I seem to have switched language fascination

[pne]

I love languages and wish I could learn ALL THE LANGUAGES!

Typically, I have one language at a time which fascinates me particularly and where I spend some time learning it (with more or less fervor); I buy books, look for web resources, and so on.

Then, at some point, another languages comes along which fascinates me similarly. And I don’t discard the previous language, but because I typically don’t have time to do even one language justice, I put it on the back burner (with all the others that are there already…). I might come back to it occasionally and am still interested in it, but I don’t spend nearly as much time on it actively.

Such “languages of the day/month/year” (I would guess that it’s typically around a year that a language survives before being supplanted; it depends on when another one strikes my fancy) have included, in the past, Niuean, Maltese, Romansh, and most recently Inuktitut.

I seem to have replaced Inuktitut with Esperanto, though. Oops.

I only noticed after I had bought a bunch of dictionaries and textbooks and started researching courses and meetings :)

All prompted, essentially, by a conversation with n_true at qepHom wa'maHDIch, wherein I noticed that I could actually hold a conversation, despite not having ever attempted this before.

Ah well. *rueful grin*

(And I wonder how far my infatuation with Inuktitut would have taken me, anyway, especially given that I haven’t been able to find information about a decent dictionary. Well, Spalding, I guess. Hm. Dangnabbit!)

Now I wonder whether I should make a new journal for my thoughts in and/or about Esperanto; I already have journals for Verdurian, Klingon, Lojban, Maltese, Romansh, and Inuktitut. (Er, not that any of them have more than one or two entries in them, and most have none… but they exist, and are theoretically for that purpose.)

Perhaps a new userpic, though.

Comments

[sollers]

Less exotic, but have you dipped your toe into Welsh? For a European language it's more than a bit weird (no verb "to have", verbs that are really nouns, sort of, having to learn the feminine third person of "with", not to mention having to learn a fair bit of grammar before looking nouns or adjectives in the dictionary - just to find out which letter the word you need starts with).

[pne]

Less exotic, but have you dipped your toe into Welsh?

Not yet, no. It's possible that its time will come one day :)

not to mention having to learn a fair bit of grammar before looking nouns or adjectives in the dictionary - just to find out which letter the word you need starts with

I had a similar experience with Greek when I just started out!

[sollers]

Oh, believe me, even with the lack of declensions it makes Greek look a doddle. For example, if you want to find out what "dlos" means you have to look up "tlws". And if you don't know the masculine to start with, if you're looking up "fach" and "fawr" you don't know whether to look under "b" or "m" (the former for the first; the latter for the second).

[pne]

Sounds like fun!

[sollers]

And as for "nghalon"... what letter would you guess? And how about "nhad"?

[pne]

"galon" and "dad"?

Just guessing.

[sollers]

Nearly but not quite - you've missed the significance of the "h". "Calon" and "tad".

[quinctia]

Oooh, this looks like the post where we suggest weird languages! From what I have read, Lithuanian is considered the oldest Indo-European language. It's also written in Roman characters, not cyrillic like some of its neighbors and despite it being periodically invaded by the Russians over its history.

I don't really know anything specific about it, though. I have a habit of picking up the study of languages that have absolutely nothing to do with my ethnic heritage. One would think I'd have gone for German, at the least, but nope.

Lithuanian

[pne]

From what I have read, Lithuanian is considered the oldest Indo-European language.

I've heard that claim, too! Also about the related Latvian. I guess they're both pretty conservative in some respects. (And, no doubt, innovative in others.)

Re: Lithuanian

[steorra]

There's an interesting quirk about the apparent conservativeness of Lithuanian. I think it's that Modern Lithuanian looks like it preserves exactly the 8 cases that were in Proto-Indo-European. But in fact, if you look at older Lithuanian, you see that it innovated a number of other cases, but it just so happens that exactly those cases were lost between older Lithuanian and modern Lithuanian, so it looks more conservative than it actually is. (I think it's cases, but it might be some other grammatical category.)