Languages!!!

[splootbloot]

Languages languages languages!!!

What ones do you know?

Are you learning or fluent?

Why did you learn it?

How long did it take to learn?

Any language is welcome!

 

 

I'll go first. I'm currently learning a language called "toki pona", which is a language derived from English, Chinese, and German. It's a con-language consisting of 137 words, making it very easy to learn. Most people who learn it claim to become fluent in about 2-3 weeks. It was made to be a minimalist language, trying to find the meaning of life in the least amount of words possible. The language has a fairly small community of dedicated speakers. Most people in this community are tech nerds like you and me!

 

A typical toki pona sentence would go along the lines of:

toki! nimi mi li sploot! mi pona tan ni! sina pilin seme?

 

which translates to...

Hello! My name is sploot! Nice to meet you! How are you?

[TetraSky]

1 hour ago, splootbloot said:

What ones do you know?

French and English. But I can recognize and know a few words of other languages. Mainly Japanese since I'm a weeb.

 

1 hour ago, splootbloot said:

Are you learning or fluent?

Always learning. But can speak and hold a conversation in both. So I guess fluent?
 

1 hour ago, splootbloot said:

Why did you learn it?

One was my home language, the other out of necessity because everything outside my little world that is my province is in that language.
 

1 hour ago, splootbloot said:

How long did it take to learn?

Still not done with either. Language is ever changing and they have so many different rules that I, more often than not, forget 95% of them and then I re-re-re-relearn them... But by the time I was 18 I could speak, write and understand both, at least.
 

[DANK_AS_gay]

1 hour ago, splootbloot said:

What ones do you know?

English, and that's it. I've taken Spanish every year of school since Kindergarten, but until 8th grade all they taught us was colors and numbers. Every year. Since then I have failed or almost failed every semester of Spanish in High School. Spanish doesn't make any sense to me, why have 4 billion different conjugations depending on the situation, when you can use 4? Things that don't make sense to me don't stick in my brain, same is true for every subject. Calculus has been easy, precalc was not, physics was not.

[jetnoodles]

I know English fluently, but can also make verbal conversation in Gujarati. I can read, write and talk in Arabic and Urdu but I'm still learning.

[DANK_AS_gay]

1 hour ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

Spanish doesn't make any sense to me, why have 4 billion different conjugations depending on the situation, when you can use 4?

 

That's not even a fraction of the conjugations

 

vs :do, does, doing, did, done

Which would be easier to learn? I hear people (especially native English speakers, which is stupid) complaining about though/thought/through, or there/their/they're, but compared to something like that.....

 

And where did the V come from???? WTF is VAYAN??? Hacer ---> vayan vs do ---> does 

I'm sorry, I just really despise Spanish for no fault of the people who speak it. 

[Dillpickle23422]

2 hours ago, splootbloot said:

Languages languages languages!!!

What ones do you know?

Are you learning or fluent?

Why did you learn it?

How long did it take to learn?

Any language is welcome!

 

 

I'll go first. I'm currently learning a language called "toki pona", which is a language derived from English, Chinese, and German. It's a con-language consisting of 137 words, making it very easy to learn. Most people who learn it claim to become fluent in about 2-3 weeks. It was made to be a minimalist language, trying to find the meaning of life in the least amount of words possible. The language has a fairly small community of dedicated speakers. Most people in this community are tech nerds like you and me!

 

A typical toki pona sentence would go along the lines of:

toki! nimi mi li sploot! mi pona tan ni! sina pilin seme?

 

which translates to...

Hello! My name is sploot! Nice to meet you! How are you?

Spanish and English.

Learning, but know enough to converse with people (came in clutch when I was in Houston and my doordash driver spoke little english, and couldn't find my hotel room). I learned it as there are a lot of spanish people in the US, and school. It took me 2 school years to learn (still learning)

[techswede]

Fluent:
English. Had to learn it in school. Now most of my day is spent thinking and speaking in english. (Lots of immigrants at job sites)
Swedish. Lived here all my life. Might as well learn the language
Danish. I'm half danish.

Can hold a conversation:
French. Took it in school. Trying to keep it from slipping out of my head.
German. My grandmother and her family are german so i picked it up here and there. I also have german cousins.
Japanese. Started out weebing. Now i'm learning kanji because i'm clearly not suffering enough.

 

Learning:
Russian. Started learning it on and off years ago. Now i may as well keep going since it may become our new language.

Arabic. Mostly for fun. My old laborer was arabic and we greeted each other with "marhaban habibi" every morning. If you know you know.
Spanish. Little by little. Also for fun.

 

I've also gone mad enough to create a couple of languages for a fantasy series i'm working on.
It is maddening. Not recommended. 

[DANK_AS_gay]

2 minutes ago, techswede said:

I've also gone mad enough to create a couple of languages for a fantasy series i'm working on.

How do you make it unique to the other languages? In my head, all I can do is a letter swap thing, where it is still English, but with different symbols. My smol brain cannot wrap itself around there being any other language besides English.

[Dillpickle23422]

Oh. to tack on, I tried to learn russian but failed, and only know curse words, and the russian word for house lmao

[techswede]

Just now, DANK_AS_gay said:

How do you make it unique to the other languages? In my head, all I can do is a letter swap thing, where it is still English, but with different symbols. My smol brain cannot wrap itself around there being any other language besides English.

I've gone a pretty simple route around the problem. I think about the culture of the people that speak it. Their origins. I find real world counterparts and i work around an existing language to find a structure (so to speak) to build the language around. One is like Maori, Another is similar to german. Etc. But only in structure. It doesn't sound like german or maori.

[Needfuldoer]

Does "foul" count?

[DaRk0]

Slovak, Serbian, Croatian, English.

 

Learning Spanish atm.

