Gallo1801 Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 4901 days ago 164 posts - 248 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Croatian, German, French
| Message 2097 of 3737 22 January 2012 at 5:36am | IP Logged |
When you are fluent in 2 languages, but know the grammar, pronunciation, writing
system, history, accents and dialects of 23 others, but alas only know about 100 words
in each.
When you get with a large group of friends and everyone is code-switching and using
like 7 languages between the group, and everyone acts like it's normal.
When people see you reading or listening to a language and ask "You speak X language?!"
and you answer no because you can only understand it but not produce it.
You get mad at American movies for having the wrong accents for characters when they
are depicted conversing in their native tongues. A Cuban character with an Argentine
accent? Really?
When you hear someone in the grocery speaking a foreign language you guess where
they're from.
When you hear a language you don't understand, instead of being frustrated, you get
excited for another opportunity to learn. [extra nerdy]
And I'm also obsessed with Turk Pop. Maybe it's the pretty girls, but something about
it is irresistible. Turkish Pop made me want to learn Turkish.
Edited by Gallo1801 on 22 January 2012 at 5:53am
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AlephBey Tetraglot Groupie India Joined 4787 days ago 41 posts - 137 votes Speaks: English, Hindi*, Urdu, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish
| Message 2098 of 3737 22 January 2012 at 5:53am | IP Logged |
When the 'personalized ads' Google shows on your Gmail homepage after scanning keywords
in your mail to determine your 'personal interests', are always, all in Japanese.
'インドでビジネスする際は' - 'When doing business in India...'
'高性能レンタルサーバー' - 'High performance servers on rent'
'キャリアアップ×年収1000万以上' - 'Career upgrade x Annual income of over 10 million'
'集客できるホームページ' - 'A homepage that would attract customers'
My personal favorite-
'129円のマンツーマン英会話' - 'Speak English one-to-one, for 129 yen'
Edited by AlephBey on 22 January 2012 at 6:55am
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Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4702 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian
| Message 2099 of 3737 22 January 2012 at 9:38am | IP Logged |
When the feelings of gratitude you harbor for Wiktionary editors begin to border on
religious.
4 persons have voted this message useful
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Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 2100 of 3737 23 January 2012 at 8:07pm | IP Logged |
You know you're a language nerd when a grammar book can make you giddy like a schoolgirl. My new Cantonese grammar book lists 30 (thirty!) sentence-final particles, adds a table for how to combine them (gigglegiggle) and gives you examples like these:
Cantonese: a Comprehensive Grammar wrote:
Kéuih ló-jó daih yãt mìhng tìm ge la wo.
s/he take-PFV number one place too PRT PRT PRT
'And she got first place, too, you know.'
Here tìm is evaluative, ge assertive, la adds currency and wo newsworthiness. Note that the order and selection of particles follows that shown in Table 18.2. More than four particles are rare, though not impossible (Leung Chung-Sum reports the occurrence of some seven particles as an extreme case). |
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 2101 of 3737 23 January 2012 at 8:39pm | IP Logged |
Teango wrote:
When you receive the best birthday present and card ever!
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When you plan on participating in the Accelerated Finnish Challenge?
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Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5692 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish
| Message 2102 of 3737 23 January 2012 at 9:41pm | IP Logged |
When you manage to utterly confuse yourself by, while typing a short URL, saying it aloud to yourself in not one – not two – but THREE different accents.
(It was "edubreizh.com", a French site for learning Breton, and I'd just been studying Catalan, so as I typed I muttered to myself "edü..."(French accent) "bryce..."(Breton accent) "pun' com"(Catalan accent).
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Quabazaa Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5608 days ago 414 posts - 543 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written)
| Message 2103 of 3737 24 January 2012 at 2:59am | IP Logged |
When you think about putting stickers of other languages' letters on your keys but can't
decide if both Arabic and Korean will fit!
Edited by Quabazaa on 24 January 2012 at 3:03am
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jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5033 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese
| Message 2104 of 3737 24 January 2012 at 7:32am | IP Logged |
...when you now consider saving owner manuals for various appliances because they are printed in all of your target languages. Well, English with both Spanish and French translations. A year ago, I wouldn't have even though to save them as language-related items.
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