Speaking in tongues (the "learning languages" thread)

[Ellie]

Long boring story why I was talking about the refugee family's parent-teacher conferences with a member of the refugee committee at church, but I was asking about a Swahili translator, and he said, "no need, so-and-so speaks enough French to translate for the mom."

What's this, now?

They also speak French?

I could have been learning French this whole time instead of Swahili????

gaaaahhhhhhhhhh

I do wonder what their reaction is going to be when I show up next time butchering TWO languages so I can talk to them

[lunchstealer]

Hey, so I never asked, but where's your refugee family from?

Holly worked with a bunch from Burundi, who spoke a language called "Kurundi" which is a minority language in that area, and for which there were almost no resources. She finally managed to dig up a PDF full of scanned images from an English/Kurundi dictionary, and that was the best she found.

By the way, one possibly important thing to do is to see if you can get a black friend to help them figure out what hygiene and grooming products might be important. That's one area where white folks can't apply their own knowledge, because the physiological differences are real.

[Mo]

By the way, one possibly important thing to do is to see if you can get a black friend to help them figure out what hygiene and grooming products might be important. That's one area where white folks can't apply their own knowledge, because the physiological differences are real.

As long as that friend isn't Eriq La Salle.

[Ellie]

Hey, so I never asked, but where's your refugee family from?

Parents are from the Congo. They spent 14 years in a camp in Uganda, where the kids were all born. They speak Swahili and Luganda (glad I don't have to try to learn that one! No idea where I'd find resources). AND FRENCH APPARENTLY

[JD]

They speak Swahili and Luganda (glad I don't have to try to learn that one! No idea where I'd find resources)

http://learn.learn-luganda.com/
Actually, I'm amazed as anyone that that exists. I was going to suggest trying a local university's Anthropology or Linguistics departments.

[Ellie]

That is surprising!

Another interesting (well, interesting to me at least) thing I just learned is that -- probably because the kids learned Swahili from their parents -- they can speak it fluently, but can't read or write it at all. Glad I learned that before I bought or made any books in Swahili for them!

[JD]

He completado de leer enteramente "Harry Potter y La Piedra Filosofal" con sólo una poca de asistencia de un diccionario. (El español usado en la traducción fue muy "castellano", con usaje frecuente de "vosotros", lo que no conozco bien.) Aprendí muchísimas palabras nuevas, aunque no creo que unos como "gargola", "centauro", o "papanatas" serán muy útiles...

[Kolohe]

Veo que el título español no hace el tonto como el título inglés estadounidense

[JD]

Veo que el título español no hace el tonto como el título inglés estadounidense

Sí, es lo mismo que el título de la edición de Gran Bretaña, pero el título español del segundo libro es (extrañamente) "Harry Potter y la Cámara Secreta" y no "la Cámara de Secretos"; no sé por qué, quizas "la Cámara de Secretos" tiene algún otro sentido.

[Ellie]

Bueno, JD!

[Fin Fang Foom]

Veo que el título español no hace el tonto como el título inglés estadounidense

I have heard this joked about Americans being dumb for not knowing what a philosopher's stone is but that just makes me question the value of those international science tests that Americans seem to do so poorly in.

[Highway]

おめでとうございます！私は一VNだけ読みました．君は”Harry Potter"が読みましたすごい！

[D.A. Ridgely]

Parseltongue or GTFO.

[Jake]

My youngest is a freshman in high school, and he's learning German (which he enjoys). Serendipitously, I came across this tonight, and it made me laugh. So I immediately passed it along to him, and now to you.

The German Animal Names Flowchart

[JD]

I had an interesting realization the other day, sparked by a learner's question about adjectives and personal pronouns. In English, you can use adjectives on nouns (duh) like "The rich man is here." And you can use adjectives on proper names, like "Big Jim is here" although we don't do it as often. But you can't use adjectives on personal pronouns, like "Tall she is here." (Apparently some other languages like Japanese do allow this.)

But English DOES have a way to quasi-use adjectives in a personal-pronoun-like fashion! You can't say "Throw drunk him out of the bar", but you can say "Throw his drunk ass out of the bar", where "his ass" is metonymic for "him".

[D.A. Ridgely]

Stupid me! I never thought of that!

[JD]

Stupid me! I never thought of that!

Yeah, the "exclamatory" adjective+personal pronoun* is the one exception to that...

* I don't know if there's a proper name for it, but YKWIM.

[JD]

So Duolingo does not offer Mandarin, apparently because "there's not enough demand for it." Not enough demand for it? You guys offer WELSH AND KLINGON.

