Wanderlust support group 5

[Luís]

Damn Celtic languages.

Now I'm wanderlusting for them all (yes, Breton, I'm looking at you too)

[linguoboy]

Now I'm wanderlusting for them all

Even Manx?

[kevin]

S'mie lhiam Gaelg, agh cha nel ee aym.

[Luís]

Now I'm wanderlusting for them all

Even Manx?

No, only the ones that still have native speakers...

[kevin]

But Manx has native speakers!

Not still, but again, but let's ignore such details...

[Saim]

I guess I’m a native speaker of Serbian then...

[linguoboy]

I just checked and it seems my library has the Doyle. I've been leafing through it and it seems pretty sound--not as comprehensive overall in its coverage as Ó Siadhail's Modern Irish (particularly regarding phonology and dialectal variation) but with a robust section on syntax. (I'm particularly intrigued by his suggestion that Irish is actually default SVO on the basis of its small clauses with surface VSO being the result of fronting the finite verb--have to read more on that.) I'll have to make some time to sit down and read through the whole thing.

[Torch]

European Portuguese And Lingala.

[vijayjohn]

Ó Siadhail's Speaking Irish still has a lot to recommend it but also a fair bit that makes it hard to use. He teaches one particular dialect, which he speaks natively, and respells some--but not all!--words to match. His phonemic transcriptions are a bit hard to make sense of unless you've read his Modern Irish (which I highly recommend).

[linguoboy]

Ó Siadhail's Speaking Irish still has a lot to recommend it but also a fair bit that makes it hard to use. He teaches one particular dialect, which he speaks natively, and respells some--but not all!--words to match. His phonemic transcriptions are a bit hard to make sense of unless you've read his Modern Irish (which I highly recommend).

You can contrast this approach to, say, Dillon and Ó Cróinín, who also teach a particular dialect in TYI but adopt CO spellings throughout, meaning you have to remember that, for instance, amárach is pronounced amáireach or that deirfiúr is driofúr. Obviously, there are good and bad points to each approach.

[vijayjohn]

When you wrote "Speaking Irish," didn't you mean "Learning Irish"?

[linguoboy]

When you wrote "Speaking Irish," didn't you mean "Learning Irish"?

Probably. Speaking Irish is the name of a DVD with accompanying text I own. (Highly recommended, btw.)

[vijayjohn]

Oh okay, I don't think I've heard of it. I thought I'd heard of Modern Irish before but maybe not.

[Vlürch]

Tangut again, because I can't focus on Japanese or Turkish and instead gravitate towards completely useless extinct languages that few things are certain about... so instead of putting my time and effort into learning more actually useful Japanese or Turkish words, I'm memorising random Tangut words.

On the other hand, I'm also wanderlusting Korean again and think I've learned to recognise a couple more hangul components. So, it's not like I'm only wasting my time... but realistically speaking I'll never be able to learn as much Korean as Japanese, so it's still kind of a waste of time even if it isn't. I don't really even have fluency as a goal in any language, though, it's more about the journey of learning or whatever.

[Vlürch]

Once again, Korean...

...and I finally found out that there actually are Korean-English dictionaries with romanisation (I could swear I searched on Amazon a dozen times before and there never were any until yesterday, wtf), and the two that have the best average rating would together cost only about 40€ so I could buy both of them without losing sleep... and there's only one left of one of them and it doesn't even say "more on the way" or whatever, so... ugh, the temptation to just order both is pretty intense and it would motivate me to actually try to learn at least a little bit of Korean if I had a physical dictionary or two.

On the other hand, I'm also aware I should be focusing on Japanese, which I've been neglecting more and more, and it's a fact that I could probably literally never learn all the crazy allophonic rules of Korean, or the grammar, or to read hangul, or anything else about it...

Why can't I just focus on learning Japanese or something?

EDIT: ...aaaaaaaaaaannnd I ordered the two Korean dictionaries, which probably makes me an idiot but ehhh, I assume they contain somewhat different vocabulary selection* so I'm hoping that makes me less of an idiot.

*Based on the fact that the two Japanese dictionaries I have do. I used to have four Japanese dictionaries, all with fairly different word selection (but of course a lot of the same words too, sometimes with different (and at least a few incorrect) definitions), but two vanished. I won't accuse the social services' affiliated cleaners of stealing them even though they vanished during the cleaning... it could just be that they stashed them somewhere that neither me nor my mum has been able to find them, but it is a bit suspicious. I mean, it could even be like "why does this dude have FOUR Japanese dictionaries?😂😂😂" and they threw two away without even asking. They asked before throwing anything away, but I mean... I did have four different Japanese dictionaries, which is probably a bit weird.

[Brzeczyszczykiewicz]

Once again, Korean...

...and I finally found out that there actually are Korean-English dictionaries with romanisation (I could swear I searched on Amazon a dozen times before and there never were any until yesterday, wtf), and the two that have the best average rating would together cost only about 40€ so I could buy both of them without losing sleep... and there's only one left of one of them and it doesn't even say "more on the way" or whatever, so... ugh, the temptation to just order both is pretty intense and it would motivate me to actually try to learn at least a little bit of Korean if I had a physical dictionary or two.

