|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 24, 2012 8:19:46 GMT -5
*gets out the fire hose and points it at Eskimo* Try it, and you'll drown in ice cold water. Then you have to face me. Afterwards, I'll feed your sorry remains to Fluffy!  Wow. Hats off! Though I am not sure what's the worse choice, to me both sound very difficult. |
|
|
|
Post by eskimoRock on Aug 24, 2012 8:30:28 GMT -5
Noooooo! Well, at least it would be a cool death...
And I didn't think it would be that hard at first. Biggest. Mistake. Ever.
|
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 24, 2012 8:42:34 GMT -5
Literally ;D
You know, I am beginning to think French would have been the lesser evil. At least it's latin script.
|
|
|
|
Post by eskimoRock on Aug 24, 2012 8:57:12 GMT -5
I forever wish I would have taken that. At least other people I know actually speak French, so i would have been able to get help...
|
|
|
|
Post by G. Novella on Aug 24, 2012 8:59:26 GMT -5
French is easy, until you get to verbs, then all the different tenses and reasons for using each tense screw you over  |
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 24, 2012 9:00:55 GMT -5
And don't mention the pronouncation. English was bad enough, but French? Can someone explain to me what use it is to string three vocals together in a word and then change it to a fourth one for pronouncation? No, thanks, I'll stay with German.
|
|
Chameleon
Headmaster/Headmistress
Call me Headmistress Chams.
Posts: 1,873
|
Post by Chameleon on Aug 24, 2012 9:03:29 GMT -5
Ooh, yeah. My father was once in a kind of school (before I was born), but failed, because he couldn't do French.
But it's good anyway, because otherwise I wouldn't probably been born.
|
|
|
|
Post by mountaingirl777 on Aug 24, 2012 15:23:04 GMT -5
three alphabets?
|
|
|
|
Post by eskimoRock on Aug 24, 2012 15:49:03 GMT -5
Three alphabets. We learnt the first two, and about 100 characters from the third. For a college/ university degree, apparently you have to learn 3000, that's what my Japanese teacher did.
|
|
|
|
Post by ShotgunWilly on Aug 24, 2012 16:08:49 GMT -5
Heh
Yea, I don't know much Japanese beyond what I learned watching anime and all that, but I do know that there's the katakana and the hiragana alphabets. Then there's the kanji of which there are thousands of characters. From what I've seen, though, there are several kanji which are simply different arrangements of katakana and hiragana characters to mean different things
If that weren't complicated enough, each katakana and hiragana character has an equivalent in the romaji alphabet which uses the latin letters to allow Japanese words to be spelled using the same characters we use
Or something like that
|
|
|
|
Post by dracosfairmaiden on Aug 24, 2012 16:16:10 GMT -5
I took Spanish in high school but I don't remember anything about it. I have to take ancient Greek and Hebrew for my religion major. When I go to graduate school, I have to study German and French. I'm so behind on languages right now.
|
|
|
|
Post by eskimoRock on Aug 24, 2012 16:19:17 GMT -5
Heh Yea, I don't know much Japanese beyond what I learned watching anime and all that, but I do know that there's the katakana and the hiragana alphabets. Then there's the kanji of which there are thousands of characters. From what I've seen, though, there are several kanji which are simply different arrangements of katakana and hiragana characters to mean different things If that weren't complicated enough, each katakana and hiragana character has an equivalent in the romaji alphabet which uses the latin letters to allow Japanese words to be spelled using the same characters we use Or something like that That's pretty much it, yeah  I can do hiragana, katakana and some kanji, but it's a nightmare to write the kanji. |
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 24, 2012 23:59:00 GMT -5
You have just convinced me to keep faaar away from Japanese. Sounds too complicated for my poor brain. I'm really impressed that you managed that much!
