Postby Mackie » Sun May 12, 2019 6:18 pm
My name is Max/Mackie however is easy, or Maxi.
I am Filipino. I am not exactly homogeneous. The issue is my father 's strain is Chinese so I do not look like the type-casted versions from that racial group.
I am 39 years old in 2019.
Everyone I encounter either find it interesting that I am Filipino, because all sino-tibetic groups think I belong there (ie. I get mistaken for a Tibetan, Nepalese, Korean, Japanese and mostly mainland Chinese) or the sino-tibetic group themselves think I am one of them and they just start flooring with either Japanese, Chines, Nepalese and Tibetan.
I am from Asia, that part of the political conversation, the shadowy part.
I grew up in the Philippines, I am currently in New Jersey, Jersey City doing a Mechanical Engineering Tech program at a CUNY school in Brooklyn.
The language I grew up with has Spanish, Malayo-Polynesian, American-English, Chinese embedded into the mainstream dialect from the group of islands, I am from, Visayas (Cebuano Seeb-wano).
I studied Chinese in high school (93-97) written and spoken
I picked up Italian for 10 months (2004) (informal jargon, survival mode type,/broken)
I can understand written Spanish without translation, since somehow the language is a preferred mode for a lot of third world and far-flung colonized areas in the far east and in the southern area of the Americas and some other islands.
I do not speak fluent Spanish either.
I am self learning the following right now (unsuccessfully, all at baseline zero)
German
Italian
Chinese-review and rehash; control of modalities and expression
Japanese-trying to absorb hiragana and katakana.
Korean - still null
I can fully understand English, as long as it does not get too dicey or certain specified jargons.
I can only say a few lines in Italian, Chinese, <Spanish maybe> and some Japanese for the following lines:
I speak little <insert language> , but still learning because I am a stranger.
Its safe to say whatever I've mentioned above are all at zero to none just to be safe.
I am actively using Mandarin and Cantonese, since I am trying to also learn hopefully
Chinese Literature 文言 文 (wen yan wen) and procure food items.
I signed on to the forum so I can look at examples of certain languages I am learning on and off (since I want to complete mechanical engineering as an application not just as a college degree).
I also would like to just read threads/posts on how people actively understand and translate whatever language is out there.
I partly collect language books (mostly English-<target language>)
So far I have a lot of German, Italian, some Japanese, Chinese, a Korean Phrasebook, a basic Greek grammar book, 2 Curso Intensivo Spanish, A French dictionary.
I mostly am applying what I know for written correspondence and to read material <engineering,architecture> in the target language.
I have intent to read German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.
Sadly right now only basic Italian and basic Chinese ( Mandarin and Cantonese) have any progress.
My main interest is the colloquial morphology of language, say when someone describes how to cook fish.. and when it is orally delivered/expressed in different languages the idea of process changes depending on how culture treats the idea of raw versus uncooked and other conditions that may apply.
If I get to all of the above, I will struggle to learn Latin (dead language) because it has its use in science and engineering and also logic.
Thank you for reading this.
Max/Mackie
2 x
Try out my software 