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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

JCC Let’s Learn Languages

Discussion in 'Community' started by Darth Punk , Jul 5, 2020.

  1. Master_Lok

    Master_Lok Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Dec 18, 2012
    Viggo majored in Spanish in college, so, yes, he knows a few. Christopher Lee knew seven languages another reason why he was so great.

    This is a great thread.

    If I was so motivated, I’d try to learn a language (Italian and Mandarin or Cantonese - I love the tones) ...my motivation needs a bit of oomph.
     
  2. CairnsTony

    CairnsTony Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 7, 2014
    'fh' in Irish is usually silent, which makes it the more peculiar form of lenition (the other forms merely change their pronunciation). This is hard for new learners to wrap their heads around, but one should always be reminded that it is the lenited form of 'f'. Once you understand the rules of Irish, i.e, when lenition occurs grammatically, then it makes perfect sense. :)
     
    Ramza likes this.
  3. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    I'm not sweating the standards of Irish pronunciation, I just thought the decision to render "silent" as "[face_plain]" in that chart was really funny. "K before an n in English? Yeah that's pronounced as [face_plain]."
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2020
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  4. Obi Anne

    Obi Anne Celebration Mistress of Ceremonies star 8 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 4, 1998
    It was when I did a semester of Old Irish that the spelling of modern Irish turned very logical. It's simply a matter of adding some extra letters in to remind people of the change in pronunciation, while in Old Irish you have to remember the rules by heart in order to pronounce it correctly.
     
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  5. CairnsTony

    CairnsTony Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 7, 2014
    Yeah, old Irish is definitely more complicated. It had five noun cases as well! The modern form has three main ones (Common, Genitive and Vocative) and a sort of semi-fossilised Dative, which is only distinctive in a small number of examples.

    Old Irish used the buailte, a dot above a letter to indicate lenition; this has been replaced by the addition of a 'h' after the affected letter. There was no real standardised form either, and a lot of confusing extra letters.

    The main reasons Irish spelling looks weird are the consonant mutations (especially eclipsis, which just chucks one letter in front of another (e.g. ár gcairde- our friends), and the use of vowel markers for broad and slender consonants, often resulting in more vowels than are pronounced. :p
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2020
  6. solojones

    solojones Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2000
    So, I just committed to a lot more Japanese learning: Rosetta Stone offered me unlimited live tutoring for a year for $130 bucks. I thought that was a pretty good deal. I already have a lifetime RS subscription (just one part of my large number of things I use to learn languages). I don't find the RS lessons themselves that great, BUT I would say the live tutoring sessions with native speakers all in your target language is invaluable.
     
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  7. Thena

    Thena Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    May 10, 2001
    I'd love to be fluent in Japanese. It would be a great way to show off with friends when eating at a Japanese restaurant :D
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2020
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  8. solojones

    solojones Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2000
    Mine is more about the fact that we hope to go to Japan next May, as long as we have vaccines by then.
     
  9. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    If I’ve learned anything from trips to Austria it’s that visiting a country where you actually do understand all of the signs is surreal as hell. Here’s hoping you get to experience that vague sense of disorientation. :p
     
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  10. Thena

    Thena Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    May 10, 2001
    @solojones - I hope they find the vaccine and your trip goes well, we'll all say sayonara and bon voyage. :p

    You can actually do that in any pretty much any country nowadays, you know?

    There's this cool thing called Google Translate, and when you use the app on your mobile device, you can point the camera to any sign or text and it will immediately translate for you.

    Is it as easy as when you know the language? Maybe not, but it still can make things a lot easier for many folks.
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2020
  11. Ramza

    Ramza Administrator Emeritus star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Jul 13, 2008
    It’s pretty worthless for signs in my experience, because while the AR translation is a cool gimmick it’s finicky enough you don’t want to be standing around pointing your phone at something for the length of time it takes. It’s most useful for text messages and longer documents you can take photographs of - and even then in practice I personally tend to ask for a second opinion from a native speaker if it’s seemingly critical.

    It also generally gets less accurate the further away you get from English. Slavic languages are hit and miss (something of a dampener on regular use for me!) and the Hungarian is more like a vague gesture in the right direction. For a funny example, they have this weird habit of “translating” Prime Minister Babiš’s name as “grandma.” So suddenly “grandma is discussing with the EU on corona payments,” or what have you. :p
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2020
  12. Thena

    Thena Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    May 10, 2001
    Yeah, they need to improve it a bit in some regards.
     
