Vreleksá

Kiri · Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 2:59 pm Post subject:

日本語を話しません。I have learnt it for one year only (together with French). I can also understand a little bit of Russian and the complete basics of German.

But I'm not sure if this is the right place for this kind of talk Very Happy

_________________
A Latvian. A language-freak.
Latvietis. Ķerts uz valodām.
an latvan Antra. an Rīnolaiewruj.
Ratvaxantršitkak. Rihraxehitkak.

achemel · Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 6:48 pm Post subject:

Waah, German! Very Happy

I wanted to take it in high school but for some crazy reason the classes were always full! I thought everyone took Spanish, but apparently I was wrong. (^_^)

僕も「ようこそ」って言いたい　－　ようこそ！作ったことばが好きだよ。 Very Happy

_________________
ssvòä bïe es lýra, weave for me a dream.

killerken · Joined: 30 Sep 2008 Posts: 107 Location: Florida

I wanted to learn German, too, but was forced to take Spanish. They only offered the Spanish IB exam at my school.

Not to be left out, japanesjapanesejapanese Cool

_________________
Speak: English, Spanish
Invent: Fidhaas
Learn: Polish
Awesome: Yes

Tolkien_Freak · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 872 Location: Everu

I've never actually taken a Japanese class (I probly will when I get to college, maybe sooner). All they offer at my (small private) high school is Spanish, and honestly I really don't like Spanish. I'm taking Latin instead, I like it better than all of the Romance languages.

I just realized that from my first post to achemel's post, every single post has had Japanese in it somewhere except Aeetl's in Latvian.
_________________
'We are the knights who say, "に!"'

「私たちに理性と知性を与えた神は、その神と同じのは、その使いを捨てるつもりがあると信じざるを得なさそうではない。｣
　－ガリレオ･ガリレイ

My friend, after an intense 10-minute session of being yelled at by my Latin teacher: 'Well, at least I know my verb cases...'

Aeetlrcreejl · Joined: 08 Jun 2007 Posts: 776 Location: Over yonder

I on'y wish I spoke Latvian. I do know some words, but not too many.

And Tolkien_Freak, I'll go edit my post to contain Japanese so that the continuity isn't broken.
_________________
Tiedämme missä asut.
Tamaqqut qantib.
Selæm ùthakyvl.
Nous savons où tu habites.

Tolkien_Freak · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 872 Location: Everu

_________________
'We are the knights who say, "に!"'

「私たちに理性と知性を与えた神は、その神と同じのは、その使いを捨てるつもりがあると信じざるを得なさそうではない。｣
　－ガリレオ･ガリレイ

My friend, after an intense 10-minute session of being yelled at by my Latin teacher: 'Well, at least I know my verb cases...'

achemel · Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:32 am Post subject:

Wish I knew Latvian too. (^_^) I took Latin my last year in high school, but I don't remember much... I just know the words to the chorus parts in E Nomine songs, haha, and a little bit of the fairy-spell from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. I thought that was a fantastic book. Very Happy

_________________
ssvòä bïe es lýra, weave for me a dream.

killerken · Joined: 30 Sep 2008 Posts: 107 Location: Florida

I'm excited to be taking Latin next August! I've been messing around the wikiversity page and flipping through Wheelock's Latin that I bought at Barnes & Noble for a while, so I'm ready to actually get some learning done.
_________________
Speak: English, Spanish
Invent: Fidhaas
Learn: Polish
Awesome: Yes

Tolkien_Freak · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 872 Location: Everu

Wheelock's is a wonderful textbook, we used it for our Latin I and II classes at our school. (I still have mine since I'm going to NJCL Nationals this summer (W00t!!).) My one complaint is that it spends 12 WHOLE CHAPTERS on the subjunctive - one per use - whereas in my Biblical Greek I class last year we learned them all in one day. The rest of it is awesome.

Back in 6th grade we had these terrible little things that were nothing more than vocab lists and conjugation/declension charts. No explanation, just vocab and charts. We learned NOTHING. (I managed to guess the case uses fairly accurately, but that was merely guessing on my part and nothing that I was taught.)

@achemel: E Nomine? Whuzzat?
_________________
'We are the knights who say, "に!"'

