zompist bboard

Basics
Username: Sglod
Birthplace: Earth - Northern Hemisphere
Place of residence: Earth - Northern Hemisphere
Any particular reason you live there now? Because I want to.
Occupation: Yokel
Pet: Many cows and sheep, several chickens and a dog.

Identity
Gender: Male
Relationship: Forever Alone
Nationality: Earthling
Ethnicity: Earthling

Measurements
Age: Too young to be interesting.
Height: Short.
Weight: Fat.
Handedness: Ambidextrous

Languages (including level of fluency!)
Native language(s): English
Other languages: Welsh, French
Your conlangs: Rolanian

Favourites
Favourite language: Japanese
Favourite colour: All of them
Favourite food: Fish and Chips
Favourite drink: Water
Favourite animal: Wolves
Favourite sport: Motor Rally
Favourite book: Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
Favourite movie: Lord of the Rings
Favourite video game: Mario Kart
Favourite non-video game: Chess

Extra Credit
1) Link to the funniest picture you know of on the internet that isn't goatse. Can't be bothered.
2) What's the most interesting place you've ever been to? Iceland (The country, not the frozen food shop)

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Siöö jandeng raiglin zåbei tandiüłåd;
nää džunnfin kukuch vklaivei sivei tåd.
Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei. Chei.

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Ο ορανς τα ανα̨ριθομον ϝερρον εͱεν ανθροποτροφον.
Το̨ ανθροπς αυ̨τ εκψον επ αθο̨ οραναμο̨ϝον.
Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν. Θαιν.

Basics
Username: Pole, the
Name: an ordinary Polish one
Other nicknames (including good stories, if you have any): RenKillsHisFatherHan (it is a pretty long story)
Birthplace: my hometown in Poland
Place of residence: currently not Poland
Any particular reason you live there now? I pay and they let me live here, so I guess it is a pretty good reason for not going anywhere else
Occupation: being a… Pole
Pets (+5 extra credit if you provide photographic evidence): none that I would know of

Identity
Gender: masculine virile, singular, second declension type
Sexuality: wtf
Relationship: none
Nationality: take a guess
Ethnicity: I am a cat.
Religion: no
Politics: If it starts with “pol-”, it cannot be any good: polio, pollution, politics, polls, Poland &c. (Except polkas, polkas are good.)

Measurements
Age: 21
Height: 178
Weight: 80 (up to 90 after a meal)
Shoe size: 42
Blood type: B-
Handedness: right

Languages (including level of fluency!)
Native language(s): Polish
Other languages: English
Your conlangs: several, most importantly Ęmyt, Yalan, Wihəs and Kopoıves
Natlangs or conlangs you have interest in but have never actually learned any of aside from maybe reading a paper on it once: all of them

Favourites - only 1 each!
Favourite language: probably English, because I can speak it and it is not Polish.
Favourite colour: blue, or green
Favourite food: not rotten
Favourite drink: Earl Grey tea
Favourite animal: I made up several animals when I was a child; were my favourites.
Favourite sport: walking
Favourite book: recently Mistborn
Favourite movie: Cloud Atlas, maybe?
Favourite video game: Galciv
Favourite non-video game: pretending you are drunk when you are actually mentally unstable

Extra Credit
1) Link to the funniest picture you know of on the internet that isn't goatse.
2) What's the most interesting place you've ever been to? My bed, wanna come over?

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The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.

How about learning Finnish?

Basics
Username: Travis B.
Name: Travis
Other nicknames (including good stories, if you have any): referred to as Trav for short
Birthplace: Wauwatosa, WI
Place of residence: Oconomowoc, WI
Any particular reason you live there now? It is near where my daughter lives.
Occupation: programmer
Pets (+5 extra credit if you provide photographic evidence): none currently, used to have guinea pigs, rabbits, and fish

Identity
Gender: male
Sexuality: straight
Relationship: single
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: ethnicity does not really make sense, well, synchronically beyond that I am a white American, but I am of German and Polish descent
Religion: atheist
Politics: something libertarian left; formerly an anarchist, but still quite sympathetic with many anarchist positions

Measurements
Age: 31 yrs old
Height: 5 ft 11 in
Weight: 240 lb
Shoe size: 11 1/2
Blood type: AB+
Handedness: right

Languages (including level of fluency!)
Native language(s): English
Other languages: studied German and Japanese, know a bit of German and no Japanese now
Your conlangs: a variety of them, some which I have abandoned and some which I have not; my latest ones are Alla and its descendent Xanínə
Natlangs or conlangs you have interest in but have never actually learned any of aside from maybe reading a paper on it once: Aramaic, Akkadian

Favourites - only 1 each!
Favourite language: probably German
Favourite colour: bright green
Favourite food: Mexican
Favourite drink: coffee, with a decent amount of sugar and half and half
Favourite animal: cats, even though I have never had one for a variety of reasons
Favourite sport: (American) football, simply in that is the only sport I pay much attention to
Favourite book: I haven't read any books in a while, but one book I always liked since I was a teenager was Snow Crash
Favourite movie: Lord of the Rings trilogy
Favourite video game: bzflag
Favourite non-video game: freeciv

Extra Credit
/me opts out.

