Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 2129 of 3737 06 February 2012 at 8:47pm | IP Logged |
WentworthsGal wrote:
FuroraCeltica wrote:
when you deliberately hold your learning books so people on public transport can see you
using them |
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This is a perfect way to find native speakers or others studying that language! They're bound to ask you about the book you're studying! :o) I've often thought about wearing a t-shirt asking "talar du svenska?" (do you speak Swedish) or something just to try and find someone who does, lol :o) |
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My problem is that I'm most likely to be reading something that's in a language that no other passenger knows. The most reaction that I've ever got so far was when a black passenger was looking intently at the cover of my copy of Davvin 2 which I was reading. I noticed this and I then explained to her that it was a Finnish textbook for Lappish and she replied that she thought it was some kind of Native American language because of the vaguely "native" design on the book's cover. It was a chance meeting of people into less commonly used languages as it turned out the she was a native speaker of Zulu (or was it Swahili?).
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Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 2130 of 3737 07 February 2012 at 6:58am | IP Logged |
WentworthsGal wrote:
I've often thought about wearing a t-shirt asking "talar du svenska?" (do you speak Swedish) or something just to try and find someone who does, lol :o) |
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You know you're a language nerd when you, in preparation for your trip to Hong Kong, order a shirt saying "唔該同我講粵語" (please speak Cantonese to me) in order to avoid the English assumption.
Now that you mention that, maybe I could get some mileage out of it in Sweden, too, on the off chance I come across a native literate speaker of Cantonese.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 2131 of 3737 07 February 2012 at 10:06am | IP Logged |
When it makes you excited to notice that someone's language list looks different.
(@Ari, did you do some switching between studying actively/on and off/not studying? I think your languages are displayed in a different order now :P)
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Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 2132 of 3737 07 February 2012 at 12:47pm | IP Logged |
Serpent wrote:
When it makes you excited to notice that someone's language list looks different.
(@Ari, did you do some switching between studying actively/on and off/not studying? I think your languages are displayed in a different order now :P) |
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I gave up on Spanish. I'm now studying Literary Sinitic ("Classical Chinese"), but I can't get that on my list since it's not availible as a choice. :(
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 2133 of 3737 07 February 2012 at 7:19pm | IP Logged |
So you deleted your whole Spanish profile? Cruel :P
hopefully administrator can add it for you then...
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mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5922 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish
| Message 2134 of 3737 07 February 2012 at 11:15pm | IP Logged |
It's been a while since I posted in this thread so my latest contributions are I know I am a language nerd when:
1. I spend 10 minutes on a Sunday afternoon arguing with a friend about whether Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects of one unified Chinese language or whether they are different languages that happen to be spoken in China and to make my point that I believe Cantonese is a different language I cited Italian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, and Venetian as examples and gave Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian as a counterexample.
2. I spend this whole morning listening to either spoken Finnish or Thai for about 90 minutes, then spend an hour learning new Afrikaans vocabulary or reviewing grammar points I thought I had forgotten and worry that I am somehow getting lazy in my language learning.
3. I will need new eyeglasses soon but if I want to get a good start on learning Thai I should buy some books to teach myself Thai. I cannot afford both in the near future and even though I know I should get new eyeglasses first I really have to remind myself that books about learning Thai will be worthless if I cannot read them. This was actually a semi-serious dilemma the last time I visited a bookstore.
Edited by mick33 on 08 February 2012 at 10:34am
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SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6657 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian
| Message 2135 of 3737 08 February 2012 at 2:41am | IP Logged |
You know you're a language nerd when you see someone wearing a shirt like Ari's, and even though you don't speak any Asian languages you go up to him and ask him where he got the wonderful shirt.
Ari wrote:
WentworthsGal wrote:
I've often thought about wearing a t-shirt asking "talar du svenska?" (do you speak Swedish) or something just to try and find someone who does, lol :o) |
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You know you're a language nerd when you, in preparation for your trip to Hong Kong, order a shirt saying "唔該同我講粵語" (please speak Cantonese to me) in order to avoid the English assumption.
Now that you mention that, maybe I could get some mileage out of it in Sweden, too, on the off chance I come across a native literate speaker of Cantonese. |
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1 person has voted this message useful
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 2136 of 3737 08 February 2012 at 9:43am | IP Logged |
When you inspire your cat to learn a foreign language. I swear it sounded like a dog today!
(not really MY cat, though... my grandma's)
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