words and languages
May. 28th, 2022 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howsmyenglishI'm sick* and all I want to do is eat chocolate and talk nerdy. And since at least two of you said they found what I had to say about Wordle interesting, I'm going to continue.
So, the German Wordle, right? I said before that a five-letter limit doesn't seem right for the German language. The reason I switched to English language SMS (remember those things?) instead of German or Russian many years ago was that both, in Russian and German you usually need more letters to say the same thing. So, at some point I suspected that to compensate for the lack of words, they included really seriously rare words in their pool of possibilities. I remember two occasions, when the German Wordle word was not only unknown to me, but was a very specialized term for something rare. Like, once, it was a part of a 17th century ship?? I don't remember the word, unfortunately. The other one was a loanword from Dutch, I think, that was also highly specialized. I'm not sure whether people complained after those two occasions (which both occurred in... if not the same week, then at least not more than two weeks apart), but I didn't notice anything similar since March or even February. But I also do not always play it daily. Should such strange words come u again, I'll write them down.
Also, interestingly, sometimes I just write something that might be a word, but really isn't, and it gets accepted. This happens both in German, and in Russian. It doesn't happen often. But it's fun to try those things. One might come up with a lot of wordy-sounding-letter-clusters that could be used for a new language or something XD OK, disregard this, this is just nonsense.
I know German better than English. But because I do not use German on a daily basis, it was really hard for me to start doing Worlde in German. It's really interesting that while I could start a conversation in German without any prior warm-up, I could for the life of me not come up with autonomous words of five letters to play with. So, in the first week or so, I would just list all the things I saw around me, in German. Table, chair, clock, sofa, cat, rain, mountain, etc. Just to stir up my pool of German vocabulary and bring it back to life. It really was not easy in the first week or even weeks. I would come up with the first word and then just stare at it stupidly, because everything else that I could think of was English. It doesn't help, of course, that German and English have a lot of words in common - with very slight variations. But by now, my pool of German vocabulary is alive and bubbling again and I play Wordle in German as easily as I do in English. Which was meant to say that such word games really are a great way to keep alert and flexible in your brain.
I used to think that while I am able to speak five languages fluently, I am unable to juggle more than three at a time. But it turns out, I totally am. I just need to keep the pools bubbling. I'm teaching a course right now, where there are three students, all of whom are brilliant. They fit great together and complement each other in the ways they learn/remember/think, and we all of us are just a great team. I'm crying inside when I think that there will never again be such a group of students for me to teach. But well, some people never get to do this :D Anyhow, these students are very much interested in languages, and, expectedly, in the fact that I speak five. Last week, when they asked me how to say X in Hindi and I accidentally answered in Hebrew, one of them said "wow, I can't imagine how it must feel like to be in your head". I keep thinking about that since. Like, you know... I am used to the languages I speak. And I don't think of them as any achievement of mine. It's just a part of who I am. But I actually did learn all of them. And I should think about it as an achievement, because it is one, and I so rarely say "well done" to myself. So I thought, I could tell you all about this and then ask you not to say "well done" to me, but to share something of yours that you don't think of as an achievement, but it totally is and you totally should. Then this entry of mine will be less of a praise to myself as a praise to all of us :D How about it?
*It's a weird kind of a very slight cold that makes me weak all over. Covid test was negative yesterday. We've decided to do the next one tomorrow. For now, I'm staying at home alone, so everyone is safe.
So, the German Wordle, right? I said before that a five-letter limit doesn't seem right for the German language. The reason I switched to English language SMS (remember those things?) instead of German or Russian many years ago was that both, in Russian and German you usually need more letters to say the same thing. So, at some point I suspected that to compensate for the lack of words, they included really seriously rare words in their pool of possibilities. I remember two occasions, when the German Wordle word was not only unknown to me, but was a very specialized term for something rare. Like, once, it was a part of a 17th century ship?? I don't remember the word, unfortunately. The other one was a loanword from Dutch, I think, that was also highly specialized. I'm not sure whether people complained after those two occasions (which both occurred in... if not the same week, then at least not more than two weeks apart), but I didn't notice anything similar since March or even February. But I also do not always play it daily. Should such strange words come u again, I'll write them down.
Also, interestingly, sometimes I just write something that might be a word, but really isn't, and it gets accepted. This happens both in German, and in Russian. It doesn't happen often. But it's fun to try those things. One might come up with a lot of wordy-sounding-letter-clusters that could be used for a new language or something XD OK, disregard this, this is just nonsense.