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Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

_________________
The conlanger formerly known as “the conlanger formerly known as Pole, the”.

If we don't study the mistakes of the future we're doomed to repeat them for the first time.

Basics
Username: Haplogy
Name: Caroline
Other nicknames (including good stories, if you have any): none
Birthplace: Netherlands
Place of residence: Somewhere else, still Netherlands
Any particular reason you live there now? Uni
Occupation: Astrophysics at uni
Pets (+5 extra credit if you provide photographic evidence):


Identity
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Mostly homo
Relationship: None
Nationality: Dutch
Ethnicity: Mostly Dutch
Religion: None
Politics: Mostly left I guess

Measurements
Age: 18
Height: Too tall
Weight: Too much
Shoe size: 40 European, so like 9.5 US?
Blood type: No clue
Handedness: Either, depends on what I'm doing

Languages (including level of fluency!)
Native language(s): Dutch
Other languages: English, German(fluent reader/listener, less so for speaking/writing)
Your conlangs: None right now
Natlangs or conlangs you have interest in but have never actually learned any of aside from maybe reading a paper on it once: Like a bunch

Favourites - only 1 each!
Favourite language: Inuktitut probably
Favourite colour: Turquoise
Favourite food: Cheese/mushroom pancakes
Favourite drink: Jasmine tea
Favourite animal: Human
Favourite sport: Physical none, e-Sport probably Starcraft
Favourite book: Rumo & Die Wunder im Dunkeln
Favourite movie: I dunno
Favourite video game: Starcraft probably
Favourite non-video game: M:tG

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Knowledge is power, and power corrupts. So study hard and be evil!

_________________
and

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

I used to frustrate Dutch people because my pronunciation was good but understanding and vocabulary were pretty low, so I'd make a request or ask them a question flawlessly but not really be prepared for the response, and then have to embarrassedly ask for English. After that happened a couple of times I kind of gave up, and like even though I could have asked for a cinema ticket in Dutch I made the poor guy speak English because I just knew he'd ask me something complicated in reply (he was willing, though, and he wanted to practice as he wasn't so good – why can I remember shit like this from 7 years ago when I can't even remember what I had for dinner the other night?).

I did happen to meet the two Dutch people in the entire fucking country who don't speak English, though – they were my customers when I was working.

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and

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Sometimes Japanese people speak to me in English, trying to be helpful, but pretty much always my Japanese is better than their English. I once couldn't even understand the guy and he switched back to Japanese. I felt bad.

No need to feel bad. If your Japanese is really that good, the switch to English was overly hasty.

I'm told the Japanese use a different register of speaking with foreigners. And apparently it's something you can't get rid of no matter how proficient you are if you are not Japanese by blood.

_________________
and

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Sounds made up. There's a talk sometimes about Japanese people being impenetrably unique or xenophobic (depending on which side you are talking from) but actually, Japanese people are people. They become associates, they become friends, they become family. It's not a uniform and monolithic mass of people. Anyway I can hear when people speak slower or more carefully or avoid phrases they think will be too difficult, and I can hear when they speak exactly the same to me as the next person.

http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com/20 ... ntrol.html
I think that there is still a lot of xenophobia in Japan, but there is a lot of xenophobia everywhere. There is also a special idea of uniqueness. Many feel that foreigners cannot properly grasp the language (as Japanese was not a prestigious or important language for most of its history, the people probably do not have a lot of experience with people trying to learn Japanese). This attitude is rare or nonexistent in nations of many ethnicities, like the UK, US, France and Russia.

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ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!

The fact of the matter is that Japanese is hard to learn if you have not spent much time in the country, specifically because of what you said, that Japanese has mostly not been used outside of Japan, so it carries a lot of cultural baggage with it.

As for your link, though the people there may indeed have been told they speak Japanese "too well", there is no explanation in that post regarding the context in which they were told this, whether the person was joking and friendly, annoyed, etc., how often they were told this, what age the people who said it were, whether they were in the city or some backwater place, etc. There is very practical application of that anecdote. I have never been told this or heard of anyone being told this before now, and I have lived in Japan for 13 years. Maybe they just met a weird person.

And this does not really support the idea that Japanese people consistently adopt some specific register (whatever this may mean) when speaking to non-Japanese people. Some specifics might be nice.

But I feel this is off topic for this thread.

So a cencus thread needed half a page to get it derailed, and another one to become complete off-topic. Congrats!

On-topic: not much has changed since the last census. I'm too lazy to see if it's still available.


JAL

Basics
Username: Vijay
Name: Also Vijay (last name John. Yes, last name! )
Other nicknames (including good stories, if you have any): Oh my God, so many nicknames and stories. Even my real name has multiple pronunciations.
Birthplace: Cleveland, Ohio, US
Place of residence: Austin, Texas, US
Any particular reason you live there now? My dad got transferred first from Cleveland to St. Louis, then from there to Austin, where he finally quit his job and started his own company.
Occupation: Online translator
Pets (+5 extra credit if you provide photographic evidence): None

Identity
Gender: Male
Sexuality: Unsure, probably either bi or pan, though also closeted, at least when it comes to family
Relationship: None
Nationality: American
Ethnicity: Indian (Malayalee)
Religion: Atheist
Politics: Liberal, I guess.

