiences.

 

[An Officer]

It's amazing how adaptable children are... the major problems arise when you have to cope with "extreme-bi-culturalism" well into adulthood. I have been brought up in a similar multi-cultural fashion myself, and it's difficult to see it as anything unusual, because it's what you've always known. It's only when you get talking with people on a very personal level and you realise how straight-forward and one-dimensional their lives are by comparison, that you understand how much juggling, compromising, and identity issues, you have to weigh up and deal with on top of evrything else.

 

[trekkiedane]

It's amazing how adaptable children are... the major problems arise when you have to cope with "extreme-bi-culturalism" well into adulthood. I have been brought up in a similar multi-cultural fashion myself, and it's difficult to see it as anything unusual, because it's what you've always known. It's only when you get talking with people on a very personal level and you realise how straight-forward and one-dimensional their lives are by comparison, that you understand how much juggling, compromising, and identity issues, you have to weigh up and deal with on top of evrything else.

I understand what you're saying.

Denmark was an extremely monocultural place while I grew up, but the world had a lot of horrible things happen to it that made a lot of people come to our little paradise for sanctuary. And because it is our ideology we let them all in (not realising that a lot of 'our own' would be afraid of this) and only in my lifetime have we had to deal with the reality of multiple cultures living amongst us -or even integrating them into our society.

Recent studies, however, show that things are working well; we are the proverbial 'melting pot': the problems constantly played by extreme politicians and journalists are just that: extreme.

No matter her problems, I believe the US also has the solutions to a lot of the problems in our world: Just give everyone the same rights and all will be good!

Am I making sense? -or am I just trying to hard?*

_______________

*) I'm a bit 'tipsy' at the moment.

 

[An Officer]

^ I hear you. Britain also has more than it's fair share of extreme journalism, and extremist political groups... the only advantage is these issues have been around for a very long time courtesy of the British empire, so the multiculturalism isn't quite as new or alien as it might otherwise have been. This would make an interesting separate topic.

 

[Niorah]

I am very much in love with my native language, which is Italian. I do believe it's the most beautifully sounding language on Earth. The balance between vowels and consonants, the distribution of open and closed sounds within a sentence, the clarity and musicality of the rhythm, even the small but oh so perfect adjustments to make words flow ever so flawlessly together. It's poetry.

 

[DiSiLLUSiON]

No, no. I'm one of the ugly, fat, sausage eating people you mentioned in another thread.

Then stop digging trenches on our beaches!!!

 

[JonathonWally]

Native English speaker, well, it's close to English...sort of. I'm from New Jersey.


My Italian has atrophied since childhood since fewer family members are around who refuse to speak English. I can still understand it fluently, but I can't speak it anymore without sounding brain damaged

I screw up verb tenses something horrible, so while you get the idea of what I'm saying, I still sound functionally retarded.

My great Aunt just had knee replacement surgery so I've been spending a lot of time with her at the rehab hospital, when she and my cousin spoke Italian and I spaced out, she beat me with her stick



My Spanish isn't too too awful, since I love Spanish girls, I know what they're saying when they yell at me. I love it when Latino girls abuse me.... They sound so sexy