Fact(s) about yourself

[SyMag]

I figure I'll want to catch up before the next 100 or so Pokémon are released and ordered. I've found the most amazingly helpful medium for learning this to be Sporcle: these six pages cover each generation.

I'm always on that site lol, it never occurred to me to suggest that. You even get a cool badge if you complete the quiz on the first 150 Pokémon!

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

Fun Fact: My hair is naturally curly, but I prefer it straight. (It's a…I'm not sure right now. I guess wavy?)
Another Fun Fact: I GOT DA GLASSES
One more Fun Fact: I've been told that I'm look younger than I am (And that I'm smol)

 

[TeaBee]

• I drink black, white, and herbal tea. I have green but it tastes/smells like new shoes. (Don't ask)
• I am trying to learn spanish.
• People think I'm younger than my age.
• I also like tarot cards.

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

• I like to drink tea with coffee creamer(unless it's flavored, then I just add sugar)
• I currently have a sore throat
• First started digital art with GIMP

 

[SyMag]

I am trying to learn spanish.

Ayyyy

Honestly I didn't know so many people were trying to learn Spanish. Maybe we should borrow a page from @G1ng3rGar1 and make a private thread for those who want to learn/practice Spanish. I could certainly use the practice, both in speaking Spanish and teaching it :)

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

Maybe we should borrow a page from @G1ng3rGar1 and make a private thread

Dude, I haven't even started that yet XD
Would I just drop it in The Crispy Calimari and wait for my peeps to flock? XD

-Likes air conditioners a lot

 

[SyMag]

Would I just drop it in The Crispy Calimari and wait for my peeps to flock? XD

You could try that! Gauge interest and see if anyone would want to start a messaging conversation like that :)

I'll keep posting facts since everyone else is:

• Besides Shaymin and Arceus, I have a complete living Pokédex (and I'll be getting those last two soon!)

 

[TeaBee]

Ayyyy

Honestly I didn't know so many people were trying to learn Spanish. Maybe we should borrow a page from @G1ng3rGar1 and make a private thread for those who want to learn/practice Spanish. I could certainly use the practice, both in speaking Spanish and teaching it :)

I'm up for that. :p

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

You could try that! Gauge interest and see if anyone would want to start a messaging conversation like that :)

Alrighty, let's see what happens!

• Dislikes bananas but likes banana bread and pudding

 

[TeaBee]

I'm allergic to apples now and they are my favorite fruit. D:

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

whAT

-I got Splatoon for good grades just before school started XD I missed the Transformers Splatfest but caught Art v Science

 

[TeaBee]

Ehh, more or less. I have no grasp whatsoever of its nuanced grammar but can understand it fairly well and usually convey my meaning.

How confusing is the grammar? :O

 

[Flareth]

Honestly I didn't know so many people were trying to learn Spanish.

American bias here, but I'm guessing it be because most schools A) require a few years of a foreign language in order to graduate from high school, and B) tend to offer a Spanish course as the primary means of fulfilling that requirement. I guess it doesn't hurt that it's also the most spoken foreign language in the US, and is fairly simple to learn at that (rolled r-s aside, apparently).

Re: Russian grammar
I assume those issues refer to the whole "palatalization/iotation" thing—which, if I'm not mistaken, refers to a consonant sound having an extra y-sound right after it and a vowel having an extra y-sound before it, respectively. The Cyrillic alphabet that Russian uses marks this palatalizing/iotizing with a few extra vowel letters (я, е, ё, ю, pronounced ya, ye, yo, yu), along with two extra marking letters (ъ and ь) that do... something regarding how the word is stressed, I'm still not sure what exactly. Plus there's the letters with similar appearance to yet different sounds from Latin letters (р is an "r", в is a "v", с is always an "s") and some really strange-looking letters to begin with (ш for "sh", ч for "tch", ж for a French j), and, well... there's another fun fact about me: I care about linguistics a lot more than I should.

(Sadly this is the extent of my knowledge of Russian, and having typed this out I realize it probably has next-to-nothing with what Cuttleshock was talking about.)

 

[SyMag]

American bias here, but I'm guessing it be because most schools A) require a few years of a foreign language in order to graduate from high school, and B) tend to offer a Spanish course as the primary means of fulfilling that requirement. I guess it doesn't hurt that it's also the most spoken foreign language in the US, and is fairly simple to learn at that (rolled r-s aside, apparently).

I mean I live in the U.S. too so I get it, it's still surprising to see so many people on SB learning it though. And even after ten years of learning/speaking Spanish the trilled "r/rr" is still my worst enemy.

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

I mean I live in the U.S. too so I get it, it's still surprising to see so many people on SB learning it though. And even after ten years of learning/speaking Spanish the trilled "r/rr" is still my worst enemy.

Now I see people saying that the rolled r is hard and now I'm wondering if I'm doing it wrong

I took 3 years of Spanish and 1 year of Mandarin before coming to Japanese.

And I made the thread! Here you go! http://squidboards.com/threads/japanese-learners-thread.25624/

 

[Cuttleshock]

How confusing is the grammar? :O

Well... I'd say that sentence structures themselves aren't fundamentally convoluted (potentially actually simpler than those of English, partly helped by the fact that you can, like, put words in almost any order). But I still sound awful when I try to speak it because of, if nothing else, declension.

