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You know you’re a language nerd when... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4871 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 2649 of 3737 12 October 2012 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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... despite your fervent agnosticism you wish you were a Mormon missionary, just to profit from their excellent training in rarely studied languages :D
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jellitto Diglot Newbie Finland Joined 4903 days ago 17 posts - 32 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: German, Swedish, Japanese | Message 2650 of 3737 12 October 2012 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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... you are annoyed because even though you sat in the bus right behind to natives speaking your target language but you can´t hear them clearly because the bus and other people are so noisy.
7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5174 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 2651 of 3737 12 October 2012 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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When, in spite of the fact that you are no great fan of Rosetta Stone, you spend an hour doing the samples
on the Rosetta Stone website just because you're bored and want to hear another language. When you do the Swedish sample and start analyzing Swedish grammar based on the scanty knowledge of Norwegian grammar that you picked up a few years ago. When you convince your 8-year-old sister to do the Swedish sample with you, and now, three weeks later, she is still waltzing around the house saying "Jag äter fisk" and "Han dricker vatten." When you wonder if there is some strange significance in the fact that in English many of our expressions of delight once meant things like "scary" and "strange" (i.e., awesome, terrific, fantastic, wonderful). 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5970 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 2652 of 3737 13 October 2012 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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When you go to the hospital and have your Language Nerd diagnosis confirmed. This is best done by a native speaker, and thank goodness, it doesn’t have to happen in a hospital, but this time it did
I am OK, but my Mom had a serious health crisis, so we’ve had a few weeks of doctor visits and pretty terrifying procedures, tests, medicines, and surgeries. You can always count on languages to help you out a little, though, when you are worried, and it’s good to focus on something else. I can’t say I learned anything new lately, but I did a lot of review, and it was very good for my verbal health. So, when I was waiting for my Mom’s preadmission tests to finish, I settled myself in the waiting area with a book, only to quickly realize that I’d brought the wrong language with me. Most of the other family members were Spanish speakers, and I realized that if read a Spanish book, they would know that I could eavesdrop on them, which is a very rude thing to do, but that’s exactly what I was doing. But after a while I wanted to talk, too, and the lady I was sitting next to was chatting with her son and daughter and they were making jokes and they all seemed very friendly. So I eventually said hello and asked if we could speak in Spanish a little. She was very happy to do so and we had an excellent conversation, which happened very naturally. We both switched back and forth from Spanish to English, whichever language the thoughts came in. It seems that I am not completely inscrutable, though, because after we talked a while, she told me she knew I understood her even before we spoke. I was a bit embarrassed then, but she only laughed and remarked that it was very nice for two people from different countries (she was from Mexico) to meet by chance and communicate in each other’s native language. I could not agree more! She gave me some good feedback on my conversational ability, too. When my Mom returned from her tests I was having a very good time telling the lady about my one, only, and totally gut-smashing encounter with tequila, a truly awful, awful experience, but, in (only!) in retrospect, very amusing to describe. I was glad that Mom didn’t understand what she heard of the exchange - although she knows very well what happened because it was her fault – she made me drink the tequila – long story, and not for an internet audience . . . Anyway, it was so much fun I wanted to keep on going in Spanish, but Mom was in enough pain and certainly didn’t need that. Apparently for me, though, this language nerdery will remain a chronic, lifelong condition. I’m fine with that. I wouldn’t have thought I’d be able to manage a decent conversation under the circumstances, even in English, but apparently my mind has a backup language memory system that activated at just the right time to bring a few big smiles to what was actually a very scary time. It’s just too easy to get too engrossed in programs and techniques and to forget what foreign language learning is really for: recounting humiliating mistakes of your past to total strangers. I’d like to know why second-language startup totally fails at other times, but that’s another topic. Just for the record, the nice lady brought up the subject of tequila, not me! I don’t automatically think about the drink when someone mentions her country. I try to never, ever remember that this beverage exists anywhere on earth. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 2653 of 3737 14 October 2012 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||
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We definitely need some real life htlal meetings (not only) for things like the tequila
story :-D 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5970 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 2654 of 3737 14 October 2012 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, we should try to organize a few of these, even if it's difficult and takes a long time, wih plenty of time for travel arrangements and all that logistical stuff. We could learn a lot from watching each other, and I'm pretty sure that the events would create a few new and exciting tequila stories, or other, equivalent beverage adventures, which I will very politely decline, sorry, once is enough! I'm a thinker, not a drinker, although I have heard that the two activities can complement each other surprisingly well. Maybe we could set up local HTLAL Language Nerd chapters around the world via Meetup? And use YouTube to share any get-togethers, either deeply intellectual discussions or weird and wacky tales of what we have done for love of lsanguages. I know that a lot of us already have a YouTube and/or Skype presence, but this might be more of a way to see what happens when a few of us are in the same place interacting with each other in our various languages - or, those parts of the interactions that are appropriate to be seen and heard publicly! I believe that very few of us would be unbearably boorish, however, and it's always interesting to meet people you have only known only online, even if the meeting, for many, must remain online. The Language Nerd meme seems to be its own brand now, of sorts, and it has some potential to continue to live outside/beyond his particular site. We didn't write 333 pages of it for nothing, did we? :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4831 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 2655 of 3737 17 October 2012 at 12:25am | IP Logged | ||
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You've finished your language class ... sometimes they go great, but this one was only so-so...you weren't firing on all cylinders for some reason...
... ... anyway, you catch the first bus home, and it's always a multilingual experience, usually of languages you have no clue about, but tonight, it seems to be all Italians.. ...and funnily enough, so is the 2nd bus, and Italians, bless them, can not usually be found guilty of talking too quietly, especially en masse... :-) But your Italian is rusty, and all you can reliably catch is ... "va bene" ... Ah well, va bene. You don't get off at the usual stop, but carry on into town, and call in at one of the few remaining real pubs left and have a well-earned?? drink. They have a wide screen showing Sky News...the sound is down, and anyway they have music blaring (some good songs actually, ones that you recognise, i.e. v.old) so you couldn't have heard the TV sound, but then you notice some text appearing, and... Mama Mia, it's Italian again... ...they are covering the trial (I think) of the captain of the Costa Concordia and we are seeing part of the transcript of the radio messages, and you learn a little technical/nautical Italian. Should come in useful next time you want to ...er, well, interesting, anyway :-) Edited by montmorency on 17 October 2012 at 12:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4932 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 2656 of 3737 18 October 2012 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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When in your class in college about samurai (which, incidentally, makes you want to learn
Japanese), you're watching a movie in Japanese with English subtitles, but you keep thinking you hear words in your totally unrelated TL (Italian), and then find yourself listening to the Japanese, reading the English, and then trying to translate into your TL as you go. Failing miserably has nothing to do with it, right? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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