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Posted by: Dr Sturm Jun 30 2008, 08:02 AM

Я не работаю завтра, так я хочу говорить по–русски, по–немецки, по–японски, по–испански...
Не знаю, если это был хорошая идея... т.е. я не понимаю много языки, потему что, я учился их так кратко.


Essentially, this topic is for foreign languages. For practicing foreign languages, discussing them, getting help with them, etc. Foreign language meaning it's not English, since this is an English site. Even if non-English might happen to be your native language.

Posted by: jcdietz03 Jun 30 2008, 06:29 PM

So how does this work?
Do I say "How to say X in language Y?"
Can I say "I think X means Y. Is that right?"
How about "What is the best way to learn [aspect of language X]?"

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jun 30 2008, 06:42 PM

ANY DISCUSSION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES IS ALLOWED, EVEN REQUESTS FOR TRANSLATIONS, TUTORING, AND OTHER THINGS THAT YOU WOULD THINK NO ONE WOULD AGREE TO AND RIGHTFULLY SO

BY THE WAY PPA I HAD A QUESTION ABOUT GERMAN I JUST REMEMBERED
I remember asking my German teacher this, but I never pay attention to anything anyone says, so I forgot her explanation:

Ich bin langweilig.
I believe that means "I am boring," but how would one say "I am bored"? I think my German teacher said the sentence used a different case for the personal pronoun "ich" (like "mir" or something), but I can't remember.

Posted by: jcdietz03 Jun 30 2008, 08:25 PM

I am a Japanese student. What is the best way to learn Japanese Kanji? I was looking at the http://nuthatch.com/java/kanjicards/ website focusing on English meanings. Are you supposed to try and learn all of the stuff (meaning, readings, and common words containing the kanji) all at once?

I was looking for printable flashcards to help with studying kanji. Are there any available for free (or for not too much)?

Any Kanji textbooks you can recommend?

Posted by: P.P.A. Jun 30 2008, 08:47 PM

"Ich bin langweilig." means indeed "I am boring."

"I am bored." would be "Ich bin gelangweilt."

"Langeweile" is the noun, "boredom". "langweilig" means "boring" and "gelangweilt" means "bored". The two adjectives stay the same in all cases.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jun 30 2008, 08:49 PM

Well, the best way to memorize anything is to associate as much information with it as you can. I know in my Japanese textbooks (I used Genki I for my class this past year, and downloaded Genki II) most of the kanji, well, you're long familiar with the pronunciations of the word, and have seen the book use the kanji (with furigana) before it ever introduces you to the kanji itself.
Then in the workbook you have to write it out two dozen times, do grammatical exercises using the kanji, etc.

Essentially, do these things to remember:
-Write it out a million times, and practice it as well in sentences.
-Associate it with as many things as you can (example, 話 usually written 話す and meaning "to speak", usually pronounced はなす, contains the same radical as 言 "to say" which has the same radical 口 "mouth"; you've got a shitton of information here, relating three kanji to the original one you wanted to memorize, and could add more; as a verb you could practice conjugations with it [something really necessary with irregular verbs in which the pronunciation hidden within the kanji can change with conjugation]).
-Attach it to visual imagery. The human mind is a visual mind, so if you can attach a picture to it, you can remember it much more easily (especially since it ends up stored in two different sections of the mind; this is how the Rosetta Stone software works, it shows you a picture of a cat with the text 猫; unfortunately the Rosetta Stone software really fails when it comes to teaching grammar).

Also, in all these things, how important you make the word changes how easily the word is remembered, because humans only remember things that matter. Hence why it's so easy for us to remember our own phone numbers - both because we repeat it over and over, and because it's something we usually need to remember.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jun 30 2008, 08:59 PM

Danke. Aber, was ist das Adverb? Wie sagt man "boringly"? Und das Verb, "to bore"?

Posted by: Raijinili Jul 2 2008, 05:44 AM

You don't learn Chinese/kanji. You have to be born with it. Like anorexial cables.

