Wulfgar Senior Member United States Joined 4671 days ago 404 posts - 791 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 1 of 10 17 August 2012 at 6:55pm | IP Logged |
In a recent interview, when asked what superpower he would like to have,
Obama said he would love to speak any language.
Do you have any language superpower fantasies you'd like to share?
3 persons have voted this message useful
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 2 of 10 17 August 2012 at 7:03pm | IP Logged |
So he wants to be like C-3PO?...
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asad100101 Diglot Senior Member Pakistan languagel.blogspot.c Joined 6455 days ago 118 posts - 137 votes Speaks: Hindi*, English
| Message 3 of 10 17 August 2012 at 7:27pm | IP Logged |
I would suggest him to speak only one language i.e peace language not war language. Ok. bye
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Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4703 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian
| Message 4 of 10 17 August 2012 at 7:31pm | IP Logged |
I've often wished I had the power of instant and perfect recall. Just imagine soaking up dozens of new words at one
glance, fully internalizing grammar without breaking a sweat, and never using the wrong auxiliary verb to conjugate
in the past tense again!
But, alas, I must trundle along with my sieve of a memory and do the best I can. Good thing I've tricked myself into
thinking the process is wildly fun.
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montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4828 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 5 of 10 17 August 2012 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
I always think my desired super power would be time-travel, although not for linguistic
reasons.
But come to think of it, it would be wonderful to go back to key points in time when
languages were developing and evolving, and see if some (or any) of our theories are
correct. Come to think again, that would actually require a bit of linguistic super-power
as well.
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Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 6 of 10 17 August 2012 at 8:19pm | IP Logged |
I'd like to be able to slow down time when I want to. So, a normal day: 8 hours sleep, 12 hours work/school/commute/chores/socializing, 4 hours languages can turn into: 8 hours sleep, 12 hours necessities, 40 hours languages ....
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Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6105 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish
| Message 7 of 10 17 August 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged |
I'd like to put on my Captain Polyglot cape and save the world!
(Marvel Comics, are you listening?)
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Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian
| Message 8 of 10 18 August 2012 at 12:17am | IP Logged |
I've thought about it, and while the ability to speak any language would definitely be awesome for a lot of reasons, it would totally destroy your ability to learn and explore any new languages, which is something I get a lot of enjoyment out of. One of the main reasons I like foreign languages is because, well, they're foreign to me!
If I had time travel abilities, I would definitely use it for linguistic research. With enough time and effort, I could make an accurate family tree of all the world's languages and determine once and for all how language originated in the first place. I think I would start by painstakingly documenting Proto-Indo-European; I'd love to hear what that language really sounded like. Then maybe I'd go ahead and figure out the relationships between all the Native American languages... Of course I'd have to go into the future and take advantage of their advanced medicine to prolong my life long enough that I'd have the time to do it all, and then I'd probably find myself learning several future languages.
Edited by Levi on 18 August 2012 at 12:22am
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