Petitanne Triglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5323 days ago 19 posts - 29 votes Speaks: French*, English, GermanC1 Studies: Spanish, Latin, Arabic (Written), Hindi
| Message 601 of 3737 12 May 2010 at 11:26am | IP Logged |
I am sorry, I haven't read all the posts so maybe it has already been said:
When you don't know why you learn a language but you still enjoy learning it...
3 persons have voted this message useful
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mirab3lla Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom lang-8.com/220477Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5442 days ago 161 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Spanish, FrenchB1, Mandarin
| Message 602 of 3737 12 May 2010 at 2:19pm | IP Logged |
When during the breaktime at school you prefer to read French textbooks.
When during the boring classes you solve German crosswords.
When your class is split in two for the foreign-languages class, and you can choose only one between German and French, but you still want to study both, so you chat in French with your French-studying classmates.
When your favourite tv programme becomes even "more favourite", because you've discovered that you can watch it on the Internet in German.
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mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5923 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish
| Message 603 of 3737 12 May 2010 at 6:01pm | IP Logged |
I had a three day weekend and chose to spend most of it learning as much as I could of Scandinavian dialects/regional languages such as Älvdalska and Jämtlandic.
1 person has voted this message useful
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ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5480 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew
| Message 604 of 3737 12 May 2010 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
When you print out the FSI Swedish course in school while your friend is at the printer in the library. When they pick
it up they immediately look at you, roll their eyes, and bring it over.
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PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5372 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish
| Message 605 of 3737 12 May 2010 at 9:23pm | IP Logged |
Kubelek wrote:
It makes you prouder to get a vote for your post in this thread than in serious discussions... and you vote more in this thread than anywhere else. |
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This post needs votes for the irony.
6 persons have voted this message useful
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ThisIsGina Groupie United Kingdom languageblogbygina.w Joined 5317 days ago 56 posts - 72 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Romanian, Catalan, Greek, German, French
| Message 606 of 3737 12 May 2010 at 11:28pm | IP Logged |
- When you have been given a boring essay to write for English class, and you feel very tempted to write it in Spanish. You start to wonder if the teacher would be angry if you did this, and finally decide that if she weren't angry, it would be for the shock of never having taught someone so weird before.
- When you've finished your work in history class, you look through the textbook for original sources from Soviet Russia to practise reading the Cyrillic script.
- You raise your hand in history class to insist that there is one correct transliteration of "Цар" (Tsar), because you are very particular about the letter Ц being transliterated as a "ts", not "cz" or any other variations. Everyone in the class groans at your nerdiness (these people already ridicule you since you had to make a speech about anything in English class, and you spoke about your favourite Russian band, and apparently listening to Russian music isn't considered normal). And then, in reply to people saying, "Yeah, you'd know" sarcastically, you reply, "Yes, actually, I would, I know the Russian alphabet", and you feel a bit annoyed at yourself for not calling it the Cyrillic alphabet even though you only said Russian because nobody would know what Cyrillic was. And then a day later someone says, "Do you know the German alphabet?" and you have trouble not losing faith in humanity as you tell them that German uses the same alphabet as English. And you're sure this has to be the nerdiest paragraph in this thread, LOL.
- You enjoy reading YouTube comments in Spanish to study how routinely misspelled and dumbed-down they can be, just like English ones. Unfortunately it's difficult to learn much new vocabulary from them, as the majority of them are just saying that the author either loves the song or thinks someone is hot. Just like English ones.
- You have to read Romeo and Juliet in English Lit class, and you are sure you'd understand it a lot better if they were speaking Spanish.
- You often wonder whether there are different dialects of dog-speak. Like, would a Spanish dog understand the barks and growls of a Chinese dog?
- You hate the song She-Wolf, but love it's Spanish equivalent Loba.
- You didn't even realise there was an English version of Loba until you heard people singing it at school.
- You found a Zanussi advertisement in a magazine, and you cut it out and blu-tacked it to the wall next to your bed because it has an Italian slogan and the picture appears to be of Italy.
- The film Love Actually makes you want to learn Portuguese so you can understand what Aurelia says and so you can see if the subtitles are accurate (I bet they're not accurate).
- The highlight of your work experience at the local council was meeting some people from Kazakhstan who came for a tour of the town hall, and they all spoke Russian and only the interpreter spoke any English, and you were fascinated by hearing them speak even though you didn't understand a word.
- You've just read this entire thread! :)
5 persons have voted this message useful
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WortDrauf Already banned: zarathustra, lifelover Newbie Canada Joined 5394 days ago 23 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 607 of 3737 13 May 2010 at 12:23am | IP Logged |
ThisIsGina wrote:
And then a day later someone says, "Do you know the German alphabet?" and you have trouble not losing faith in humanity as you tell them that German uses the same alphabet as English. |
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Because English uses umlauts and eszetts...
2 persons have voted this message useful
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GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5522 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French
| Message 608 of 3737 13 May 2010 at 1:01am | IP Logged |
WortDrauf wrote:
ThisIsGina wrote:
And then a day later someone says, "Do you know the German alphabet?" and you have trouble not losing faith in humanity as you tell them that German uses the same alphabet as English. |
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Because English uses umlauts and eszetts... |
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They're both Latin-based though, and not changed enough to say that knowing the English and the German alphabets are two different achievements.
3 persons have voted this message useful
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