You know you're a language nerd when…

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

Postby Ogrim » Mon May 14, 2018 3:46 pm

When your son calls out to you when you are studying Arabic, and without even realising it you shout "Maa?" (What? in Arabic.)
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Teango » Mon May 14, 2018 6:51 pm

My wife told me I had щетина [ɕːɪˈtʲinə] all over my face the other day. I thought this was a bit of a harsh comment for a mere day's worth of stubble, until I realized "щетина" is actually the Russian word for "stubble".
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Silvarian » Wed May 16, 2018 2:27 am

...you have multiple books that teach several different languages, and you can't figure out how you're going to get to them all! Also, when you have multiple books for one language, and you can't for the life of you decide which one to read because they're all different and perhaps the book that you chose not to read has useful information that isn't in the book that you have already chosen and now you're frozen in place because you just don't know what to do.... lol the struggle is real :? :? :lol:
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Ani » Wed May 16, 2018 7:02 am

Silvarian wrote:...you have multiple books that teach several different languages,

Multiple books?? Multiple book cases! And you can't even fully admit to yourself how much you have because you've gracefully separated out all the materials that are "for teaching the kids someday" on to their own shelves in another room.

Edit: and that doesn't even take into account the like... terabyte.. of digital resources gathered "just in case"
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Iversen » Wed May 16, 2018 7:06 pm

You might be considered a nerd if you sit in your comfy chair with your Polish wordlists two weeks before countdown to Bratislava and suddenly the thought strikes you "maybe it would be more logical to do this in Slovakian".

And then you switch to writing wordlists in Slovak and concoct your own mini Slovak grammar from the internet because you discover that the grammar you bought last year in Bratislava is written in Slovak, and instead of looking for a textbook or course you hunt down texts from zoo home pages and newspapers and Wikipedia and stuff ... all because you find the thought unbearable that you would go there for the second year in a row and still not be able to read a local newspaper...
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby smallwhite » Fri May 25, 2018 3:35 am

... when your phone is in Spanish although you're Chinese and you're in Australia, and then one day it dawned on you that it could be dangerous in an emergency if other people could not use your phone to access important information about you, so you rush to the phone's Language Settings, look for "English", ...... and select French.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Teango » Sat May 26, 2018 12:20 am

In response to If you could learn any language without considering outside factors..., Neurotip wrote:Bella Coola or something similar -- the Everest of articulatory phonetics, get a medical certificate before attempting...

Oh why, for the sake of Mezzofanti, did I have to go and look this up...?
...the Nuxalk word clhp’xwlhtlhplhhskwts’ (IPA: [xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]), meaning "he had had [in his possession] a bunchberry plant", has thirteen obstruent consonants in a row with no phonetic or phonemic vowels... [source: Wikipedia: Salishan languages] :shock: ;) :) :ugeek:


...now I feel compelled to find out just how deep the rabbit hole goes!
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Hank » Sat May 26, 2018 1:12 pm

The word "tan" in Spanish means "so" or "very", as in: Estoy tan cansado./I'm so tired.

I was driving by a furniture store and the sign on the front was advertising "Tan Sofa". I was absolutely confused because this made no sense whatsoever. So sofa? Very sofa? What does that even mean? Eventually I figured out that it was the color tan. :lol:
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Cavesa » Sat May 26, 2018 1:46 pm

Hank wrote:The word "tan" in Spanish means "so" or "very", as in: Estoy tan cansado./I'm so tired.

I was driving by a furniture store and the sign on the front was advertising "Tan Sofa". I was absolutely confused because this made no sense whatsoever. So sofa? Very sofa? What does that even mean? Eventually I figured out that it was the color tan. :lol:


This reminds me of a moment that happened approximately ten years ago. We were reading a bit of Gilgamesh in class and I was asked to read aloud. Having just started learning Spanish, I read Chumbaba the Spanish way (as my brain automatically identified the word as a foreign one), and the whole class burst out laughing, because "Čum baba" sounds like a very rude way to tell an old lady to look at something. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong.

The right way to pronounce it in Czech is more or less the same as what the German natives would read it like.

It wasn't the only funny moment during that lesson. Another classmate read "Jsem jelen" (I am a deer) instead of Jsem jeden (I am one). This time, it took the whole class and the teacher a minute to realise something was wrong, while that guy kept reading. Really, Gilgamesh was having a weird effect on us.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Neurotip » Sun May 27, 2018 10:32 pm

Teango wrote:Oh why, for the sake of Mezzofanti, did I have to go and look this up...?
...the Nuxalk word clhp’xwlhtlhplhhskwts’ (IPA: [xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]), meaning "he had had [in his possession] a bunchberry plant", has thirteen obstruent consonants in a row with no phonetic or phonemic vowels... [source: Wikipedia: Salishan languages] :shock: ;) :) :ugeek:

OK, now I have to admit... I knew I was a language nerd when I noticed that at stressful moments, when I was most in need of something calming and energising, I would find myself curled up once again with my well-thumbed Mithun 'The Languages of Native North America'. :oops:
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