m-knell wrote:
pegasus
It's interesting, why do you need to spend so much time to figure out how russian words reads? Well, I didn't dedicate the whole time of those weeks doing just that, I visited periodically and split my time between satisfying my curiosity about learning how to pronounce the words and absorbing the posted content. I was visiting two different msg boards about windows, php and other types of hacks and exploits; your compatriots are known for being one of the leading hacking crowds in the world, you know :].

I think it would be better to make a thread for each language instead of mixing all languages up in this thread.

But that would only be worth the effort if there are actually people who would like to learn a language and if there are also people who would take care about teaching that language here.

Some basic things would be nice to know, the 'lesson-topics' can be thought about later.



So for me: I'd like to learn more Russian and also some Turkish if m-knell and Ig0r would want to make the lessons.

I could teach German, if someone is interested.


Besides simple grammar-stuff like it was done in this thread already it could be good to work on translating simple and slower songs of the language, so you have something to climb along and you could also listen to the pronunciation if that song is on Youtube.


So again: Who's interested?

crusha_k_rool wrote:
I think it would be better to make a thread for each language instead of mixing all languages up in this thread.[...]I don't. In fact, the whole concept of trying to teach/learn a foreign language on the msg board of an FPS gaming community - whose members, I might add, on average have shown repeated problems mastering the most widespread and easy to learn language themselves (english) - is a colossal folly to begin with. There's a lot more to learning a new language than being translated a few songs with lyrics made up of everyday words: spelling, grammar, syntax, verb tenses and conjugation, noun declensions, other particular traits, even reading the characters that make up the words themselves...

crusha_k_rool wrote:
But that would only be worth the effort if there are actually people who would like to learn a language and if there are also people who would take care about teaching that language here.[...]If you're serious about learning a language go take up lessons, hire a personal tutor or buy some casette program (at least with that you can listen to the pronunciation of foreign words and practice for yourself); hell, even buying a dictionary and browsing through it will do you more good than asking random ppl on the internet to teach you through text messages just because it's their mother tongue. Point is, anyone can speak a language, not everyone can teach it. If anyone's considering rebranding this thread as an all-purpose language teaching class or make more for the same reason, change their titles and state it now so we can stay away while expecting their imminent demise and make the necessary arrangements.

This is of course not an argument to counter your statement, but you seem to me like an incurable pessimist. I think 80% of your posts are just about how bad an idea is.

I wanted to do this not on a professional level. The goal was that you get an impression of the language and can understand a few basic sentences. Depending on which other languages you know, it's also possible to get behind some unknown words by yourself.


And who said that it would be only about translating some lyrics?
At least I would also deal with spelling, grammar and that stuff. I don't know in how far that would apply to the others, since we didn't try it out yet…

^ i agree with peg this time too.


A better idea would be learning some welcome words in diffrent european countries, frecvently used by techcom's players. for example polish, czech, french, german, russian, etc.

i'll write some roughly examples:

enghish - romanian

hi! - salutare! (or short version = salut!); buna!
welcome - bine ai venit (bine = well,good; ai = you[have]; come = veni[t]); or short version: "bun venit"!
have a nice day! - sa ai o zi buna! (or just "o zi buna!")
good night! - noapte buna!

how are you doing? - ce mai faci?
very well! - foarte bine!
very bad! - foarte rau!
nice! - frumos!; fain! (fain spells like "fine" ;p)
thank you! - multumesc!; merci!
i kill you! - te omor!
i am sorry! - imi pare rau!
forgive me! - iarta'ma!;
help me - ajuta'ma
help your team! - ajuta'ti echipa!
brother - frate
(hey) man - (hei) omule
we are winning - noi castigam (or only "castigam!")
we are losing - noi pierdem (or only "pierdem!")
by your fault! - din vina ta!

