limey75 Senior Member United Kingdom germanic.eu/ Joined 4405 days ago 119 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Norwegian, Old English
| Message 1 of 11 06 December 2012 at 8:29pm | IP Logged |
The Nordic languages have a delightful term for the phenomenon of someone being a language-freak (whether it is about their own language or other languages).
Somehow English "language nerd" just doesn't sound as good.
I'm not sure what such a person is called in German, but I thought that one could convert Fachidiot to Sprachidiot, but unfortunately the latter does not denote someone with near-genius language skills (and lacking life-skills) - quite the opposite ;)
What's a språknørd called in your language?
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7162 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 2 of 11 06 December 2012 at 9:34pm | IP Logged |
See the messages following this post for suggestions in other languages.
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hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5136 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe
| Message 3 of 11 06 December 2012 at 10:09pm | IP Logged |
limey75 wrote:
... but unfortunately the latter does not denote someone with near-
genius language skills (and lacking life-skills) - quite the opposite ;)
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I guess I don't see a connection between nerd and "near-genius", no matter the skills.
R.
==
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4879 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 4 of 11 06 December 2012 at 10:49pm | IP Logged |
I prefer the word "språkentusiast" isntead. In Norwegian, "nerd" is a word used by the
most shallow ones among us.
EDIT: In short, "nerd" is just a word people throw around them. Even computer geeks
prefer "geek" in Norwegian...
Edited by stifa on 07 December 2012 at 4:10pm
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5853 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map
| Message 5 of 11 07 December 2012 at 10:48am | IP Logged |
I would say that in Dutch it's "een talenenthousiast" and in German it's "ein Sprachenfreak", that's what I would call me in these languages and both expressions have a positive meaning. "Ein Fachidiot" is something different: It's somebody who is only occupied with his own subject without having a higher general level of education. The word "Fachidiot" in German has a negative connotation. "Idiot" already is a word which only has negative meanings.
Fasulye
Edited by Fasulye on 09 December 2012 at 9:24am
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tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4713 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 6 of 11 07 December 2012 at 2:28pm | IP Logged |
Weet niet of je het woord talenenthousiast zo kan gebruiken. Taalliefhebber is misschien
beter?
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6915 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 7 of 11 07 December 2012 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
Nerd, geek and freak are all pretty much synonomous to me, but nerd (nörd) seems to be used most in Sweden. I've also heard people use it as a verb, "att nörda" ("focus heavily on a certain topic").
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clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5184 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi
| Message 8 of 11 17 December 2012 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
In a Japanese movie called 'My Darling is Foreigner' the main heroine called her boyfriend from America, who was fervently learning Japanese, a 語学オタク 'gogaku otaku', which translates as 'lnguage learning nerd (otaku)'.
Unfortunately I have no idea about the Polish version.
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