Happy Things Thread

[Herr Dunkel]

"In case"?

[Birdlang]

"In case"?

Yeah, I might also want to be a pharmacist.

[Herr Dunkel]

No I mean, they are expensive pieces of equipment; why would you get them if you aren't sure whether you'll have use of them

[jal]

"In case"?

It's a good thing, probably, he's not going to by a grand piano, just in case he's going to be a concert pianist.


JAL

[Birdlang]

No I mean, they are expensive pieces of equipment; why would you get them if you aren't sure whether you'll have use of them

OK. It is not a concert piano, it is a synthesizer that is used in those sappy YouTube Chinese love ballads that Rui mentioned quite a while ago.

[Herr Dunkel]

It's 650€~$800? It may not be a piano but it's an expensive chunk of plastic, sand and copper. Just I don't see the point in getting it if you aren't absolutely sure you'll use it. Nobody starts from 500ml tubes of oil paint, they start with pencils and charcoal. If ypu aren't sure whether you'd be doing that you might rather consider getting a 15-key

[Birdlang]

It's 650€~$800? It may not be a piano but it's an expensive chunk of plastic, sand and copper. Just I don't see the point in getting it if you aren't absolutely sure you'll use it. Nobody starts from 500ml tubes of oil paint, they start with pencils and charcoal. If ypu aren't sure whether you'd be doing that you might rather consider getting a 15-key

I just figured that I want to use it and it is $699.99.

[Imralu]

I'm learning German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache - DGS) full time until March. The course is expensive but awesome. Nerding out over the grammar. (Generally SOV, with Wh-question words tending to occur after the verb, topic prominent like all other sign languages as far as I'm aware of. When the verb does not inflect for the position of the object and the object is animate, there is a special morpheme for to indicate the object.) The teacher's kind of cute too.

[Bristel]

I'm learning German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache - DGS) full time until March. The course is expensive but awesome. Nerding out over the grammar. (Generally SOV, with Wh-question words tending to occur after the verb, topic prominent like all other sign languages as far as I'm aware of. When the verb does not inflect for the position of the object and the object is animate, there is a special morpheme for to indicate the object.) The teacher's kind of cute too.

I wonder what similarities exist between DGS and ASL? It's not an French Sign Language based system, but I know the finger spelling might be similar.

[Imralu]

I wonder what similarities exist between DGS and ASL? It's not an French Sign Language based system, but I know the finger spelling might be similar.

Yeah, the fingerspelling's pretty much the same. The main differences are:

• G is just the index finger pointing to the left (for right-handers), not the same shape as Q as it is in ASL
• T is almost like the German G but with the thumb pointing up to make a cross.
• M and N can be more angled down as they are in many countries, but they can also be bunched over the thumb like in ASL
• P comes in two varieties, one like in ASL, the K shape turned down, but the other one essentially like the D turned down.
• Germans also tend to turn their C, D and O sideways (the same direction as G, H and T) to make them more clear and that is the hardest thing for me to get used to as I had a Deaf friend from the USA in Australia who taught me to fingerspell her way and that's with the palm facing forward for just about everything.
• The modified letters Ä, Ö, Ü and ß are formed the same way as A, O, U and S but with a pull down and up.
• There is a special handshape for "sch" and that is the spread-hand held upwards, palm forwards.

I'm not super familiar with ASL grammar but my American friend assures me that ASL grammar is roughly the same as Auslan (Australian Sign Language) which I am more familiar with. A lot of the grammar is similar, all of the head shaking to negate, the eyebrow stuff to indicate Y/N-questions, Wh-questions, Topicalisation and Subordinate clauses and the nodding to indicate affirmation and matrix clauses seems to be pretty much the same. There also seems to be the use of non-interrogative (eyebrows-raised) Wh-signs to introduce focus (eg. "I live where - Berlin") and there's subject copy, particularly in Y/N-questions ("You happy you?"). As far as I've seen, this stuff is pretty much universal in sign languages, or at least western ones. I'd expect at least the nodding and shaking head stuff to differ by cultures but the eyebrow stuff less so.

