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Help, I’m a language book hoarder | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6918 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 35 02 March 2012 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just took a look at how many books and movies I purchased from Amazon over the last two years and it is scary. I recently donated 15 boxes full of language books to Goodwill/Salvation Army last month. For what it's worth, here are some of my best purchases over the past two years (I don't have the heart to look back any further):
Aliens and Linguistics Linguistics Anthropology One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered and Lost Babel-17 Chinese Language: Fast or Fantasy Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World's Undeciphered Scripts Dictionary of Invented Languages: From Elvish to Klingon Cultural References in Modern French Is that a Fish in Your Ear: Translation and the Meaning of Everything New Book: Languages of the World - An Introduction (pre-order - see I can't stop...) Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel Stuff Parisians Like What Lingua es Esta? (Portuguese edition) El Genio del Idioma (The Language Genius) Passionate Defense of the Spanish Language By Roman Hands: Latin Inscriptions and Graffiti for Students of Latin Parisians: An Adventure History of Paris Introduction to Sicilian Grammar Say What? The Weird and Mysterious Journey of the English Language Native Grammar: How Languages Work Learning Japanese for Real Real Japanese: Learn to Speak Japanese the Way Japanese Kids Do Speak Chinese with Millions Survival Russian Learning Chinese the Easy Way Written Chinese Mastering Japanese Kanji Enciclopedia del espanol en los Estados Unidos Guide to Argentine Spanish Slang Speed Up Your Spanish: Strategies to Avoid Common Errors and the best book ever: Don't Sleep There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle Edited by translator2 on 02 March 2012 at 7:04pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6293 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 2 of 35 02 March 2012 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps we should all be donating our excess language learning materials to Polyglot U if it ever gets going. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iwwersetzerin Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Luxembourg Joined 5668 days ago 259 posts - 513 votes Speaks: French*, Luxembourgish*, GermanC2, EnglishC2, SpanishC2, DutchC1, ItalianC1 Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 35 02 March 2012 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nice list! I can totally relate, my collection is ever growing too, but I could never give my books away. My books are my treasures. I dream of having a big library in my future house one day (current bookshelves are totally overloaded).
I even buy books and dictionaries for languages I don't even intend to study! I bought a Spanish-Maya dictionary in Mexico once, because I just couldn't resist it. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5817 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 4 of 35 02 March 2012 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah I think we need to open a support group for people like us who have more language
books than there are hours in any human lifetime. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| napoleon Tetraglot Senior Member India Joined 5015 days ago 543 posts - 874 votes Speaks: Bengali*, English, Hindi, Urdu Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 35 02 March 2012 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah... Maybe we could set up a 1800 number one could call and say: Hello, my name is... and I am a lingua-holic! Then the person on the other end would try to get us to calm down and talk us out of buying any more of these books. LOL :p 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Christine Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 6625 days ago 41 posts - 47 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Japanese, Modern Hebrew | Message 6 of 35 02 March 2012 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't have that many books on languages in general (the German version of David Crystal's Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language - it was easier to get hold of and cheaper than the original - and 4-5 others I'm not going to list as all of them are German ones that nobody here knows), but I own dozens of books on first names, both German and English ones. I bought most of them about ten years ago when I started writing a sci-fi novel set in the USA in a not-too-distant future and needed names for the characters (my other project is a fantasy novel for which I can just invent names or derive them from the languages I rudimentarily make up for the respective cultures ... yes, I'm also into creating conlangs, but that really doesn't belong here). But apart from that, I'm generally interested in names. I even wanted to set up a web page on names, I already had rented a server some time in 2002, but I never uploaded anything because I lacked the necessary knowledge on database programming. I guess being into names is even more nerdy than being a language enthusiast - at least the knowledge of languages is practically useful, while a love for names clearly isn't. ;)
The main reason why I don't buy many more books on languages is simply a lack of money and especially of space. I'm still a student and I live in a one-room apartment of about 22 square metres, which is seriously crammed - I have to sort my books by size rather than genre. But once I'm out of here, I'll definitely set up shelves for my books (and CDs - I'm also a music enthusiast) that are much nicer to look at. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7220 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 7 of 35 03 March 2012 at 2:19am | IP Logged | ||
One thing I recommend is learn to speed read. This is one skill I feel will benefit anybody, as it is transferable to languages of a similar alphabet anyway. It should have some advantages with other another alphabet also, just finding out how it is done might be tricky. One double edge sword possibility, if the books are ever finished, then new language books might be purchased for the insatiable interest of reading some more. This is a possibility of being a speed reader. :P 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Elizabeth_rb Diglot Groupie United Kingdom polyglotintraining.b Joined 4635 days ago 54 posts - 84 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: GermanB1 | Message 8 of 35 16 March 2012 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm reading 'The Chinese Language, Fact or Fantasy' by DeFrancis at the moment. It's
very interesting and has got me wanting more Chinese linguistics books... Edited by Elizabeth_rb on 17 March 2012 at 10:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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