Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4489 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin
| Message 9 of 15 16 March 2013 at 5:19am | IP Logged |
Travel and do business in China without anyone thinking I'm a foreigner. Speaking, understanding, reading,
writing fluently. My father is ethnicly Chinese so this could happen.
Chat with particpants from different countries in their native lnguage using at least six major languages
during international conventions.
Go to Chinatown in Manila and Bohol island and speak Fookien and Bisaya respectively with the locals
without anyone thinking I learned the languages later in life. These are the places my parents spent their
childhood in.
4 persons have voted this message useful
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Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4370 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans
| Message 10 of 15 18 March 2013 at 8:38pm | IP Logged |
Two big ones for me:
1) Read Freud in German and actually be able to understand it (not just reading words I know without really comprehending everything).
2) Read "The Brothers Karamazov" in Russian. I first read it when I was 16 and I would appreciate it so much more now.
2 persons have voted this message useful
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palfrey Senior Member Canada Joined 5274 days ago 81 posts - 180 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, French
| Message 11 of 15 19 March 2013 at 3:00am | IP Logged |
If we're allowed to fantasize, I'd like to stumble upon a false wall in some castle or church in Britain, that had long concealed a hoard of of previously unknown or lost Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Enough, in fact, to double the amount of surviving Anglo-Saxon literature that we possess. (This would not take much, apparently. I read somewhere that all of the surviving Anglo-Saxon literature would probably fill up a large weekend edition of a big-city newspaper.)
Other languages would also be good, of course. E.g. lost Celtic writings, or perhaps some of the lost books of Livy, Tacitus, and other ancient authors -- books that we know existed, but are now gone. Or more of the old gnostic gospels. And so on.
I suppose none of this would require much linguistic ability on my part, beyond being able to recognize the value of what I had found.
And to go off the language track for a moment, I'd also be very happy to accidently discover a prehistoric site such as the Caves of Lascaux.
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ilcommunication Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6693 days ago 115 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin
| Message 12 of 15 20 March 2013 at 5:49pm | IP Logged |
Play a role in a popular Latin American telenovela.
Spit a verse in a non-English rap song.
Help negotiate an historic peace treaty between two non-English-speaking parties
(ideally including a dramatic speech in both languages at a decisive moment that brings
both sides to tearful embrace, but I'm not picky).
Contribute to a renaissance in a hitherto-marginalized language (especially an
Amerindian language).
Oh, and this is copying Alexander von Humboldt, but learning part of a language from a
parrot who happened to be the language's sole surviving speaker would be pretty cool,
too.
Well, a guy can dream, right?
5 persons have voted this message useful
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expatmaddy Diglot Newbie Korea, South Joined 4329 days ago 19 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin
| Message 13 of 15 26 March 2013 at 7:03am | IP Logged |
I would love to have an immense library of classics and first editions that I can read in
their native languages. I would house it in it's own property and invite language
scholars from all over the world to read and learn together.
:)
3 persons have voted this message useful
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Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German
| Message 14 of 15 26 March 2013 at 9:12am | IP Logged |
For me it's: learn Ancient Greek and Ancient Hebrew and translate the Bible into "new" languages.
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renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew
| Message 15 of 15 01 April 2013 at 9:38pm | IP Logged |
One more for my list.
As I have already declared on my languages profile
Vorrei iniziare una corrispondenza con Cesare Borgia, e imparare tutti i segreti della sua storia.
Wouldn't it be a dream? Magically corresponding with all the people that have inspired us to learn a language, in those very languages? (Cesare Borgia NOT being one of them, but still... what interesting letters those would be). I wouldn't mind Machiavelli though.
Wouldn't that make a great journal exercise? Instead of just writing, actually write to a historical person.
Let's see...
For English, I'd write to Christopher Marlowe and gossip maliciously about the rest of the elizabethan gang.
For German, it would be Albrecht Dürer. All about art of course.
For french, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire.
For russian, Pushkin. In verse.
For Italian, I can't choose. I'll ask Cesare.
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