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 Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 2:06 pm
After a date with a girl from Iceland, I really want to learn more about the Icelandic language.
Something I've found particularly interesting in my initial reading, "despite its arguable baggage, the remarkable conservatism of the Icelandic language and its resultant near-isomorphism to Old Norse (which is equivalently termed Old Icelandic by linguists) means that, to their delight, modern Icelanders can easily read the Eddas, sagas, and other classic Old Norse literary works created in the tenth through thirteenth centuries." (From Wikipedia.)
So cool. whee
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Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2012 10:03 pm
Interesting Nya! cat_whee
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Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2012 5:20 pm
Came across this article by Joshua Foer on Fark, and decided to share. It's about constructed languages, such as one called Ithkuil, which try to improve upon the problems that are present in natural languages. One of the goals is to create a language that's both precise and concise. I've always found the idea of making up a language to be fascinating, and...well, kind of mind-blowing. Think about how many words we use each day! I don't think I'm cut out for conlangs, but I have an intense admiration for linguists who work on them. (Tolkien, for instance!) The creator of Ithkuil is a man named John Quijada. In the article, he says, "“I had this realization that every individual language does at least one thing better than every other language,” The article then goes on to explain, "For example, the Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr doesn’t use egocentric coördinates like “left,” “right,” “in front of,” or “behind.” Instead, speakers use only the cardinal directions. They don’t have left and right legs but north and south legs, which become east and west legs upon turning ninety degrees." Have any of you guys ever made up your own language? Do you know any constructed languages? What do you think your language is good at, compared to other languages? For English, I would say that it's flexible. The spelling is so inconsistent that I would say that it's easy to add a new word without worrying overly much about the spelling or phonetics. The sheer number of synonyms for any given word is also a plus.
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Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 11:55 am
Taeryyn Came across this article by Joshua Foer on Fark, and decided to share. It's about constructed languages, such as one called Ithkuil, which try to improve upon the problems that are present in natural languages. One of the goals is to create a language that's both precise and concise. I've always found the idea of making up a language to be fascinating, and...well, kind of mind-blowing. Think about how many words we use each day! I don't think I'm cut out for conlangs, but I have an intense admiration for linguists who work on them. (Tolkien, for instance!) The creator of Ithkuil is a man named John Quijada. In the article, he says, "“I had this realization that every individual language does at least one thing better than every other language,” The article then goes on to explain, "For example, the Australian Aboriginal language Guugu Yimithirr doesn’t use egocentric coördinates like “left,” “right,” “in front of,” or “behind.” Instead, speakers use only the cardinal directions. They don’t have left and right legs but north and south legs, which become east and west legs upon turning ninety degrees." Have any of you guys ever made up your own language? Do you know any constructed languages? What do you think your language is good at, compared to other languages? For English, I would say that it's flexible. The spelling is so inconsistent that I would say that it's easy to add a new word without worrying overly much about the spelling or phonetics. The sheer number of synonyms for any given word is also a plus. It looks like quite the daunting task, but I'd love to try it one day. Too bad I don't think I have the heart for it.
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2013 6:48 am
Really wanting to speck ISL after hearing a friend talking about it!
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Posted: Mon Nov 25, 2013 7:05 pm
Wasn't sure whether to revive this thread, or the Regional Stereotypes one, but since this is language-specific...*shrug* I came across this beautiful article called How to Speak Like a Maritimer. For those that aren't aware, the Maritimes of Canada consist of Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick, and I personally grew up in a rural part of NS. The article literally had me laughing aloud, because in my head, I heard the whole thing in my uncle's extra-thick accent. Some of my favourite parts: "After some time [in the Maritimes], their garbled fast-paced accents and abuse of English grammar grows on you to the point where you find yourself back in the big city going, “Holee Jesus cocksuckin’ Murphy, she was some ********’ cold and a pocketful of ******** yester’ night, I’ll tell ya right now.” -"So words like “our” are pronounced “are,” “car” sounds like “currh,” and you’ll regularly hear things like, “Come on, Terry. Get in the currh (car) we’re going to the burrh (bar). Oh it’s not too furrh (far).”" -"if you ask anyone how they’re doing, there’s a strong chance that they’ll tell you… and then tag on “as ********” at the end. You’ll go, “Hey buddy how’s it going?” And they’ll tell you that they’re either “tired as ********,” “ready-to-go as ********,” “hungry as ********,” and so on. But the mother of all “… as ********” is the proverbial “drunk as ********.” Every Maritimer ever in the history of Maritimers has at some point in their Maritimer lives told another Maritimer that they were “drunk as ********.” I ******** it." (In New Brunswick I noticed that it's "deh-RUNK as ********", the first syllable uttered with one's eyes rolled to the heavens.) -"Past, present, and future verb tenses are erratically interchanged making it difficult to pinpoint when or what the ******** someone is talking about. Rather than abiding by the normal rules of the English language and saying, “I saw the Batman movie the other day,” Maritimers will say, “I seen the Batman movie this day,” with all the intended meaning of the former."
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Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 10:26 pm
After resisting for a long while, I've finally begun to learn Dutch, as my partner is from the Netherlands, and we're going there on holiday in two months. It's been really interesting, as a lot of the words sound the same but are spelled differently. Like "coffee"in Dutch is "koffie"- which I much prefer. The only thing is that my written Dutch is coming along fantastically, whereas my spoken Dutch is TERRIBLE. The way it's spoken is much harsher than English, and it's taking some getting used to...
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