Hello everyone. I just ran across this forum while searching for something. I've always felt a little out of place given my interest of language that other people don't seem to share. I get enough people asking me, "why would anyone want to learn Latin, when no one speaks it?" I don't dare fully explain my full interests in other languages.

I'm a native English speaker, but I used to be fluent in Korean. I've spent several years in high school, college, and outside school studying Latin. I took a year of Mandarin in college (after being fluent in Korean). I was linguist in the National Guard for Korean for several years. I have a very eclectic collection of language courses, which has cost me more money and shelf space than I would like to admit. Usually the weirder the language (from my perspective), the better.

I like studying languages for their own sake. I really don't have any practical aims. I am fascinated by the languages themselves, how they all seem to be able to express pretty much whatever the human mind can conceive, yet they all do it in different ways. That's way I am so interested in learning languages that are very different from one another, rather than very similar.

I have a bad habit of learning enough about a language until I "get it" which usually means that I understand the grammar and it's worldview to a certain point. Only a few languages have I learned to a mastery level.

I am currently in a Native American language phase. Unfortunately the resources are pretty scarce and many of them aren't very good. I also like to study ancient languages like Egyptian and Sumerian. I took some stabs at Greek and Hebrew. My kids are learning Greek and now they know more than me. They know ASL, too, which I don't know at all.

So, that's me.

Giga-waabamin minawaa

Biindigen!

I sympathise with you on the dearth of resources for indigenous North American languages. I got it in my head several years ago to learn Osage, chiefly because I found an excellent grammar, but I was soon stymied by a lack of resources. At the time, the same author had a new dictionary that was "just about" to be published; the press' website is now accepting pre-orders, but there's still no word on a publication date. In the meantime, the tribal government devised a new orthography, but has been terrible about publicising it. It's almost like they're deliberately setting out to thwart learners.

Welcome to the Omniglot forum!

Why quote all that text if you're not replying to anything specific in it?

Probably to refer back to it instead of the other topic that was being discussed. Though I'm sure Sobekhotep would've been understood either way.

By the way, Welcome to Omniglot.

ᎤᎵᎮᎵᏍᏗ
ulihelísdi

Welcome. I share your passion for Amerind Languages. I actually got my degree in it (aka..the unemployment degree )I have quite a few resources on a vast array of native American languages. My knowledge stops south of Texas however.( I never studied much about the South American families, like Tupi, Arawak, Ge, etc..)

ᏅᏩᏙᎯᏯᏓ
nvwadohíyada (peace)

Wow I didn't even know there were degrees for that. Very cool.

I got my degree in economics with a minor in Korean. But I've be a computer programmer for about 10 years. Actually, learning programming languages and spoken languages aren't really very similar, but there are a few things that are. I've had to learn many programming languages and they each have their own way of doing things. You get to be pretty good at learning new programming languages after going through the process a few times. It comes to a point that you really just need to learn the syntax and nuances of the particular language. That's kind of how I learn spoken languages now. Just list out all the grammar and vocab, and I can figure it out.

Even though linguists sometimes like to downplay the notion of a Universal Grammar, it still seems that people are people, and there are pressures to have languages behave in similar ways. They really are not wildly different. They all seem to gravitate towards compact ways of expressing similar ideas. Like, every language I know has a way to deal with person (1st, 2nd,etc.) and the pronoun or 'fixes all seem to be very short, one or two syllables max. That's just how humans like it. It seems like there's like this pool of syntax to start off with, and the speakers seem to exert pressures on the language to suit them. So then you get language drift, but always towards ease of use.

So there's a parallel with that and programming languages. They tend to lean towards terseness, but not to the point of making it more ambiguous or confusing. But programmers like to type less, and they like to have fewer statements. So new programming languages come out and make the programmer's job easier, but still expressive.

BTW, I keep seeing people posting text in scripts that I apparently don't have installed on my computer. I've got firefox so I see the ascii numbers in boxes. Is there some font package I need?

Learn Lakhota!

I have these: http://www.amazon.com/Lakhotiya-Woglaka ... 927&sr=8-4

Haven't really gone through them yet.

Welcome! Your bags are being taken up to your room. If you have any questions, call the concierge.