You know you're a language nerd when…

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

Postby SGP » Thu Nov 15, 2018 7:03 am

Djedida wrote:You know that you're a language nerd when you consider all alternatives to the more popular language that you're learning.

Should I learn Italian... or maybe Venetian, Piedmonteis, Neapolitan, Corsican, Sardinian, or Sicilian? Or how about Spanish? Wait no, too popular, maybe I should try Catalan, Valencian, Quechua, Galician, Guarani, or Nahuatl instead... I like Swedish, but wouldn't it be cool to learn Norwegian Bokmal, Danish, Icelandic, Faroese, Elfdalian or why not Old Norse? Decision, decisions...


What about those who decide to learn all of them at the same time, but to a much lesser extent?
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Monox D. I-Fly
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Monox D. I-Fly » Fri Nov 16, 2018 5:16 pm

When you read a comic which was released using your native language but you happened to encounter its scanlation in your target language so you choose to read the target language version instead.

Happened to me last Wednesday.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Chmury » Sat Nov 17, 2018 12:05 am

When you watch the movie Arrival for the umpteenth time and during the scene when she walks into the lecture hall and is about to begin the day's lecture and says, "Today we're going to look into why Portuguese sounds so different from all the other Romance languages", but then realises that the hall is virtually empty and one of her students asks her to turn the tv on so that they can see the breaking news of the arrival of alien spacecraft all around the world, you think, 'actually, I would really like to hear her lecture about why Portuguese sounds so different from other Romance languages'.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Ani » Sat Nov 17, 2018 12:51 pm

Chmury wrote:When you watch the movie Arrival for the umpteenth time


That's the best movie. Math/physics, languages & aliens. It's a shame you can't listen to the lectures, read the books on the shelves.. that's one movie I'd love to walk around inside
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Cèid Donn
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Cèid Donn » Sat Nov 17, 2018 8:45 pm

-- when someone on a forum innocently asks "Whats the difference between language X and language Y?" and you force yourself to click away because you know you would spend 2 hours writing an obsessively detailed response

-- when your Twitter feed has tweets in some many different languages you no longer consciously register which language you're reading from tweet to tweet

-- when whether a game on Steam has language support for one of your target languages is a factor in whether you buy it

-- when you're secretly proud of the fact you own a copy of every version of the TY textbook for your favorite languages

-- when you get mad at Duolingo for marking your answer wrong because you wrote your answer correctly, but in that language's sister language by mistake

-- when you've unintentionally convinced Google Ads you're a native speaker of a language other than your native language and now you're getting targeted ads for courses in your actual native language
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Chmury
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Chmury » Sat Nov 17, 2018 8:54 pm

Ani wrote:
Chmury wrote:When you watch the movie Arrival for the umpteenth time


That's the best movie. Math/physics, languages & aliens. It's a shame you can't listen to the lectures, read the books on the shelves.. that's one movie I'd love to walk around inside



Same here. I’d love to chat with them about how they figured out the alien script and if they’d mind if I copied all the alien pictographs on their computers and took them home with me so that I could turn them into an Anki deck. Oh, and if I could have a copy of her book, The Universal Language when she finishes writing it in the future. Such a good film!
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Cavesa » Sun Nov 18, 2018 3:36 pm

A few days after an urgent visit to hospital:

He: What are you doing?
Me: Just some grammar.
He: But you're supposed to be resting!
Me: I am, it's Spanish!
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redtomcat
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby redtomcat » Sun Nov 18, 2018 4:41 pm

Via Diva wrote:
Iversen wrote:When you prefer your Greek or your Cyrillic handwriting to the kind of semilegible scrawl you use for your native language

When that makes you think how greatly would some languages look with Greek or Cyrillic alphabet...


That's true - some writing systems like some fonts are great for certain effects.
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redtomcat
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Interested in Maghrebi Arabic, Polish
Japanese is my current study lead.
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby redtomcat » Sun Nov 18, 2018 4:44 pm

When you take a year out to do an MA in Applied Linguistics and are unhappy there isn't that much linguistics: but now you are seriously considering taking more time out to research comparative linguistics
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby nooj » Mon Nov 19, 2018 5:48 am

Image

Of course.

I said I'd start. It took me a while to work up the will to start though. For now, learning the scripts is good enough.
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