Languages

[Wren of the Brown]

In my spare time, I puzzle out Anglo-Saxon/Old English. I honestly don't have any sort of fluency in it but I am learning to recognize origins and the etymological insight is rewarding. I do this by copying out from original Weird Stuff to English into a journal - I'll start copying the contemporary English first and then copy the untranslated work. This also gives me neat little journals of hand-scribed work I can call my own. Like I said, I have no real fluency but once I learned to recognize the origins and their descendants, English became a very different language for me. The Anglish Moot is an interesting project. They are striving towards a working model of English without loanwords and at some point, I intend to write a few poems in this manner. They also appear to be doing this without any of the kookiness associated with other previous "English reform" movements, so that's also a plus.

 

There are plenty of things about English that I enjoy studying but I'd also like to study Norwegian and a few others. I'm horrible at teaching myself a new language and there aren't any local Sons of Norway chapters I can drive to when they offer classes.

[Arez Al'Loke]

Jag är kungen av Sverige. Vadå? Det är ju sant!

 

I speak Swedish ("100"%) , English ("100"%), Persian ("15"%) and Bosnian ("10"%)

 

Can speak enough to survive =P

[Raena]

Я немного говорю по-русски. I also am considering learning either Swedish, Finnish, or Japanese.

 

Jag röstar på svenska. Jag kan hjälpa dig.

 

(I vote for Swedish. I'll help you. )

 

<---- Swedish (first language), English, and Spanish... kind of.

[Arez Al'Loke]

Ohhhhhh, another sweeeed =P!

 

I vote for Swedish aswell, because

[Wildfire Sedai]

I only speak english....and a teeny-tiny bit of russian...however i plan on learning both russian and spanish sometime in the future..

[Wayward_fool]

Saya boleh cakap bahasa Melayu. Tetapi Bahasa Inglish adalah bahasa biasa aku.

(I can speak Malay. But English is my normal language)

 

Wo ye hui jiang huayu. Ying wei ta shi wo de di er yu yan. Gen peng you ping shi shi shuo hua yu de. Dui bu qi. Wo de dian nao bu neng da hua wen zi.

(I can also speak Mandarin. Because it is my second language. I usually speak it with friends. Sorry, but my computer can't type Mandarin characters, which I doubt yours can read anyway.)

[Ledinna Sedai]

Jag är kungen av Sverige. Vadå? Det är ju sant!

 

 

... Hoppas att du ljuger :P

 

Panda, I think it does make it easier to know German before starting to study Finnish. I dunno about the school system. But they really can give a bunch of homework >.>

[michellem]

Norwegian school systems are also quite high up on the list there *nods* But German is generally a good gateway into any Nordic language.

 

I wish this forum wasn't PG-13 right now, then we could teach each other the fun words *snickers*

 

Btw, what is WoT called in your languages? In Norwegian it is Tidshjulet.

[Raena]

In Swedish it's Sagan om Drakens återkomst... ("The Saga of the Return of the Dragon"). In Sweden, most fantasy series get called something with "saga", for example A Song of Ice and Fire = Sagan om is och eld = The Saga of Ice and Fire; The Lord of the Rings = Sagan om ringen = The saga of the ring... etc etc.

[MashiraSedai]

English was my first language, but Urdu is my native language.

I also know a bit of Gujarati and Konkani.

[cosmicpanda]

Jag är kungen av Sverige. Vadå? Det är ju sant!

 

 

... Hoppas att du ljuger :P

 

Panda, I think it does make it easier to know German before starting to study Finnish. I dunno about the school system. But they really can give a bunch of homework >.>

 

I think the cases in German are awesome, though the Germans do over-complicate it a bit when it comes to declension. So, since Finnish has more cases, does that mean it is exponentially more awesome?

[Razen]

Cases are fun once you get used to them. Russian's only got six of them...

[michellem]

Sorry but what are cases?