「私たちに理性と知性を与えた神は、その神と同じのは、その使いを捨てるつもりがあると信じざるを得なさそうではない。｣
　－ガリレオ･ガリレイ

My friend, after an intense 10-minute session of being yelled at by my Latin teacher: 'Well, at least I know my verb cases...'

killerken · Joined: 30 Sep 2008 Posts: 107 Location: Florida

It does seem like a great book. I especially love that it doesn't start you out translating stupid little made-up phrases. You actually start with Cicero adn Virgil. Very cool to drop you right in the middle of the best part of Classical literature.
_________________
Speak: English, Spanish
Invent: Fidhaas
Learn: Polish
Awesome: Yes

Tolkien_Freak · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 872 Location: Everu

Indeed. Most of the Sententiae Antiquae (at least near the beginning) are modified to make them more understandable to students at that level, but they are far better than the ones my teacher makes up for quizzes ^_^

Just wait 'till you try reading unmodified Vergil. You'll find adjectives modifying nouns three lines away. It's crazy. (Cicero is way easier, I actually read through a bit of his Oratio Prima in Catilinam at the end of this year.)
_________________
'We are the knights who say, "に!"'

「私たちに理性と知性を与えた神は、その神と同じのは、その使いを捨てるつもりがあると信じざるを得なさそうではない。｣
　－ガリレオ･ガリレイ

My friend, after an intense 10-minute session of being yelled at by my Latin teacher: 'Well, at least I know my verb cases...'

eldin raigmore · Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 984 Location: SouthEast Michigan

Speaking of resources:
Look at
http://languagelink.let.uu.nl/tds/main.html#home[0]
and at
http://stresstyp-test.leidenuniv.nl/form2b.htm .
_________________
Therefore love the child who holds your hand; and let your wife delight in your embrace; for this is the lot of mankind to enjoy:
But immortal life is not for men.

eldin raigmore · Joined: 03 May 2007 Posts: 984 Location: SouthEast Michigan

On Conlang-L someone told me about a resource I'm having some fun with.

http://elexicon.wustl.edu/
http://elexicon.wustl.edu/WordStart.asp
http://elexicon.wustl.edu/query13/query13.asp

It's got 80000 English words and 80000 "English" non-words.
They tracked how fast people recognized whether or not it was a word, and how fast they could pronounce it, and how accurate they were in both recognition and pronunciation.
They also track some phonological and morphological facts about the word; how many phonemes, how many syllables, how many morphemes, etc.
And they track orthographical features about it, too.
They track the words' frequencies according to two different major studies.
They track something they call "bigrams". As near as I can tell, they look at each consecutive pair of letters in the word, and tell how frequent that pair of letters is; they're trying to determine whether familiarity with all the bigrams makes it easier or harder to recognize or pronounce the word.
They have things they call "phonological neighborhoods" -- other words that sound a lot like this word -- and "orthographical neighborhood" -- other words that are spelled a lot like this word. (In most cases the neighborhoods are up to 20 words big.) They tell how many "neighbors" of the word are more frequent than it is, and how many are less frequent. The idea, I think, is to figure out if a word is a lot like a lot of more familiar words, it's likely to be misread; and the existence of a lot of similar less-familiar words might also have such an effect, though a noticeably less radical effect.

-------------------------------------------

Anyway; these might give you ideas about how your own conscripts should work, at least if your conscripts are somewhat sound-based.

Also, if you just want to know the most frequent English words, you can find them here, up to the first 80,000.

Also, if you have a bunch of "non-words" -- that is, words in a conlang instead of English -- you can input a list of them and it will deduce phonological and orthographical rules based on that list, and tell you how hard or easy it predicts recognizing some other word might be.
_________________
Therefore love the child who holds your hand; and let your wife delight in your embrace; for this is the lot of mankind to enjoy:
But immortal life is not for men.

Aert · Joined: 03 Jul 2008 Posts: 203

http://www.eskimo.com/~ram/lexical_semantics.html

is an amazing resource for beginning/intermediate conlangers/linguists. I just started reading it, but even the contents listing is great. Very easy to read so far, and later on he outlines a complete language (Interlingua).

It is, however, 273 pages in Word Shocked

Baldash · Joined: 19 May 2009 Posts: 66