You know you're a language nerd when…

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

Postby Teango » Mon May 01, 2017 7:10 pm

@Kazumi
Hanzi/kanji tic-tac-toe...this is a stroke of genius! :D
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guiguixx1
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby guiguixx1 » Mon May 01, 2017 8:05 pm

When you read English topics on the forum and then go back to studying your course in your mother tongue (French) and realize that the way your pronounce the words (in your head) written in your syllabus make no sense at all in English (word order is different, reading and understanding "structure cognitive interne" thinkinig it's in English is difficult to understand at first reading). Then you get out of your dream and realize you have to switch the language botton! Sometimes having to use French is so uncommon that I have to make the conscious and deliberate action of going back to French to decypher my lessons! Most of my lessons and my homeworks are either in Dutch or in English, almost never in French, I'm not used to it anymore
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby William Camden » Fri May 05, 2017 8:52 am

Iversen wrote:When you arrive in a Romanian town and buy a pocket dictionary before you buy your first meal there. And use it to look up what ink is called in Romanian ("cerneală") so that you can ask the shop assistant in Romanian whether they have got it.


A Slavic loanword.
Trotsky was a sort of war correspondent during the Balkan Wars and once described sitting in at a Romanian socialist meeting. Romanian struck him as being an odd mixture of Romance vocabulary with the occasional obvious loanword from Slavic languages.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Iversen » Fri May 05, 2017 3:53 pm

It is clear that this word is related to the Slavic words for 'black' ("черный" in Russian") - but it would be impossible to guess "cerneală" even if you had been tipped that you should look for a Slavic root. And the funny thing is that the shop only had red and blue ink, not black. I did manage to buy black ink ("μαύρο μελάνι") in Thessaloniki last year, but when it was used I had big problems to find ink in my own town - it has simply become an obsolete product. I did at long last find the stuff in a local department store, but they keep it in closed drawers in the stationary-and-book area, and I only got wind of their hidden treasures because they also sold expensive fountain pens there.

By the way: I need black ink to write crotchets and quavers and semiquaver on my note sheets, which goes to show that I'm a antiquated nerd in more than one respect.

Kunst076(BigBastian-ink).jpg
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Dragon27
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Dragon27 » Fri May 05, 2017 7:37 pm

Iversen wrote:It is clear that this word is related to the Slavic words for 'black' ("черный" in Russian") - but it would be impossible to guess "cerneală" even if you had been tipped that you should look for a Slavic root.

It sounds almost like a Russian word "чернила", but with a Romanian suffix "-eală".
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Teango
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Teango » Fri May 05, 2017 7:47 pm

Image

When you actually look up the word "ЯНСИЗР" on the front page of Rhinospike. :roll:
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby AndyMeg » Sat May 06, 2017 4:48 am

When you casually look at the Youtube button for closed captions (cc) and what you actually see is a korean letter: ㄸ
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby arthaey » Sun May 07, 2017 3:05 am

When your idea of a vacation is buying a bunch of books in the local language that you don't really speak yet.

When you're proud of your "restraint" at buying "only" $100 USD of books on vacation.

When you have to buy a new carry-on bag to bring all those books home.

:D
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby AndyMeg » Mon May 08, 2017 5:18 pm

When you are talking to your sister in your native language (spanish) and midway (and without noticing it) you switch to english and finally you end with a sentence in japanese. And you only notice this because you sister tells you how happy she is that she understood everything (because she also speaks english and you've been teaching japanese to her xD!)
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Cavesa » Mon May 08, 2017 6:17 pm

AndyMeg wrote:When you are talking to your sister in your native language (spanish) and midway (and without noticing it) you switch to english and finally you end with a sentence in japanese. And you only notice this because you sister tells you how happy she is that she understood everything (because she also speaks english and you've been teaching japanese to her xD!)


When you take it as a matter of honor to not allow your siblings to be horrible at foreign langauges.
My little sister is "my project" in this area too.
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