Lemon's drop-inn

[npixelz]

Thanks lol

[Lemon Cheesecake]

An over cast day, won't be able to see the full moon.

[JinMay]

I got to stare at the moon yesterday with my brother, very lovely. We looked at the constellations as well. He's really sick, just the flu so he called off work today.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

I love looking up at the moon & stars ... I am sorry your brother is sick and I hope you stay well!

[JinMay]

Me too, it's so soothing. :3
Thank you! He's making sure to take medicine and I'll have to as well because I have a feeling he's gonna get me sick.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

Wash your hands often & can you open a couple windows to get some air flow?

Or do you have an air purifier you can use?

[npixelz]

Moon nice

Hope he get better soon

[JinMay]

I'm officially sick as of yesterday and I have a meetup tomorrow with a guy I've been talking to. Ugh.
I've been taking medicine though and it has kind of helped. Drinking lots of fluids. I'm a little nervous. He's on the mend and I hope I don't get him sick again.

[Shamrock Shamus]

Also, I'm ready for the linguistics department Halloween party! Yay! I wore my shirt that says hello in several different languages.

Oh that's fun!

I knew you spoke a couple of languages, but never exactly how many. Can you tell us?

I've always had questions about linguistics (mostly from watching sci-fi show, etc.). I understand most modern languages have similar aspects. I'm curious what is the most "different" language you've encountered and what makes it so in your opinion?

I speak English, Chinese (taught it for multiple years), Spanish, and I'm going to be doing Romanian and Italian in the coming school years. I also have some Japanese and Icelandic under my belt, but not fluently. I can also read Greek, Korean, Japanese, and Hebrew, but I don't know what it means.

I think any language Isolate is pretty unique, considering they don't have any other languages related to them. Some include Basque, Korean, and Ainu. However, if we're talking about the ones I know personally, I'd say Romanian. It's like the baby of Romance Languages (like Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian) and Slavic languages. I love it, and I love listening to the way it sounds while being spoken.

Lemon: I don't really know how I keep the languages straight but I somehow do. lol. My brain is very linguistically inclined and I love them so much. I love that you guys are asking me about languages because I can never really geek out about them because no one in my life loves them the way I do.

[Lemon Cheesecake]

JinMay, I guess it all depends on whether you oboth have had the same virus type.

Shamus, and I was impressed the US First Lady Melania Trump I think speaks 7 languages... you are up there on the wow list now!

[Shamrock Shamus]

Thanks! I do get mixed up with the Japanese and Chinese as a lot of the characters are used for the same words. So, like for example, 月 is the character for month in both languages, but obviously phonetically different. In Chinese, it's pronounced "yuè" and in Japanese, "tsuki". Since I'm so much better with Chinese, my brain automatically sees it in Japanese text and reads it as yuè. I have to make a huge conscious effort to read it as tsuki.
I hope I'm not going to explain things you already know here. I hate when people do that to me, so I apologize if you knew this part already: Japanese scholars went to China to study Buddhism long ago, and while they were there, they picked up the language and writing and brought it back to Japan with them, and it spread. This is why they use the same writing, or so the legend goes, but I'm sure there's a lot more to it than that. The Japanese supposedly didn't have their own writing system yet.

[npixelz]

I wasn't even able to learn French!

[galled]

Totally fascinating!

If you're up to it I have questions!

I'd love to know which parts of language do you find universal. I can only speak (pardon the pun) in terms of nouns, verbs, etc.. I'd imagine concepts like these are found in every language?

The reason why I'm asking is, being a huge sci-fi fan, I've often thought about how I would attempt to talk to someone from another planet. I know math is universal (figuratively and conceptually), but at the next level, how would I move on from there?

[Lemon Cheesecake]

Wow, I had no clue & I generally like to watch historical documentaries to find out the origins of things.

I mean, it makes sense the Asian cultures intermingling, especially in the character writing style because, as I understand, many written words are based on images of what the word is. Did I say that right?

I wonder what time period that was?

[Shamrock Shamus]

npixelz: French is so hard, I don't know if I could do it, the pronunciation is so weird compared to the spelling.

Galled: If I understand your question right, I would say that nouns are not all universal as some languages have noun genders but verbs have to be conjugated in certain languages, so I am not sure that those would be either. I do think food is universal, and the importance of food is shown in languages through things like sayings before meals, after meals, how easy it is to describe foods and meals. It's an easy gateway to the souls of other cultures and countries. Then again, I'm hungry and a foodie. Did I answer that okay? If not maybe you can elaborate.

Lemon: I was told this the first time I was in college by my chinese professor, so I assume it's factual but I understand that she was only human too. So, take it with a grain of salt just in case I was wrong lol


YOU GUYS MY OLDER KIDS ARE COMING TO VISIT ME AND THE YOUNGER KIDS ON THANKSGIVING I'M SO EXICTED I HAVEN'T SEEN THEM IN PERSON SINCE 2023