Posted by: P.P.A. Jul 3 2008, 08:50 AM

"to bore" wäre "langweilen".
Ich langweile *. Du langweilst *. Er/Sie/Es langweilt *. Wir langweilen *. Ihr langweilt *. Sie langweilen *.
Ein Adverb von "langweilig" hab' ich aber ehrlich gesagt selbst noch nie gehört. Ich weiß noch nicht mal, ob's das überhaupt gibt!

Posted by: Irysa Jul 3 2008, 10:26 AM

Hey, will you guys translate my porn for me?

Posted by: Raijinili Jul 5 2008, 11:09 AM

Hey, will you guys porn up my translating, please?

Posted by: Archeia Jul 5 2008, 12:34 PM

What does Spielchen mean? I saw it in a german game :o
What should I Do to learn German? I want to learn German and French :'(
I started with French though.

Posted by: P.P.A. Jul 6 2008, 08:37 AM

"Spielchen" is basically the cute form of "Spiel", which means "game". Hanging the syllabe "-chen" to a noun basically makes it... cute. It's also used to indicaten that something's small or young.
For example "Bäumchen" would be a small "Baum/tree". Or an alternate word for "Welpe/puppy" would be "Hündchen" coming from "Hund/dog". "Häschen" from "Hase/rabbit" would indicate that you think of one cutely. Err, yeah.

HELLO DR STÜRMCHEN

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jul 7 2008, 12:36 AM

I REMEMBER LEARNING ABOUT THIS
I think we learned about it learning the word for squirrel.

As for learning German, same, really, with any foreign language. IMMERSION.
If you can't do that, start taking classes - at college, highschool, private, whatever, as long as they are person-person - and use every opportunity to practice - reading, writing, speaking, listening. This is why people never get far with languages in highschool, though, because they so rarely practice outside of class.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jul 23 2008, 06:59 PM

Я учусь испанский язык на работе.
Потому что, я мой работа не люблю.
Никто не понимает русский здесь? :(

ALRIGHT ROLL CALL
What languages do you know, and what languages are you/will you be studying in the upcoming school year?
Know: English, Russian, German, Japanese
Starting in the fall: Spanish, French


And "know" is not the same as "fluent in."

Posted by: P.P.A. Jul 23 2008, 07:10 PM

Languages I know: German, English, French (not so well yet)
Studying: French

Posted by: DustyHaru Jul 23 2008, 11:34 PM

I've lost almost all my french vocabulary since last year. :|

My mom is trying to teach me Cantonese.
I'm working on pronouncing the five elements (gold, wood, water, fire, earth), sun (day) , moon (month), up, down, and 1-10

one

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jul 25 2008, 06:38 PM

Ho ho ho. You shall then help me practice more than just German, soon.

Posted by: d4rkdragon Jul 28 2008, 03:34 AM

I know: English, Cantonese (My Canto is quite bad though)
I'm learning: French

Damn I'm pathetic =(

Posted by: Lucho Jul 31 2008, 03:17 AM

Nope, you are not.

I only know English and Spanish.

Posted by: Yuka Jul 31 2008, 03:33 AM

I know English and French, and once the school year starts up again I'll be taking my second course of French.

I don't know why, but I enjoy French slightly more than I enjoy English, but I find English much more practical since it's native to me.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jul 31 2008, 06:45 PM

Я думаю что я очень люблю русский. Я не знаю почему, а я всегда говорить по–русски, но не по–немецки или по–японски...
でも、僕は日本語で書くのが大好きです。分かりますか。とてもきれいだよ。

I'm planning on writing a book that uses several different languages - not in the same way as House of Leaves, but, well, I don't want to give it away. Needless to say, it will be near unreadable to most.

Posted by: Malice Aug 2 2008, 02:27 AM

Wow, everyone knows so many languages...!

I've been thinking about immersion once i'm old enough, but I feel like I won't know enough of the language to go there. I also worry about cost )':. (It's French btw.)

Also, any suggestions for learning French over the summer?

! and.. I know English and I can speak/understand Cantonese. Can't read or write it though. )':

Posted by: H. Tsukiyono Aug 2 2008, 03:03 AM

I know English, a bare minimum of Japanese (there was that fluency period back at age three, but then I learned English... :/ ), and some French.

