tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post8297300251203461811..comments2023-09-25T13:41:12.977+01:00Comments on Brave New Words: Linguaphiles UniteB.J. Epsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07564748493196230467noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post-22891957397802830632011-09-21T20:23:56.527+01:002011-09-21T20:23:56.527+01:00Yes, I do get your point. I don't know if ever...Yes, I do get your point. I don't know if everything I link to is correct -- I'm not that knowledgeable, alas -- but it can be of interest and it can, obviously, spark debate!<br /><br />Best wishes,<br />BJB.J. Epsteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07564748493196230467noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post-55328942208950952002011-09-09T20:07:57.879+01:002011-09-09T20:07:57.879+01:00The list is you link to at the end of your post is...The list is you link to at the end of your post is, well, rather blinkered at best, and an insult to my intelligence at worst. Since I am suffering from someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet-itis, I will expound:<br /><br />For example, take the little bit about English being a "German derivative." Come the bloody hell on. Is a person who doesn't know the difference between "German" and "Germanic" <i>seriously</i> pontificating about language???<br /><br />Also, the claim that English <i>"features more interdentals than any other language, including German."</i><br /><br />Huh? German doesn't have ANY interdentals!!!! Did they not even Google this? Moreover, English only has two such sounds (the "th" sound of "this" and of "thin"). Many languages have more. Standard Arabic, for example, has three.<br /><br />Then the bit on Arabic has this to say:<br /><br /><i>Considering Arabic’s widespread status, moving from classroom studies to real-world applications will mean navigating an especially complex (and likely unfamiliar) series of regional and dialectical differences.</i><br /><br />It's true that Arabic has register differences that result in different colloquial dialects in different areas that, under other circumstances, would be considered separate languages. (For example example "That's not what I want to tell you" will be <i>Hada mush illī biddī a'ullak iyyāha</i> in colloquial Palestinian Arabic but <i>Haða laysa l'amra llaði urīdu an aqūlahu laka</i> in standard Literary Arabic.)<br /><br />But this is not particularly far removed from the situation in, say, the German-speaking world where, for example, Bavarian or Swiss German is no closer to Standard German than Spanish is to Italian. Speaking of Italian the speech variety known as 'Sicilian', thought of by many as an Italian dialect, actually can be shown to form its own separate branch off of Latin. Similar issues of diglossia crop up everywhere- from Finland to the Balkans to Indonesia, and sometimes in ways that are even MORE annoying than Arabic (e.g. nynorsk and bokmål, for one.)<br /><br />And then the Korean bit: <i>To get around, one must memorize 1000 Hanjas.</i><br /><br />WHAT? Modern Korean texts rarely use any Hanja at all, outside Academic publications -and even then only rarely. The only really vibrant use of Hanja anymore is to disambiguate homonymous lexical items (a classic example is 囚徒 'prisoner' and 隧道 'tunnel'. Both pronounced "sudo.") and even that is mainly limited to dictionaries. <br /><br />Does the author of that post WANT to sound ignorant?<br /><br />Really, which kind of idiocy is this? I'm playing moron-bingo here and I want to know if I have a winning set. <br /><br />I'd go on with regard to other ways in which the post makes an art out of being uninformed, but I think you get my point by now.A.Z. Foremanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07178150009150360184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post-80925400191777250712011-09-09T19:53:25.018+01:002011-09-09T19:53:25.018+01:00This comment has been removed by the author.AFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16046618263562987119noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post-87649610476236686482011-08-28T16:07:16.336+01:002011-08-28T16:07:16.336+01:00I grew up with French and German, majored in Russi...I grew up with French and German, majored in Russian at university and became a Swedish>English translator because we lived in Sweden for 12 years. I would also put Russian in the list of "difficult languages." It's not the Cyrillic alphabet; that's easy enough to learn. It's the SIX cases and the declension of nouns that, imho, make it so difficult. Not to mention the prepositions. Looking back, I can't believe I ever learned the language well enough to use it in my first job after graduating! Next on my list is Italian....Mireillenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post-91453254755583432562011-06-30T00:42:35.427+01:002011-06-30T00:42:35.427+01:00Growing up, my first two languages were English an...Growing up, my first two languages were English and Urdu. I really want to expand to French and/or Spanish, which I think shouldn't be THAT bad, but still would need some work to build up proficiency. German comes after that :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post-73023642497373585132011-06-21T12:41:29.014+01:002011-06-21T12:41:29.014+01:00Learning a language is hard, pronounciation even h...Learning a language is hard, pronounciation even harder.<br />But translasting is not too hard considering you have a wide array of different <a href="http://www.todaytranslations.com" rel="nofollow">translation services</a> online. I think for most people <a href="http://www.todaytranslations.com/languages/french" rel="nofollow">french translation services</a> are needed as some words do not translate directly into the english language.. Another thing is that having the ability to have these translations done are what makes others want to learn the language other than to just translate parts of it.Anil Sharmahttp://www.todaytranslations.com/languages/frenchnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post-46019476029100724942011-06-15T08:34:06.130+01:002011-06-15T08:34:06.130+01:00Hooray for linguaphiles! I love learning languages...Hooray for linguaphiles! I love learning languages. You have quite a language collection, yourself.<br /><br />I speak English natively and Spanish fluently. (I am a Spanish>English translator, which is great fun!) After living in Barcelona in college, I studied Catalan, which I also used a bit in graduate school. I can't say I speak it as well as I would like, though. I also studied Japanese in college, but I have gotten rusty. I loved learning it, though! I decided I wanted to learn it when I was five years old and made friends with a girl from Japan, so it was a long time coming.<br /><br />I have been studying Farsi for a little while now. It is more for personal reasons, but I am finding it hard simply because there aren't very many structured learning opportunities around here. Thankfully, I found a good course online to get me started and have someone to practice with regularly.<br /><br />However, my most recent addition is German. I studied German for a year in elementary school, and I never thought I would pick it up again! As it turns out, I may be moving to Germany in the fall; I figure I better get a start on it. I'm not complaining. :) (Plus it's the easiest language I have tried to learn since Catalan!)Rachelhttp://www.mcrobertstranslations.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26093079.post-7953749216386438562011-06-15T04:17:04.089+01:002011-06-15T04:17:04.089+01:00My first second language was German thanks to goin...My first second language was German thanks to going to a Bavarian elementary school in 2nd and 3rd grades. However, that's been mostly subsumed at this point by Russian, which I majored in in college and have been specializing in ever since. The German comes back but only ever to a basic level, although I understand a lot of conversational stuff. I spoke pretty decent Serbo-Croatian for a few years, working with refugees, but it's fallen mostly by the wayside at this point due to lack of practice. <br /><br />I would love to re-up and increase my fluency in both German and Serbo-Croatian (I know, that's a loaded term - I learned a mixture of the Serb and Croat variants).<br /><br />Looking at NEW languages, I need to learn some Spanish to make life easier at my horse's ranch. I want to learn Italian and Czech, just because.penniferhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16041521362413587787noreply@blogger.com