fi-le's files
Lanugage Learning
Following linguist Jack Halpern's examle, here is a little bit about my fun hobby - 'language learning'. I hope to inspire you rascals to also pick up a few, especially if you happen to be monolingual at the moment. As is natural, below is a list of a few languages roughly ordered by competence.-
German - Die Kupferne
Luckily my mother's tongue. Having senseless grammar terms, punctuation rules (see: erweiterter Infinitiv) and sandpaper-like phonetics drilled into your skull at a young age is a very strange preperation for the more poetic aspectics of live, of which it turns out that there actually are a lot. Lends an ironic quality to most things.
Level: Native Favourite Works: Die Harzreise, Die Nordsee, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, Sein und Zeit - English - The Prosaic
Absolutely beautiful consonants in most dialects. Do you think it's a coincidence that Anglophones came up with ASMR? I don't! AAVE is a true blessing for the large language community; English vernacular in general is, as far as I know, by far the world's best and very fun to use.
As most language enthusiasts, I have my quarrels about it and heavily dislike writing everything in just one language (which is not great for writing at all). The intrusion of English vocabulary into all other languages is annoying.
Level: C2 (Certified C1/B2 by secondary School and the Cambridge Certificate) Favourite Works: Emma, Gender Trouble - Japanese - 万華鏡の如く
Surely the coolest writing system on the planet and a very lovable phonetic system. Sadly I don't know any other agglutinative languages to compare, but the grammar is fun and easy.
It whittles nobility into everything that touches it, the blade doesn't blunt either. I still understand very little and hope to be able to properly use it. It truly is unlike everything else.
Level: C1 (with large gaps) (Certified JLPT N1) Favourite Works: 三四郎, TUGUMI - Russian - древний великий
The most magical consonants, maybe they can come out of my mouth, too, sometime. It is no secret that Russian grammar is not loved, but the vocabulary far makes up for it. Makes you want to speak more Slavic languages.
Cyrillic is a good system! (Altough the orthography is not especially straight forward as a result.) This is sadly the position on the list where I should stop pretending I have any idea what I'm talking about because I really haven't.
I have an open list of learning ressources here!
Level: A2 (no Certification) Favourite Works: нос - Swedish - den gemytliga
Try to listen to spoken Swedish and not relax. It's quite difficult! The common observation that the language is like a song due to its pitch accent is very very true. The vocabulary has an always sweet, often cute, sometimes funny and seldom bitter quality to it. I wonder if someone shouted at me in Swedish I would just like chill out and have a good time.
Written Swedish can look a little plain, for lack of a better word, but the orthography is consistent and overall pleasant. Please, Swedish people, stop speaking English!!!!! I'm begging you!! (The irony is not lost and am sad about it, see the section about English.)
Level: A2 (no Certificatation) - Spanish - la Caliente
Alright, I got nothing. Here I just want to highlight the precarity of having learnt a language in school for three years and not knowing the first thing about it. Really, I'm drawing a blank.
The ductus is famously cool! What's most interesting about it is that while the speech is light, fast and colloquial, the written language remains untaintedly serious. Hopefully I can properly learn it some day.
Level: < A1 (Certified B1+ (!) by secondary School) - Latin - Lingua Superflua
Why in deus name do you teach this to children?
Level: N/A ('Latinum'-Certification)