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Serpent’s log
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Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log

119 messages over 15 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 10 ... 14 15 Next >>

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 73 of 119

01 March 2008 at 3:34pm | IP Logged

Thanks, Volte! :)

The break is going nicely, I finished reading the first book of The Fellowship of the Ring today :)

A couple of days ago I registered at cantr.net. I want my first character (that will speak Esperanto) to have an Elvish name, so I just checked out some. For some reason I liked Quenya way more than Sindarin, and when I googled specifically Quenya names I found the reason: it has a lot in common with Finnish! I knew Tolkien had loved it but had no idea which of his languages was based on it.

But it was even more strange to find this:

Quote:

Names ending in "u" are more commonly masculine, and those ending in "i" are more commonly feminine.

I immediately remembered my post in this thread:

Serpent wrote:

sumabeast wrote:

why is there not a single language that has all the best or preferred grammatical features of other languages all rolled up into one?

If you could design a con-lang like that what would it have?

mine:
-gender that can be understood from the endings, which are however not the boring a for female and o/er/us for male.... smth like: i for female, u for male
(...)

Quenya does have the "boring" o for male names though, while in my conlang the only endings for nouns would be i and u. And looks like common nouns in Quenya don't have a gender :( Still a nice coincidence!

Edited by Serpent on 01 March 2008 at 3:47pm
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 74 of 119

01 March 2008 at 7:00pm | IP Logged

The game was a disappointment. A friend once invited me to play a forum-based RPG, I refused because it seemed a waste of time to play one in your native language. I followed the game for a while though and I liked it a lot. Don't know why I thought Cantr is also like that, but it absolutely isn't. I'd rather learn some Quenya or Toki Pona than collect food for my characters.

If anyone knows a Play-By-Post game in Esperanto, please do tell me.
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Sprachprofi
Nonaglot
Senior Member
Germany
learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6469 days ago
2608 posts - 4866 votes

Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese

Message 75 of 119

04 March 2008 at 11:09am | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

I am sorry to hear that. I like Cantr a lot, because societies in the Cantr world will have their own ideas and traditions and history develops independantly, yet it doesn't allow one player to influence things beyond the reasonable, as could happen in forum post RPGs. That is because the physical world (such as having to have food to eat, having to make steel before you can have advanced weapons, etc.) is hard-coded, while the characters' interpretation of it is wide open to speculation, and so are laws. For example, the game doesn't punish stealing or killing characters, it's up to the societies to do so or not, giving a natural incentive towards forming of societies. The creator of Cantr is a student of social science and this was intended more as an experiment than as a game.

Anyway, I must admit that the Esperanto region isn't nearly as interesting as the English one, because it doesn't have as many players and its fairly new. Older players usually like starting out in a new region like that and try to develop it, develop kingdoms and the like, but for newbies I would definitely recommend the older islands, that have already seen a lot of history. Read the forum or the webzine for some genuine in-game lore such as the infamous Lad (empire), Queen Purple Turtoise, the MacGregors, the Stone Knights, the Barons, Treefeather, the wars for K-island, and so on.

All language groups are in the same world, just on different islands or regions. This also leads to some interesting "first contact" situations; I just love roleplaying those. Btw your character must not speak any language besides the one you chose, at least until he "learns" another from a foreign character or whatever materials you can find.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 76 of 119

04 March 2008 at 3:15pm | IP Logged

Actually I just don't really like computer games, except the ones which are PC "versions" of paper games, e.g. battleship.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 77 of 119

04 March 2008 at 6:58pm | IP Logged

Taking my words back: I really love this game :D
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 78 of 119

06 April 2008 at 12:16pm | IP Logged

Well, de facto I returned quite a while ago, but now I'm officially back :)

Today, I've had epiphany moments with two languages: I spoke Portuguese in a dream for the first time and I took the basic exam in Esperanto (at lernu.net) and passed it (it took me just 15 minutes instead of the 50 that are allowed:))) I do think this means I'm at intermediate level now.
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 79 of 119

26 April 2008 at 1:09pm | IP Logged

I accidentally took the second level's exam at lernu yesterday - I was just going to check the requirements. Just as I expected I didn't pass - but it feels very nice that I understand all the mistakes I made.
Oh, and I was offered a free issue of an Esperanto newspaper for passing the basic exam. Like every Russian, I love халява, so of course I accepted the offer and chose Kontakto, because it's more youth-oriented. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I could understand - not less than 90%, in some articles almost 100%. Seems that a newspaper is just what I need before moving on to "Lundo ekas sabate" by brothers Strugackie, which is waiting patiently on my shelf :-) It will have to wait for a while though, because right now I'm focusing on Portuguese. I haven't even mentioned I quit the classes in the beginning of April. I like the language a lot, although I can't find absolutely any logic in many of the irregular verbs. There's nothing wrong with sumus becoming somos, but how on earth could habeo turn into hei or audio into ouço??? Well, actually I've decided not to check anything about how Latin developed into the Romance languages, it's much more fun to discover these things on your own...but when it stops being fun I'll definitely read something on it :-)
My favourite Portuguese band Moonspell is coming to Russia at the end of May, and I really hope I'll be able to ask for autograph and maybe a photo in Portuguese by then :)))
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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6596 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

Message 80 of 119

01 May 2008 at 2:53pm | IP Logged

I did the exercises on Esperanto participle at lernu today. I decided to check how many errors I'd make in the highest level's exercise and I made none :) But there were 4 of them (out of 10) in the second level exercise :( I don't even understand these ones:

Elironte li prenis sian valizon.
Kaptote, li forkuris.

:( why not elirante and kaptite?

I've recently tried L-R in Portuguese and this time it was great. I guess the problem with my first attempt was that I was so afraid of reinforcing incorrect pronunciation that I forced myself not to repeat anything aloud or to myself, and maybe it just blocked my mind from learning :/ I'm pretty sure the same would have happened with any other method.
I think I would benefit greatly from L-R in Esperanto at this point, too bad there are so few materials :(

And just a small note to remind myself that it's better not to add too many cards to Mnemosyne at once - I added about 200 last week. Or at least I shouldn't have missed almost all the repetitions this week. did 180 of them today and there were 24 words that I had to grade 0 or 1. I even had to leave 20 of the "not memorized" ones for the next session, which I normally don't do.

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