Language learning discussion

[Fen Shen]

I've read an interesting article today about how speaking a foreign language changes our thoughts and behaviour.
The main points the article presents are:
- Depending on the language in which they are interviewed, people change their moral beliefs. In their mother language, they tend to be more compassionate.
- If asked to make a financial decision during a foreign language conversation, test persons acted more rationally than during a conversation in their mother language.
- A new language can help to construct a role for oneself, like a costume, and helps to get to know more variations of the own identity. There even seems to be a Czech saying: By learning a new language, you get a new soul.

Here's the article (in German), if you are interested in the original version.

[kjeks]

I've read an interesting article today about how speaking a foreign language changes our thoughts and behaviour.
The main points the article presents are:
- Depending on the language in which they are interviewed, people change their moral beliefs. In their mother language, they tend to be more compassionate.
- If asked to make a financial decision during a foreign language conversation, test persons acted more rationally than during a conversation in their mother language.
- A new language can help to construct a role for oneself, like a costume, and helps to get to know more variations of the own identity. There even seems to be a Czech saying: By learning a new language, you get a new soul.

Here's the article (in German), if you are interested in the original version.

So the next contract negotiations with bank, future employer or insurance will be held in english. I fear challanging them to norwegian would not work out for either party

[Synthpopalooza]

OK, my story:

I am from the USA (Tennessee) and obviously fluent in English.  I have had some experience learning Spanish in college but forgot a lot.  And I've had an interest in Swedish, as a lot of my music contacts in the synthpop scene are Swedish, and it's a fun language.  And recently, the discovery of the ssss comic has reignited my interest.  I also hope to eventually learn some Polish and German, as I am also into the retro Atari computer scene, and a lot of people in that scene are Polish or eastern European.

Also:  It would be great to be able to use the Polish diacritics on this forum.

[Adrai Thell]

Languages have always fascinated me - some of my earliest memories are of deconstruction the meanings of words and attempting to create my own. In about seventh grade, I got my hands on an unabridged, translated copy of Les Miserables, and I read it cover-to-cover in two days, falling in love with French in the process. Now I'm finally studying French in an attempt to eventually get to the point where I can read that book with it's original intent.

I intend to learn as many languages as possible on my way, despite them not fitting into my major or having any use outside of personal (I live in possibly the least diverse place in the world...)

Also, I'm trying to understand the roots of as many languages as possible in my quest to create my own. So far, I have the basics of the written form of one of the races I've created, but there's a long ways to go from there...

[Auleliel]

Also, I'm trying to understand the roots of as many languages as possible in my quest to create my own. So far, I have the basics of the written form of one of the races I've created, but there's a long ways to go from there...

Have you seen The Language Construction Kit? I think it is an excellent resource for understanding how language works and how to make constructed languages.

[Adrai Thell]

Have you seen The Language Construction Kit? I think it is an excellent resource for understanding how language works and how to make constructed languages.

Ooooh! Never seen that before - and now I'm happy that I've been doing a lot of these things before ^_^ Thank you so much!

The difficulty is that the languages I need are not designed for human mouths, so I can't get a proper pronunciation - my best bet is is to approximate with my own, then compare to their mouth structure.

[Deirdre]

Well, I guess I left at least a hint, if not a full answer, in a little rant somewhere in the general language-learning topic.

"I very often have a strange feeling that the language I use is unnatural. That every language used anywhere is unnatural in fact. Like, how and why did one group of people choose to describe world using the particular sounds, totally different that the other group? Why did anyone choose to systematize rules of that code? Does it have any sense that I make a chain of sounds to describe something, as it carries the meaning only to those using the same language code? Doesn't it mean all languages mean objectivly nothing?"

But to be more systematic there.
First of all, your language backstories are all so interesting I feel a little dumb writing anything, as it's all very ordinary.

