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Hello; Noob in the house, ready your weapons!
Topic Started: Jun 13 2010, 09:00 AM (2,169 Views)
Rhadamanthus
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Legitimist

Ulgania
Jun 15 2010, 10:38 AM
Rhadamanthus
Jun 15 2010, 07:27 AM
Ulgania
Jun 14 2010, 10:02 PM
Well, that's a given. But in the context of French and Spanish, learn Latin anyway. The silly Germans ruined Italian with all their invasions, so learn Italian after Latin and German. Then work your way through Eastern Europe I suppose.

Japanese is a little easier. At least, Katakana and Hiragana are easy to latch on to.
Italian is awesome. and there were Franks and Goths in France and Spain so its not like they didn't get invaded.
French still feels unique. The whole lingua Franca thing made it learnable on its own without a desire to connect it to other languages.

Also living in Vermont I hear a useless amount of Quebecois French.
The term "lingua franca" did not actually refer to any status of French itself, but to a pidgeon dialect used by Christian and Muslim traders in the Mediterranean to communicate. See Wikipedia, for example:

Quote:
 
The original Lingua Franca was a mixed language composed mostly (80%) of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish, French, Spanish, Greek and Arabic. It was in use throughout the eastern Mediterranean as the language of commerce and diplomacy in and around the Renaissance era. At that time, Italian speakers dominated seaborne commerce in the port cities of the Ottoman empire. Franca was the Italian word for Frankish. Its usage in the term lingua franca originated from its meaning in Arabic, dating from before the Crusades, whereby all Europeans were called "Franks" or Faranji in Arabic[citation needed]. Lingua franca is first recorded in English in 1678.[3]
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Union
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Pyrenees Republic
French is a disgusting language. I hate speaking it, and have thankfully forgot all that was forcibly instilled in me. Any language that requires gagging noises in regular pronunciation is unworthy of speaking. :lol:
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Leselier
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Eater of French Fries
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Union
Jun 15 2010, 11:16 AM
French is a disgusting language. I hate speaking it, and have thankfully forgot all that was forcibly instilled in me. Any language that requires gagging noises in regular pronunciation is unworthy of speaking. :lol:
xDDD. That actually made me laugh out loud.

My mother speaks French, but I don't know the language at all. I prefer my Spanish. xD.
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Sedulius
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After a year of Latin, I find French and Spanish much easier to understand, for obvious reasons.
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Telosan
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The Foremost Intellectual Badass
I know next to nothing in Spanish, due to 6 years of elementary school assigning a new teacher every year. We just learned colors and numbers every year for 6 years.

7th and 8th grade I took French because it was the only other language available and I was tired of Spanish.

Last year and this year I've been taking Italian. I love it, since it's the first time I've ever attempted learning a language with genuine interest. I'll be taking it next year as well. Learning it is difficult, though, when I try listening to my family for firsthand experience. My grandpa is the Italian one and he speaks his own dialect, it seems. My great-grandfather was Venetian and my great-grandmother was Sicilian/Calabrian, so he speaks some wierd combo of the two, leaning more towards Sicilian.

I would like to someday be able to claim to know Italian, Venetian, and Japanese. I can't even get started with the second two, though, since I can't find much of anything in the way of Venetian, since it's regarded as an Italian dialect and stifled when it's actually officially viewed as a separate language of its own. Japanese just confuses me. There are so many different forms of writing the language that I can't even figure out where and how to start. Ulg mentioned Hiragana, which I've heard of, and Katakana, which I haven't. Then there's something called Romaji which seems to be a translation of Japanese syllables into a separate Japanese language based on a Latin alphabet. I don't know which to start with and which is for what.

I'll just have to stick with Italian for now. Maybe Japanese will be available in college. I know Venetian won't.
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Toussaint
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Major
Telosan
Jun 15 2010, 02:39 PM
I know next to nothing in Spanish, due to 6 years of elementary school assigning a new teacher every year. We just learned colors and numbers every year for 6 years.

7th and 8th grade I took French because it was the only other language available and I was tired of Spanish.

