My experience with trying to learn Mandarin says it's pretty difficult. It's like trying to learn how to write all over again (which, for some languages, you pretty much are)
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I'll get around to Latin some day, just not high on my list.
As for learning a language different than your own it depends. I find that Chinese is much easier than English in many respects, but more difficult in others (reading and writing are much more difficult in Chinese than English for example).
Yeah, that's what I thought, but how hard is it to learn to write again? What I found is the key to learning a language is to think in that language, if you just translate in your mind you are going to get all messed up (like it happens to me most of the time:smalltongue:)
Rissy gets a small cookie for knowing what an ice pop was before I said.
Languages again?
Fluent in English (duh), fluent enough in French, I won't know all the specialised stuff, but I'm fairly sure I could live in France quite comfortably on what I know, very small smatterings of Cornish, a little Japanese, some Latin, and because of the French I can read moderately well in Spanish.
Germanic, Romance x 2, Celtic/Brythonic, Altaic and Italic.
I should start relearning Latin and Ancient Greek.
I'm also fairly proficient at reading English from 1300 - now. OE's just mean.
. . .
My cat just tried to eat my baby toe. It was painful.
All I can say in french is... well, I dont know how to write it, but all I can say is "Do you speak french? I dont speak french"
Languages huh? I know a little bit of German, if I went on holiday to Germany I might manage for a week, but I doubt I'd do any good long term unless I started picking up the language. My french I just forgot after year 9 (2 years ago).
I'd like to know other languages, but I've never really been motivated enough to properly learn them which is a shame.
'Putonghua' is the Mandarin for - Mandarin.
'Minanhua' is the Mandarin for - the sino-tibetan language spoken by natives of southern Fujian province. Officially considered a branch of Chinese, to my completely uneducated ears it sounds totally different. (And my putonghua-speaking husband can't understand a word of it either.)
Chinese (I believe the major language in Taiwan) is made up of multiple different dialects that are actually almost languages onto themselves sometimes. Mandarin is largely considered the main dialect and is spoken in the Beijing and central Chinese area. I think Cantonese is number two and is more common south of Beijing around Hong Kong.
The more you know...
*nibbles at cookie*
Is it oatmeal? Please let it be oatmeal! And none of those nasty nut thingies in my cookie, okay? And no chocolate chips either, I'm not in the mood.
It's just plain oatmeal? YAY!
*glomps cookie, hugs Koorli*
I like people who give me cookies.
And isn't that just the truth?
Here's something else for you to forget: wikipedia provides a nice diagram of the Sinitic language family. Mandarin (which I call 'putonghua') belongs to the Guan twig of the middle Chinese branch. Taiwanese (spoken as a native dialect by 70% of the Taiwanese population) belongs to the Minnan (southern Min) twig of the Min branch - specifically the Hokkien ...um...leaf?
My northern-Chinese husband speaks Mandarin/Putonghua as his native dialect - a lot of northern China does. However, he has found it much easier to learn and understand Yuehua (Cantonese) and Wuhua (Shanghainese) which both belong to the same branch of the family than any of the Min dialects.
Edit @ Cristo: in my experience of learning Mandarin, the reading/writing and pronunciation are incredibly difficult, but the vocabulary and grammar are surprisingly easy.
Just to continue this 'language discussion'... I have a tid-bit that I'm trying to wrap my head around. Looking for validity and other input...
Language is a 'right brain' activity that requires structure and form. Sign language on the other hand (ASL) is a 'left brain' activity that is more compared to a 'dance'. So how do you coordinate these to incongruities?
Britland English: cookie = chocolate chip/similar - a specific type of biscuit
Britland English: biscuit = an american cookie.
But yes, it's a plain oatmeal biscuit.
Now I want either porridge or an oaties biscuit.
I have a rumbly tumbly now.
[insert squee over having rediscovered her Learn Old Norse and Latin sites]
It occurs to me that Felixaar has levanted with, among other things, addresses. While it wasn't entirely unpredictable that his internet access was about to drop, I'm still perturbed.
Speaking of languages, I'm having my last final, Latin, tomorrow. After that, no more Latin. I like the language, it's interesting, but my classmates and teacher are so inept, so...
I just had to drop the class. I now have some extra study periods next year, though.
Ahem.
SpoilerWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOO!
I'm done with finals! And school! And everything! It's summer! WOOOOO! :smallbiggrin:
*fistpump*
So. Um.
