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The last language you would want to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6651 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 81 of 346 07 November 2007 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's too bad you're excluding things like sign languages with that position, but to each their own. :( 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Darobat Diglot Senior Member Joined 7189 days ago 754 posts - 770 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin | Message 82 of 346 07 November 2007 at 9:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Actually, I see sign languages in a separate category, and given the opportunity, I would love to learn ASL. The reason I separate them from other non-written languages is that they are really just visual forms of another language; in the case of ASL, English. I know the grammar of a signed language can vary quite extensively from its associated language, but its still part of the same culture. Kinda like a far removed dialect So I guess I see ASL literature as just being any piece of literature written in English.
I'm referring to languages with an oral tradition with no standardized writing system, and little or no literature. To me, such languages do not appeal too much. Edited by Darobat on 07 November 2007 at 9:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6651 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 83 of 346 07 November 2007 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
Gotcha. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| epingchris Triglot Senior Member Taiwan shih-chuan.blog.ntu. Joined 7029 days ago 273 posts - 284 votes 5 sounds Studies: Taiwanese, Mandarin*, English, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese, German, Turkish | Message 84 of 346 10 November 2007 at 8:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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English. It's ugly, with those apostrophes, insane spelling and consonant clusters.
:) Okay seriously now. The first things that came to my mind is Irish and Arabic. Not that I felt driven away by them (actually spoken Arabic, heard only once, does drive me away to a certain extent). I don't want to touch Irish anywhere soon because of its strange traits - namely the aspiration, eclipsis and the bizarre grammar that's not familiar to me at all. Strange that I don't feel the same way about Finnish and Icelandic, maybe Scandinavian nations just fascinate me so much. As for Arabic, I picked up the script once but now somehow I just can't anymore, and I'm definitely having trouble even understanding the four sounds pronounced in the back of the throat and some other sounds produced with twisted tongues. And I can't stand not marking the vowels lol. Glad to find Chinese on the bottom of lots of people's lists, fits the reputation :) Seriously though, it's funny that many people native to Mandarin finds other tonal languages unpleasant also (disliking Cantonese, Taiwanese or Thai, for example), without realizing they're using the exact language other people might find repulsive for the exactly same reason! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| xtremelingo Trilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6288 days ago 398 posts - 515 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi*, Punjabi* Studies: German, French, Arabic (Written) | Message 85 of 346 13 November 2007 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Esperanto.
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| Fazla Hexaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6263 days ago 166 posts - 255 votes Speaks: Italian, Serbo-Croatian*, English, Russian, Portuguese, French Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 86 of 346 13 November 2007 at 3:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Esperanto aswell Edited by Fazla on 13 November 2007 at 3:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaoMei513 Senior Member United States Joined 6846 days ago 110 posts - 113 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Korean | Message 87 of 346 13 November 2007 at 8:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would never in a million years learn French. It sounds terrible to me, and the culture is in no way pleasing in my opinion.
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| dysphonia Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 7162 days ago 48 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, German Studies: Russian | Message 88 of 346 13 November 2007 at 8:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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1. Number one on the list of things I would not learn is anything artificial or without a history and culture
attached to it ie Esperanto, Klingon, etc It's not that I have something against these - it's just that I know how much is involved in learning a language to even basic fluency and I would always have languages, even obscure ones, that would rank higher than ones that have no cultural context which I could subsequently enjoy. 2. Anything nearly extinct (eg some native american languages). I'm not sure I could summon the enthusiasm for something I could never talk with anyone in and for which the literature is limited to say the least (ironically I am more attracted to completely dead languages like Latin or Ancient Greek but then they have benefits in literature and in learning other languages) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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