I know German better than English. But because I do not use German on a daily basis, it was really hard for me to start doing Worlde in German. It's really interesting that while I could start a conversation in German without any prior warm-up, I could for the life of me not come up with autonomous words of five letters to play with. So, in the first week or so, I would just list all the things I saw around me, in German. Table, chair, clock, sofa, cat, rain, mountain, etc. Just to stir up my pool of German vocabulary and bring it back to life. It really was not easy in the first week or even weeks. I would come up with the first word and then just stare at it stupidly, because everything else that I could think of was English. It doesn't help, of course, that German and English have a lot of words in common - with very slight variations. But by now, my pool of German vocabulary is alive and bubbling again and I play Wordle in German as easily as I do in English. Which was meant to say that such word games really are a great way to keep alert and flexible in your brain.
I used to think that while I am able to speak five languages fluently, I am unable to juggle more than three at a time. But it turns out, I totally am. I just need to keep the pools bubbling. I'm teaching a course right now, where there are three students, all of whom are brilliant. They fit great together and complement each other in the ways they learn/remember/think, and we all of us are just a great team. I'm crying inside when I think that there will never again be such a group of students for me to teach. But well, some people never get to do this :D Anyhow, these students are very much interested in languages, and, expectedly, in the fact that I speak five. Last week, when they asked me how to say X in Hindi and I accidentally answered in Hebrew, one of them said "wow, I can't imagine how it must feel like to be in your head". I keep thinking about that since. Like, you know... I am used to the languages I speak. And I don't think of them as any achievement of mine. It's just a part of who I am. But I actually did learn all of them. And I should think about it as an achievement, because it is one, and I so rarely say "well done" to myself. So I thought, I could tell you all about this and then ask you not to say "well done" to me, but to share something of yours that you don't think of as an achievement, but it totally is and you totally should. Then this entry of mine will be less of a praise to myself as a praise to all of us :D How about it?
*It's a weird kind of a very slight cold that makes me weak all over. Covid test was negative yesterday. We've decided to do the next one tomorrow. For now, I'm staying at home alone, so everyone is safe.
no subject
Date: 2022-05-28 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-28 09:53 pm (UTC)If you have to switch between languages all the time in the same setting and without knowing which you are going to need, it's unsurprising that you mix them up. Kol hakavod for being able to make yourself intelligible in spite of this! And if your mother tongue is English, I'm amazed you've managed to learn those grammar-laden languages at all!
no subject
Date: 2022-05-28 11:52 pm (UTC)Also, I really like the idea of sharing an achievement not to elicit praise but to encourage others to share *their* achievements!
no subject
Date: 2022-05-29 09:58 am (UTC)Does Wordle in Romanian allow plurals? Words other than nouns? Conjugated verb forms?
no subject
Date: 2022-05-29 12:10 pm (UTC)Re: Wordle, I haven't noticed any plurals yet, but yes, there are words other than nouns (today was frige, to grill, but I haven't encountered any conjugated verbs yet). Interestingly, no diacritics...
no subject
Date: 2022-05-30 10:48 am (UTC)Oh yeah, this happens with Hindi speakers a lot, too. When I was learning it, I had to especially ask people to talk Hindi to me, and many still switched to English :D
This is the first time in my life that I'm even talking to someone who knows or learns Romanian, and the first time I went and read up a bit on the alphabet. Very interesting! The Czech language uses diacritics in a similar way to Romanian, I wonder whether they do use them in Wordle... I'll go and look it up! XD
no subject
Date: 2022-05-30 01:17 pm (UTC)...but this one apparently does have diacritics: https://wordle.global/ro . I'm a little iffy about this one, though, because today's word ("pongo") doesn't actually seem to be a Romanian word...?
Anyway, interesting about the similarities to the Czech language...I'm actually not very familiar with the Slavic influences on Romanian, but my interest is piqued...
no subject
Date: 2022-06-01 04:22 am (UTC)I don't play wordle, and know nothing of it other than the fact that it's been trending on twitter often and people are really into it. I'm still in a hectic time of my life presently, but keep thinking I should/will check it out eventually when things are more calm for me. Of course, I'd only be able to do it in English. I love that you're having fun with it. Also, part of your first line, "all I want to do is eat chocolate and talk nerdy" made me laugh, and I'd definitely wear that phrase on a T-shirt! ;D
no subject
Date: 2022-06-08 12:28 pm (UTC)Should our friendship ever move off-line, I'm totally making you one! XDD
Yes, thank you! It took a week, but by now I hardly remember it.