I'm taking another French class when school starts, but I'm really tired of French. I wish I could take Latin instead. Or German. :/

Posted by: Dr Sturm Aug 3 2008, 11:04 PM

If you know some already - Google News. I have Google news in Russian, German and Japanese in my RSS feeds. I also regularly raid bookstores and libraries for foreign language books.

Latin is a dead language. Ignore it.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Aug 13 2008, 07:05 PM

I have decided to vote for Obama largely based on the fact that he wants everyone in America to be bilingual or even trilingual.
And I can't believe anyone has used that against him.

Posted by: blues Aug 14 2008, 08:22 PM

Sturm, you might find this useful,

http://caminobrowser.org/download/releases/1.6.3-MultiLang/

I'll assume that means you can change the text so that it comes out as the language you've selected.

You can also change things like that on OS X/Leopard, but I think you already know how to do that.

Posted by: aerozero Aug 14 2008, 09:09 PM

I can speak Vietnamese, can't read or write it though >_>

Posted by: Liger Aug 15 2008, 01:48 AM

I know English, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, and the um... that Fujian-Chinese dialect. Ugh I wish my family would stick to ONE dialect of Chinese rather than having some parts of the family speak Mandarin, some Cantonese, and then others Fujian. My ability to read/write Chinese isn't wonderful, though.

My Fujian is really choppy though. My Spanish isn't that great either, but I can carry a conversation.

Posted by: Raijinili Aug 16 2008, 06:54 AM

I can't speak Fuking at all. Apparently my grandmother and I communicated with gestures. I always thought she understood Cantonese.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Aug 16 2008, 07:38 AM

У русских очень другое мнение о Войне в Южной Осетии. Ну, у новост, но я не знаю, как русские люди думаю. Я должен спрашивать мои русские друзья на vkontakte.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Aug 28 2008, 02:54 AM

Salut francophones, ça va?
I think (at least so far) I like French more than Spanish, but in Spanish we're moving so much more quickly - we were learning how to conjugate verbs day one, but in French we've only kind of briefly touched on it, saving the full discussion for a later, undisclosed date.
But maybe French and Spanish weren't the best to start at the same time, since they share something like 80% of their vocabulary (with exact spellings), they're just pronounced differently.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Sep 6 2008, 11:04 PM

Я наверно проваливался на моём французкем тесте. Может не быть. Но я ещё делал же плохо. Я знал мало о материале на контрольной, так я мог бы получать F.
Qui étudies français?

Posted by: jcdietz03 Sep 28 2008, 10:04 AM

I would like some help reading some kanji.
I am having trouble with:
The first two kanji in the yellow text.
The second, fourth, and fifth kanji from last in the white text.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Sep 28 2008, 05:43 PM

The problem with video games is that they'll often neglect strokes for clarity, making it hard to read for anyone not fluent.

The yellow, the first kanji is 鎧, I can't make out the second but I'm assuming it more-or-less means "Armor-plated" or "Armor-wearing" or whatever.
And I'm not totally sure what you meant, your last sentence was incredibly unclear, but I think these were the kanji you wanted: (maybe?)
情報を, 場所です

Posted by: Malice Sep 29 2008, 01:18 AM

J'étudie le français!!! Il y a trop de verbes que je dois memoriser. C'est très difficile. Les accents sont terribles aussi parce que je les oublie toujours!

Je dois pratiquer plus! ):<

I'm not sure if I should have used trop. D: Halp..

edit: Qui is just like il/elle right? so there wouldn't be a s after étudie? \(o_O)/

Posted by: Dr Sturm Sep 29 2008, 02:04 AM

Verbes français sont trop pas mal. Mais, j'étudie les langues étrangère...
See, this is the kind of practice I want. Not this stupid workbook that I'm plowing through since I have forty pages due tomorrow and only started on an hour ago. >_>
As for whether you should have used trop, I have no idea. You actually just taught me the word. Do you know if I should have used it where I did (or at all)? <_< Actually I'm unsure about that sentence altogether. I wanted to say "French verbs aren't too bad." Should I have negated the verb? So, like "Verbes français ne sont pas trop mal"? Google Translate comes up with the same translation for both.
Accents are easy to remember if you get your pronunciation down, because they (usually) are pronounced different when they have an accent of some kind...