^ these are some examples which can be used successfully in game =)

Hmm… some of the words seem very similar to French. Does it have some roots there or is that only because it also comes from Latin?

crusha_k_rool wrote:
This is of course not an argument to counter your statement, but you seem to me like an incurable pessimist. I think 80% of your posts are just about how bad an idea is.[...]I don't know how you're reaching the conclusion that I'm a pessimist just by sampling posts where I've stated why I find an idea to be faulty and provided arguments for it, but okay, it's your assessment of me and I won't bother contesting it. As far as I'm concerned, I consider myself generally an upbeat person and neither too optimistic nor pessimistic regarding my outlook on life and daily affairs. No, what's going on here is, I've just been around the proverbial internet block a few times in my life since 1998 when I first got online and I also consider myself to be a fairly good judge of human behaviour, so after all this time seeing what ppl do and how they do it on the web (successfully and not), I can tell you with decent confidence what I believe will work as a concept and what won't. Most times I've been correct in my expectations, a few the outcome surprised me.

crusha_k_rool wrote:
[...]The goal was that you get an impression of the language and can understand a few basic sentences. Depending on which other languages you know, it's also possible to get behind some unknown words by yourself.[...]You can learn words in other languages by going to foreign sites and using online dictionaries or automated translation services like babelfish to run the text through 'em. It'll yield much more information in much less time than expecting native speaker members here to make a new post with several more words each time. But, once again, if you want to acquire knowledge this way, and others are willing to provide it, go ahead.

crusha_k_rool wrote:
[...]And who said that it would be only about translating some lyrics?[...]I didn't mention it because someone said it, I did because that has been the prevalent theme so far. Anyway, feel free to go on and try to make this thread a language learning seminar if you want, my opinion on how this will turn out, however, has been stated above already and remains the same.

crusha_k_rool wrote:
Did you spent some time learning German already, or where do you know so much about the language from?


Yeah, i'v studied it in highschool. But you know, i was realy bad student and spent much more time at work rather than studying. And seriuous learning of foreign language especialy in high-school is hard everyday work.
And with Konjuktiv, the trouble was not only "Bildung des Konjunktivs I und II" but usage of them. As I remember there are a lot of cases in german when Konj. is used, for example for direct into inderect speech translation or for slogans such "Sei gesund!" or "Es lebe Deutschland" and other cases. Well, as you say in everyday-life people speak simplier but in school...

pegasus_ wrote:
I was visiting two different msg boards about windows, php and other types of hacks and exploits; your compatriots are known for being one of the leading hacking crowds in the world, you know :]


Realy? True too say i didnt know. I know about our ICQ-stealers and carders. Well... as usual russians like stealing everything they could:). Internet isnt exception. But if you've read boards that means you understand russian?

huntdown
Interesting! Reminds me french sometimes too. And "merci", is this romanian word or just using of french word, as for example we use "OK" etc?
i kill you! - te omor!
i am sorry! - imi pare rau!
In both cases there are pronoun "I", but in romanian not. How is this?
Lol, "omor" reminds me "amour" but meaning of course far away

"Romanian is a Romance language, belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family, having much in common with languages such as French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish."

M-knell, in romanian "amour" is "amor", and that is even closer to "omor" ;p (which means murder)

merci is a french word, in romanian is either merci or mersi (spelled alike)

i kill you! - (eu) te omor!
i am sorry! - (mie) imi pare rau!
that would be the correct form, but it is rarely used like that.

m-knell wrote:
[...]Realy? True to say I didn't know. I know about our ICQ-stealers and carders. Well... as usual russians like stealing everything they could:). Internet isnt exception. But if you've read boards that means you understand russian?[...]Well, I had managed to learn to pronounce most of the words (I forgot some of it since then though) and I've known the meaning of a few nouns and verbs from before as well. Plus, they were IT-oriented msg boards, so many of the words were easy to figure out in discussions because they were directly derived from known sources; the Windows OSes, scripting languages, web networking terms, etc. Also, since these were hacks they were documenting and showcasing, the commented bits of code and the occasional demo video that accompanied the posts helped make sense of things too. So, all in all, yeah, I could understand a good portion of it; certainly enough to see what they were doing.

Btw, nah, this has little to do with any thieving mentality that russians might possibly have and much more with their curiosity and prowess at understanding the inner workings of closed-source software compared to others. I'd say few other groups are on the same level of skill as the russian hacking community; the chinese and a few others from the Americas perhaps (brazilians, some US ppl), but that's it.


m-knell wrote:
[...]i kill you! - te omor!
i am sorry! - imi pare rau!
In both cases there are pronoun "I", but in romanian not. How is this? [...]It's not just in romanian; it's the same way with greek. If the subject of a sentence is a personal pronoun in nominative case, it is usually omitted because it can be directly inferred by the verb's conjugation and suffix. Another benefit of languages that feature person-specific suffixes in verb conjugation (different for 1st/2nd/3rd person and number) .