A dilettante in all things, but especially languages

[muckefuck]

This is my response to franzeska in linguaphiles regarding my command of languages. Since it's something I get asked a lot and generally hate trying to answer, I thought I'd reproduce it here for easy reference.

It's still a bit hard to answer these questions because, as you know, active command of a language degrades rapidly with disuse, so it's hard to predict accurately whether you can still do something you haven't done in a while. I'll give it my best shot, though:

How many languages can you have a casual conversation in? Short answer: Probably about six (Catalan, Chinese, Dutch, English, German, Spanish.) Long answer: I might be able to manage French with a sufficiently patient interlocutor. Last time I tried chatting in Welsh, it was disastrous, but perhaps with a chance to cram ahead of time it would turn out better.

How many languages can you write an academic paper in? I haven't had to write an academic paper in any language for more than fifteen years, so it's difficult to say. Definitely English and German, and probably Catalan and Spanish as well without too much trouble.

How many languages can you read literature in? Short answer: About a dozen. Long answer: I've read short stories and/or novels in all the languages listed above plus Irish, Italian, Asturian, and Low Saxon. Portuguese and Occitan should be no problem, but Romansh is a different story; as I mentioned before, I've got a novel in Rumantsch Grischun that I've never been able to hack through more than a few pages with in the absence of a decent dictionary. I've read short Korean texts before, but nothing of tremendous literary quality. (I have short stories from Hwang Sun-wŏn and Yi Mun-yŏl that I've never been able to get through.) I also studied Old English in college, but I'm not confident in my ability to get the gist of texts I'm not already familiar with (e.g. Biblical ones). Oh, and I can probably read Yiddish--I know the orthography and some of the most vital Hebrew borrowings. (Enough to understand popular songs, at least.)

How many languages do you speak/write on a more or less native level? Only English, I would say. Most Germans figure out I'm not a native speaker after less than fifteen minutes.

How many languages have you studied for the equivalent of a year of high school language (i.e. more than picking up a bad phrasebook, but way less than any of the above)? Armenian, Cantonese, Czech, Modern Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese, Latin, Osage, Persian, Panjabi, Russian, Scottish Gaelic, Swahili, Tibetan, Turkish. A tier below even these I would rank Alemannic, Arabic, Basque, Breton, Finnish, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Romanian, Romany, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian, Vietnamese--as you can see, it's a fairly wide penumbra. What is that, about 30 in addition to the 12-15 already tabulated?

Comments

[pne.livejournal.com]

"linQuaphiles"?

I <3 dorques

[niemandsrose.livejournal.com]

It must be a bunch of dorques who share dorquey internet linques.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

as someone who's pestered you for exactly this, thanks. That's some impressive dilettanting. So what bites you, is it all structural/morphological, or are you swayed by other kinds of cultural production in the language group, or do you fantasize about going to live in the places where the languages are/were spoken? Do you have a Grand Project on the backburner?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I'm too much of a slacker to have a Grand Project and my answer to the other question is "Yes". I'd have to give you a different answer for every single language and it would include excursus on people I've known who spoke that language and books, songs, and movies I know which make use of it. A powerful motivator that you might not expect was my experience with RPGs: I have no patience with bullshit fantasy languages or mangled grammar, so I was compelled to do my research before naming characters, places, and the like. Factor that it, and you can add Ge'ez, Aramaic, Malagasy, Hausa, Somali, Middle High German, Venetian, Ancient Greek, and many other obscure languages to the list.

[franzeska]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Why people can't even do enough research to make a decent name, I will never know. (Here via vanity googling, naturally. :D)

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You can do your research and still put together something that is nonsense. Some of my friends (who shall remain nameless despite the fact that they're all here on LJ) tried to name a world "house of blood" in Nahuatl and ended up with "Ezocalco". They had the right roots, but the wrong combining form and didn't realise that "calco" was a locative ("in the house") rather than an nominative form. It took me some research of my own to discover that the correct form would be "Ezcalli". If you haven't worked with a wide variety of languages (and most people I know are too busy learning about other things, like science and history), you won't even know what pitfalls to be on the lookout for when you dabble in an unfamiliar one.

