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kd7sovWay back in high school, I took four or five years of German. It was pretty fun, but not enough that I've ever tried to pursue it in college. I managed to pick up bibs and bobs of a few other languages here and there, but again, nothing major or continuing. The long and short of it is, it's been a long time since I actually tried to do anything much with any language other than English; somewhere between six and eight years, I think.
This semester, I needed a foreign language. The offered options were Spanish, French, and Arabic. I chose the last, in part because I wanted to try something quite outside my experience. And it's interesting. Challenging, on account of being in a different language family and using such a different set of sounds and shapes, but interesting.
Anyway, I have heard that a good way to learn a new language is to watch cartoons in it. So I figured, why not a cartoon I'm already familiar with? (I have no idea whether this is helpful or counterproductive, but it's what I'm trying.) As it happened, the week that I started checking was the week before ماي ليتل بوني (the official Arabic transliteration of "My Little Pony") began airing, and I found a Youtube channel that looked likely to carry it.
As I expected, I couldn't understand a lot of what was being said. Even when you have the vocabulary, there's a big difference between speaking for a beginning student of a language and speaking for an audience that understands you. So I could catch the occasional و (and) and أنا (I) and لا (no) and so on, and get some idea of how the characters' names were spelled (although the alphabet is still my biggest challenge), but not a lot beyond that. I did learn that a proper "Yeehaw" depends in huge part on the accent and intonation, though.
Then, on a whim, I pulled up the German MLP. It was amazin'! A rainbow, pointin'... no, wait, that's not quite what happened. I could understand it all! Not every word, of course, but I could get, not just the gist, but a lot of the specifics of what was being said. For the first time, I was able to understand conversationally-spoken German without having it replayed a few more times. Pinkie's incoherent, as expected, and Nightmare Moon used considerably more complicated vocabulary - which I haven't noticed in English, although whether that's because it's not the case or because I've been speaking English for over two decades.
One thing I find interesting is that everypony used du. ...This may take a little explanation, for those of you who don't know German. German has three different forms of "you": "du" (the familiar singular), "ihr" (the plural, although I'm not sure whether it's all plural-yous or just familiar), and "Sie" (the more formal version). I'm no expert in German usage, but it seems to me that Rarity, at the very least, would use Sie for a stranger, particularly when she found out she was there on royal business. And I'm surprised Nightmare Moon didn't insist on Sies, on account of being an arrogant princess.
So, yeah. I can understand German better now than when I was actively studying it. Crazy world.
This semester, I needed a foreign language. The offered options were Spanish, French, and Arabic. I chose the last, in part because I wanted to try something quite outside my experience. And it's interesting. Challenging, on account of being in a different language family and using such a different set of sounds and shapes, but interesting.
Anyway, I have heard that a good way to learn a new language is to watch cartoons in it. So I figured, why not a cartoon I'm already familiar with? (I have no idea whether this is helpful or counterproductive, but it's what I'm trying.) As it happened, the week that I started checking was the week before ماي ليتل بوني (the official Arabic transliteration of "My Little Pony") began airing, and I found a Youtube channel that looked likely to carry it.
As I expected, I couldn't understand a lot of what was being said. Even when you have the vocabulary, there's a big difference between speaking for a beginning student of a language and speaking for an audience that understands you. So I could catch the occasional و (and) and أنا (I) and لا (no) and so on, and get some idea of how the characters' names were spelled (although the alphabet is still my biggest challenge), but not a lot beyond that. I did learn that a proper "Yeehaw" depends in huge part on the accent and intonation, though.
Then, on a whim, I pulled up the German MLP. It was amazin'! A rainbow, pointin'... no, wait, that's not quite what happened. I could understand it all! Not every word, of course, but I could get, not just the gist, but a lot of the specifics of what was being said. For the first time, I was able to understand conversationally-spoken German without having it replayed a few more times. Pinkie's incoherent, as expected, and Nightmare Moon used considerably more complicated vocabulary - which I haven't noticed in English, although whether that's because it's not the case or because I've been speaking English for over two decades.
One thing I find interesting is that everypony used du. ...This may take a little explanation, for those of you who don't know German. German has three different forms of "you": "du" (the familiar singular), "ihr" (the plural, although I'm not sure whether it's all plural-yous or just familiar), and "Sie" (the more formal version). I'm no expert in German usage, but it seems to me that Rarity, at the very least, would use Sie for a stranger, particularly when she found out she was there on royal business. And I'm surprised Nightmare Moon didn't insist on Sies, on account of being an arrogant princess.
So, yeah. I can understand German better now than when I was actively studying it. Crazy world.
