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Studies all languages and scripts | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Members profiles |  | |
| Ganzpret Newbie United States Joined 4318 days ago 7 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Egyptian | Message 1 of 5 07 June 2014 at 8:04am | IP Logged |
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Hi, everybody. I don't use the internet much, so please cut me some slack. I don't get online that often and probably won't revisit this thread until months from now.
I've been on this site maybe a year or so but haven't posted much. I wanted to post a member intro just to share what I do. Since about 2002, I've been studying every language and writing system for enrichment and fun. ( To clarify, I only read all the Germanic and Romance languages at an advanced or intermediate level, especially German, French, and Latin. Everything else I just have Linguistics-type knowledge about and working skills in matching translations to texts in the original script.) I'm apparently very rare in this and most people I've told about it think I'm crazy, so I don't tell people about it much anymore. I have found the local Mensa chapter to be really supportive, though I've been too busy to attend more than my first meeting. But I do it because it's fun and because I think I contribute something to my local community and the world at large. One of the more specific reasons I do it is because I want to understand the diversity of worldviews which have existed and exist. I also study all languages just to keep at it, otherwise I'd get bored. I learn some things, review things I've learned before, and gradually accumulate knowledge and skills. Since I started, I switch languages every few days. I spend a lot of time on the hieroglyphic writing systems because they're so complicated and neglected. I don't have a website yet. I have to go. I have a BA in Linguistics from a major university, though there are certain things about Academia which don't appeal to me enough for me to become an Academic. Edited by Ganzpret on 07 June 2014 at 8:09am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5597 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes  | Message 2 of 5 07 June 2014 at 10:00am | IP Logged |
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That is the spirit!
Ethnologue gives a total of 7106 languages. If you want to practice your working skill weekly (and sleep six hours daily), you can dedicate each of them 64 seconds. If your obviously interested in ancient languages too, well, you can practice them in your sleep. So you will not get bored ;-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4442 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 3 of 5 07 June 2014 at 6:17pm | IP Logged |
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Right now the polyglot Moses McCormick from the US seems to be the one with the most number of
languages up his sleeves. In total he mastered over 30 languages even when some of them are at the intermediate level. Every continent except Australia and Antarctica you will find some type of script / alphabet / writing system in use. In N. Africa you have the Ethiopian alphabet & Arabic widely in use. You go to E. Asia you have a dozen writing systems including Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Cambodian, etc. In S. Asia you have a number of scripts related to Sanskrit. In the Middle-East you have Arabic, Persian & Hebrew. In E. Europe you have the Greek & Russian alphabets. You may have to study languages for the next 10 years to become familiar with many of the writing systems. Edited by shk00design on 07 June 2014 at 6:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ganzpret Newbie United States Joined 4318 days ago 7 posts - 10 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Egyptian | Message 4 of 5 18 June 2014 at 2:39am | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the kind responses!
I personally think I've accomplished more than Moses McCormick because I can work with all languages, though certainly not read them all. I could be a polyglot and be able to speak a ton of languages up to 1,000 words or something, but I choose not to because I think what I do is cooler. Ethnologue lists 7,106 languages but that's only living languages, most of which have small written, recorded or in-speech corpora. One of my goals is access to all human knowledge. One of the things I do in order to be able to work with all languages is study languages in families. So of the ones that are in Ethnologue, there's about 25 distinct families in my mind where the words may be quite different from eachother, but the syntax and morphology is almost the same. Like Indo-European languages. Not much variety between them. All the Asian languages likewise do tons of similar things, with sub-groups. Amerind languages, they all feature the same concepts but with some regional variations. It mostly just ends up being time-consuming. But it's worth it. And I do tons of other stuff, too. C'est la vie. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5098 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 5 of 5 29 June 2014 at 12:03am | IP Logged |
Would you perhaps be able to identify this language?
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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