And yes, qui is singular third, so it should have been "qui étudie..."

Posted by: Malice Sep 30 2008, 02:41 AM

I haven't really learned much about shortening negatives and stuff, but I think it should go something like

les verbes français ne sont pas trop mauvais

I think i'll ask my French teacher tomorrow. :/

Sturrrrm, how long have you been learning French? O: And did you finish those fourty pages on time..

There are French exchange students in my school. I want to talk to them, but I'm afraid of insulting them by screwing up when speaking French (or destroying the accent stuff). Speaking at the front of the mouth is hard. )':

Posted by: Dr Sturm Sep 30 2008, 02:50 AM

Like four weeks. And there are students in our class that are fluent in French, too.

Posted by: Sepharan Sep 30 2008, 08:08 PM

Estoy aprediendo Espanol.

Not fluent, oh no, not too close at all, but I know the language fairly well. Of course I can conjugate (one of the first things you have to learn), and all that good stuff; wish I could learn more language, but unless I hire a tutor I'll have to wait a few years.

You don't like Spanish as much as French, Sturm? What are your criteria?

Posted by: Dr Sturm Sep 30 2008, 08:39 PM

There is no criteria. It's personal preference. Why do I like Japanese and Russian better than German, despite the fact that my German is far better than either? Just because.

Posted by: Sepharan Sep 30 2008, 08:44 PM

Hm, language judgment. Well, who am I to understand you anyway?

Posted by: jcdietz03 Sep 30 2008, 09:04 PM

Which language is the best? Hm... I don't know. I know only one language though.

I don't like Japanese because they have too many letters. 46 in the "alphabetic like" part and 2000 extra characters. It makes reading unnecessarily difficult. Thanks to Dr. Sturm for the help earlier with this. An alphabetic language with few letters seems better to me. Then again, I can dictate a passage in Spanish perfectly and still have no idea what I'm saying.

Will there ever be a time when Americans, British, and Australians cannot understand each other because their language is too different?

Posted by: Dr Sturm Sep 30 2008, 09:23 PM

I think I like syllabic alphabets far more than "phonetic" alphabets. At least in the one I've encountered, there's little exception regarding pronunciation, spelling, etc.
French, English, Russian, Spanish, Irish and German all have letters whose sound is dependent upon its location in a word, or even in a sentence. Hence why the "a" in "cat" is pronounced differently from the "a" in "father", and why the "c" in "cat" is pronounced as a "k" whereas it is pronounced as an "s" in words such as "cease". In Russian, "vodka" (водка) is pronounced "votka" (вотка), simply because of the "d"'s location relative to the "k".

Posted by: Raijinili Oct 1 2008, 01:41 AM

I thought Spanish wasn't so bad in that.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 1 2008, 01:43 AM

Spanish and German aren't nearly as bad as the others.

Posted by: jcdietz03 Oct 1 2008, 10:01 AM

Rai is right.
Not in Spanish.
LL, RR, and N-tilde don't count - they're considered different letters than regular R, regular L, and regular N.

I thought about Spanish words I know, and I can't think of a single example of two syllables spelled the same but pronounced differently.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 1 2008, 12:06 PM

No, in Spanish it certainly does happen. B, V, C and X all have pronunciations that vary (and with X they're historical; no way to know without hearing the word).

Posted by: Neon_the_Chao Oct 1 2008, 05:54 PM

Salut!
Je m'appelle Neon the Chao.
Ca va?

(French for:
Hello!
My name is Neon the Chao.
How are you?)

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 1 2008, 06:24 PM

Comme ci comme ça, mais je suis trés fatigué.

Posted by: Malice Oct 2 2008, 01:51 AM

Lol, fatigué. I used to make fun of that in grade 7. :/

Isn't Spanish the easiest language to learn because you pronounce every letter?