I started both English (at 9) and German (at 13) at school, as two foreign languages are obligatory in here, and they were the only ones available at my former school. I was the only one in my enviroment happy to learn German, and it stayed lke that baisically to this day, unfortunately. At 16 I started French because of cultural reasons (French opera! Victor Hugo!), and found it very amusing.
With never fulfilled languages dreams... I had an Irish phase when I was 11. Can't remember a thing. I smattered Spanish as well, just because it sounds cool, and I want to go back to it, but I have sooo little time. And I still do Icelandic (my Polish-Sweadish friend speaking Icelandic promised to help me with it, and also do some Swedish because why not?). Why Icalandic? Well, there's a certain webcomic...
No, to be honest, this language has always fascinated me; it's so pure and intact. Also, I'm a mild Tolkienist (Yes, I tried Sindarin. Love/hate relationship at best).
Russian language was my favourite when I was about 5; one of my grandmas was a Russian speaking Ukrainian, and I loved the sound of the language. But my parents - not really into language learning - probably never had the slightest idea you could teach a four/five-year-old a foreign language, so it stayed uncontinued when I was still really enthusiastic about it. Also, Russian isn't the most loved language in Poland. At some point I decided I can stop at the level of fluently deciphering cyrilic script and  conjecturing the meaning, and here I am. I have Russian speaking friends though, so it's probably the next language in the queue.
For Polish SL I have another story, shared in the language introduction thread.

[Richard Weir]

Have you seen The Language Construction Kit? I think it is an excellent resource for understanding how language works and how to make constructed languages.

Blast you! I just spent HOURS reading that when I should have been doing other things!

[Auleliel]

Blast you! I just spent HOURS reading that when I should have been doing other things!

Ah, then I probably shouldn't tell you that the author of that website has a book series as well, that is available as fairly inexpensive ebooks...

[Richard Weir]

I noticed. I am tempted!

[Sunflower]

Have you seen The Language Construction Kit? I think it is an excellent resource for understanding how language works and how to make constructed languages.

Blast you! I just spent HOURS reading that when I should have been doing other things!

Heh, heh, heh... have you dipped into his Virtual Verduria?  It is *the* most detailed worldbuilding I have ever seen.  It rivals Tolkien's Middle-Earth and Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea.  (Though not in the quality of the literature set in those worlds -- yet, anyway.)

(Can feel from 8 time zones away the whoosh of vacuum displacement, as many hours of R.W.'s time suddenly dematerialize...    )

[Adrai Thell]

Heh, heh, heh... have you dipped into his Virtual Verduria?  It is *the* most detailed worldbuilding I have ever seen.

Oh my goodness, I'm not the only one who does this for fun! YUSS. My only qualm is that all their races follow a very similar structural pattern.

[Auleliel]

Oh my goodness, I'm not the only one who does this for fun! YUSS. My only qualm is that all their races follow a very similar structural pattern.

One of the how-to books (maybe the planet construction kit?) explains why they have a similar structure, using sciency stuff.

[Nimphy]

Oh my goodness, I'm not the only one who does this for fun! YUSS. My only qualm is that all their races follow a very similar structural pattern.

Only one?! HA!

[Pessi]

My first foreign language, at 9, was German which I choose to be able to stay in my old school even when we moved some seven kilometers away. Second - which is not foreign but "the second national language" - was the compulsory Swedish at 13. Third was English which I choose as an optional subject at 14 since being able to speak and understand English is a kind of "must" in this world we live in. But then I felt I had enough trouble with two non-mothertongue languages and dropped English away when moving to the secondary school at16. Funny thing is I can still speak, write and understand English much better than German or Swedish. There are so many good fantasy books written in English that have not been translated to Finnish (or hadn't been when I was a teenager) that I learned the language simply by sitting with a fantasy book in one hand and a dictionary in the other

I have for many years been trying to learn Japanese by myself because I like the Kanji and would like to be able to read and write them. It might also be nice to be able to read manga in the original language. This project is proceeding very slowly, but I'm not going to give up.

As a Tolkien fan I've also started once again studying the high elven language Quenya. I've done this many times before and never gotten very far, but perhaps this time will be different since there is now so much self study material in Finnish and an actual course on the Finnish Tolkien Society's forum Vihreä Lohikäärme. I usually find it rather difficult to learn one foreing language through another, so material in my own mothertongue is quite necessary.

Unfortunately there is no Finnish material about learning Modern Golic Vulcan, so I have to do my best studying it through English. I've only just started and this project may die away soon, but I'll give it a try anyway. I'd like to be able to cosplay a Vulcan some day, they are absolutely the coolest people in the Star Trek universe, but a Vulcan who doesn't speak a word of Vulcan sounds rather ridiculous.