On the other hand, I'm also aware I should be focusing on Japanese, which I've been neglecting more and more, and it's a fact that I could probably literally never learn all the crazy allophonic rules of Korean, or the grammar, or to read hangul, or anything else about it...

Why can't I just focus on learning Japanese or something?

EDIT: ...aaaaaaaaaaannnd I ordered the two Korean dictionaries, which probably makes me an idiot but ehhh, I assume they contain somewhat different vocabulary selection* so I'm hoping that makes me less of an idiot.

*Based on the fact that the two Japanese dictionaries I have do. I used to have four Japanese dictionaries, all with fairly different word selection (but of course a lot of the same words too, sometimes with different (and at least a few incorrect) definitions), but two vanished. I won't accuse the social services' affiliated cleaners of stealing them even though they vanished during the cleaning... it could just be that they stashed them somewhere that neither me nor my mum has been able to find them, but it is a bit suspicious. I mean, it could even be like "why does this dude have FOUR Japanese dictionaries?😂😂😂" and they threw two away without even asking. They asked before throwing anything away, but I mean... I did have four different Japanese dictionaries, which is probably a bit weird.

I can definitely relate to this! I still remember all too well when I bought my Catalan-Catalan dictionary a few years ago; sure, it was at a second-hand bookshop and with Spanish as my mother tongue and pretty solid knowledge of French by then it was perhaps not such a crazy thing to do, but then it's also true I had never, ever, learned the slightest bit or piece of Catalan, and I still went ahead and bought it. Mind you, I don't regret it even a little! On the contrary, I've had ample time to verify it's one heck of a gem, but one still has to be careful because that's not always the case.

It's so strange that you had found no Korean dictionaries with Romanisation until now, the first time I looked for one on Amazon I found one which did include it right away! Beginner's luck, eh?

You know, all things considered, I'm not sure I would say it's such a nutty idea to try your hand at Korean, taking into account what you wrote about having already learned some Japanese. Learning both simultaneously may not be the wisest thing, because of how demanding they can prove to be when it comes to certain things, but it's not impossible.

Unlike Japanese, with its two syllabaries and bunch of Chinese characters, Korean only uses Hangul nowadays for pretty much everything and it's not a terribly complicated system to learn, I think I actually found Arabic a bit harder, even though it has fewer letters. I find Hangeul to be very straightforward and quite fascinating, to boot, aesthetically speaking!

As for the phonetic oddities of Korean: there are a few, to be sure, but that's another thing about the language that I've found to be considerably less abstruse than some people make it to be.

And as for the grammar, well, I believe that is the hardest thing about Korean for many folks (along with correct pronunciation of a couple of sounds), but since you've already had a go at Japanese it shouldn't be so disorienting, because both languages work essentially the same way on quite a few levels: honorifics, particles, agglutination...

Not to mention there are more than a few cognates since both took so much from Chinese at a certain point.

Anyway, let us know when those two dictionaries arrive!

P.D. It sucks so much that you lost those Japanese dictionaries; I don't think it's weird to have four dictionaries for the same language, I also have four for Dutch and four more for Italian! They each have a certain thing that makes them quite good and that's why I'm unwilling to get rid of any of them.

[Vlürch]

I can definitely relate to this! I still remember all too well when I bought my Catalan-Catalan dictionary a few years ago; sure, it was at a second-hand bookshop and with Spanish as my mother tongue and pretty solid knowledge of French by then it was perhaps not such a crazy thing to do, but then it's also true I had never, ever, learned the slightest bit or piece of Catalan, and I still went ahead and bought it. Mind you, I don't regret it even a little! On the contrary, I've had ample time to verify it's one heck of a gem, but one still has to be careful because that's not always the case.

Cool! I can imagine Catalan being overall easy if you have Spanish and French down, but doesn't it also have a lot of false friends with both? Which is easier to you, Catalan or Portuguese?

Also, I wish I hadn't given up on learning Spanish and French, myself, but at this point I've forgotten most of them... I can only understand maybe a third of written Spanish anymore and barely anything of French. Sometimes languages just stop being fun to stick to, especially when it becomes clear that there aren't people you'd actually use them with even if you got fluent...

I also have a Catalan-English dictionary my dad bought from Barcelona, I've barely ever touchd it but maybe one day... lol

It's so strange that you had found no Korean dictionaries with Romanisation until now, the first time I looked for one on Amazon I found one which did include it right away! Beginner's luck, eh?

Well, it could be because the only Amazons that ship to Finland are the German and British ones, and even then some of them say "this item cannot be delivered to your location" or whatever.

Unlike Japanese, with its two syllabaries and bunch of Chinese characters, Korean only uses Hangul nowadays for pretty much everything and it's not a terribly complicated system to learn, I think I actually found Arabic a bit harder, even though it has fewer letters. I find Hangeul to be very straightforward and quite fascinating, to boot, aesthetically speaking!

It really does seem surprisingly easy to learn Hangul components when going through a physical dictionary full of them, which is surprising since I'd never been able to get more than a few to stick until now!