Je suis malade parce que j'ai un rhume (did I spell that right), mais il y a beaucoup de personnes qui l'ont aussi.

C'est octobre!! Je ne peux pas attentre pour l'hallowe'en! Cette année, je veux être une personnage de "Soul Eater" ou "Phoenix Wright"! Je veux manger des bonbons..

I want to take German, but is it already too late to start?! D: Should have signed up for it this year. ;O;?

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 2 2008, 03:07 AM

It's never too late to start. Unless you mean at your school, in which case, possibly.

Posted by: Malice Oct 2 2008, 08:15 PM

Another problem is that i'm not sure if it'll even be useful or not. :/

Posted by: Yuka Oct 2 2008, 08:31 PM

Who cares if it doesn't turn out to be useful? If you want to do something, do it.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 2 2008, 11:05 PM

There have been several studies making a link between active multilingualism and a delay of the offset of Alzheimer's.

Posted by: Neon_the_Chao Oct 7 2008, 06:58 PM

That's cool, though, Sturm. I didn't know you knew French.

I know English (duh), French, some Italian and Spanish, and miniscule Chinese and Japanese (words only, characters are confusing. @_@)

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 7 2008, 08:33 PM

Oui, je parle français, allemand, le japonais et le russe.

Posted by: Neon_the_Chao Oct 10 2008, 06:47 PM

Wow! You do? Sweet! And your French is so good! I'm still learning.

Are you as proficient in the other languages as you are in French?

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 10 2008, 07:05 PM

French is my weakest language. Well. My weakest language that I've actually studied. I've only been working on it for About a month and a half now. Sort of. I skip a lot of my French classes (like today!) because the teacher is terrible.

Я очень хорошо же говорю по–русски. Но... Мой русский профессор ещё сказат, что я глупый. :/ Тот сука.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 14 2008, 09:08 PM

It's time for swear words.
How many swear words (or words you don't use in polite speech, at least) do you know in other languages? And I know there are books for almost every language dedicated to this kind of thing, but don't use them. Go off of what you actually know.

Russian:
-ебать (YEbat'): to make love (probably more approximately translated as "to fuck like animals")
-хуй (khuy): dick, cock (often used in the phrase иди на хуй, meaning more or less "go to hell" [I have a jacket with this Russian phrase on it!])
-пизда (pizDA): cunt
-французская любовь (frantsusskaya lyubof'): oral sex (noun, literally "French Love" [hence why I remember it; it's so damn funny])
-сиськи (SIS'ki): tits (singular: сиська)

That's all I know. :/

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 23 2008, 04:40 AM

Mein Mitbewohner und ich möchten mit einander Deutsch sprechen.

FIX IT PPA, AND GIVE ME NOTES ON WORD ORDER AND CHOICE

Posted by: P.P.A. Oct 23 2008, 12:25 PM

Assuming your room-mate is male, the only error here would be "mit einander", which should be one word, so "miteinander". But that's a rather unimportant flaw.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 23 2008, 03:20 PM

Would you word it differently? Ordering or otherwise?

Posted by: P.P.A. Oct 23 2008, 04:43 PM

Hm, "Ich würde gerne mit meinem Mitbewohner Deutsch sprechen." or "Mein Mitbewohner würde gerne mit mir Deutsch sprechen." would work too. But since it seems the initiative is from both of you, what you said is perfectly fine. It doesn't really sound awkward either.
You could replace "sprechen" mit "reden" but it wouldn't really make that much of a difference.
"Mein Mitbewohner und ich möchten uns in Deutsch unterhalten." would work too, but none of these is really better or worse than the others.

Posted by: Neon_the_Chao Oct 23 2008, 05:00 PM

Fungu: Italian for "fuck you".
B a k a: Japanese for "idiot".
Buta/Buto: Spanish for "bitch".
Ca: French for "shit". (only if the c is unaccented)

I'm not sure if the first 3 are spelled right, but they're close.

EDIT: Damn this site's override of certain Japanese words to I DON'T KNOW JAPANESE BUT I LIKE TO PRETEND I DO!.