[Leala Sedai]

Along with English I speak Spanish. :) I'd love the opportunity to use it with anyone, I don't want to lose it. (Working outside of my field of study)

[Razen]

Sorry but what are cases?

 

Basically, cases are a series of endings that you attach to nouns and adjectives to convey a given meaning. In Russian, I can use the sentence Я читаю книгу тебе. It means I read the book to you. It involves three different cases. Я (I) is the nominative case (the subject of the sentence). читаю is the first person conjugation of the verb читать (to read). книгу (Accusative case of книга, book) takes the accusative case, which is the direct object of the verb (the thing that receives the action of the verb). тебе (Dative case of ты, you (informal)) is in the Dative case, which involves the indirect object of the sentence. It means for whom, or to whom the action was performed.

 

I'm not a linguist, but I think an example is usually easier to explain than just saying the concepts. Basically, you use different endings to convey meanings of a sentence. Other people could probably explain it better than I could.

 

Along with English I speak Spanish. :) I'd love the opportunity to use it with anyone, I don't want to lose it. (Working outside of my field of study)

 

I took Spanish classes in high school. I don't remember much, but I would love to study it again. That would probably make four languages I'd be able to passably speak if I improved my Spanish enough.

[Rekinu Alasayaar]

I love to use Spanish every chance I get! (if you want to add me on msn, i can chat with you there, and not clog up a thread on DM...) PM me if interested... lol

 

I would love to learn German or Russian someday!

[michellem]

Thanks Razen, I understood that actually :)

[cosmicpanda]

Yeah, noun cases show you what the noun is doing in the sentence. In German there are only four - the nominative (subject of a sentence), accusative (direct object), dative (indirect object), and genitive (posessive). English uses case too, but indicates it by means of prepositions: I, me, to me, of mine, etc.

 

Wikipedia says that Finnish has 15 noun cases. *licks lips*

 

Razen, that alphabet is weird to my eyes. It's got some characters that are the same as this alphabet, but... O_o It almost reminds me of old German writing, which is almost indecipherable.

[kukasö]

Мой родной язык - русский. Я смотрю, он один из самых популярных тут

Почему вы его учите для меня загадка.

А еще я чуть-чуть говорю на немецком.

 

That means: My native language is Russian. I can see it's one of the most popular languages here.

But why you learn it I don't understand. And I speak German a little.

 

Wot in Russian - Колесо Времени. Nothing new invented here

[cosmicpanda]

If one was going to Russia, Russian would be a useful language! The act of learning languages can also be fun in and of itself.

[Razen]

Agreed. I felt proud of myself that I didn't need to look at the translation to know what you said, Kuka!

 

For my future career, Russian will definitely help me. I want to go into international relations and specialize in the former Soviet bloc. But I want to be able to speak a third language fluently, I'm leaning towards taking Swedish, but I'm also looking at Finnish or Japanese.

[Ledinna Sedai]

 

Wikipedia says that Finnish has 15 noun cases. *licks lips*

 

 

Yup, but three of those are rarely used in real life, except for books, of course. And Hungarian has about 30 of them XD That would be interesting...

 

And WoT in Finnish is just a direct translation - Ajan pyörä

[kukasö]

Are all of you learning Russian are going here? Yes?Yes?! *bouncing*

 

Razen, I need to say something more difficult

[Wildfire Sedai]

I travelled to the at the time "Soviet Union" when I was 17. I visited Moscow, Kiev (which is in Ukraine. And I was in Kiev when the Ukraine declared independence from said Soviet Union.), Rostov-on-Don, Sochi, and St. Petersburg/Leningrad (whichever you prefer). I saw Lenin's tomb, the catacombs, red square and other sites in Moscow. I can't read the language but I can speak the "polite phrases" which one needs to learn to converse in a nice way to the Russians. I don't know how to spell most of them even in english though so I won't even bother to try.

[Dwynwen]

I speak whatever French I have managed to remember from when I studied it a little over a decade ago.