|
|
|
|
Post by mountaingirl777 on Aug 25, 2012 0:01:49 GMT -5
Try learning about space travel, the science stuff that is a whole other language on it's own. I'm having to research space travel for my original story. my poor brain melted after reading a few sentences on light years and such. thank God for friends who are interested in that stuff. |
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 25, 2012 0:20:02 GMT -5
LOL - I'd probably have a look at it and then decide to change the story!
|
|
|
|
Post by mountaingirl777 on Aug 25, 2012 0:23:46 GMT -5
well, thanks to my friend I understand more. He gave me a few pointers and gave me some options that I could use that I was having trouble figuring out. I had given him the whole plotline and he had a few questions. It is nice to have someone to run ideas off of.
|
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 25, 2012 0:26:41 GMT -5
Oh definitely. Glad you found someone who could explain that stuff to you in a away mere mortals understand, too. Some scientific books are just too much written for other scientifists. (Actually, I had a discussion with a colleague about that some weeks ago - it is changing, thankfully)
|
|
|
|
Post by mountaingirl777 on Aug 25, 2012 0:29:25 GMT -5
yeah thanks to him I now understand the whole time shift stuff. Now I have to go back over and figure out what direction I want this story to take.
|
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 25, 2012 0:39:20 GMT -5
Good luck with that!
|
|
|
|
Post by mountaingirl777 on Aug 25, 2012 1:02:48 GMT -5
yeah, thanks.
Oh, another language that I would love to learn is Elvish, Quenya. It is so beautiful!
|
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 25, 2012 1:07:36 GMT -5
Ah yes, Quenya and Sindarin ... they sound lovely, don't they? A friend of mine is pretty good with them - as far as one can with the bit Tolkien gave us, of course.
|
|
|
|
Post by eskimoRock on Aug 25, 2012 3:25:10 GMT -5
Somebody has translated my new story into Portuguese for fanfiction.net, and I dont understand a word anymore I got eskimoRock and Colin, thats pretty much it |
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 25, 2012 3:53:02 GMT -5
You mean you can't even guess a few?  |
|
|
|
Post by G. Novella on Aug 25, 2012 3:55:44 GMT -5
It's so cool when that happens  if you get google chrome it translates the page for you into English. My story got translated into Chinese, and I had no idea how to read it since even the characters were in Chinese. |
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 25, 2012 3:57:10 GMT -5
Just out of curiosity, how good was that translation? Years ago I tried one of these online translator for a text - nearly died laughing at what it did!
|
|
|
|
Post by G. Novella on Aug 25, 2012 4:02:13 GMT -5
It was decent. The grammar was off most of the time, but I got the gist of what the translator person had written It was so cool seeing my name and then my story on the Chinese fanfiction site! |
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 25, 2012 4:23:05 GMT -5
Ah, then these things haven't improved that much.
Yeah, I can imagine. Just the knowledge that someone thought the story good enough to translate it in the first place is great, isn't it?
|
|
|
|
Post by G. Novella on Aug 25, 2012 4:26:05 GMT -5
Extremely! It makes me smile just thinking about it. And yeah, it's still extremely poor, but for languages whose characters you can't recognize, it's a great system |
|
|
|
Post by Kitty279 on Aug 25, 2012 4:34:38 GMT -5
And I am happy for both of you that your stories got translated Ah yes, it's a great help under these circumstances, even in languages spelled in latin, but you don't understand. Using another script is an additional pain in the butt. Been cataloguing a lot of Russian and Greek books over the years and know how much of an inconvenience that is. |
|
|
|
Post by G. Novella on Aug 25, 2012 4:38:41 GMT -5
*nods* I've always wished I could read characters other than latin. It would be such an asset. But most ,anguages that don't use katin characters are much harder to learn, and aren't offered in my school |
|
I can do hiragana, katakana and some kanji, but it's a nightmare to write the kanji.
if you get google chrome it translates the page for you into English. My story got translated into Chinese, and I had no idea how to read it since even the characters were in Chinese.