Posted by: Sepharan Oct 24 2008, 08:47 PM

Damn it, I just realized I don't know a single Spanish swear word.

Posted by: Neon_the_Chao Oct 27 2008, 03:25 PM

You do now.

*pointing to my reply ^ *

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 27 2008, 06:01 PM

That's a problem you have to fix. You don't have to know how to say anything else; if you can curse and form insults beyond "YOU ARE NOT INTELLIGENT", native speakers will love you.
Regardless of the language.

Posted by: Raijinili Oct 28 2008, 03:11 AM

Neteca, an insult and a swear word are not the same thing. Baka isn't a swear.

Posted by: jcdietz03 Oct 28 2008, 04:22 PM

Last time I checked, "you're an idiot" is an insult. Maybe not one of the worse ones though, I don't know.

I know how to say loco (crazy) but again, saying "you're crazy" is only a light insult.

They won't teach you swear words in school. That's a problem. Because you need to learn all the words, not simply the convenient ones.

On JapanesePod101.com in one lesson they said "We'll teach you how to say 'I'm feeling BAD' a little later" - argh, annoying, why not teach "I'm good" (genki) and "I'm bad" (warui?) at the same time.

In my Japanese class yesterday the teacher ACTUALLY DID tell us the word for "ugly" (opposite of kirei / pretty). Unbelievable. It's not in the textbook vocab list though. Teach did tell us "the word is too strong" though.

Next: Japanese learners can check out http://hiragana.jp/ - will add the furigana to all kanji on the page. Doesn't work with flash sites like the Knights in the Knightmare site but will work with sting.co.jp. There's a firefox extension called http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/ that helps with reading Japanese websites.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 28 2008, 08:36 PM

That's why native speakers respect you so much when you do know them.

The reason is because a lot of more negative comments are less used, partially as a politeness issue. The textbook I use for my first and second year Japanese class does not say how to say "I'm feeling bad."

Posted by: jcdietz03 Oct 29 2008, 12:15 AM

Okay I have a question:
When I am drilling vocab using flash cards, is it better:
1) Look at the English side of the card, say the Japanese word, then flip to the Japanese side to see if I'm right.
2) Look at the Japanese side of the card, say the English word, then flip to the English side to see if I'm right.
3) Drill both ways.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 29 2008, 12:45 AM

Both ways, but translating from your native language to the other languages is definitely better for you.
However, the best possible way to do it is to write in your target language everyday, using your vocab over and over in actual sentences.

Posted by: Neon_the_Chao Nov 19 2008, 07:06 PM

:D

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jul 20 2009, 12:12 AM

C'est ne peut pas être mort!

I'm reviving this thread. I've started using word frequency lists to study languages. Eg, studying the most used words in the language to make it easier to understand a large amount of general stuff.

Posted by: jcdietz03 Jul 20 2009, 01:58 AM

I did something like this for Japanese.

http://thejapanesepage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=13198&start=0 is full of fail (like my work usually is) but maybe you will get something out of it. Long story short: Particles are really common in Japanese. It's the big post about halfway down.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jul 20 2009, 02:03 AM

What do you mean "really common"? Particles pretty much define Japanese grammar outside of verbal and adjectival conjugations and declensions. A sentence can be constructed without them, but you can say very little (perhaps nothing useful) without particles.

Posted by: jcdietz03 Jul 20 2009, 02:07 AM

By that I mean pretty much ALL particles appear in the 100 most common newspaper words. The folks over at TJP.com (the link) said they don't think particles are words though.

You can get a raw word list by frequency over at the WWWJDIC FTP site.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Jul 20 2009, 02:33 AM

This idea is more or less true of any language. The article escapes me now, but in the chart the average was that the most common 2000 words would make up 75% of the corpus.

Posted by: P.P.A. Jul 20 2009, 11:33 PM

I think I am starting to learn Dutch. I visit the Netherlands every year and it's very easy to learn, so not doing that someday would be sort of a waste.

Posted by: jcdietz03 Jul 21 2009, 11:28 PM

Swearing in Japanese.
Well THAT didn't take long. Reading Inuyasha (a children's comic book!) will teach you fun words like ちくしょう (dammit) and てめえ (impolite "you"). It would probably be awhile if you tried learning that using a textbook.

