20 Languages
I'd like to learn fluently, in order:
1. French
2. Spanish
3. Latin
4. German
5. Greek
6. Magyar (Hungarian)
7. Elvish (Sindarin and Quenya)
8. Dutch
9. Olde English
10. Swedish
11. Finnish
12. Olde Norse
13. Icelandic
14. Hebrew
15. Russian
16. Coptic (Old Egyptian)
17. Italian
18. Gaelic (Irish & Welsh)
19. Portuguese
20. Turkish
You could comment if you like by listing the languages you are personally interested in. It could be just top 10, top 5, or just the languages you find fascinating, unnumbered.
Friday, July 11
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15 comments:
Hmm, you're grouping Irish and Welsh togehter as one?!
I'd like to get my French back to where it was in 1996 when I was living there, and improve my Italian and Catalan, Starting from scratch I'd do German first, and then maybe thing about Portuguese.
Please educate me then on Celtic languages. I was under the impression Welsh, Irish, and Old Scots derived from a common source. One that different completely from, say, that of the Angles, Picts, Vikings, Romans, and of course Normans that all took their turns occupying or ruling various portions of the British Isles.
Have those Celtic languages fractured so much as to be mutually untintelligble now? I know Irish and Welsh spelling look very different... but I thought maybe there were still some commonalities in the way it was spoken. No? Way different?
Of course even the Celts are immigrants, a people originally from central Europe who invaded and conquered most of what is now the UK even earlier than the others mentioned, so their druidic pride and feeling of being somehow native to that place and pushed to the margins by the later "English" (Anglo-Saxons, Normans) is technically misplaced, like both the Israelis and Palestinians feeling of being "native" to that contested region. It was being called home by the Assyrians and Akkadians long before either of those two peoples came along and was only ever taken by bloody conquest or abdication. People forget so quickly after putting down a few generations of roots!
Who the "original" Britons were no one really knows for sure, with all the blood mixing that has gone on (DNA surveys are helping to sort it out), but if we're talking about the neolithic or even paleolithic hunter-gatherer types, they more likely looked and sounded like the northern Picts than anyone else extant. I think it would be fair to say any pure "Briton" blood - the people who built Stonehenge - is unfortunately probably long gone.
The conquest of William in 1066 was just the latest insult after a long series of invasions and occupations. Your lot are in a sense just as much a melting pot of cultures as America is, especially considering that during colonialism, you also attracted your share of Indians and Pakistanis and other peoples, and of course a city as large and diverse as London probably has living within it a family from nearly every country on the globe.
It would be extremely fun to read a book or take a course of classes about the ethnic history of the British Isles. I'll have to keep my eyes open...
My 12 languages I want to speak fluently, in order:
1. Japanese
1. French (tie for first place)
2. Spanish
3. Hindi
4. Italian
5. Xhosa
6. Arabic
7. Magyar
8. Malay
9. Ancient Persian
10. Russian
11. Basque
12. Finish
Eek, you called my bluff. I'd have to research that some more. I do know that Breton can be understood by the Welsh and vice-versa.
Graeme has put me to shame with his fancy list. So here's mine, the order's not precise:
1. German
2. Portuguese
3. Russian
5. Arabic
6. Chinese Mandarin
7. Japanese
8. S. American Spanish to avoid making mistakes such as 'coger el autobus'.
9. Welsh
10. Greek
11. Icelandic
12. Latin
That'd keep me busy for a while so I'll stop there. Ideally, I'd love to be able to talk to anyone in their native language, but that's setting my sights a just little too high. I'm fortunate enough to have English as my native language which make global communication easy, and frequetly native English speakers are lazy when it comes to learning foreign tongues. Spaniards who don't know me often think I'm German when they first meet me - it may have something todo with the height and the hair but I also suspect it's becasue they automatically assume that a British person would not be speaking Spanish that well or would automatically try to converse in English.
I would tend to use "tomar" el autobus. Is this what you're talking about? Coger... you might get smashed! Means "to catch" no? Tomar is "to take" (I know you know), that's all I hear in California anyways...
What I want to learn:
1. English, perfectly
2. Spanish
3. Italiano
4. Gaelic
5. Russian
6. Japanese
7. Mandarin Chinese
8. Arabic
9. Ivrit/hebrew
10. Hindi/sanskrit
11. Some african language
12. Some northern language, maybe icelandic
:)
Aha! Some exotic imagination...
For some reason I have no interest in the Far East (China, Japan, etc.) They were once cool but are now just becoming extensions of the USA in the materialist culture. Asian languages are LAST on my list.
You may accuse me of Eurocentrism, and I'll readily plead guilty, but not for the usual racist and religious/culturally deterministic (see Jared Diamond) reasons - it's because my genetic heritage is there and I find that while I've been taught a fair amount about Egypt/Greece/Rome/Renaissance/Reformation/Democratic revolution, there are huge gaps in the story, like the rest of Europe besides Rome (the Gauls and Germans, described by Caesar as barbarians but from archaeological evidence anything but), as well and the Balkan states and the Holy Roman Empire, from its glory under Constantine to the constant battles with Turks, employed Viking mercenary forces, Eastern Orthodox Christianity taking a sharp turn from Catholicism in the West, through the "Dark Ages" still in contact with the Arabic and thus Greek worlds and thought, the attacking pressure of the Huns, the ethnic mixing of Romanians, Huns, Magyars, Moldavians, and many other peoples, the exchange of language and culture, the folklore, the legends, the mystery, all the way up to the modern age of Ceausescu and "Dracula Tours" and serious exploration of the Carpathian mountains.
Little of this has been seriously explored since "Glasnost" and then real freedom only in the very early 1990s. It's such a fertile area for investigation! We need to learn the history of the WHOLE WORLD, not just Greco-Roman/Catholic/English history if we are to understand the world. I could choose to learn Mandarin or Arabic in pursuit of this aim, but I find them uninteresting to my own peculiar mind and will always stay interested in Eastern Europe, the British Isles before invasion (neolithic Britain), and Scandinavia. That is where my blood and my heart lies.
English (better vocab)
Doglish
Catlish
Elven
^_^
Better add grizzly bearish to that list in case you ever get confronted by one and have to talk your way out of the situation. Or perhaps tigerish if you plan to visit the SF Zoo.
Or just don't make them mad by yelling at them and pelting them with rocks.
oh yeh, and fishish - I'd like to get a Siamese Fighting Fish (carnivore) - I need to be able to communicate "no you can't eat my dog", etc.
Don't think I have to worry about meeting up with a Grizzly, but I should learn whalish - I'll be talking to pods of Orcas on my birthday (only 1 month away)
Wait, orcas? Where are you going for your birthday, back to Seattle? Or another Alaska cruise?
Tell them hello for me. Might want to add dolphinish (also called Dolfino) and Porpoiseguese just in case you see some of those guys.
Cool, if you get a fish let me come with you! It would be fun to decorate the tank and stuff =) You should get TWO MALES though, that's what I hear keeps them most harmonious.
As far as I know, if you use what would be the usall Castillian Spanish phrase in S. America -'coger el autobus' , it means you want to shag it.
Empath, ooh yes, tell us where you're going to se Orcas!
Are there any other creatures where putting two+ of the males together in closed environment keeps the peace better? I can only imagine it having the opposite effect with other species. (The Red Dwarf episode 'Quaratine' has sprung to mind now.)
I was kidding about two males living together, they are notorious for instantly fighting to the death, hence the name. In fact, if they both of the size, strength, a irritability, I imagine they BOTH might each each other at the same time.
Of course you were kidding. Now I feel a little foolish.
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