I am currently playing Sethian, a game where you are a xenolinguist armed with a couple books on the Sethian language and a notebook. Unfortunately, everyone has disappeared and your only resource is a computer you've found, which you can only communicate with in Sethian. The game developers used elements of ASL and Chinese (didn't specify Mandarin or Cantonese), so it's not just English with different symbols. It's engaging and exasperating all at the same time, much like other translation work I've done.
Do we have any other Norwegian speakers/learners here? I speak Norwegian and French on about a high A2, low B1 level, but, like most people, I understand and read better than I can speak. Korean is also on my bucket list, if only because one of my childhood friends is Korean, and I've already spent a couple of hundred dollars on learning materials.
Oooooh, languages! I am fluent in both Mandarin and English, since I grew up learning them simultaneously, pretty much. I can read Chinese, although it is literal hell because the words are so tiny and just everywhere on the screen and AUGH. I am sadly lacking in the Other Languages department, however. I know how to say 'fuck', 'merry christmas', and 'where are my pants?' in Spanish, and that's pretty much the extent of what I know otherwise.
here's a question: does a programming language count as an actual language? they do have consistent structures/syntax that separates them from plain english. if they count as a stand-alone language, what category would they fall under? would similar programming languages like C-Sharp and Java be labeled as dialects?
@BunjyWunjy I think I'd consider them like codes. They're not strictly English (or whatever language the designer was using to create it), but they're translating ideas from a source language into a specific pattern. In my experience they're also not 'productive' - Jabberwocky is a good example of how you can make up a bunch of words and an English speaker will understand what part of speech they are, and I can make up a new word from elements of other words and you'll have an idea of what I mean (e.g., I was brushing my cat and there was a fursplosion).
languages!!! english is my primary language but i also do urdu and arabic. urdu is my native tongue! i can understand it conversationally, speak it with clumsy grammar pretty decently, and am trying to teach myself how to read and write it. it used to be my first language but when i learned english as a kid something in my brain kicked urdu out and ive had to try and relearn it since :( i learned arabic in school, for religious reasons! for like... 10 years! so my knowledge of arabic is very formal, qur'anic and fus-ha. i can read and write it very well. typically i have a difficult time understanding native arabic speakers when they're going all informal and rapid-fire, and if you ask me to speak it i'll just gargle awkwardly instead coz i've forgotten how haha (*sweats*) theyre both really pretty languages, very different from western ones in terms of the sounds you use, style of the alphabet, typical sentence structure, how words are formed around their roots... especially qur'anic arabic, i could wax poetic about how gorgeous it is Forever if i had those sort of spoons.
Arabic is really such an incredible language, especially the writing system. I read a book that went into detail in regards to the way you form words, and how there's a 'root' of three different 'letters,' or something along those lines. Arabic calligraphy is something else, too. One of my close friends is a Muslimah, so I know some basic phrases.
It's generally 3 consonants. Which you then put into a set series of consonant-vowel patterns. There's a nice sort of orderliness to the system. Like different verb patterns mean different ways of performing the verb. So both to teach and to learn use the exact same root letters but in different patterns. Plurals aren't as bad as many fear either, falling into similar groups. So fasl and saff have the same plural pattern as dars.