Measurements
Age: 27
Height: Oh God, I never remember Maybe 5'11"?
Weight: Last time I checked, 170 lb (77 kg)
Blood type: O
Handedness: Right

(Language stuff in my case is kind of complicated, so skipping that. I certainly don't mind talking about it, though).

Favourites - only 1 each!
Favourite language: None
Favourite colour: Blue
Favourite drink: Water
Favourite movie: Maybe Ankur? (<- Kind of an obscure Hindi movie)

Extra Credit
2) What's the most interesting place you've ever been to? Probably a slum in Chennai.

Sorry for the double post and the length of this one, but I think the language-related details in my case are complicated enough to warrant writing a completely separate post. Also, I want to change my answer about the most interesting place I've ever been to; probably what's even more interesting is this small extra kitchen or whatever at the front of my grandmother's house. There, I witnessed firsthand the traditional way of boiling rice, in a pot on a fire fueled by not only coals but also various kinds of leaves, and stoking the fire through a blowpipe.

Anyway, I've been learning bits of languages as long as I can remember. The first language I ever spoke was Malayalam, but then I was forced to learn English at a young age (around four years old) and forgot Malayalam. I've been gradually relearning it since then, but by now, I know it well enough to read novels in it (I've read five by now and have been reading my grandfather's diary for months now, and that's mostly in Malayalam as well). Even before I was made to learn English, though, my dad would share random phrases in e.g. bad Russian or German with me since he studied those as a university student, like saying "ya lubya tibya" for 'I love you' (he meant я тебя люблю in Russian).

The first language I remember beginning to seriously learn is French starting when I was about 7 years old, soon followed by German and then Spanish. I eventually took classes for all of them. I started Latin around this time of my life as well, probably even before German, and I took a class for that much later, too (the most advanced class I could find, after testing out of the lower levels). Something similar happened with Mandarin Chinese later on; I started out learning it by myself for years, then convinced a Taiwanese instructor that I spoke it well enough to skip the first semester and took as many college courses for it as I could. In the last course I took, I was the only student who neither was Chinese nor had ever been to China. There's a whole bunch of other (almost all Eurasian) languages I've studied to a lesser degree on my own: Portuguese, Italian, Catalan (though most of what I know in these languages comes from just knowing French and Spanish, honestly), Russian, Turkish, Thai, Hindi, Urdu, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Romani, Bengali, Persian, and oh God I am such a shameless braggart. Well, maybe not, actually, but that's enough already. Maybe you'll find out over time how familiar I am with any others (probably not much). Oh wait, I also started studying Quechua, Mapudungun...er, "Micmac" (I hate that name, in particular, how it looks when Anglicized...), Michif, Oirata, Teiwa, Dinka, American Sign Language, Indonesian, and Tagalog pretty recently (actually started Indonesian and Tagalog a long time ago but am trying to be a bit more serious about them now than I used to be). Had to throw those in there because those are some of the ones I've been trying to make a concentrated effort to study over the past few years. The only other non-Eurasian languages I've attempted before and that I can think of are Guarani and I guess Tukano.

Yeah, this is why I said I was insane about learning languages when I introduced myself.

I knew a Malayalee person whose surname was an English male given name. She told me it was her father's name. I don't really understand what that's about exactly. Is it similar for you?

Yeah, it is. It's a Malayalee Christian thing, I guess. We have complicated naming systems, and the conventions probably differ between sects and stuff, too.

For example, my family is (traditionally) Syrian Christian (specifically ), and for us, "family name" and "surname" are completely different things. In our tradition, our family name isn't part of our names at all; instead, we use it as our home address, since there aren't even street names in Kerala for the most part. (So presumably, mail carriers who work in a given neighborhood have to know that family X lives in this house, family Y lives in that house, etc.). Our given name is just another relative's name, and our "surname" is really just a patronymic.

According to our naming tradition, my official name actually shouldn't be "Vijay John" at all but rather "George Thomas." That's because I'm the second-born son, the second-born son's first name is taken from his maternal grandfather, and my maternal grandfather's name was George. Thomas is just my dad's name. But of course, all this is way too complicated for immigration services in this country to understand, so my grandfather (the oldest member of our family to immigrate, albeit only temporarily) sort of arbitrarily decided to change the whole family name to "John," which was his given name and thus my dad's last name. That's why my last name is "John," too.

In reality, my family name is Chelikuzhiyil [t͡ʃeˈɭikuɻijil], which literally means 'in the mud pit', lol. I've heard maybe 2-3 different suggestions about how we got that name. So if I was born in India and followed our naming traditions, my home address would start out with something like this:

George Thomas
Chelikuzhiyil
P. O. Box ___________

And then other communities in Kerala have their own naming traditions, too!