You know you're a language nerd when…

[Blaze]

When you surprise someone by asking them which type of Arabic they are learning because they're so used to people assuming that Arabic is just one language.


When your Uni implements a new registration system for classes which requires students to swipe their cards before entering the classroom and you have to stop yourself from laughing because you saw one of the Chinese students in the corridor tiptoe up to the scanner, swipe their card and whisper to their friends 刷卡了，
回家! (Swiped card, going home) before bolting off back down the corridor.

[Iversen]

When you go to Berlin and buy thick German-Lituanian and German-Latvian dictionaries, and now you have a problem because there really isn't any place for them in the neighbourhood of the Slavic section of your collection - and as everyone knows the Baltic and the Slavic languages share their own main branch within the Stammbaum of the Indoeuropean languages so that's where the new Baltic books ought to be.

Right now they are squeezed into the space normally occupied by a thick Green German-Polish dictionary from Pons, which for the time being is placed on a stool near my armchair (below the notestand with my study printouts) because an avalanche of dictionaries in different languages already take up all the space on the small table to the other side of my armchair. I have four small Langenscheidt dictionaries on top of my portable computer, which is located on top of my stereo rack. Every time I want to use this computer I have to balance the Langenscheidts on top of a pile of midsize dictionaries on the small table which includes those for Irish and Indonesian and Croatian and my Cyrillic Serbian dictionary - and then I can't study those languages. I could alternatively put them on top of the green Polish Pons on the stool, but then I can't study Polish before they are returned to their normal place on the portable.

I would also have bought an Estonian dictionary if the bookstore in Berlin had had one, but that's less of a problem because there is some free space on the shelf where I keep my Finnish and Hungarian dictionaries. I can't put more dictionaries on the stool because my Albanian and Greek and Esperanto dictionaries and Harry Potter in Irish and English already are placed there.

[Monox D. I-Fly]

Me today (well, technically yesterday since it's already past-midnight here):
When you spend your time queuing at the hospital by reading 10+ anime lyrics in Japanese script.

[tiia]

...

Looks to me like: ...when you need yet another shelf for all the language related books, but have not time to get one because you're collecting and using more material?

[Cavesa]

Imagine the situation: my surgery exam (the 1st attempt), I am sitting at one side of the desk, the five examiners at the other one. It is already not looking good for me and I know my immediate future, just trying to make it less embarassing. And then I can't remember the word "bypass" (which Czech took from English and both doctors and patients use) and automatically talk about "pontage". It confused the hell out of them. And it took a moment to figure out what was happening and I really couldn't remember the word "bypass".

I failed because of being in general badly prepared, so it wasn't appropriate to be honest and I wisely decided not to tell them: "I plan to need only the French terminology in my career anyways". I need to pass next time.

[tiia]

@Cavesa: Btw. Germans also use the word Bypass.

[zjones]

You are preparing a list of both impressive and insulting sentences in your head for when your family members inevitably gush, "Oh my gosh!!! You can speak French now? Can you something to my dog in French?! Pleeeeeease?" over the Thanksgiving dinner table.

[rdearman]

You are preparing a list of both impressive and insulting sentences in your head for when your family members inevitably gush, "Oh my gosh!!! You can speak French now? Can you something to my dog in French?! Pleeeeeease?" over the Thanksgiving dinner table.

Whenever anyone says to me "Say something in French" I always reply "quelque chose"

[Iversen]

Since it is thanksgiving you could also tell your chien to get the dindon and eat it. That will teach your family not to make fun of your French studies!

Btw, I have partly solved my dictionary distribution problems - though not by buying more shelves. Instead I have moved my cookery books to the back of the shelves (after 46 years on my own I know how to cook anything I would care to eat) - there they can keep my old and dusty fiction books company. And then I have moved a collection of Danish dictionaries and my Finno-Ugrians one shelf up so that I now have a free shelf below which can be reached from my armchair, and that's where I intend to put the dictionaries and grammars I have used the last couple of days - still within reach, but no longer cluttering my small table and my four-legged stool and my portable computer. The two new Baltic treasure troves are still placed on the same shelf as Russian and Polish, and I have even been able to move Comrie's big All-Slavonic opus there because I now had enough free space to move the Irish collection (including Potter) to the same shelf as my big Hungarian and Finnish books, adjacent to the smaller tomes about the same languages.

[Monox D. I-Fly]

You are preparing a list of both impressive and insulting sentences in your head for when your family members inevitably gush, "Oh my gosh!!! You can speak French now? Can you something to my dog in French?! Pleeeeeease?" over the Thanksgiving dinner table.

Whenever anyone says to me "Say something in French" I always reply "quelque chose"

For me it's Escargot.