Language topic

Good article. Language can point towards the culture and values of the society it comes from.
 
Of course, just because people talk differently doesn't necessarily mean they think differently.
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Here's a research, done some years later (unfortunately a subscription is needed but here's an abstract):

Two Languages, Two Minds
Flexible Cognitive Processing Driven by Language of Operation

Abstract
People make sense of objects and events around them by classifying them into identifiable categories. The extent to which language affects this process has been the focus of a long-standing debate: Do different languages cause their speakers to behave differently? Here, we show that fluent German-English bilinguals categorize motion events according to the grammatical constraints of the language in which they operate. First, as predicted from cross-linguistic differences in motion encoding, bilingual participants functioning in a German testing context prefer to match events on the basis of motion completion to a greater extent than do bilingual participants in an English context. Second, when bilingual participants experience verbal interference in English, their categorization behavior is congruent with that predicted for German; when bilingual participants experience verbal interference in German, their categorization becomes congruent with that predicted for English. These findings show that language effects on cognition are context-bound and transient, revealing unprecedented levels of malleability in human cognition.
 
I like that bit in the article about people needing their language skills to count. I find it hard to keep track of two set of words at once. If I'm listening to a song, I sometimes focus on the lyrics and lose my own train of thought. Or if I'm deep into something like programming, all music passes me by unnoticed. Can't spare a thought for it.
 
Viking language!
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http://www.thelocal.dk/20150505/copenhagen-man-revives-viking-forest-language
It might sound like something from Lord of The Rings or The Local Sweden's recent April Fool's Day prank but Elfdalian is a real language currently used by around 2500 people in central Sweden and is understood to date back to Viking times.

Previously regarded as a Swedish dialect, leading linguistics experts now consider it a separate language and are battling to save it, after figures emerged that less than 60 children can currently speak it.

"Often Norwegians, Danes and Swedes can understand each others' languages and dialects. But Elfdalian can't be understood by any Scandinavians apart from the ones that grow up with it, and that is why we consider it a separate language," Yair Sapir, a linguistics expert who lives in Copenhagen and teaches at Lund University in Sweden, told The Local.
 
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@The Flash is this correct?
 
Partially. It's called Baykuş, with Bay meaning Mr. and Kuş meaning Bird. But "Bay" in the word is unrelated to its actual meaning. More of a homonym based joke, really.
 
Dude Kevinismus is the worst of em all.

Jeremy-Pascal is the first thing that comes to mind *shudder*
 
You missed out 'lol' at the end of that @The Flash. :D

I love a bit of Middle English. The vowel sounds are quite different to modern English, although similar to some regional accents.
 
@The Flash : I just saw a poster from some Christian ministry which read "Isa Mesih diyorki:...". Now I know that it means "Jesus Christ says:...", but I was wondering: Is the di- in diyorki a part of the actual word, or is it a verbal present prefix?
 
First off, it's spelt wrong. "Diyor ki" is the correct spelling. Di is part of the word. "to say" is "demek" and "he says" is "diyor". Ki is a conjunction, in this case carrying the meaning of "as such", as in "He says as such".
 
Thanks. I was just wondering, because it looked just the way a Kurdish verb would be conjugated if it was "yorkin" (which doesn't exist), and that interested me. I figured it would most likely just be a coincidence, though.
 
So, as someone who'll start majoring in Translation and Interpretation next month, I'm looking for ways to learn some basics about foreign languages. I never really "studied" to learn English, it was a natural gradual process. So, for those on the forum who speak multiple foreign languages, what do you reckon are good methods of learning new languages?

I'm preparing to join some foreign language courses at uni, but I'm also looking for ways to develop some skills on my own.
 
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Are you going to learn a new language from scratch? I mean, something other than English? If that's the case - exposure. :p It's probably how you picked up English anyway.

As funny as it may sound, exposure to the language you are trying to learn is crucial. Once you find out what language you are going to study, you should try to read and listen to the language as much as you can- articles, videos, podcasts, news, etc. It takes some time to get accustomed to the sound of the language and at this stage it's not likely that you would understand a whole lot of what you see or hear but it is very important for the foundation of your future skills. In order to avoid sounding like a robot or like someone who has learned words at random, you should first pay attention to features like rhythm of the language, intonation, phrasing patterns and phonology. At first, you should give yourself some time to develop very basic passive skills, such as listening and reading. The production skills - speaking and writing - come later and take more time to evolve, so don't expect to be able to start speaking too soon.

From then on, it's highly individual and depends mostly on your learning type, the type of memory you have and whether you prefer a structured (grammatical) approach or a situational approach, in which you learn chunks of language that are typically related to a specific situation. Probably the best way is to combine things and try various approaches to see what works best for you.
 
"Majoring in translation"?

May I ask: as part of which study? What are you doing now/or going to study now?

I assume someone studies a lengthy study on a university (or other school type) and does several modules/courses/directions/you name it as parts of that study.

For me it seems logical to first learn (study) a language and then, later, focus on translating.
 
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Should've made the field clearer. I'm going to study English translation and interpretation at uni. My field at uni will solely be English. The reason why I'm looking to learn new languages is to lay the foundations for translating them in the future because I want to be able to cross-translate in the future.

So the idea to learn other languages have no effect on my study field. I obviously already speak English. It's just a career plan.
 
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Ariana said:
Are you going to learn a new language from scratch? I mean, something other than English? If that's the case - exposure. :p It's probably how you picked up English anyway.
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I already know about exposure from experience. As guessed, it's how I picked up English. Started out playing language related games on my Atari when I was 4, listening to English football commentary on Eurosport when I was around 6-7, playing text based football games in English around 8 so on and so forth. It helped that I started familiarizing myself with the language at a very young age. I used English for the first time just months after I learned to read and write in Turkish, around 3 years old. It's the reason why I'm a bit concerned about learning new ones, anyway, because I picked up English over a gradual natural process of about 15 years.

I'm probably gonna need to use the same formula for the other ones. Combine foreign language with things that I like and work from there. I will point out, that spending time on the forum really helped me be more fluent. I joined here when I was 14, I knew how to speak English but my fluency grew extensively over time. That, and watching a shit ton of YouTube videos every day. :p
 
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