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You know you’re a language nerd when...

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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
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montmorency
Diglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4578 days ago

2371 posts - 3676 votes 
Speaks: English*, German
Studies: Danish, Welsh

 
 Message 1969 of 3737
29 September 2011 at 1:04pm | IP Logged 
Марк wrote:
montmorency wrote:


i.e. so long as the meaning is clear, we can remove as much punctuation as we want in
modern British English. This is certainly the message that has been both implicit and
explicit, in developments in English during my adult life. So I used to minimise them.

Then full stops and especially question marks must be omitted. Questions have special
constructions and new sentences start with a capital letter.



I suppose carried to its logical conclusion, you could do that (unless this was a reductio ad absurdum). Most people would find this too much I think. The important point is: is the meaning still clear, and I think there was a feeling that a lot of commas could just get in the way, and those were what tended to go, wherever there was no ambiguity. A simple example would be that we always used to write commas in addresses and now nobody does. But also colons and semi-colons to some extent. Full stops and question marks are still too useful to be done away with I think. Of course, experimental novelists have written without conventional punctuation in the past.

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psy88
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5341 days ago

469 posts - 882 votes 
Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French

 
 Message 1970 of 3737
30 September 2011 at 3:18am | IP Logged 
meramarina wrote:
You know you are a language nerd when you want to practice your languages, but that's simply impossible because you've just had emergency dental surgery. So to console yourself as you recover, you try to invent a language program for the half-numb, half-agonized, swollen and somewhat drugged language learner:

Wanna lern ta ffffpeeek a lankfish like Ffpaniff ur Ruffiin wiff da befft meffet? (spit blood) Fell dats too bat, gonna hafta wait. Dammit hurt. Fut up and go ta fweep till dwugs go way




I think I can relate to you-I just had my third emergency root canal this past Monday, so YKYAALN when you can't decide if it is a good thing or a bad thing that you cannot understand the dentist when he makes comments to his assistant in Korean. You know the comments are not just random remarks, but do you really want to know what he is saying about the surgical procedure that he does not want you to know?



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meramarina
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5717 days ago

1341 posts - 2303 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: German, Italian, French
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 Message 1971 of 3737
30 September 2011 at 3:54am | IP Logged 
I got through a root canal once by thinking about accusative vs. dative prepositions in German. And it really hurt.

I couldn't do anything nerdy like that this time because I had IV anesthesia. Sometimes people say strange things when recovering - I don't think I did, but I'd be kind of proud of myself if I burbled or blurted out something in another language.

EDIT: In the first sentence I wrote pronouns instead of prepositions! That's why posting should not be done while under the influence of medication! Nerds don't let nerds post when on drugs!



Edited by meramarina on 02 October 2011 at 5:41pm

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JNetto
Groupie
United States
verbumpopuli.blogspoRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4732 days ago

43 posts - 60 votes 
Speaks: EnglishC1

 
 Message 1972 of 3737
30 September 2011 at 4:21am | IP Logged 
meramarina wrote:
I got through a root canal once by thinking about accusative vs. dative pronouns in
German. And it really hurt.

I couldn't do anything nerdy like that this time because I had IV anesthesia. Sometimes people say strange
things when recovering - I don't think I did, but I'd be kind of proud of myself if I burbled or blurted out
something in another language.



It is funny that you said that because I actually had a weird experience when I had a knew surgery: as I
was coming back from the anesthesia I was able to day a word in Portuguese! Detail, it is my native
language! Though I tried I could not find the word to say anything, it was as I had never known the
language. Very weird! :/
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LebensForm
Senior Member
Austria
Joined 4800 days ago

212 posts - 264 votes 
Studies: German

 
 Message 1973 of 3737
02 October 2011 at 5:15pm | IP Logged 
meramarina wrote:
I got through a root canal once by thinking about accusative vs. dative pronouns in German. And it really hurt.



Haha, I go to the dentist next week.... this is something I will probably do.
I did something similar during a visit to my gynocologist, I got through that (it was a male doing it grr) by thinking about the dative preposition rhyme: roses are red violets are blue, aus ausser bei mit nach seit von zu (and gegenüber).

Oh and apparently, according to my ex bf, I speak German in my sleep, but what irks me is that I don't know if what I am saying is grammatically correct! And cf course he wouldn't know :(

Edited by LebensForm on 02 October 2011 at 5:17pm

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meramarina
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5717 days ago

1341 posts - 2303 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: German, Italian, French
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 Message 1974 of 3737
04 October 2011 at 3:05am | IP Logged 
You know you are a language nerd when . . . OK, you aren't so sure about it anymore, because your sister and her husband call you to say they've sent you a gift card for your birthday and you should go get yourself something nerdy . . .

. . . but what you hear is: Go get yourself something dirty!

You'd think with all the words I know, I'd at least recognize the word "nerdy" !

Just for the record, I'll take the nerd option, thanks!
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Kartof
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4816 days ago

391 posts - 550 votes 
Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish
Studies: Danish

 
 Message 1975 of 3737
04 October 2011 at 3:28am | IP Logged 
YKYALNW you get excited that your Spanish teacher is mentioning the subjunctive tense as your next topic!
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Levi
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5317 days ago

2268 posts - 3328 votes 
Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish
Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian

 
 Message 1976 of 3737
05 October 2011 at 10:53pm | IP Logged 
Kartof wrote:
YKYALNW you get excited that your Spanish teacher is mentioning the subjunctive tense as your next topic!

¡Espero que disfrutes la lección!


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