  13. solojones

    solojones Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2000
    Same for me when I was in France. And I must have showed it, because people kept asking me for directions in Paris.
     
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  14. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 20, 2012
    I've been wanting to learn more about the German language. I speak (barely) enough to get by.
     
  15. Sith Lord 2015

    Sith Lord 2015 Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Oct 30, 2015
    Wow, a language thread on a SW forum! Glad I found it, as I'm kind of a language freak myself, especially about East-Asian languages. So I guess I'll share a little of my language learning experience as well.
    I'm a German native speaker. I have read that some of you here are learning German. So I'd be glad to help if you have questions concerning that language.
    My real passion nowadays is Chinese, or to be more specific, Cantonese. My interest in Chinese, and to some extent Japanese, culture, began when I was in university in Germany and they happened to offer a Japanese language course. I became immediately fascinated.
    Luckily in Germany university was (and I think still is) free, and a student could practically attend any lecture or course in any subject, whatever your major was. So during that course I bought my first Kanji dictionary and began madly learning the radicals and later the characters themselves. Hiragana and Katakana were relatively easy to master. They had this great booklet with pictures to help you memorize the characters. Also, I had previously taken a lecture on Chinese philosophy as part of my psychology studies, which was one of the minor subjects I took.
    Strangely my passion for Chinese culture really began on a trip to San Francisco in 1992. It happened to be during the time of the Mid-Autumn (or "moon") Festival, so there were lots of activities there, lion dances etc. It's also were I first tried mooncakes. The whole culture somehow fascinated me extremely. Naturally, having had some basic knowledge of Japanese, I became interested in Chinese as well, as this is where the kanji came from.
    So I changed my major to sinology, and seriously got into studying the language. In fact I think during the first two semesters I spent most of my free time practicing reading and writing Hanzi. The university course at first only required a knowledge of simplified characters, but I got so interested in them that I learned the traditional forms as well, more or less as a hobby. Almost everyone in my language class was a complete China freak, though only a few of them had been to the country. Naturally, two classmates and I planned our first trip to China for the 3-month summer vacation in 1993, after 2 semesters of language lessons, which really gave us only a very basic listening comprehension and speaking level. And that's when my passion for China not only increased even more, but I also met my future wife then. I can say I loved every minute of that trip, which included Hong Kong and Taiwan.
    So since I had personal ties to China I went back there every chance I got. Since my wife and her family didn't know any English at all I was forced to speak Chinese. And that's how I learned the most. Her family weren't even native Mandarin speakers but Zhuang minority, speaking the Zhuang language, which has absolutely no relation with Chinese. In fact it's much closer to Thai. But I did get by with my limited Mandarin well enough.
    In my university all sinology students were encouraged to spend at least 2 semesters in China, it was practically mandatory. I chose Sun Yatsen University in Guangzhou, specifically to study Cantonese (mainly because everyone else took Putonghua courses, and I wanted to do something different). In order to take part in the Cantonese course you had to pass a Putonghua ("Mandarin") test. I don't regret having chosen Cantonese, as it turned out I spent over 2 decades in Zhongshan, Guangdong, a few years later, where we bought an apartment. Everyday life, just talking to people, dealing with all the formalities etc. helped me a lot to improve both Putonghua and Cantonese. I dare say I'm pretty fluent in both languages. Unfortunately I have not lived in China steadily for 9 years now, so I'm sure my language skills have suffered, though my extended family and friends there assure me I'm pretty fluent.
    I would really love to live and work in China again, but that is no longer possible for numerous reasons. Anyway, I have lots of nostalgia for my time spent there.
    Oh, after marriage I also continued my Japanese studies, and later took a Korean class. I never reached even a basic level in Korean, but did manage to learn the writing system, which is pretty easy.
    So now my main interest is still Cantonese, including the writing, which somewhat differs from standard Chinese. Sadly it seems to be disappearing step by step, and is now discouraged even in Hong Kong. It would be great to exchange experiences with someone interested in Cantonese.
    I'm not going into the languages themselves, as much has been written about them already. Just one thing I noticed, it's incredibly fast inputting Chinese on a keyboard. In fact it takes me about half the time to input a Chinese sentence than an English or German one. I use the 华宇拼音输入法 (also known as 紫光), which I found to be very useful. It saves your previous inputs and remembers proper names, place names, sentences etc., in some cases all you need to do is input the first letter of the corresponding pinyin syllable. For example if I want to write "I'm taking the train from Guangzhou to Maoming tomorrow" - 我明天坐火车从广州到茂名 - theoretically all I have to input is "wmtz'hchcgzhdmm", not necessarily in one go but split up in 3 or 4 parts. Still it's incredibly fast. You have to know your pinyin though, and make sure you choose the characters you want. It even has the more common Cantonese characters such as 佢,噉,唔,嚟,冇 etc.
    Now I've been spending years in Spain, with not much hope of going back to China even for a visit in the near future. Covid alone is making that impossible. I have to admit I never had much interest to take an actual Spanish language course. Unfortunately "Western" languages don't interest me that much. I can get by from what I pick up in daily life, and some people even said I "speak like a local", which is BS of course.
    In any case I wish I had any opportunity to refresh my Putonghua, Cantonese and Japanese, but no such opportunity here.
    Very long post I know. Sorry. But if someone is interested in any of those languages it would be nice exchanging experiences.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2020
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  16. solojones

