You know you're a language nerd when…

General discussion about learning languages
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Iversen
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Iversen » Thu Sep 27, 2018 5:13 pm

How do you know you won't ever use them again? I bought dictionaries and textbooks for Greek and Russian near the end of my French studies, and shortly after I got my final exam in 1981 I also bought grammars and dictionaries for just about any Slavic language on the planet from a Slavic bookstore that was about to close, including a Russian history books with accents.

And then absolutely nothing happened for almost thirty years, but I have got those books now, and I have used them - even the Greek Langenscheidt with all the old accents and aspiration marks which now have been abolished. My fat old Romanian Academy dictionary is still the only one to indicate whether any given verb has infixes or not - and then I can live with the fact that the letter î in all non-initial positations has been replaced with â (except u in "sunt"). And of course I have also kept my books about Old French and Occitan, even though I didn't need them.

You never know what you might choose to study later ...
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Bluepaint
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Bluepaint » Thu Sep 27, 2018 8:14 pm

Iversen wrote:How do you know you won't ever use them again? I bought dictionaries and textbooks for Greek and Russian near the end of my French studies, and shortly after I got my final exam in 1981 I also bought grammars and dictionaries for just about any Slavic language on the planet from a Slavic bookstore that was about to close, including a Russian history books with accents.

And then absolutely nothing happened for almost thirty years, but I have got those books now, and I have used them - even the Greek Langenscheidt with all the old accents and aspiration marks which now have been abolished. My fat old Romanian Academy dictionary is still the only one to indicate whether any given verb has infixes or not - and then I can live with the fact that the letter î in all non-initial positations has been replaced with â (except u in "sunt"). And of course I have also kept my books about Old French and Occitan, even though I didn't need them.

You never know what you might choose to study later ...


Iversen the Enabler :P
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Skynet
Green Belt
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Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=8686
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Skynet » Fri Sep 28, 2018 4:43 pm

arthaey wrote:
Skynet wrote:3. You hoard language learning resources that you're unlikely to ever use.

why you gotta at me like this


I see that someone is also guilty of impulse buying! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Iversen wrote:How do you know you won't ever use them again? ... You never know what you might choose to study later ...

I totally agree with you. I am certainly not a clairvoyant, which is why I had qualified my statement with "unlikely to ever use." I am currently digitising all the books that I bought, and I have no idea when I am going to start (if ever) on Arabic, Hindi, Bengali, Urdu, Pushto, Gujarati, Turkish, Russian and Swedish. I have already made plans (after certain members coerced me) for Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish. Czech will be learnt just to impress Cavesa. ;)

Iversen wrote: Greek Langenscheidt

I assume that the book was in German? After I have become competent in French and German (which will be my main languages), I will be using to learn subsequent languages. In all honesty, I turn green with envy each time I read the languages on your profile. How did you manage to do that??? :mrgreen:
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Izabela
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Izabela » Sat Sep 29, 2018 7:05 am

When you go to a used bookstore after work on Friday to look for a book or dictionary about a foreign language and feel happy about purchasing an old Teach Yourself Greek book.
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AndyMeg
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby AndyMeg » Sun Sep 30, 2018 1:46 pm

When you completed the survey from Prof Argüelles and it took you way more than 30 minutes...
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Cavesa
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Cavesa » Mon Oct 01, 2018 10:33 am

Skynet wrote:I have already made plans (after certain members coerced me) for Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish. Czech will be learnt just to impress Cavesa. ;)


Aaaaaaand now I'll have to learn Shona! Otherwise, I'll be like that friend everyone gives nice birthday presents to, while they don't bother much to reciprocate. :-D
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Skynet
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Skynet » Mon Oct 01, 2018 4:03 pm

Cavesa wrote:
Skynet wrote:I have already made plans (after certain members coerced me) for Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish. Czech will be learnt just to impress Cavesa. ;)


Aaaaaaand now I'll have to learn Shona! Otherwise, I'll be like that friend everyone gives nice birthday presents to, while they don't bother much to reciprocate. :-D


Except, I am the kind of terrible friend that will insist that you learn Shona using a resource that is guaranteed to send you into a comatose sleep. :lol:

I must say that I was pleasantly surprised that Prof. A. A. managed to find an FSI Shona course, and used it for his FSI review! :D
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Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Iversen » Mon Oct 01, 2018 8:10 pm

When you completed the survey from Prof Argüelles and it took you way below 15 minutes because you basically already knew the answers
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Axon
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Axon » Tue Oct 02, 2018 4:03 pm

... when you type "wik" in the search bar and it autocompletes to "Wiktionary" instead of "Wikipedia."
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arthaey
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby arthaey » Tue Oct 02, 2018 7:18 pm

Axon wrote:... when you type "wik" in the search bar and it autocompletes to "Wiktionary" instead of "Wikipedia."

Although to be fair, a not insignificant amount of my traffic to Wikipedia is going to an English page and then immediately clicking on another languages translation to see the word's usage in context. ;)
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