posted by pefferie on July 11, 2011 | 15 comments
My command of Mandarin is advancing thanks to the sustained quality of the podcasts, but my English has stalled. Get into the recording studio so that we can get some more of that "aplomb and panache" and learn about the criminal demimonde.
Aww! I've been overloaded with a glut of outside work lately, but it looks like Gail's people and my people will finally succeed in scheduling a recording session later this week. I'll bring my thesaurus!
"Cri de coeur" dropped so nonchalantly in http://popupchinese.com/lessons/absolute-beginners/advanced-chinese-telephone-kungfu... Magnifique!
It took me a while to get back down to my normal podcasting weight, but I think I'm really hitting my stride now. Next up: "syzygy," "omphaloskepsis," and "highfalutin'." (The last one is not particularly new or rare, but since none of the students in my translation class had ever heard of it, I figure a refresher may be necessary.)
@Pefferie,
I have a theory about Philadelphia people, my old friend who speaks fluent Japanese and worked as a professional translator was from Philadelphia just like Brendan. People from Philly just seem to have an amazing language 天赋, it must be something in the water.
可能是跟地理有关的吧。
I'm not so sure about innate talent -- but then again most people from Philadelphia can speak both Philadelphian and English, so I guess there's that.
@Brendan,
Could it be related to the Philadelphian culture and upbringing? Perhaps emphasis on language is firmly rooted in the cultural constitution? Is it that every parent wants their child to have the ability to use language to cross international barriers? Or maybe it's that, speaking Philadelphian gives one a distinct advantage, just like an ABC can shift effortlessly between fluent and accentless English and Chinese.
I think the conclusion is as plain as the nose on our collective face.
Next stop; www.popupphiladelphian.com. (should make a welcome addition to the popup family.)
I grew up in a polyglot family, but I don't think it was a typical one -- my dad is from Ireland, and my mom is second-generation Irish-American, and they've studied more dead languages (Classical Greek, Latin, Old Irish, Old Norse) and nearly-dead languages (Irish) between them than living ones. I can't actually do a convincing Philadelphia accent (other than obvious things like "wooder" for "water," "cwurdder" for "quarter") even when I'm trying to, so we'd probably have to find a better native speaker for popupphilly.com.
@Brendan,Impressive! I've always wanted to learn Classical Greek, Latin and Hebrew, however I couldn't bring myself to spend the time at a task that wouldn't benefit my life. In my earlier years I was very devout, so I wanted to learn the above languages to understand biblical texts, and ancient texts written in language related to biblical writings.Heh heh, perhaps you have a Philadelphian friend who can contribute to popupphilly.com?
Years ago, when I went back to the States to finish up my college degree, I took a course in Classical Greek, on the basis that I thought I wanted to learn it. Not long after the drop/add period ended, I realized that I didn't want to *learn* it; I wanted to *know* it -- preferably without having to spend time memorizing declensions. (To this day I'm not entirely sure what an aorist is or why I would want one.) Nowadays I regret not having worked harder at it. My standard excuse is that Chinese ruined me for proper languages with normal grammar, but the truth is that I was just lazy.
Xiao Hu,I took latin for three or four years in high school and would love to do Popup Latin at some point. Of course, two problems are that we never actually learned how to pronounce the language and I can't imagine the market being big enough to make it really sustainable. But I hope we can do it eventually. Roman history is fascinating and latin is a beautiful language (I really liked reading Catullus). And latin's convoluted morphology would also make it perfect for the popup approach (ablative, accusative, etc.), while Classical Greek and Hebrew would be interesting to do as well.I've just registered all three domains (popuplatin.com, popupgreek.com and popuphebrew.com) to add to our somewhat bulky list of dreams.--dave
drummerboy on July 15, 2011 | reply
Ever given any thought to a popup Korean site? It is one of the easier Asian languages alphabetically with hangul, and it's borrowed use of Chinese characters would be interesting for Chinese learners (although they use the complex form). The grammar is a bit more challenging with all the honorifics but it is a very interesting language. I studied it many years ago when I was stationed in korea in the army and would love to brush up on it as I travel there for business. The popup model would be a warm welcome by me :-)
We have the domains for a host of languages including Korean. That said, we're bootstrapped and since it takes a while to get a site up to speed, this is the sort of thing that depends on how our other languages go.Cantonese launched last December and Chino Ahora (Chinese lessons for Spanish speakers) came out in May. So we're growing. I don't think we'll be putting anything else together until maybe December?
AmateurAsian on July 17, 2011 | reply
I second the vote for PopupLatin and PopupAncientGreek!