Golden Deer Pub Community Forums

Blame the French~

[spoiler]The evolution of English is pretty interesting, actually. You'll be hard pressed to find any English speaker that understands Old English. Which makes sense.

But I guess that's what happens when a language that's heavily influenced by other dialects and languages becomes the (or at least the closest thing to it) language of the world.

But I'm sure you know this, Maxine [/spoiler]

English- the linguistic bastard child of German and Latin.

Or German as Latin's brainwashed slave.

I took three years of Spanish. My last two girlfriends were both of some hispanic ethnicity (and fluent in it) AND I live in fucking Texas. I think my Spanish now is capable of maybe ordering Taco Bell. If that.

Ooh, polyglot superpower go!

Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Spanish would be my picks.

Japanese, so I wouldn't have to bother with disgusting second-hand translations for things I care about anymore. It's also very pretty.

Spanish, so I could get around Southern California more easily. I'd want a foothold in Romance languages that I'd actually use, though I think Italian is the most pretty.

Mandarin. It was a tossup between this and Korean, but all the Koreans down here speak at least passable English, and I'd only like it for easy access to the culture and media of that country, whereas Mandarin will get me a job, and I still get to watch cool Chinese movies and read the literature. Written Chinese will also give me a foothold in that strange set of runes that's useful all over the far-east. Korean is a much prettier language though, IMO. So wonderful in music.

French. I might live in Canada one day, so it would be polite to know Quebecais, and to be Canadian is to be polite. And so much good literature and film! And it's very pretty, though I used to hate it. I used to think it sounded gooey. Now I would say the right adjective is "silky."

In a tossup between German and Russian, I choose Russian, because it sounds nicer, has a large number of speakers on the internet with well-defined communities, and because of all that delicious literature.

This is all subject to change of course