Languages

[MrCarmady]

0__0 very cool! yeah i bet there are sometimes little things you don't know 100% native-ly and intuitively, which you might miss... but at the same time, i bet you know 'proper english' better than most native speakers, from learning it deliberately. ...like conrad and nabokov (no pressure). if i had to learn english as a second language, i would never trust native speakers for teaching me grammar

and you're still fluent in russian (and other things!) too...?

Still speak Russian with my family (though my younger brother and I have migrated to English, for better or worse), plus German cos I spent a few years there and am taking French classes at the moment. Apparently I'm B1.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Yeah, I definitely agree about being paradoxically worse at grammar in the language one gleaned as a child, at least nowadays when they don't teach advanced grammar in school anymore. Learning Latin, I'm becoming more attentive to English grammar, because that's useful for language learning, and I keep noticing grammar and usage errors in my capsule reviews to my embarrassment! Perhaps in ten years I'll finally have properly taught myself English grammar...

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Apparently I'm B1.

B1 Gang! I tested into the B1 level when I was studying French at the Sorbonne years ago. Graduate the program with some fancy certificate, took a proficiency exam, still B1. A decade since... still B1. That's just who I am apparently.

[Curtis, baby]

Changing my Tinder to Berlin was the best thing I ever did for my German language studies

Seriously I'm learning so much so fast! I see profiles like:

Hey bin [redacted] (englisch ausgesprochen)
Bin Berlinerin

Weil jeder das macht: bin 1,64 cm

Bin altmodisch: schreib mich zuerst an

Two words I don't know, ausgesprochen and altmodisch, but from context they're clear and now I understand usage, and also since German is the most logical language ever I can imagine that neumodisch is a word, and for that matter modisch, and mode (noun) and moden (verb) and now better understand the English word mode!

I like Duolingo but I really wish, for a language like German anyway, they taught me more words like this. I'm learning Strand (beach) but that doesn't help make any connections. Zoll (customs line)? Great. It's too focused on being passable in the language while you're on vacation and not REALLY understanding the language, how it actually works

Also Duolingo has a module on "flirting", but it doesn't even teach astrological signs? Bro have you even ever hit on straight women or gay men in 2021? Anyway the signs are interesting. Mostly very literal but sometimes pluralized. Aries is Widder (ram), Libra is Waage (scales), but then Pisces is Fische (plural of fish). One of the more interesting ones is Virgo. Obviously it's gunna be virgin. But virgin is Jungfrau. Don't think that needs any translation! The thing is jungfrau means virgin of any gender, but jungfrau as in Virgo is always feminine. So:

Er ist ein Jungfrau = he is a virgin
Er ist eine Jungfrau = he is a Virgo

Sie ist eine Jungfrau = unclear?? I think??

The three named after specific characters are varying levels of odd

Sagittarius = shütze (shooter)
Fair enough

Capricorn = Steinbock (stone buck)
Ok sure but mountain goat is just bergziege so why not that?

Aquarius = Wassermann
Hahahaha omg too good. So literal, so German!

[Searchlike]

I feel ya, everyone who's having trouble finding people to practice with. I was thinking about starting a thread to help us with this matter. The concept is that in that topic we wouldn't be allowed to write in English or in our mother tongues, that way we would be forced to communicate in whatever languages we were learning.

Since the point of it all is to actually facilitate learning though, I don't want to be too harsh with this rule and we could arrange it so that one could speak in English, or their native languague, for clarifications, to give advice and other things like that as long as one still made an attempt to also write a couple sentences in a foreign language in the same post.

If you like the idea, let me know and I'll make that thread appear out of thin air. Any suggestion are welcome, of course. Oh, and what would be a good title? I like Tower of Babel, personally.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

That would be fun! I'm learning Latin, French, and German at the moment (focus is Latin, others are on back-burner).

[Searchlike]

Excellent! I'll try to have it up sometime this week. In the meantime, I'd love to hear some opinions on the dos and don'ts of the thread.