As for the phonetic oddities of Korean: there are a few, to be sure, but that's another thing about the language that I've found to be considerably less abstruse than some people make it to be.

Hopefully I'll learn all that stuff, but honestly I wouldn't mind mispronouncing stuff by not using the correct allophones as long as it was mostly understandable. Whether it would actually be mostly understandable is another matter entirely, of course...

And as for the grammar, well, I believe that is the hardest thing about Korean for many folks (along with correct pronunciation of a couple of sounds), but since you've already had a go at Japanese it shouldn't be so disorienting, because both languages work essentially the same way on quite a few levels: honorifics, particles, agglutination...

The big problem will probably end up being memorising all those verbal suffixes. I generally struggle memorising even vocabulary, always mixing words up. With verb conjugations and whatnot it's amped up a notch in that they're bound morphemes and there are different variations and whatnot.

Not to mention there are more than a few cognates since both took so much from Chinese at a certain point.

True, and when seeing romanised Korean it becomes obvious but in speech I've never been able to pick up more than one or two words as obvious Chinese derivations that also exist in Japanese when watching Korean films, although sometimes I've heard false friends but they haven't turned out to be Chinese derivations either. It's kinda weird since one of the dictionaries says something like 60% of the Korean lexicon is Chinese borrowings, but then again maybe it's just that to my ears Korean always sound really "slurred" the same way Kazakh does compared to Turkish...

Anyway, let us know when those two dictionaries arrive!

They were delivered on the 24th, I've been trying to memorise a handful of words but so far the only ones I've been able to really learn are simple bodyparts.

They each have a certain thing that makes them quite good and that's why I'm unwilling to get rid of any of them.

Exactly! But still, someone who isn't that into languages would probably find it weird.

~

Oh, and now I'm wanderlusting literally every single indigenous language of the Americas.

[linguoboy]

I finished the Duolingo Finnish tree this morning. Overall it was fun, though odd choices abound. I feel like I was reporting way more sentences than I have before simply because the English versions were so off so much of the time.

It made me hungry to try another course so I started Scottish Gaelic. It seems to lie within the Goldilocks zone: Familiar enough that I pick things up quickly but different enough that I don't find it boring. (I tried the Catalan course just to see what it was like and it soon became tedious.) Most importantly, I don't know the language well enough to be annoyed by their decisions. There are oddities to the English equivalents (they seem to favour literal renderings that are somewhat reminiscent of Hiberno-English), but at least I know these are the consequence of deliberate choices and not mistakes made by non-native speakers.

[Linguaphile]

I finished the Duolingo Finnish tree this morning. Overall it was fun, though odd choices abound. I feel like I was reporting way more sentences than I have before simply because the English versions were so off so much of the time.

It made me hungry to try another course so I started Scottish Gaelic. It seems to lie within the Goldilocks zone: Familiar enough that I pick things up quickly but different enough that I don't find it boring. (I tried the Catalan course just to see what it was like and it soon became tedious.) Most importantly, I don't know the language well enough to be annoyed by their decisions. There are oddities to the English equivalents (they seem to favour literal renderings that are somewhat reminiscent of Hiberno-English), but at least I know these are the consequence of deliberate choices and not mistakes made by non-native speakers.

I did a lot of "My answer should be accepted"-reporting in the Duolingo Finnish course (both for answers written in English and answers written in Finnish), especially in the second half. It seems like the first half was better than the second half, probably because more people had gone through that part of the course and reported issues before I got there. It's in beta.
But there were hardly any where I reported an English sentence as being actually "off" if by that you mean incorrect. I'm not sure I can remember any. When I reported things it was mostly just to add additional options as "also correct" (or to report pronunciation errors in the Finnish TTS). Many did use wording that wasn't what would normally be my first choice when speaking English but I think many of the oddities in the English versions were quite a bit like what you said for Scottish Gaelic: literal renderings, which in the Finnish course seemed to be meant to point out aspects of Finnish grammar and/or help you learn the meaning of the individual Finnish words.
They did have a native English speaker on the team that created the course. I don't know if the somewhat Finnish-influenced English wording was the best decision, but I think it was deliberate and I can see why they did it. Actually, I think if they hadn't, learners would make some incorrect assumptions from the course that would have to be un-learned later by anyone who goes on to study at a more advanced level.


Edit: I also remembered that there were two or three sentences where an adjective was included in one language but omitted from its translation. For example, one had the word "perfect" in the Finnish version but it was missing from the English translation, and another had the word "big" in the English version but it was missing from the Finnish translation. I think there was one more like that too. I reported them.

[linguoboy]

They did have a native English speaker on the team that created the course. I don't know if the somewhat Finnish-influenced English wording was the best decision, but I think it was deliberate and I can see why they did it. Actually, I think if they hadn't, learners would make some incorrect assumptions from the course that would have to be un-learned later by anyone who goes on to study at a more advanced level.

Not knowing much about the finer points of Finnish grammar, I'll have to take your word for it. I found that there were several cases involving the adessive or inessive where I wouldn't have minded more literally renderings, since I used an Eselsbrücke to remember the Finnish construction and when I made the mistake of putting that down instead of a freer English translation (but not just any freer English translation!), I got the klaxon.