>>Oh, crap. You are right, and I didn't even think of that. I have edited the post to include this point.<<
I only spotted it because I've run into that problem from both ends. And while one might be able to ID, say, Finnish or Portugese by recognizing variants of letters, it is not consistent or 100%.
>>*laugh* My partner calls me to the television to identify languages. And to sight-read Russian chessmaster names.<<
That case, I was printing out some information in Farsi, Urdu, and Arabic. So I needed to label the sheets so we could copy them and hand them out to the right people.
Also, I once had to doublecheck if I was getting a Castillian or Spanish book for someone. (I can speak Spanish, but the written forms look very similar to me.)
And then there was the time I was discouraging an ESL speaker from reading my book - that Sector General book with the aliens that had a gravity-fed cardiovascular system... that is way complicated for reading material in a Level Three language. (Reading, yay! Reading something that confusing...ugh.)
>>You can't use a different script more than brief tidbits, unless you expect your readers can read that one too. Or you have to translated it right after, which I have sometimes done with Russian/Cyrillic in Love Is For Children. Otherwise you might as well be typing ####.<<
In RL with totally unfamiliar languagues, too. If the conversation is in an unfamiliar language, most people get bored after about 30sec-1min, and barring a very good reason (like Very Important Meeting) will tune out/wander off.
>>A quirk of my brain is that any foreign language yanks my attention to it. All human babies are born with this feature, ... <<
I file 'languagues spoken' and 'dietary restrictions' for people I spend time with, though I think it is a learned thing. (I've spent enough time working around language barriers for the former, and the latter is due to multicultural environments and having a food allergy myself.)
Unfortunately, I'm not that good at remembering names, which annoys people. :(
>>I have been told normal people can't do it. That only comes with high linguistic intelligence.<<
All I know is that I can understand spoken Portugese about as well as Spanish, and the other people in the conversations usually seem to understand me fairly well.
I mean, Norwegian's mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish, right? And "A languague is a dialect with an army and navy." - Max Weinreich
At work (in retail): "Siento, no hablo portuges. Prefiere ingles o espanol?" As I recall, they preferred Spanish, so that's what I used. (Side note on soiciolinguistics and politics: as I understand, Portugese is not Spanish and assuming it is, is...rude.)
And my coworkers would give me the most hilarious WTF? look the first time they heard me conversing with Spanish-speaking customers at the register...
Let's see, there was another occasion where the person and I talked about Cool Science Stuff (and Portugese/Spanish was a mutual second languague.) And the other-other case where I was teaching someone, and another student was assisting me...and other student thought I should use English with help from a translation app to go from French to English instead of using Spanish/Portugese.
My reply: (jokingly) "Hey, her kid's got my phone. You want me to fight him?" Kid was about 10 and watching an entertaining/educational kids show I'd reccomended (based on his interests). Oh, and the show was in English, which he didn't speak, but was going to learn.
I also have a relative who can read most Romance languagues and get the rough meaning, though I don't think she is actually fluent in any of them.
I am the kind of person who will try to dissect meanings of terms, like the difference between 'person walking' and 'creature walking' in ASL. And I've asked people about, say, genderlects/gender-specific introductions, when they are trying to teach me "My name is..." in their languague. So I probably have good linguistic intelligence.
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dancing_serpent
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2021-12-07 03:10 pm (UTC)I only spotted it because I've run into that problem from both ends. And while one might be able to ID, say, Finnish or Portugese by recognizing variants of letters, it is not consistent or 100%.
>>*laugh* My partner calls me to the television to identify languages. And to sight-read Russian chessmaster names.<<
That case, I was printing out some information in Farsi, Urdu, and Arabic. So I needed to label the sheets so we could copy them and hand them out to the right people.
Also, I once had to doublecheck if I was getting a Castillian or Spanish book for someone. (I can speak Spanish, but the written forms look very similar to me.)
And then there was the time I was discouraging an ESL speaker from reading my book - that Sector General book with the aliens that had a gravity-fed cardiovascular system... that is way complicated for reading material in a Level Three language. (Reading, yay! Reading something that confusing...ugh.)
>>You can't use a different script more than brief tidbits, unless you expect your readers can read that one too. Or you have to translated it right after, which I have sometimes done with Russian/Cyrillic in Love Is For Children. Otherwise you might as well be typing ####.<<
In RL with totally unfamiliar languagues, too. If the conversation is in an unfamiliar language, most people get bored after about 30sec-1min, and barring a very good reason (like Very Important Meeting) will tune out/wander off.
>>A quirk of my brain is that any foreign language yanks my attention to it. All human babies are born with this feature, ... <<
I file 'languagues spoken' and 'dietary restrictions' for people I spend time with, though I think it is a learned thing. (I've spent enough time working around language barriers for the former, and the latter is due to multicultural environments and having a food allergy myself.)
Unfortunately, I'm not that good at remembering names, which annoys people. :(
>>I have been told normal people can't do it. That only comes with high linguistic intelligence.<<
All I know is that I can understand spoken Portugese about as well as Spanish, and the other people in the conversations usually seem to understand me fairly well.
I mean, Norwegian's mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish, right? And "A languague is a dialect with an army and navy." - Max Weinreich
At work (in retail): "Siento, no hablo portuges. Prefiere ingles o espanol?" As I recall, they preferred Spanish, so that's what I used. (Side note on soiciolinguistics and politics: as I understand, Portugese is not Spanish and assuming it is, is...rude.)
And my coworkers would give me the most hilarious WTF? look the first time they heard me conversing with Spanish-speaking customers at the register...
Let's see, there was another occasion where the person and I talked about Cool Science Stuff (and Portugese/Spanish was a mutual second languague.) And the other-other case where I was teaching someone, and another student was assisting me...and other student thought I should use English with help from a translation app to go from French to English instead of using Spanish/Portugese.
My reply: (jokingly) "Hey, her kid's got my phone. You want me to fight him?" Kid was about 10 and watching an entertaining/educational kids show I'd reccomended (based on his interests). Oh, and the show was in English, which he didn't speak, but was going to learn.
I also have a relative who can read most Romance languagues and get the rough meaning, though I don't think she is actually fluent in any of them.
I am the kind of person who will try to dissect meanings of terms, like the difference between 'person walking' and 'creature walking' in ASL. And I've asked people about, say, genderlects/gender-specific introductions, when they are trying to teach me "My name is..." in their languague. So I probably have good linguistic intelligence.