Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[canisaries]

Does knowing how to talk in medical jargon count as a second language? Because it sure seems like it sometimes.

well, it's mostly latin/greek as well, so don't see why not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ due to studying anatomy for drawing and out of general interest, i can name a whole lot of muscles by their medical names without having any clue what they might be in finnish.

 

[CrystaI]

Biology and zoology seems more fitted for that.

 

[Ambyssin]

well, it's mostly latin/greek as well, so don't see why not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ due to studying anatomy for drawing and out of general interest, i can name a whole lot of muscles by their medical names without having any clue what they might be in finnish.

I'll take it! XD

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I'm finding it really hard to pick up French, partially because it's not a language I'm casually exposed to and partially because everything is pronounced from the back of the throat. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's where English's inconsistent spelling rules come from.

it's funny how the whole person-embedded-in-verb thing happens in both spanish and finnish, when they're completely unrelated.

And English has more in common with Hindi than any of the Celtic languages.

 

[zoroarctic]

Since I'm an ignorant American, most of my experience with foreign languages comes from stuff like this...

Spoiler

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM7FvixFerY

Spoiler

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIVI3q-ZlX4

 

[Beth Pavell]

My language skills have gone to rust since I started work - though I never much liked speaking French anyway. It's not an especially useful language, and if I had the choice of doing ... well, many more, I would have

 

[Iggy]

My German is hardly adequate, even after living in Germany for a good decade. I have no intention of remedying it as I'll be moving back to the Netherlands within the year. Aside for my mother tongue (Dutch), I dare to say I can make myself reasonable sound in English, both vocal and written.

 

[diamondpearl876]

The only reason French has been particularly difficult for me thus far is because of the altered sentence structure compared to English... though I am just trying to be able to read/write it. I'd have far more trouble if I tried to speak it as well. German's far more straightforward as far as sentence structure goes, at least from what I've learned so far.

Does knowing how to talk in medical jargon count as a second language? Because it sure seems like it sometimes.

Considering a lot of related jobs specifically ask applicants to be proficient in medical terminology, I'd say so. xD

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I'm thinking of learning German after a year of Esperanto fluency~

Not only is any field of jargon a kind of sub-language, but sociolects in different communities are a kind of dialect that won't necessarily be fully intelligible to outsiders. Language is interesting and messy!

 

[Gama]

@Ambyssin

A related fact that may interest you - 14-16 year old kids learn more new words in biology than foreign languages! Crazy, right?

 

[Nitro Indigo]

That's funny, because I feel the opposite about French and German. It's been a long time since I've done German, though.

 

[Ambyssin]

@Ambyssin

A related fact that may interest you - 14-16 year old kids learn more new words in biology than foreign languages! Crazy, right?

I mean, it's been awhile, but that sounds about the age where you take a lot of bio in American grade school. So, makes sense to me. XD

 

[Misfit Angel]

I don't know if that's strictly accurate. In that age range, I took three-years-worth of Spanish lessons, while my biology class was... unfortunately less than informative. I don't feel like I learned a whole lot in biology, other than stuff like ecosystems and how to better treat the environment, since the whole environmental preservation movement was just taking off at the time.

 

[Gama]

@Misfit Angel It is a general rule rather than true for every kid. It's also based on the UK where I know foreign language education isn't great. I think it's roughly consistent with most English speaking countries and much worse than most non-English speaking countries, but I may be wrong on either of them.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Apparently English is harder to learn than Chinese? I heard someone claim that in a let's play. He didn't specify what kind of Chinese.

 

[canisaries]

it all depends on what the learner speaks natively. languages similar to your own are easier to learn. so i'm definitely calling bullshit on that for speakers of germanic languages, and why not for literally everyone who natively uses the latin alphabet. i don't care how easy that chinese would be grammatically, you still have to learn a totally new way of writing and that always takes time.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

languages similar to your own are easier to learn.

That's what I was thinking. I once read about how English speakers find it easier to learn Spanish than Mandarin, and there was something about the opposite, and I can't remember what it is. I think it was in one of the QI trivia books.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Considering Spanish is one of the simplest languages in terms of general structure, grammar and verb conjugation, I'm not surprised that people find it easier to learn than Mandarin, which involves learning 20000+ characters to read, write and speak fluently. Nevermind the grammar, sentence structure and other such things.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Mandarin grammar is very simple. Stringing together a sentence is like slotting bricks together. Reading Mandarin is somewhat more difficult, because (Among other reasons) the characters don't give you any indication as to how they're supposed to be pronounced. I noticed that native speakers tend to slur their tones, but technically you do have to pay attention to your vowels (Something English speakers aren't at all used to)

 

[diamondpearl876]

I learned in my speech therapy undergrad program that I'm absolutely awful at discerning inflection and tone and everything else when listening to people... so I'd probably fail hard with Mandarin, in that case.