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You know you’re a language nerd when... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 505 of 3737 02 April 2010 at 3:59am | IP Logged |
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...when you have just read through all 64 pages of this thread and agreed with the vast majority of the previous posts.
...when you have memorized what languages countless HTLAL members speak and study and have read the the "details" section of their profile many times for fun. ...when you forgot a word in English when writing a timed essay for AP Geography, so you just substituted the French equivalent and hoped that the teacher would know what you meant. ...when people at school greet you with "Hi Philip, what language are you studying today?" ...when reading on this page is your break from studying your target language, which is itself a break from whatever you're supposed to be doing. ...when you correct your native French teacher's French on a regular basis and help her remember words. ...when you can give your friend a detailed overview off the top of your head of many different resources for learning Chinese even though you've never used any of them yourself and you don't even study the language. ...when you're referred to as "the local language expert" by your teachers (even though you never told them you studied foreign languages) and are asked to give translations to and from various languages. ...when you wonder why your backpack is so heavy even though you have no homework, and then realize it's because you brought all those language books to school. ...when your mother begs you not to get up so early in the morning so that you can study languages before going to school. ...when you get mad at one of your friends for not telling you sooner that her native language is actually Hmong. ...when your first thought when you hear you're going to Tanzania on vacation is "I only have four and a half months to learn Swahili!" 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5557 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 507 of 3737 02 April 2010 at 9:34pm | IP Logged |
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When you're in an Italian restaurant in Germany dining with friends, when all of a sudden a big group walk in and sit down on a nearby table speaking a language you know is neither German nor Italian.
You become terribly curious, you lean towards their table like a sunflower to the sun, you strain really hard to listen, cupping your ears indiscreetly like little spy satellite dishes trying to pick up any strands of their secret conversation, but for all your best efforts, they're all a bit shy and haven't indulged in any pre-dinner aperitifs yet, and so you still can't fathom what on earth they're saying. From this point on whatever your friends are saying really begins to fade out, you focus on facial features and gestures in the group, or look for clues in their clothing labels perhaps, you even hope and pray for possible language difficulties with the waitress, and so it takes every ounce of self-control NOT to go over, tap one of them on the shoulder, and ask if they could all speak up a bit louder so you can try to guess what language they're speaking. You realise much to your horror, you're restaurant language-spying once again... Edited by Teango on 02 April 2010 at 10:39pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| WingSuet Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5352 days ago 169 posts - 211 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German Studies: Cantonese | Message 508 of 3737 03 April 2010 at 12:01am | IP Logged |
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- When you speak in another language to someone and don't even notice it until you stop to ask them why they are looking at you like that.
- When you move to another country because you want to learn the language and not the other way around. - You use words from other languages because they don't exist in your own or are much better than the equivalent. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5592 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 509 of 3737 03 April 2010 at 1:46am | IP Logged |
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When, after adding French as your second target language,(to the Spanish you have been studying) you get excited because one movie channel is running several French films. You get even more excited after reading the descriptions and find that there is one that actually sounds interesting to you, because otherwise you would probably have forced yourself to watch a film whose only appeal was that in was in French.But, no, this sounds like a great film. Then as you watch,understanding maybe one or two words here and there,suddenly you hear a full sentence that you actually know because it is a "saying", or proverb, that you studied in the fifth lesson of Assimil! You pause the film, back it up, and repeat it several times, reciting it along with the actor.
You think it can't get much better than that until one character suddenly,and briefly, starts speaking Spanish and you are able to understand everything she says. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5423 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 510 of 3737 03 April 2010 at 5:22am | IP Logged |
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When you go to the Biltmore house, you are most amazed not at the 43 bathrooms, the kajillions other rooms, the amount of wealth that it must have taken to build that mansion (well, somewhat amazed at that), but most at the library (2 stories!) of George Vanderbilt and the fact that he had books in 8 languages and could understand them.
Also, a lot of visitors were speaking foreign languages. Spanish, some Slavic language, what I think was a Scandinavian language, and some other one I have no clue what it was. It was awesome. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6004 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 511 of 3737 04 April 2010 at 8:24pm | IP Logged |
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When you read the description of sounds in the beginning of language learning books, comparing the sounds to English words and such, not to learn how to pronounce the sounds but to critique the author's job of explaining the sounds of that language, which you already know and have known since years before studying that language because you read the Wikipedia article on its phonology and listened to it online.
When you have to bring a friend with you to the bookstore to keep you from spending all your money on books on or about languages you aren't even studying (yet). When your drunkenly slurred speech correctly and confusingly (to those around you) uses grammatical constructions from your target language. When you get "Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic" for Easter and the first three things you have to say about it are: 1. "How appropriate for me." 2. "Except kekoukele (the Chinese transliteration for Coca Cola) doesn't mean to bite the wax tadpole." 3. "She spelled 'zhe' wrong on the third page... Where's a pen?" 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5554 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 512 of 3737 07 April 2010 at 4:18am | IP Logged |
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When you get this directed to you in a chatroom:
"You write too well not to be a Finnish native." ...and it totally makes your night, if not your whole week :DD And I figured I might as well cut and paste which of my posts this guy was responding to just for the heck of it: "no mie oon opiskellu suomee noin kaks tai kolme vuotta ja oon asunu suomessa tän vuoen uuenvuoenpäivään saakka. ikävä kyllä, en viel kykene puhummaa kieltä (KUTEN TE JO VARMASTI NÄÄTTE...). mie osaan lukee ja kuunnella, mut epäröin puhuessani ja puhun niin hiton hitahasti. kaipaan vitusti suomalaist poikaystävää." Edited by kyssäkaali on 07 April 2010 at 4:20am 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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