Last year and this year I've been taking Italian. I love it, since it's the first time I've ever attempted learning a language with genuine interest. I'll be taking it next year as well. Learning it is difficult, though, when I try listening to my family for firsthand experience. My grandpa is the Italian one and he speaks his own dialect, it seems. My great-grandfather was Venetian and my great-grandmother was Sicilian/Calabrian, so he speaks some wierd combo of the two, leaning more towards Sicilian.

I would like to someday be able to claim to know Italian, Venetian, and Japanese. I can't even get started with the second two, though, since I can't find much of anything in the way of Venetian, since it's regarded as an Italian dialect and stifled when it's actually officially viewed as a separate language of its own. Japanese just confuses me. There are so many different forms of writing the language that I can't even figure out where and how to start. Ulg mentioned Hiragana, which I've heard of, and Katakana, which I haven't. Then there's something called Romaji which seems to be a translation of Japanese syllables into a separate Japanese language based on a Latin alphabet. I don't know which to start with and which is for what.

I'll just have to stick with Italian for now. Maybe Japanese will be available in college. I know Venetian won't.
Romanji is a latinized form of the Japanese language. You can use it if you want, but if you learn Japanese that way, you'll be illiterate.

Hiragana is a Japanese syllable based alphabet. That's a good place to start if you want to learn. You can get by with a knowledge of this and

Katakana, which is equivalent to italics, I believe. It is also used for foreign words.

Then there's Kanji, which is similar to the Chinese writing system, and many characters are the same. These are a bitch.


The one system that I'd recommend to learn a language is Pimsleur, though. It's audio only, and you won't become literate off it, but it really lets you listen and speak- which is the best way to learn. It's about how much you can get in your ears and out your mouth- not in your eyes and out your hand.
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Tristan da Cunha
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Science and Industry
Literacy in Japanese entails knowledge of Hiragana + Katakana + Kanji. If you intend to learn Japanese you'll be best served by learning all 3 at the same time, side by side.

Romanji is just a Latinization of Japanese words to help the initial learning process. Basically it is a "pronunciation guide for beginners".
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New Harumf
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Bloodthirsty Unicorn
Kanji is, literally, impossible, since it is the Chinese writing system, adopted by the Japanese, and not at all related to their language. It's like using a binary code to learn English.
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Eleytheria-Duo
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Resident Bystander
My apologies for not seeing this sooner. Welcome to the Forums! And oh my GOD, we've another female on the boards!? What the hell is happening in, well ... hell? ...Skiing anyone? :lol:

If you have any questions about our forums/world/history, feel free to ask any of our older members and they will answer any questions you may have, I and some of the newer (some would call us intermediates) will also answer any query you may have to the best of our abilities. So feel free to hop into the melting pot and help us bring the forums back to life!

If you are interested in any interaction, I have a few nations in which you can do so. A Federal Republic (same name as my account) in North America and a Military Dictatorship, Murmanskaya, in Europe. A Socialist Republic by the name of Kimmirut, while technically mine, is under the leadership of Telosan due to the "One nation per continent" rule. Also in North America, as can be observed by my comment about the rules.

There are also many other friendly people here that would be more than interested to see some activity, so you may want to seek them out as well if you are not interested in these parts of the world.

Again, welcome.
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Al Araam
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Demigod of Death & Inactivity