[splootbloot]

2 hours ago, techswede said:

German. My grandmother and her family are german so i picked it up

I've always wanted to learn German just to join online communities. So many things that I'm interested in have German users.

 

I've tried starting here and there, and, while I do get somewhere, I end up dropping it due to other projects or plans.

[RasmusDC]

I of course can speak Danish, since it is my native language. which means i am fairly communicative in Norwegian mostly "Bokmål" not that great at "nynorsk", can do swedish, but not as well.

 

Then English, i would call myself fluent, been used most of my life, and since i have been a part of big Danish owned companies, that had English as main spoken language, then it is more English than Danish at work.

 

I´m competent at German, but mostly the written part, it has been long since I have used the spoken part, so I tend to strive a bit away from it..

 

I can do a bit of Spanish and a bit of French, just to get by (order a hotel room, buy some food stuff like that)... but I think that it is. (Wife´s family, although Danish, most of them live in Spain)

 

I really wanted to learn Japanese, but just never found a place to do it, there is so much culture behind it.   And had 2 months of Italien, but just did not have the time, so stopped.

[Heliian]

Fluent in English and French. 

 

Some grasp of the other romantic languages.

 

Picked up some German in Baden, picked up some Cantonese in HK.  

 

 

Did you know that English is a Germanic language?  

 

ALWAYS trying to learn and expand my capabilities.  I find the best way is to immerse yourself in the culture, go to a bar and start ordering. 

 

[Rauten]

20 hours ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

And where did the V come from???? WTF is VAYAN??? Hacer ---> vayan vs do ---> does 

I'm sorry, I just really despise Spanish for no fault of the people who speak it. 

Don't worry, it's not just you. That makes no sense. Either the place/teacher you got those tables from screwed up badly, or you're learning a different version of Spanish than the one I speak. "Vayais" and "Vayan" are conjugations of the "ir" verb, which is the "to go" verb in English.

It should be "vosotros hagáis", "ellos hagan".

 

One of the reasons why we have so many conjugations for each verb is the amount of info we cram into them. We add a lot and I mean a LOT of temporal information into the conjugation, as well as the subject. You see the subject when learning because it makes it easier to "link" each one with their subject, but it's completely unneeded.

 

You can sum up "I would do" into "haría", and that one word has the full information.

Is it better? Is it worse? Depends on who you ask. Most people find it easier to learn English, but most linguists think Spanish is a much better language. 

[DANK_AS_gay]

41 minutes ago, Rauten said:

Is it better? Is it worse? Depends on who you ask. Most people find it easier to learn English, but most linguists think Spanish is a much better language.

Yeah, If I was to learn a new language, I would want it to be something a little more out there. That way it is interesting to me. Gaelic sounds cool, maybe Mandarin (your paycheck in business goes up tenfold if you know Mandarin, given the US' dealings with China). I dunno, the most frustrating part is that I could be fluent in Spanish by now, but due to administration changes, teacher changes, etc. my Spanish class was colors and numbers for 10 years. I am now 17, and my brain is far more developed than it was when I was in Kindergarten. I understand the appeal of learning a new language in Europe, but there aren't as many languages (so close together) over here. If I drive 500 miles I would be in a State or two over from where I was. America is large enough to have just about every climate in it, If I want to go to the beach, I can go there. Tropical areas, dunes, mountains, deserts, tundras, forests, plains. Realistically, the only biome we don't have is the rainforest or jungle. All of this to say, realistically, there is not really a reason for me to learn another language (outside of fun). I don't want to force other people to learn English to get in the United States, but at the same time I have neither the time nor the intellect to memorize literal gigabytes of data.

[Rauten]

2 minutes ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

All of this to say, realistically, there is not really a reason for me to learn another language (outside of fun).

Since you're in the U.S., I'd say that's a very good reason to learn Spanish. The U.S., AFAIK, does not actually have an official language, and you have a bajillion of Spanish speakers as fellow citizens.

2 minutes ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

I don't want to force other people to learn English to get in the United States, but at the same time I have neither the time nor the intellect to memorize literal gigabytes of data.

The time? Maybe not.

The intellect? Most certainly you do have.

Your main impediment is that you're probably burned out of Spanish. And that's fine. Not all languages are for everyone, specially if you had such a horrendous experience in school. But don't let that fool you into thinking you're not "smart enough".

Motivation is extremely important for any learning process. Find a language you're actually motivated to learn, and you probably will learn something. Maybe not to be fluent, but a step forward. And some time later, you may go back into it, and learn some more. Take it easy, step by step.

[Hybris5112]

I speak some English but being a US midwesterner I have been told repeatedly that I sound strange. I guess that's why I am pretty good at cutting through English speaking accents that other people struggle with? 

 

Beyond that I can read some Spanish, French, and German mostly because of how much safety training material I handle at work and because and I am a military history nut so you tend to pick up a few things here and there.

 

As I decided to take up writing I have come to realize that my grasp on my own mother language is very basic and crude thus leading to me hoping to one day take some remedial English courses at the local community college one of these days.

[DeadnightWarrior]

Italian, English and French.

I'm Italian so I obviously speak Italian.

My mom is a francophone, that's why I speak French.

And finally I learned English at school and improved my knowledge of it thanks to a whole bunch of heavy metal records I used to listen to when I was a teen!

[Stahlmann]

Obviously German since it's where i was born and where i live.

 

I'm also fluent in English. But not because of school, rather because my obsession with gaming started when i was very young. Because of that I was always a few years ahead of english class in school.

 

Big surprise: Years of just practicing without much thought put into it works better than memorizing and repeating vocabulary and tenses over and over again. I might not have perfect grammar all the time, but i can speak to someone in english without having to pause and think or permanently translate in my head. When i speak or write in english, i also think in english. I guess that's the point where you could say it's "fluent".