Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5566 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian
| Message 337 of 3737 06 February 2010 at 12:07am | IP Logged |
Sprachprofi wrote:
kottoler.ello wrote:
When, upon entering your favorite bookstore, you start moving towards the foreign language section without thinking about it, and when you get there you have to use all your willpower to pry yourself away to keep from spending all your time and money there. |
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Guilty. Are there other sections? |
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Sometimes you'll find interesting books in those other sections, but you wouldn't want to waste any money or bookshelf space on them. Or the time! You can't afford to be reading too much in your native language. ;)
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Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5421 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 338 of 3737 06 February 2010 at 6:32am | IP Logged |
...when watching Angels and Demons (great movie) some of my favorite parts were when they spoke in Italian, and when the various newsreporters spoke in there languages.
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Asithassa Tetraglot Newbie Greece Joined 5619 days ago 10 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Greek*, English, Italian, Ancient Greek Studies: Finnish, Icelandic, German, Japanese, Welsh
| Message 339 of 3737 06 February 2010 at 10:42am | IP Logged |
...when you complain of a sore uvula and people around you think you are seriously ill...
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mrasiteren Newbie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5539 days ago 10 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English
| Message 340 of 3737 06 February 2010 at 12:15pm | IP Logged |
When you turn on your computer, first thing you do is to start listening your favorite
podcasts
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Margarita Diglot Newbie Netherlands Joined 5574 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2
| Message 341 of 3737 06 February 2010 at 12:39pm | IP Logged |
Teango wrote:
When you translate a charity letter written in English from Ghana for your German neighbour, but all the time wonder what they speak over there, and whether you could learn it so as to help your neighbour reply in her sponsor child's native language. You fantasize over adding an exotic African language with lots of clicks and whistles to your language collection for a moment, even though you know next to nothing about African languages, just the fleeting harmonies of Paul Simon and the Ladysmith Black Mambazo band resonating faintly in your ears for a moment. Then you go on Wikipedia only to discover that English IS the official language, and return to your translation secretly a little disappointed...never mind, maybe next time... ;) |
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Haha I got my first Swahili studybook because I started sponsoring a girl from Kenya. Yes, I know, they speak English overthere as the official language but how great would it be to be able to write to her in her first language :D
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kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5552 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish
| Message 342 of 3737 06 February 2010 at 7:07pm | IP Logged |
When you, on a whim out of nowhere, spend about 40 bucks on the !Xóõ dictionary and "Phonetic and phonological studies of ǃXóõ Bushman" and now must wait in eager anticipation for about 2 weeks before you can get your grubby little fingers on them.
Holy crap I'm so excited :DD
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unityandoutside Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6013 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin, Mandarin
| Message 343 of 3737 07 February 2010 at 8:09am | IP Logged |
Levi wrote:
Teango wrote:
When you take down certain words in Teeline shorthand in your written notes, not because it's easier or faster, but because you once picked up a thin blue book over 10 years ago and glanced through a chapter or two, and have ever since felt the relentless desire to metamorphose your perfectly legible scribblings into a disarray of crazy cursive hieratics. |
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I have entire notebooks written in Quikscript. I love using a script that only a handful of people on the planet can read. |
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When, after reading this post, you spend several hours of the evening internalizing as much of the quickscript handbook as possible, bringing you closer to your goal of having everything you write be incomprehensible to everyone around you -- even if it is in English.
When your plan before learning some quickscript was to do a side by side comparison of your two editions of "German for Reading Knowledge," even though you have absolutely no intention of learning German in the near future (but sometime in the future, you do). After that, you the plan was to "relax" by adding another 15-20 words to your Russian wordlists via the "Iversen" method.
When people accuse you of cheating at scrabble because you keep score with the names in Cyrillic and the numbers in Chinese, and periodically ask throughout the game if you can play a word in such-and-such a language when your hand isn't yielding anything good in English.
When while taking notes in American history class in Russian, you realize that you don't know a word, and instead of just writing the word in English, your first priority becomes to discreetly find the word so you can finish your sentence in Russian. Thank heavens for the dictionaries loaded onto my iPod touch!
Edited by unityandoutside on 07 February 2010 at 8:11am
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Dainty Newbie United States Joined 5484 days ago 38 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German
| Message 344 of 3737 07 February 2010 at 9:20am | IP Logged |
When you discover, to your delight, that your new dietary supplements are labeled not only in English but also in German and Spanish, and then you eagerly begin to increase your vocabulary by learning new words through comparison of the texts.
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