Telosan
Jun 15 2010, 02:39 PM
I know next to nothing in Spanish, due to 6 years of elementary school assigning a new teacher every year. We just learned colors and numbers every year for 6 years.
Sounds like my experience trying to learn French in elementary school. I think I might have even had seven years, and I now have no working knowledge of French whatsoever. I had the same teacher the whole time though. She just had a strange fixation with teaching us food, colors, etc, over and over and over. I think we may have learned the most basic conjugations my final year of studying French. She was just a truly awful teacher. Took two years of Spanish in high school and one year of Turkish via immersion. I've taken another year of Turkish in college. I'm not good at languages like some people are, but I do like them. I also firmly believe it's impossible to learn a language without native speakers to speak with (read: incessantly make fun of your vocabulary and pronunciation). Anyone who tells you they became fluent in a classroom is full of crap.
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Deleted User
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I've had Spanish ruined for me due to a plethora of shit union teachers. I just finished the final today, and I hope never to speak it again, save when describing food items.
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Ulgania
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A better Zarathustra has never rode a horse
Atticus
Jun 15 2010, 06:53 PM
I've had Spanish ruined for me due to a plethora of shit union teachers. I just finished the final today, and I hope never to speak it again, save when describing food items.
Not even place names?
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Telosan
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The Foremost Intellectual Badass
Ulgania
Jun 15 2010, 07:09 PM
Atticus
Jun 15 2010, 06:53 PM
I've had Spanish ruined for me due to a plethora of shit union teachers. I just finished the final today, and I hope never to speak it again, save when describing food items.
Not even place names?
I know "casa" is house.

Only because its the same in Italian.
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Hastine
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Universi enim hic sumus.
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New Harumf
Jun 14 2010, 02:47 PM
flumes
Jun 14 2010, 01:12 PM
Everything was slang at one point.
More like, nothing was slang at one point, everything was appropriate for the speaker.
Slang is the reason languages exist as they do today. The very existance of the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, etc.) is based on the fact that Roman soldiers serving in the provinces were too lazy to speak Latin like Cicero.

Oh yeah, and Portuguese is the tits. Though I prefer the deep-sounding Brazilian form compared to the European one, which literally sounds like Murican.
Edited by Hastine, Jun 15 2010, 08:11 PM.
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New Harumf
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Bloodthirsty Unicorn
The only phrase I needed when I was traveling in Spain:

"Vino tinto de casa, por favor."

Which I pronounced "Beeno tinto de caasssa, po(rolled r) fa-vo(rolled r)."
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Abnar
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Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the lurkiest of them all?
A belated welcome to you. I emerge from my lurking only to put this thread back on the rails. =P
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Deleted User
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Abnar
Jun 17 2010, 10:44 PM
A belated welcome to you. I emerge from my lurking only to put this thread back on the rails. =P
:lol: Jeeze, I don't even know who you are.
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Leselier
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Eater of French Fries
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Abnar
Jun 17 2010, 10:44 PM
A belated welcome to you. I emerge from my lurking only to put this thread back on the rails. =P
Thank you. Hehe. It seems my thread has gotten a little bit out of control.
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Paradise
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Resident bureaucrat

Another girl... Does that mean I have to make them a separate washroom? ^^

Welcome, and don't panic if people here seem weird to you, because they actually are. All of them. Tristan in particular. ;)
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Sedulius
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Field Marshal
The Forum God has spoken! We are weird.

...

*gradually gets a more angry expression on his face from being told he was buried alive*

KHAAAAAN!!!

*echoes are heard*
Edited by Sedulius, Jun 21 2010, 01:18 AM.
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Tristan da Cunha
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Science and Industry
On normalcy:

Normalcy is that which I and I alone decide to be normal.
Edited by Tristan da Cunha, Jun 21 2010, 01:24 AM.
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Nag Ehgoeg
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The Devil's Advocate

Tristan da Cunha
Jun 21 2010, 01:23 AM
On normalcy:

Normalcy is that which I and I alone decide to be normal.
-al = -ity
-t = cy

Normality was coined first. And has always had wider use. And is linguistically congruent (like normalness).
Normalcy was coined later. Has always had lesser use and more informal use. It is not linguistically congruent. It has never appeared in a British dictionary. Its position as an American English word is hotly contested. Its survival into the modern age is due to its usage by a famous illiterate.

I know I've already ranted this at TC: this is for the newbies benefit. :P
Edited by Nag Ehgoeg, Jun 21 2010, 07:59 AM.
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Rhadamanthus
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Legitimist

I hate the "word" "normalcy." Its a pet peeve of mine.
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Deleted User
Deleted User

Well I also want to say "Hello" to all since I am new to the forum as well. And hello to you Leselier!
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Rhadamanthus
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Legitimist

Hey there Sultan! Welcome to the boards :)
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