UniLang

Bijlee wrote:


When you will zealously object when someone tells you your language is useless.

When you doodle in class/at work in foreign languages.

When you try and translate your thoughts into different languages.

When you learn a new script just as something to entertain you for a while.

I'm guilty of all of these!!!




When you always have a lanaguge playing in the background when you do your homework/work.

When your ipod has no English songs on it.

When you bring langauge books with you everywhere.

When you go to your local Barnes &Nobel and study for so long the workers want to kick you out.

I prefer to study at a café. At home, there are too many distractions.

So let's add "you feel uncomfortable when other people give you weird looks for muttering to yourself in Chinese". Also, you take up an entire table with your computer/books/coffee/phone/bag.

I prefer studying at the library here (both for schoolwork and languages). I can just get shit done.
Especially when I can get in those little cubbyhole things on the 5th floor, that's the fucking best spot, too bad they're always taken.

I like them, but they're always full and when they're not, people leave their garbage and crap all over the place. Slobs.

Yes, I agree, studying at home is hard because I can never get anything done because my family is always bugging me

I should really find a partner to help motivate me. I mean, I have a tutor but she doesn't really care when I show up. It's not good for discipline.

When you are out in the city and overhear a conversation in a foreign language and you want to hear more, but are scared of being pinpointed as a stalker.

When you correct somebody´s mistake and then try to argue with him and tell him more even though he really isn't that much into it.

When you have to learn f.e. chemistry, but you'll end up reviewing it in Chinese and Catalan on Wiki, but learn nothing but the word for alkane in Vietnamese although knowing your teacher doesn't give a damn about that.

When you spray some words on people in their native language and after a month they expect you to know more, but because your interest is spread over a lot more language, you feel a little bad about yourself.

When you tell foreigners that their language is difficult just to hear that it isn't and when you tell them you suck at their language when you want to hear that you don't.

When you have overdue library books on language-learning material.

I just got an email reminder from my local library that two books I borrowed a few weeks ago are shortly due for return. One of them is Colloquial Russian: The complete course for beginners by Svetlana le Fleming and the other is Pocket Dictionary and Phrase Book: English–Maltese with imitated pronunciation by Paul Bugeja.

When your friends know that they should not say anything about languages/linguistics unless they want to be involved in a very long discussion.

When you have a friend who is also a language nerd and you agree not to talk about languages for a change, only to find yourself discussing Hebrew verbs 5 minutes later.

When you throw in random comments/questions about the speaker's grammar/pronunciation in a conversation ("Did you just use a plural as the first part of a compound? Awesome! Er, what was the question again?")

When you start analyzing people's slips of the tongue to see if they fit with Levelt's model of speech production.

When a friend says you look like you're in love and it turns out it's just because you've found that awesome Portuguese textbook at the second-hand bookstore.

When you play Glossotechnia in a pub with a bunch of Dutch and German people while a soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands is on TV, totally ignoring the match but getting excited about somebody drawing an exotic phoneme.

When hanging out with some 70 linguists at a student's conference is your idea of one of the greatest weekends ever (including making up satirical linguistic theories at a party and leaving notes for each other in IPA in the local dialect).

When your favourite jokes are not considered funny by non-linguistically inclined people. [A verb walks into a bar and sees a hot noun sitting at a table. The verb walks over. "Hey baby, wanna conjugate?" - "No", says the noun, "I decline."]

linguaholic wrote:

When you play Glossotechnia in a pub with a bunch of Dutch and German people while a soccer match between Germany and the Netherlands is on TV, totally ignoring the match but getting excited about somebody drawing an exotic phoneme.

What a weird game. Seems interesting and really geeky.

linguaholic wrote:
[A verb walks into a bar and sees a hot noun sitting at a table. The verb walks over. "Hey baby, wanna conjugate?" - "No", says the noun, "I decline."]

Hehe

When you think about robbing library instead of a bank, because bank doesn't have German -Mari and Tibetan dictionaries.

Taunt wrote:When you are out in the city and overhear a conversation in a foreign language and you want to hear more, but are scared of being pinpointed as a stalker.

Haha, this is awesome, some months ago I was at the McDonald's and there were some Swedish ice skaters, too. I was together with two friends, they were talking to me, but I told them to shut up, because I had to listen to the cute Swedish that was spoken.

Reinder wrote:

Taunt wrote:When you are out in the city and overhear a conversation in a foreign language and you want to hear more, but are scared of being pinpointed as a stalker.

Haha, this is awesome, some months ago I was at the McDonald's and there were some Swedish ice skaters, too. I was together with two friends, they were talking to me, but I told them to shut up, because I had to listen to the cute Swedish that was spoken.

I always visit the Usti Grand Prix in Boxing and not because of box.

linguaholic wrote:When you throw in random comments/questions about the speaker's grammar/pronunciation in a conversation ("Did you just use a plural as the first part of a compound? Awesome! Er, what was the question again?")

When a friend says you look like you're in love and it turns out it's just because you've found that awesome Portuguese textbook at the second-hand bookstore.

Reinder wrote:

Taunt wrote:When you are out in the city and overhear a conversation in a foreign language and you want to hear more, but are scared of being pinpointed as a stalker.

Haha, this is awesome, some months ago I was at the McDonald's and there were some Swedish ice skaters, too. I was together with two friends, they were talking to me, but I told them to shut up, because I had to listen to the cute Swedish that was spoken.

These. So, so much.

When your favourite jokes are not considered funny by non-linguistically inclined people. [A verb walks into a bar and sees a hot noun sitting at a table. The verb walks over. "Hey baby, wanna conjugate?" - "No", says the noun, "I decline."]

This made me giggle. Guilty as charged.

When your mother asks how the party yesterday was and you answer "Great. I spoke a lot of Swedish and German, some French and even a bit of Czech."

When you think Hebrew is the ugliest language in the world and you're determined not to learn it, but you've lost count of the number of times you've talked with Israeli friends about Hebrew.

When you have overdue library books on language-learning material.

I just got an email reminder from my local library that two books I borrowed a few weeks ago are shortly due for return. One of them is Colloquial Russian: The complete course for beginners by Svetlana le Fleming

Oh my god. I took that exact book out last year from my university library and never returned it, and now I owe them about $100. Rather than pay the fee, I've decided to just keep it.

There's a very old Colloquial Russian book in my uni library. Shall I follow the trend and just keep it?

Yep. This is the spirit of glasnost', comrade. You are merely liberating that book from its capitalist oppressors. Unless it's a public library, in which case it's already yours anyway.

They'll make you pay by holding your degree hostage upon graduation though.

Clearly they just don't understand the socialist spirit. "Something for nothing" is our motto!

When the "recommended for you" box on Youtube is filled with language videos.