Some of the things that are different:

• DGS is, in unmarked word order SOV, with a more extended syntence pattern generally taking on the word order
  [time] [place] [subject] [indirect object] [direct object] [verb] [wh-word].
  Unsurprisingly, this means modal verbs generally follow the verbs they go with. For example:
  HERE YOU SMOKE MAY-NOT (= "You are not allowed to smoke here")
  TOMORROW YOU you-VISIT-me CANNOT WHY? (= "Why can't you visit me tomorrow?)
• Modifiers follow their heads, so this means adjectives follow nouns and verb-modifying adverbs (when not non-manual and simultaneous) follow the verb. In a lot of cases, however, modifiers precede their heads. This typically happens when the equivalent is a compound in German so I'm not sure if this is just the influence of German or whether its a case of restrictive modifiers tending to precede and non-restrictive modifiers tending to follow. It could of course be a mix of both. German has definitely influenced DGS in a way that drives me crazy: numbers follow that ridiculous "four and twenty" word order meaning that you don't read out a number from left to right but jump forwards and backwards through it.
• My favourite thing: As in ASL, directional verbs generally lead to the dropping of objects (and sometimes subjects) from the sentence as the verb indicates them, but unlike ASL (as far as I know), when the verb is not directional, animate objects are marked as distinct from subjects. I suppose this is useful because the SOV word order means otherwise they'd be right next to each other and pointing at "I" and then at "you" feels inherently ambiguous to me as though it might mean "I and you". An animate object not spatially indicated by a directional verb is not marked by a simple index finger point as usual but is basically marked with a directional version of the sign for person. (There's no DGS dictionary online but this sign is identical, but maybe rather vertically longer.) This sign is commonly accompanied by the mouth pattern "auf" (meaning "on"), so to say "I love you" you basically say "I ON-PERSON-you LOVE." (The fifth example on that Danish Sign Language (DTS) page, for "Han er interesseret i mig" seems to show something similar, but DTS is SVO and doesn't seem to have grammaticalised this like DGS has.)

[Risla]

So I've applied for nine jobs in the past week, and as of right now six of them have replied to me. I have two interviews set up already and am waiting on more.

For months I've been feeling like I've been casting my resume into the void. I have no damn idea what is happening, but I am entirely cool with it.

[hwhatting]

Good luck with the interviews!

[----]

So I've applied for nine jobs in the past week, and as of right now six of them have replied to me. I have two interviews set up already and am waiting on more.

For months I've been feeling like I've been casting my resume into the void. I have no damn idea what is happening, but I am entirely cool with it.

I thought I was good for nothing and doomed to a life of dependency just two weeks ago and now I've got a pretty snazzy job myself. Things will go well for you I'm sure!

[Risla]

Thanks guys! I'm pretty optimistic. I now have three interviews within the next three days!

[Bristel]

-DGS snip-

That's pretty cool. With little practice I could introduce myself by name in DGS.

My brother wants to be a inter-sign language interpreter, which I think is a laudable goal.

[Imralu]

Today I bought a massive grammar book of DGS. It's massive. It's 21cm x 30cm x 40 cm, over 700 pages. I've never owned a grammar book so massive and thorough before, and it's not big because it's filled with pictures. It's quite low on pictures - tonnes of glossed example sentences though.

[Imralu]

How did your interviews go, Risla?

[hwhatting]

Today I bought a massive grammar book of DGS. It's massive. It's 21cm x 30cm x 40 cm, over 700 pages. I've never owned a grammar book so massive and thorough before, and it's not big because it's filled with pictures. It's quite low on pictures - tonnes of glossed example sentences though.

What language?

[jal]

What language?

DGS (see above).


JAL

[hwhatting]

What language?

DGS (see above).

Somehow I read this to mean a publishing house or some such. Stupid, I know.

[Risla]

I've just accepted a job offer as an English teacher in Nishinomiya, Japan!

[----]

Victory!

[masako]

おめでとう！

[jal]

Yay! Congrats!


JAL

[linguoboy]

I joined a language discussion on a FOAF's wall and, as an aside, asked him, "While we're on the subject of etymology, why are you named for a little radish?" He immediately Friended me and we had a geeky conversation about Catalan, Icelandic, and making native-like mistakes in non-native languages.