Russian has six cases. German has four, and I've managed to make sense of those to the point that they feel natural to me. English virtually doesn't have them at all; there are only a few relics of its Germanic past, such as whom and -'s. The additional two that Russian has over German... well, firstly, I've never understood where they're to be used; secondly, unlike those in German, they significantly change the endings of the nouns and adjectives around them.

German cases, on the whole, just determine whether you're gonna use, say, der, den, dem or des for masculine 'the'. Russian cases, probably partly because Russian doesn't have articles (that's why you get the stereotype of the husky Russki saying "I hunted bear yesterday! He tasted good in soup", rather than "a bear" and "the soup". "He" is used, of course, because it's a language with gendered nouns), cause the entire noun (and any adjectives) to which they pertain to decline.

Basically, the ending of the word will change depending on context in the sentence, and you either have to grow up with it or learn it thoroughly in order to be able to do it right a fair amount of the time. If you don't, you sound like a 4-year old. I grew up with it... not really very well. Spoke iffy Russian at home that only became more English as I grew older, as I've lived in England for basically my entire life.

(Sadly this is the extent of my knowledge of Russian, and having typed this out I realize it probably has next-to-nothing with what Cuttleshock was talking about.)

Good introduction to Cyrillic, but no, not really what I meant. I find the pronunciation itself fine, although I didn't learn to roll Rs until I was... 12?

I assume those issues refer to the whole "palatalization/iotation" thing—which, if I'm not mistaken, refers to a consonant sound having an extra y-sound right after it and a vowel having an extra y-sound before it, respectively.

That... sounds like something that only an external student of the language would put a name to! I have no idea what you're talking about there, I'm afraid.

 

[Flareth]

That... sounds like something that only an external student of the language would put a name to! I have no idea what you're talking about there, I'm afraid.

Y'know, I thought I knew what palatalization was myself, but then I did a little digging on Wikipedia while I typed up that post and found that what I was thinking of was actually called iotation, and that the two are slightly different... I think. (That sort of thing happens what happens when you're both half-asleep and long-mistaken.) It's something that only a dedicated linguistics course could clear up.

Re: the rolled Rs
Maybe I just got lucky, having listened to just enough Spanish over the years that I was able to pick up on it well enough. Not perfectly, because my tongue does occasionally slip out of position, but enough that I'd assumed it to be a regular sound that anyone could pronounce easily. Of course, this was before I learned that English isn't the be-all-end-all when it comes to sounds, and having wasted enough time trying to pronounce crap like these (again, purely for the hell of it), I can sympathize with them quite a bit.

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

-I'm smiling because this got turned into like languages/linguistics thread or something

 

[SyMag]

-I'm smiling because this got turned into like languages/linguistics thread or something

Language geeks of the world, unite!

 

[TeaBee]

American bias here, but I'm guessing it be because most schools A) require a few years of a foreign language in order to graduate from high school, and B) tend to offer a Spanish course as the primary means of fulfilling that requirement. I guess it doesn't hurt that it's also the most spoken foreign language in the US, and is fairly simple to learn at that (rolled r-s aside, apparently).

Re: Russian grammar
I assume those issues refer to the whole "palatalization/iotation" thing—which, if I'm not mistaken, refers to a consonant sound having an extra y-sound right after it and a vowel having an extra y-sound before it, respectively. The Cyrillic alphabet that Russian uses marks this palatalizing/iotizing with a few extra vowel letters (я, е, ё, ю, pronounced ya, ye, yo, yu), along with two extra marking letters (ъ and ь) that do... something regarding how the word is stressed, I'm still not sure what exactly. Plus there's the letters with similar appearance to yet different sounds from Latin letters (р is an "r", в is a "v", с is always an "s") and some really strange-looking letters to begin with (ш for "sh", ч for "tch", ж for a French j), and, well... there's another fun fact about me: I care about linguistics a lot more than I should.

(Sadly this is the extent of my knowledge of Russian, and having typed this out I realize it probably has next-to-nothing with what Cuttleshock was talking about.)

Meh, that caring about linguistics sounds like a really good drive for those who wanna learn another language.

Well... I'd say that sentence structures themselves aren't fundamentally convoluted (potentially actually simpler than those of English, partly helped by the fact that you can, like, put words in almost any order). But I still sound awful when I try to speak it because of, if nothing else, declension.

Russian has six cases. German has four, and I've managed to make sense of those to the point that they feel natural to me. English virtually doesn't have them at all; there are only a few relics of its Germanic past, such as whom and -'s. The additional two that Russian has over German... well, firstly, I've never understood where they're to be used; secondly, unlike those in German, they significantly change the endings of the nouns and adjectives around them.

German cases, on the whole, just determine whether you're gonna use, say, der, den, dem or des for masculine 'the'. Russian cases, probably partly because Russian doesn't have articles (that's why you get the stereotype of the husky Russki saying "I hunted bear yesterday! He tasted good in soup", rather than "a bear" and "the soup". "He" is used, of course, because it's a language with gendered nouns), cause the entire noun (and any adjectives) to which they pertain to decline.

Basically, the ending of the word will change depending on context in the sentence, and you either have to grow up with it or learn it thoroughly in order to be able to do it right a fair amount of the time. If you don't, you sound like a 4-year old. I grew up with it... not really very well. Spoke iffy Russian at home that only became more English as I grew older, as I've lived in England for basically my entire life.

Wow, this language sounds complicated. I'm gonna have a lot of fun with this on duolingo and maybe with my book about that language (which I have not touched in years). Either way, I'm gonna learn that after I learn Spanish.

• Fact about me, I tend to contemplate a lot.