Re: Ah-ha! New computer, YANC and fluency

At 13:11 14.4.2000 -0700, ishmael@pocketmail.com wrote:



>2. Quenya.  Because how can you not want to talk with elves?
If they happen to be named Feanor or Thingol it's easy not to want to meet
them at all, IMO.  With the latter you would have to learn ancient Sindarin
-- or bring David Salo along! ;-)

>5. Esperanto.  Because I want to know if it can really be that easy.
Ain't!  About as hard as any European language.

>3. Tibetan.  It has a great script and appeals to me for some reason
>beyond my ken.
Yeah, that!  IME you'll have to get used to another way of thinking just to
use the verbs aright!

>4. Romani. (?)  It's obscure and dying and spoken by vagabonds and
>wanderers.  What more could you want?
Not to be a Gadjo? ;-)

>5. Latin.  Because, despite my general distaste for things classical, it
>has its own sort of beauty and logic, and because it would be great fun to
>use when conversing with the sort of people who assume that because I am
>employed in physical labor I have an IQ below room temperature and am
>probably illiterate to boot.
Move to Italy.   IME such prejudices are less in evidence there -- tho I
guess Luca and others may not agree: I'm talking about compared to
protestant countries.

BTW: given the reasons you give for wanting to learn latin, you should jump
rigt at greek.   Check out the new teach Yourself Ancient Greek by Gavin
Betts (at least he's a co-author, IIRC. The older TY greek is ghastly! TY
Latin by Betts is good too!




/BP

 B.Philip Jonsson  <mailto:bpj@...>bpj@netg.se
<mailto:melroch@...>melroch@my-deja.com
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