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Beware of "secret" languages ;-) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6942 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 57 of 173 20 September 2009 at 8:06am | IP Logged | |||||
Who are you going to speak it with? There is no way you would get your friends, family, girlfriend, etc, together to study such an insignificant language to a useful degree. If you want to take this path, then the most logical choice would be to invent a language that only you and whoever you want to communicate with can understand, but again, almost nobody would bother going to these lengths.
Uh-huh, and what's the point of learning a language with a few hundred or (at most) thousand speakers? There's little enough return on your investment as it is even learning an important world language, to say nothing of the complete dearth of learning materials, and that there are so few speakers that you will have nobody to speak your "secret language" with anyway. Secret languages must be significant enough that you have someone to speak with, but not so significant that too many of the hoi-polloi can understand you. Edited by Walshy on 20 September 2009 at 8:33am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5847 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 58 of 173 20 September 2009 at 10:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Turkish people sitting in the tram or bus talking with each other or talking on their mobile phone may always think to speak a "secret language", but now I am able to understand more and more of what they say...
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Katie Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6718 days ago 495 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian Studies: French, German | Message 59 of 173 21 September 2009 at 6:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've found that I speak a nasty little mix of Hungarian & English at times. This is something that has 'formed' over time between my Hungarian friends and I - and neither of us realised it until a couple of months ago.
My friends' little girl was telling me a story about her day in the kindergarten, while the kids I teach were warming up for class. She told her story and I talked with her a little, just as normal. When she left, the kids were staring at me wide-eyed and said "DID YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?!??!". I proceeded to argue with them that the whole conversation was English until my friend (the mother) pointed out that the whole thing had been English & Hungarian mixed together... I hadn't even noticed! Since then, every time one of us does it and the other notices, we laugh at each other... ie "Nem szabad, that's very csunya" "Too hangas vagy! Why?" It's quite funny because I remember about 4 years ago, we used to laugh at my friends' aunt (who lives in Canada) for her mixed Hungarian-English (ie. a kitchen-ben van ... lol) - and now, we're just as bad. As for using Hungarian 'properly' - as an example, a few times I've been in a shop and, so that the sales assistant doesn't understand me, I'll say in Hungarian to my friends "that's too expensive, I saw the same thing at another store for $x less" or something like that. I've been lucky enough though to never have any embarassing moments - but at work, I have to remember to be very careful what I say as there is another Hungarian there who would understand! It's also great to be able to 'pull the kids into line' without embarassing them in front of people. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 60 of 173 22 September 2009 at 3:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I wonder if Esperantists speak Esperanto as a secret language.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 61 of 173 22 September 2009 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
I frequently do, in a pretty wide range of circumstances. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| modestblues Newbie Bahamas Joined 5557 days ago 33 posts - 54 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 62 of 173 25 September 2009 at 5:46am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ideally you'd learn a lot of well known languages and then speak the most obscure one in the setting you find yourself in. ie speak Mandarin in France, speak Russian in the US, speak Arabic in Japan, speak English by yourself in antartica etc.
Again you'll always need someone to speak with who knows the same languages as you and a secret that needs communicating. The only way I see secret languages being viable is if you have syblings whom you were raised speaking some obscure language, or if you have a spouse with an obscure native language which you commit to learning. Edited by modestblues on 26 September 2009 at 3:22am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5904 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 63 of 173 27 September 2009 at 3:59am | IP Logged | |||||
It's something to watch out for though, if you'd do it in Europe there are places where people can get the gist of what you're saying cause of the fact that most rootwords come from romance languages. In South-Korea it's quite effective though, although we did have a bit of an embarrassing situation once my friend and I were talking in the airport... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 64 of 173 27 September 2009 at 10:59am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes; so far, I've mainly used it in Germanic- and Slavic- language speaking countries. With a little thought, heavy affix use, and the rather non-Romance accent of most speakers, I'm usually not too worried about cognates. The one time I think enough was understood by a third party to be awkward was because of a German cognate - so the problem does happen, but it's fairly minor. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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