Should we allow English/Native languages at all? If the answer is yes, then how about for every line of text in English or your mother tongue you must contribute two sentences in a foreign language.

Regarding topics, I think we should allow any discussion, it would be a shame not to take advantage of the fact that we all share a common interest, film, that is.

Hmm, what else am I missing? Any questions, ideas?

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Yes, talking about film in languages other than English sounds rather fun!

[Curtis, baby]

so fun!!!! LETS DO IT!!! (----:

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

A couple of years ago, I was planning to make a rule for myself that every time I watched a French movie, I had to post a Letterboxd review of it in French. But then I realized I should be prioritizing Latin, so I postponed that idea. (I contemplated posting reviews in Latin for the sheer absurdity of it – I already write for a rather niche audience, so why not go whole hog? – but it's such a complex language that I still don't know Latin well enough to do that even if I thought it was worthwhile.) All this to say, I'd enjoy taking up the French-reviews idea again now, together with the Tower of Babel forum.

[Searchlike]

That's a great idea. Another way to go about it is to gatekeep some of your hobbies, if you happen to have a lot of them, behind a language you're learning. So say I wanted to play a video game, I could only do so if it's entirely spoken/written in Japanese or German.

---

Sorry to keep you all waiting. I'm still unsure about hot to tackle this and need your help.

Which one of these options sounds more appealing to you?

MASTER MODE:
No English/native languages allowed at all. Might be fun, but probably not very useful. We need to have someway to address each other's doubts as well as any other communication problems that may arise from this challenge and I don't think we should rely entirely on translators.

HARD MODE:
This one consists of 2 threads. The first one is basically Master Mode, no English/native languages allowed. The second one is for giving advice, asking questions and the like in English or any other language. You can also share useful resources other members may not be aware about.

NORMAL MODE:
This is the original concept I already talked about. For every line of text in English/your native language, you must write at least two sentences in a foreign language. You could easily break this rule by writing two unrelated common use phrases, but what would be the fun of that?

EASY MODE:
No penalties whatsoever. You can use English/your native language as much as you want.

If you don't like any of these, would like to suggest a better one or simply combine some of them, for example, a Normal Mode that consists of 2 threads, please, let me know.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

I'd lean towards Normal Mode as being the easiest to navigate.

[Curtis, baby]

hard or easy, cos i like the idea of their being a thread in which i can be exasperated in english et c

[Searchlike]

We could keep everything in one thread by using the spoiler function, but I remember we had some problems with that in the past. How is it working for everyone? It's all good on my side.

Spoiler!

and then in the end it turns out he was sleeping the whole time!

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Yup, spoiler tags works for me!

[Searchlike]

As long as we keep English and native languages under spoiler tags, we might not need to have penalties. The last thing I want is to discourage members from participating. What do you think?

And finally, if you know of any good online resources for learning one or several languages, please share them with me so I can add them to the first post.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

As long as we keep English and native languages under spoiler tags, we might not need to have penalties. The last thing I want is to discourage members from participating. What do you think?

And finally, if you know of any good online resources for learning one or several languages, please share them with me so I can add them to the first post.

Yes, I agree about the spoiler tags being a good option.

Duolingo is a good online resource, and Quizlet is good for creating your own flashcards, which you can do Duolingo-style exercises off of. Off-line resources (books, courses) are my preference, but I use those two online resources daily in my language studies.

[niminy-piminy]

now, my kg "warning" is no longer counted in days but in hours, so time to start taking a lesson in creative foulmouthing in a foreign language...

[greennui]

https://twitter.com/bfcarlson/status/16 ... 9401816065

[rischka]

i find this sad but not unexpected from the man who wouldn't travel to brazil because there were too many black people

[Curtis, baby]

Wrote my first Deutschemaße!

können Sie mir sagen/
warum Sie Schmerz haben/
tief in deinem Magen/
wenn ich mich einloggen/
(will), Maße vom Meister sind ill/
geboren im März, verrückt seit April/
also was das tatsächliche Problem/
wenn Sie Feindschaft haben, muss ich Waffen halten