Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jaume on September 15, 2009 at 3:59pm

I know I'm coming late to this party

There isn't such a thing as coming late to a 'Member Survey' or 'Introductions' discussion.

Permalink Reply by Nicholas Temple-Smith on September 15, 2009 at 7:23pm

English, French, a bit of German, a smidgen of Russian. Does Latin count?

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on September 15, 2009 at 7:29pm

Yes, Latin counts.

Permalink Reply by heretic on September 16, 2009 at 2:04am

Hello Everybody,
As an unabashedly aggressive logophile, WRT [with regard to] every language, i pick up whatever I can, where ever I am! Which is, fellow language-lovers, as many places as I can be (have been to 40 countries so far; hope to double that in the next ten yrs).
I cope w/ basic Italian (my mother & her family is Sammarinese-I'm first generation American); ken an appreciable smattering of Spanish. Can get by with even more French (adore it); yet still more German (my best-but don't get technical).

The kicker is, this chick's daily commute dutifully involves a set of Hindi learner CDs...yeah, for a native speaker of English, that means memory by rote. Such a beautiful script, with an even more melodic sound!
(Have the Hindi Rosetta Stone pgm, too...a non-standard approach to foreign language learning; seems more apt for "right-brainers," though.)

Mini-story: In 1996, tried to get a grip on Arabic before being shipped to Saudi Arabia; so employed books, audio materials, etc.,...but--alas!
To my supreme dismay, discovered I could not, no matter what, coerce OR bribe my uncooperative, unlimber tongue into performing the required contortionist "limber-batics" to make those incredible, alien sounds--(and OH!!--never mind the chorls, whortles & pips had to be in harmony with the lips!)
No matter what funny faces I painstakingly produced, I just couldn't squeeze out the precise noises that needed to emanate outta my mouth. At least, not in recognizable form to any sane Arab. (ACK.)

OK, that was a laughably unintelligible disaster, but nevermind--I'm never going back to Arabia.
I have a new plan now- Yay! Pakistan.
Yes, I wish to learn Urdu. Ayone want to help?
(serious guys!) /smiles/.

On another internationally flavored note, for those of you who have not read it, I'd recommend a book: The Post-American World, by Fareed Zakharia. Despite being simply written and extremely easy to understand, it is stupendously relevant. Zakharia's respectable credentials and plentiful salient points go far to show protectionists and ugly imperialists who pretend that that what they fight against is not happening, exposing why they must instead adjust to a rapidly changing world. No hegemony has ever been permanent.

After all, globalization is the word of the decade--if not century.

Permalink Reply by Heidi Guedel on September 17, 2009 at 3:51pm

English (mother tongue) and a tiny smattering of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. I can partially comprehend some of these written Latin/romance languages, but would still find it difficult to communicate correctly in writing, or to understand when spoken aloud (too rapid).

My love affair with written language is emotive. What does some else's written language cause me to feel and/or "know"... and vice-versa? I also love humor - both written and spoken - especially plays on words.

Permalink Reply by Bill E on October 9, 2009 at 1:20am

I hope I'm not coming to the party after all the guests have departed. A survey of this survey tells me that people here, like many people out in the world, mean a lot of different things by "fluent." I've noticed some pretty sophisticated distinctions being drawn regarding what tasks people can use various languages to accomplish. I'm a native speaker of English, and that is the only language in which I would claim to be able to accomplish any advanced tasks. As a linguist, I've been exposed to a number of different languages to some degree or other, including Spanish, Latin, Russian, Portuguese (Brazilian variety), Khmer, and Tok Pisin (aka Melanesian Pidgin English). I've tried to teach myself some Italian and Greek for travel purposes, and I am currently attempting to learn Finnish in order to understand my wife and daughters. I've recently been exposed to quite a bit of Kurdish, both the Sorani and the Kurmanji variety, and have learned to deal with the Cyrillic and Arabic scripts. I would like to attain a useful functional ability in another language, say to where I could read newspaper articles, listen to tv or radio news broadcasts, and engage in basic social conversations. Finnish seems the most likely candidate.

I was a mathematics/logic person in college, but then I realized that my most satisfying classes were in linguistics and languages, so I ended up going to grad school in linguistics. I now work in the field of language testing and have come to appreciate language as a system with two natures: it is simultaneously a rich formal system and a rather messy social behavior--both aspects interesting and worthy of study.

Permalink Reply by Stephen Moore on October 9, 2009 at 1:49am

That's quite an impressive list, Bill.

I don't know any Tok Pisin, but have browsed a phrase book a few times in bookstores. Pidgins are quite interesting, and I wouldn't mind learning one or two, but would have little use for pidgin as a means of communication where I live.

And what, may I ask, is language testing? Is it some kind of technical field of study (my first thought) or is it really as simple as it seems (embaressing omg realisation of it simply being testing people's language skills)?

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on October 9, 2009 at 9:18am

embaressing

embarassing

Permalink Reply by Stephen Moore on October 9, 2009 at 12:01pm

Not if you pronounce it em-bares-sing.

Which I don't. Just sayin'. :oþ

Permalink Reply by Bill E on October 9, 2009 at 2:48pm

My minor field was pidgins and creoles, and it is a fascinating field of study. Some scholars think that the structure of pidgins and creoles tells us something about our innate language ability.

Language testing *is* a technical field of study for some (a branch of applied linguistics, which studies, among other things, language teaching and acquisition crossed with the theory of assessment design), but I learned it "on the street." So I've picked up some knowledge about the aforementioned fields, but I've really been a practitioner mostly, writing materials to test other people's language skills.

An analogy I've found useful to explain test development is the building of a house. At least three kinds of people are needed: the architect to design the house (this is analogous to the applied linguist, who knows how to design the test); the engineer to assess whether the design can be put into practice (this is analogous to the assessment specialist--usually found in the field of psychometrics or educational psychology); and finally the contractor/builder to actually (choosing to split the infinitive here--that's another topic for this board somewhere) instantiate the design---that's me (I don't even want to get started with the grammatically correct but very stilted "that's I"). I've written test materials to test people's critical thinking skills as well as to test the proficiency of English Language Learners (ELLs). I'm currently working on testing native-English-speakers' proficiency in second or foreign languages. Kind of interesting....

I was trying to write a paper about Tok Pisin once; I had an informant from New Guinea who was fluent. I was trying to construct a sentence to prove something about tense in subordinate clauses, so I constructed the following sentence "Miting olsem mi kisim pukpuk," which I was hoping would mean "I think I got (killed) a crocodile." When I asked my informant what that sentence meant, he said, "Nothing." When I pressed him, asking him if there were any circumstances under which that sentence could be uttered, he replied, "Well, I guess if a waiter brought you crocodile meat by mistake in a restaurant." So now you know how to say that in Tok Pisin if this ever happens to you in New Guinea.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on October 9, 2009 at 9:17am

Khmer

Cambodian language? Khmer-Rouge is only association I have with that word.

...language as a system with two natures: it is simultaneously a rich formal system and a rather messy social behavior--both aspects interesting and worthy of study.

What a great way of putting it. Unlike mathematics, language does not have to be exact to be understood, which is an interesting aspect of communication. However, when it is exacting and perfect, it is quite beautiful, wonderful, or perhaps gratifying, as well.

Permalink Reply by Jaume on October 9, 2009 at 12:26pm

Khmer also refers to an ethnic group and a specific culture. While Cambodia is more a geographical and political entity.

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