    solojones Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2000
    Team, in addition to Japanese I am now also learning Korean. Can already read Hangul. Goal is to understand BTS songs. Because I am so cool.

    Hangul is a really awesome and easy alphabet!
     
  17. CairnsTony

    CairnsTony Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 7, 2014
    Yeah, the Hangul alphabet is wonderfully easy and logical. Good luck!

    I've just completed a major revision of my Irish, so that I can take it more to the intermediate level. Finally cracked things like noun declensions, the conditional tenses and some weird stuff with 'if' clauses.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2020
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  18. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 20, 2012
    How's it going with the sentence structures? That always gave me trouble when I was taking German.
     
  19. solojones

    solojones Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2000
    Yeah doing SOV is definitely weird. But also topic markers! I am finally realizing they exist.

    Because I have a Rosetta Stone lifetime membership, I get free live lessons with a teacher... I am going to try my first one for Korean on Sunday. You have to speak only in Korean as much as possible and that will be an adventure.
     
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  20. CairnsTony

    CairnsTony Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 7, 2014
    If you ever do get around to studying Scottish Gaelic, you'll have to get used to a VSO word order. :p

    Even Japanese people sometimes get caught out with the difference between the は (wa) and が (ga) topic markers.

    The others function a bit like noun cases: を (o)= accusative; の (no)= genitive; に (ni)= dative; から (kara)= ablative; で (de)= instrumental; and so on. It's important though to remember that entire phrases can, and often are, 'marked' with particles, not just nouns and pronouns.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2020
  21. anakincol

    anakincol Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 28, 2009
    Accepti, latine quattor annis
     
  22. solojones

    solojones Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2000
    I have used VSO in Hebrew. It was wild.

    Just had my first live Korean lesson. Boy was that bad :p Gotta start somewhere, but while I could understand most of it, I couldn't recall vocabulary. Even though I studied!
     
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  23. CairnsTony

    CairnsTony Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    May 7, 2014
    You're braver than me. I still haven't built up the confidence to do online lessons in anything yet!
     
  24. solojones

    solojones Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Sep 27, 2000
    I went through the whole Rosetta Stone course in Spanish using the live lessons. It was tremendously helpful!
     
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  25. TiniTinyTony

    TiniTinyTony JCC Super Bowl Pick 'Em Winner star 7 VIP - Game Winner

    Registered:
    Mar 9, 2003
    RE: Goodbye

    English:
    In the late 16th century, some writer/scholar wrote "God be with ye", but abbreviated it as Godbwye which eventually became Goodbye.

    Japanese:
    Sayonara literally translates to "if that's the way it is" almost as a "goodbye forever" or "I don't know if I'll ever see you again". Because of this, it's rarely used in practice and depending on the situation the more common uses are.
    • See ya - Ja ne
    • Bye - Baibai
    • See you later - Mate ne
    • See you tomorrow - Mata a****a
    Spanish:
    Adios literally means "to God". Again, in some cultures this is more a permanent "goodbye", so some alternatives are
    • Unitl the next time - Hasta la proxima
    • See you later - Hasta luego
    • See you soon - Hasta Pronto
    • See you tomorrow - Hasta Manana
    British:
    Bugger off.

    If any of this is incorrect, I'll happily stand corrected by our Japanese or Spanish (or British) users. Ultimately, you can blame Google if any of the above information isn't correct. :p