Am I wrong? Is ちくしょう not a swear?

Hey, I was wondering if anyone has tried Bing translator. Is it any good?

Posted by: Dr Sturm Aug 16 2009, 07:51 AM

So next spring I'll be able to take some language classes again. Taking my fourth semester of Russian and second of French. And this December I'm taking the JLPT 4.
Currently reviewing for that.

Je suis trés impatient.

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 10 2012, 05:29 PM

I'm in your web blags, screwing up your text directions.

Started taking Persian. Pretty cool. Surpisingly hard.

Posted by: P.P.A. Oct 10 2012, 06:26 PM

Something I wondered is if learning Tajik—a dialect of Persian—first would make it easier. Tajik is written in Cyrillic, which is certainly easier to read for a Westerner than Iran's variant of the Arabic alphabet. You could thus learn the language without having to struggle with squiggly lines for letters (or save that for when you're already familiar with the grammar and know a good number of words).

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 11 2012, 02:55 AM

Orthography is probably one of the stupidest reasons to rule out a language. Maybe it's some combination of my skills, interests and training, but a new orthography takes me about a few hours to become proficient enough in to recognize all the letters quickly. The biggest impediment to me right now with the orthography is that most sources print the squiggles in what looks like a 5pt font.

As for Tajik, it split off from other Persian dialects a long time ago, and reflects a purer Persian, whereas the Farsi and (though to a lesser degree) Dari dialects' lexicon reflect the influence of Arabic conquerors and Islam. Learning it wouldn't make for a significantly simple transition to those Persians using Arabic alphabets.

Learning Arabic first would probably make Iranian Persian easier than Tajik would. Additionally, though I don't know the status for Tajik, my teacher has made a point of the fact that spoken Farsi and written Farsi are completely different entities, a distinction made without regard to literary Persian and slang, which only add more levels of linguistic variety in terms of grammar, pronunciation and available lexical entities.

Posted by: P.P.A. Oct 11 2012, 09:24 AM

Hm, I simply imagine that learning Arabic is much more difficult than learning Cyrillic, which—just like our native Latin script—is based on the Greek alphabet (both of which only took me a few hours to learn). Arabic/Persian on the other hand, with their up to four often radically different looking variants of each character, depending on its position in a word, and the frequent use of cursive script are very intimidating. Though as I have never actually tried to learn these scripts, I don't know how troublesome it is in practise…

I see, though. I did not know the differences between Tajik Persian and Iranian Persian to be this great, though little else is to be expected after two centuries of Arab occupation, the prevalence of Arabic as a literary language, and as of recent an Arabophile Islamist dictatorship…
(All the more reason for me to look at Tajik first, as a Persian free of Semitic taints; but I can see how it would be impractical.)

Posted by: Dr Sturm Oct 11 2012, 08:13 PM

They're stupidly easy to learn. Most characters belong to a group which dictates their shape in initial, medial, final and stand alone positions. For example, the characters representing the sounds /b/, /p/, /s/ and /t/ all have this bowl shape: ببب ب
(And here you can see the initial, medial, final and stand alone shapes thereof)
But only /b/ has the single dot on bottom. /p/ has three dots below, /s/ three above and /t/ two above (/n/ with one dot above and /y/ with two below have the same bowl shape in initial and medial but different ones in final and stand alone). So you learn one character's four forms and then the meanings of the four dot configurations. In a way it's similar to learning Hiragana/Katakana in that you learn a shape, and then add two small dots or a circle and the sound changes.
In Persian there are fifteen character groups like this comprising 32 letters. Many of the characters are standalone or only connect on a particular side, or have the same shape in some contexts as another group (as with /n/ and /y/ above), so that also cuts down on what you have to learn.
The only real issue with learning the alphabet is that because Persian doesn't have as many distinct sounds as Arabic but borrows words with exact spellings, there are something like four /s/'s, three /h/'s and two /z/'s, and a word can differ on a single shape with the same sound but have entirely different meanings.