[redatdawn.livejournal.com]

As someone who has asked you such a question before and gotten (understandably) a grumpy response, thank you!

[kumazuki.livejournal.com]

I don't think I should call you a cunning linguist, but I do know you are my new Hero!

[bwillsouth.livejournal.com]

Interesting and enlightening list, as others have said!

I've read texts in Old High German and Middle High German before. The latter was, surprise of surprises, not especially difficult, despite being 800 years old. Given how similar the older Germanic languages are (Romance languages anyone?) it shouldn't be too horrendously hard to find one with a good body of literature (i.e. Old Icelandic) and set to. Of course OI has the double advantage of making it easy to pick up Modern Icelandic. Or at least that's my plan, for the layer of Germanophilia that's been buried with laziness and other distractions.

I'm sure that's all old news to you, but the textbook I have for OI is "Old Icelandic: An Introductory Course" by James E. Cathey. I had to order it as a coursepack thingy from the UMass bookstore.

Currently, given the laziness and latent Germanophilia, the likeliest next target ("next" in a very loose sense) is Afrikaans. When I get to UT Austin (transferring for 08/09) I may decide to take Korean, if I can fit it in and if the instructor is good, which would be a good way to finally set after that particular linguistic curiosity.

And of course the only non-English language I can hold a conversation in, write at an (acceptable for classwork) academic level in, and read basically anything in is German. Although for lack of having been to Germany (!) my conversational fluency needs help, I actually have been briefly mistaken for a native on a few occasions due to my pronunciation.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I find near-native pronunciation a real mixed blessing, to be honest. It's not a problem with German, but in Spanish, it prompts my interlocutors to immediately speak colloquially and at speed until the end up losing me. The whole time I'm gawking at them trying to figure out how not to seem like a poseur, I'm wondering if they think I'm rude or just stupid, and which is worse.

[bwillsouth.livejournal.com]

I definitely understand what you mean. Although are you trying to say German-speakers are less prone to that, or just that your German is better so it's fine? Because I haven't noticed an especially large variation in how German is spoken before and after, other than them getting all helpful whenever I stumble and then speeding back up a little later.

That, incidentally, is a lot of why I think German-speakers are more helpful on the whole to L2 learners than, say, the French. It almost seems like it's a cultural norm to want to help people, or use English out of politeness, rather than getting disdainful.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The latter. I've never had the same problem with getting hopelessly tongue-tied in German than I have in Spanish. Catalan-speakers are another story, since they know immediately I'm a non-native speaker (nobody just starts speaking to another person in Catalan in the states before they know something of their background) and are just so thrilled by the novelty of that that they're extremely forgiving.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

I also find it a mixed blessing. Often in Russian, my interlocutor is so impressed by my pronunciation they assume I speak fluently and consider my protests on that account to be modesty instead of honesty. Then 5-10 minutes into the conversation, I falter on something and receive a look that quickly goes from confused to angry, like I was tricking them or something.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I also studied Old English in college, but I'm not confident in my ability to get the gist of texts I'm not already familiar with (e.g. Biblical ones).

Have you seen Eddie Izzard's purchase of a Frisian cow?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Not all the way through.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

thanks so much for pointing to this, mostly because of Izzard's demonstration of the Amsterdam hipster accent in the preceding bit - perfect. He must have a massive collection of these snippets tucked away in his head.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Took me a while to track down the right clip, but it is priceless.

[wwidsith.livejournal.com]

I think it was Anthony Burgess, famously polyglot, who said that "after the first couple of dozen, they get easier to learn"...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I thought people were joking when they told me that, but it's really true! The languages don't even have to be related. After all, there are only so many different ways of organising grammar and after a while it becomes, "Okay, so which of the four or five main ways to do this does this language prefer?"