But it turns out there's a good Duolingo-like app called HelloChinese. I've gone through a few lessons already, and I like it. Mandarin grammar is dead simple, from what I've learned so far. No genders! No verb conjugation! No articles! Thank Crom for all that, because they actually want you to start writing almost right off the bat. No wonder literacy was historically such a huge deal there. The tones are not too bad - only four (plus a "neutral" tone). I thought there would be more. Thank Crom for that too, because I can already see how distinguishing, say, "xang3" from "xiang2" at high speed could get real difficult...

[Jadagul]

My understanding is that the duolingo people don't think they've come up with a good way to handle the family of writing systems that includes Chinese and Japanese. At least that was the explanation last time I tried to do that.

[Sandy]

So Duolingo does not offer Mandarin, apparently because "there's not enough demand for it." Not enough demand for it? You guys offer WELSH AND KLINGON.

But it turns out there's a good Duolingo-like app called HelloChinese. I've gone through a few lessons already, and I like it. Mandarin grammar is dead simple, from what I've learned so far. No genders! No verb conjugation! No articles! Thank Crom for all that, because they actually want you to start writing almost right off the bat. No wonder literacy was historically such a huge deal there. The tones are not too bad - only four (plus a "neutral" tone). I thought there would be more. Thank Crom for that too, because I can already see how distinguishing, say, "xang3" from "xiang2" at high speed could get real difficult...

Do not try Cantonese, because they have like 12 tones, IIRC.

[Jadagul]

So Duolingo does not offer Mandarin, apparently because "there's not enough demand for it." Not enough demand for it? You guys offer WELSH AND KLINGON.

But it turns out there's a good Duolingo-like app called HelloChinese. I've gone through a few lessons already, and I like it. Mandarin grammar is dead simple, from what I've learned so far. No genders! No verb conjugation! No articles! Thank Crom for all that, because they actually want you to start writing almost right off the bat. No wonder literacy was historically such a huge deal there. The tones are not too bad - only four (plus a "neutral" tone). I thought there would be more. Thank Crom for that too, because I can already see how distinguishing, say, "xang3" from "xiang2" at high speed could get real difficult...

Do not try Cantonese, because they have like 12 tones, IIRC.

In to Schoenberg?

[JD]

My understanding is that the duolingo people don't think they've come up with a good way to handle the family of writing systems that includes Chinese and Japanese. At least that was the explanation last time I tried to do that.

HelloChinese lets you write your answers in pinyin with tone numbers, pinyin with diacritics, or Chinese characters. I've only tried the tone numbers so far, since it's a lot faster and easier than entering diacritics on my phone.

[Sandy]

So Duolingo does not offer Mandarin, apparently because "there's not enough demand for it." Not enough demand for it? You guys offer WELSH AND KLINGON.

But it turns out there's a good Duolingo-like app called HelloChinese. I've gone through a few lessons already, and I like it. Mandarin grammar is dead simple, from what I've learned so far. No genders! No verb conjugation! No articles! Thank Crom for all that, because they actually want you to start writing almost right off the bat. No wonder literacy was historically such a huge deal there. The tones are not too bad - only four (plus a "neutral" tone). I thought there would be more. Thank Crom for that too, because I can already see how distinguishing, say, "xang3" from "xiang2" at high speed could get real difficult...

Do not try Cantonese, because they have like 12 tones, IIRC.

In to Schoenberg?

Their tones are pitch shifts, not absolute pitches. Uptalking would be a tone.

And Schoenberg is one of the ruiners of western civilization, along with Paul of Tarsus and Karl Marx.

[Jadagul]

So Duolingo does not offer Mandarin, apparently because "there's not enough demand for it." Not enough demand for it? You guys offer WELSH AND KLINGON.

But it turns out there's a good Duolingo-like app called HelloChinese. I've gone through a few lessons already, and I like it. Mandarin grammar is dead simple, from what I've learned so far. No genders! No verb conjugation! No articles! Thank Crom for all that, because they actually want you to start writing almost right off the bat. No wonder literacy was historically such a huge deal there. The tones are not too bad - only four (plus a "neutral" tone). I thought there would be more. Thank Crom for that too, because I can already see how distinguishing, say, "xang3" from "xiang2" at high speed could get real difficult...

Do not try Cantonese, because they have like 12 tones, IIRC.

In to Schoenberg?

Their tones are pitch shifts, not absolute pitches. Uptalking would be a tone.

And Schoenberg is one of the ruiners of western civilization, along with Paul of Tarsus and Karl Marx.

I'm aware of the distinction. But the twelve-tone coincidence was too fun to ignore.

[Jennifer]

My understanding is that the duolingo people don't think they've come up with a good way to handle the family of writing systems that includes Chinese and Japanese. At least that was the explanation last time I tried to do that.

Something I've long been mildly curious about: what do such non-alphabetic written languages do for handling organization and filing, since "alphabetical order" isn't an option?