Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cthulhu]

Saw the life advice thread now I'm watching Gandahar.  If only the metal men's weakness were boobs.

Spoiler: Holy shit I want one (click to show/hide)

[Rilder]

My Gods, Its full of neutrons!

Yeah I'm making bombs. >.>

[RedKing]

My interest is piqued.

[Darvi]

And I managed to get to the end boss...

Which one?

[Vector]

Russian class:

"Do you люблю in the accusative?"

I love Berkeley, sometimes.  By which I mean most of the time.

[alway]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My Gods, Its full of neutrons!

Yeah I'm making bombs. >.>

Tip: Put a colloid shell around it. It hardens when the blast wave comes through, preventing most pressure damage to the outside while heating up to maximum temp. When the pressure drops a while later, it turns into lava at said temp. 

[Ochita]

And I managed to get to the end boss...

Which one?

Extra. As in, extra start....

[RedKing]

Russian class:

"Do you люблю in the accusative?"

I love Berkeley, sometimes.  By which I mean most of the time.

Isn't all love somewhat accusative? 

Class declension is one of the reasons I didn't pursue learning additional Russian in college. Why does a group of people do that to themselves??
I frequently cite this as a reason why Mandarin's not that bad to learn. Yes, the writing system is insane (although logical in its own way). But the spoken form is completely free of declension, and relies on context. Which makes it far easier to learn, though a nightmare to comprehend for a beginner coming from a language with extensive declension.

[RedWarrior0]

Had to turn on the AC in my car today. Spring has arrived! Unless, of course, it snows again. I wouldn't put it past the weather or my track coach to do something like that.

I frequently cite this as a reason why Mandarin's not that bad to learn. Yes, the writing system is insane (although logical in its own way). But the spoken form is completely free of declension, and relies on context. Which makes it far easier to learn, though a nightmare to comprehend for a beginner coming from a language with extensive declension.

Enter English. Writing is easy and spoken is minimal declension. Pronunciation, however, can be a bitch because of all the source languages and variable rules.

For example, you've probably seen the example of  "GHOTI". GH as in "Tough", O as in "Women", and TI as in "Nation" and many other words. Or how adding an S to the beginning of Laughter makes the GH silent.

[Vector]

Haha.

I don't really mind the declensions.  There's only 6 of them or so, after all, and I generally don't pay attention to the names--I just go "Oh, that's the n one, and then I use the a one after that."  Or "I need to use the e-one here."  I don't even think "why," I just do it and it's usually right~

Other fun from Russian:

"Wait, did you just call your boyfriend a sausage?"

(Tomasa vs. Kolbasa--the professor misheard the student and thought she was talking about sausages)

[Darvi]

Well that was kinda gloopy from him :p

[GlyphGryph]

Why does a group of people do that to themselves??

I have no idea. I frequently ask the same question for gendered nouns though. Pretty much every language has some sort of "Do you enjoy making yourself suffer!?" aspect to it, though.

[Something Evil]

"Wait, did you just call your boyfriend a sausage?"

(Tomasa vs. Kolbasa--the professor misheard the student and thought she was talking about sausages)

He should've felt proud.
But honestly, declinations aren't much of a bother. Sequence of tenses kills my desire to actually study languages. Stupid French. Stupid English, likewise. And most languages with Latin structure. Damn your stupid tenses and your conjunctives. Damn you all.

[RedKing]

Why does a group of people do that to themselves??

I have no idea. I frequently ask the same question for gendered nouns though. Pretty much every language has some sort of "Do you enjoy making yourself suffer!?" aspect to it, though.

This is true. Most of the Sino-Tibetan languages lack declension, but make up for it with tonality. But at least tonality has the hidden advantage of making a language awesome for puns and jokes. And in practical usage, most tonal languages are spoken so fast that it obliterates most of the tonality anyways. But it can lead to some epic fails if you're talking slowly in two or three word phrases (as most tourists will be doing), because of the lack of sufficient context.

[GlyphGryph]

But at least tonality has the hidden advantage of making a language awesome for puns and jokes.

I think this is probably more than a worthwhile trade off. ^_^