You know you're a language nerd when…

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

Postby Bluepaint » Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:00 am

Bluepaint wrote:When you're backpacking & trekking but you still have to buy that dictionary you saw for the language you currently have no plans to study


I bought a 2nd one! Kadazan-Dusun-Malay-English. God help this addiction :cry: I did manage to avoid buying a 3rd (Murut-Malay, I want it so very badly!) because I'm supposed to be a backpacker and not a rich tourist. And I would have to post it home at this point. Book + postage maybe £40-50? Eek.

I must start setting aside a book & postage budget when travelling.
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Iversen
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Iversen » Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:39 am

I just leave home with empty space in my luggage so that I can permit myself to buy a few dictionaries along the way. Most of my wardrobe when travelling is washable, and I bring along the most wornout rags I've got so that I can throw them out if I need more space in my bag.

The big problem nowadays is that paper dictionaries are dying out and that you only find grammars for the languages the other customers also might want to buy, and then the temptations become less numerous. But dictionaries and grammars for Kadazan and Dusun (and Murut - how can you live without it?) would definitely be worth owning.

Right now I'm in the middle of a major multilingual wordlist project. In the last round I included some 28 languages, and since then I have acquired dictionaries in Czech and Ukranian and they both deserve to be included in the current round. so far I have reached the Iberian pensinsula with Portuguese (after English, Scots, Afrikaans, Dutch, Low and High German, Icelandic, Nowegian, Swedish, Latin, Modern and Ancient French), and today I expect to do the rest of the Romance languages and if possible also Greek and Albanian and Esperanto and Indonesian. Then I'll go visit some zoos and aquariums and museums, and after that I have the Slavic languages waiting for me. Actually I could extend the project to include Hungarian, and it ought to be possible to by an Estonian dictionary over the internet, and ... well, I don't study the last handful of languages yet, but it was fun to do a wordlist in Finnish so I'm sure it also would be interesting to study the vocabulary of for instance Latvian or Lithuanian. I only leave out the Asian languages because there is such a thing as lingvistic constipation.
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tommus
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby tommus » Mon Jun 24, 2019 10:54 am

Iversen wrote:... so that I can permit myself to buy a few dictionaries along the way ... I bring along the most wornout rags I've got so that I can throw them out if I need more space in my bag.

Iversen, I think you win the prize for the best "language nerd" statement of all time!
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby nooj » Mon Jun 24, 2019 2:11 pm

It's a madness that unfortunately I share as well. Looking at my (one) suitcase, in order to fit all the books that I've bought in order to fit inside, I have to give away most of my clothes. Oh well, they'll go to a good cause. Clothes I can live without. But books I can't.
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Bluepaint
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Bluepaint » Mon Jun 24, 2019 4:06 pm

nooj wrote:It's a madness that unfortunately I share as well. Looking at my (one) suitcase, in order to fit all the books that I've bought in order to fit inside, I have to give away most of my clothes. Oh well, they'll go to a good cause. Clothes I can live without. But books I can't.


Whilst I am inclined to agree I believe you are underestimating just how much one sweats when trekking in a rainforest. And there isn't always water or time to wash and dry clothes. It doesn't sound that bad but the smell can really be something else ;-) the solution of course is to stay away from all urban environments in between treks, right? :P if only it were that easy
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Koneho
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Koneho » Sun Jun 30, 2019 5:03 pm

Bluepaint wrote:
Bluepaint wrote:When you're backpacking & trekking but you still have to buy that dictionary you saw for the language you currently have no plans to study


I bought a 2nd one! Kadazan-Dusun-Malay-English. God help this addiction :cry: I did manage to avoid buying a 3rd (Murut-Malay, I want it so very badly!) because I'm supposed to be a backpacker and not a rich tourist. And I would have to post it home at this point. Book + postage maybe £40-50? Eek.

I must start setting aside a book & postage budget when travelling.



Dusnic languages are cute because they're in-between indonesian style and philippine style grammar. A dusun from the penninsula got me hooked on Malay and his native/heritage sabahan dialect. This forum needs more austronesian geeks!
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sporedandroid
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby sporedandroid » Thu Jul 04, 2019 6:46 am

You try to watch some Netflix, but you’d rather just study your target language.
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Cavesa
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Cavesa » Thu Jul 04, 2019 6:28 pm

When you're not sure whether you're a learner or a beta tester of the learning tools you're using.

When you are more comfortable (less anxious) to write emails in a foreign language than your native one.
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Bilingual_monoglot
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby Bilingual_monoglot » Fri Jul 05, 2019 2:36 pm

When you ended up speaking German with an American and a Burmese person in Singapore
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brad-alm
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Re: You know you're a language nerd when…

Postby brad-alm » Thu Jul 11, 2019 7:51 pm

You spend a Saturday night with a foreign language textbook instead of a date!!!
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