…
How's everyone else? >.>
It finally happened/ I'm slightly Maaaaaaad/ Oh dear.
A vow to listen to all my Queen songs, A - [punctuation] starting from three p.m. until now has meant I've only gotten to I.
Eighteen letters (including punctuation) and six live concerts to go. At nine twenty.
So. Good. But ever so slightly binkers as I've also got my CDs to go through as well.
Better than earlier tough. Ever tried to do three hours of French exams whilst having the theme tune to Duck Tales! in your head?
Not good. I ended up writing out some of the lyrics and translating them in an attempt to get it out of my head.
I also finished Writing in Registers absurdly early. 75 mins to write 230 - 50 words - :smalleyeroll:, so did some minor math. In French.
Result:
If I wished to use the full six pages they gave us for the answer ('twas ab essay - type thing), assuming the average of 240 words, I'd have to write 40 words per page. There were 26 lines on each page. That means somewhat less than two words per line.
Assuming the line length was between 15 - 18cm (average = 17.5cm) that means roughly one word per 8cm. +/- 2cm because I was feeling generous and doing very rough mathematics.
I did 237 words in 26 lines. I did an average of 8 words per line, meaning it was roughly 2cm per word +/- 0.4cm.
That is how bored I was. I figured all this out and wrote it out in French. In my answer booklet a scant three lines underneath where I'd finshed my essay. :smallsigh:
Hope the examiner's impressed. Or at least amused.
It's in the rules.
Listening paper:
Over half the marks come from a resume (80 - 100 words) where you translate and summarise a two minute French topic, generally comprising of two speakers/though one is interviewed for the topic, in continuous English.
You can lose half marks for the following:
being under the limit, even if by one word
being over the limit, even if by one word
AND
for writing in non - continuou English. In this case meaning: one paragraph and one paragraph only even though they give a list of five or six topics they want covered, often completely dissimilar, which one would naturally separate into multiple paragraphs because of being told since primary: New topic or a new speaker mean a new paragraph.
Writing in registers:
Again, one mark over or under you can lose major marks.
It does help though that we're told the margins at the top of the question.
We all became very paranoid in our counting. On average I recounted my articles/resumes four times.
And as for proving the answer booklets were too big, what can I say but that I was bored. We had a whole six page book for 250 words maximum.
Even if you did a plan (one page) and wrote double line spaced, with an average of six words to a line (ridiculously wide - spaced) you'd still barely make it onto the fourth page.
So why not print a four page booklet?
Definitely, for the long essay subjects without a word length gove them longer booklets. For Classics and History so far I've had a 12 page booklet for each ninety minute Classics exam and an eight page booklet for the hour forty five History exam.
Oddly with that one they split it into section a) space: 4 pages and section b) space: 4 pages, even though the former only carried twenty marks when compared to the latter's forty marks.
There I think, perhaps a ten page booklet with a 4/6 bias would've worked better.
I nearly ran out of space on the b) question for that paper and I don't trust using extra sheets. They're only attached by one hole and those wrappy - string binder thingies - yes, the word escapes me - a tag, that's it! Basically, it'd be incredibly easy for your concluding work to be lost.
EDIT:
The Latin site is a (fairly) basic one for medieval Latin as opposed to classical Latin. I haven't had much of a gander at it, but it's primarily grammar based which is good.
Textkit looks good for Latin and Ancient Greek, though as the books are all public domain they're about eighty to one hundred years old. All free downloads too.
One of the Norse ones completely tanked in the last several months and commited honourable suicide or something. The other's simple, but again, a breakdown of grammar and sound vocab.
EDIT EDIT;
I also found a good online copy of the KJBible, so I read the first ten chapters of Genesis today. One chapter was A beget B who begat C, D, E, F etc.
There's a good quote from one of them (paraphrased): "in sorrow will you bring forth children".
Nice, James. Picking on the little kiddiwinks.
Lurking gets quite boring after a while... it would be more fun if I didn't do it so much. I wouldn't be doing it so much if I could get our gaming group off of the ground.
You could post.:smalltongue:
Also, I've been wondering, do mods have multiple accounts? The Rules thread made me suspect that they might. But I occasionally see one post normally.:smallconfused:
Where in the rules does it say that they might?
And I could, but I can't always find a thread where I feel like posting. =/
I think I just need a break from the Internet. Again, it would be happening if we were gaming. But the organization process was left to me because the DM won't do it and none of the other players want to. :smallsigh:
There's also a longer, more frustrating, more complicated story involving two of the players.