Help your fluency in a nifty way

[finlay]

クリープ写真と言うのの理由があるさ。男でも
There's a reason they're called creep shots. For men too

[linguoboy]

Ich weiss nicht, was ich sagen muss. Wäre du heterosexuell gewesen, denn hätte ich dich für ein schreklicher Sexist genommen. Es würde unter keinen Bedingung ok sein, eine wildfremde Frau zu fotografieren, nur da sie angenehm aussieht.
I'm not sure what to say. If you'd been straight I'd think you're an terrible sexist. It would be under no circumstances ok to take a picture of a woman who's a complete stranger to you, just because she looks cute.

Das seh ich auch so, jal. Ich hab auch mal geile Bauarbeiter geknipst, aber nie ohne ihre Zustimmung. Das wäre ja uncool.
I agree with you, jal. I've also taken pics of hot workmen, but never without their consent. That would be uncool.

[Astraios]

I beg to differ.

Но там тоже слово «grease» — разговорное (и противное) название для воска для волос. Вежливые люди не измазывали себе волосы самой «смазкою», а намазывали помадой. Аналогично, свечи не изготовляют из «пчелиной смазки» (раздавленных пчёл? гемолимфы?), а из их воска. А фильм — точно не противный.
But there too the word “grease” is a colloquial (and yucky) word for hair wax. Polite people didn’t put “grease” in their hair, but pomade. Like how you don’t make candles out of “bee grease” (squashed bees? hemolymph?), but of their wax. The film though, definitely not yucky.

[Imralu]

Siku moja miaka michache iliyopita mwanaume alinijia barabarani akaniomba ruhusa ya kupiga picha viatu vyangu. Alisema vilikuwa 'poa sana'. Nilisema ndiyo, hivyo alaenda nyuma kidogo akachutama ili kupiga picha, na nina hakika kwamba mwili mzima unaonekana katika picha. Yaelekea unaweza kuniona Tumblr fulani ... au huenda katika blogu ya fesheni china ya neno "Usifanye!"
One day a couple of years ago a man came up to me on the street and asked if he could take a picture of my shoes. He said they were 'really cool'. I said yes, so he stepped back a bit and crouched down to take the picture, and I'm sure my whole body can be seen in the photo. You can probably see me on a Tumblr ... or maybe on a fashion blog under the words "Do not!"

(this is the kind of thing that happens, I forget the word for the French thing and my POS brain spits out the Japanese word conjugated as if it's French. I don't know how to actually say "mix up" in French off the top of my head but my brain is going, "... must be 'mazéter', that sounds right" and what's worse, it also happens the other way – I forgot the Japanese word for cardboard box and I was about to say "boîte" and having to stop myself)

This is my life. Often, if my brain gives me a word in the wrong language mid sentence, it will stubbornly refuse to give me even a hint about what the word in the right language should be. The weird thing is, my native language seems to be the most affected ... possibly because of the added shock of feeling like I should know this. The worst example was forgetting the word "window" because my brain decided "Fenster" is a perfectly acceptable English word too. In writing, it only happens if I'm writing out of my comfort zone, but in speech, it's crazy. I'm most comfortable speaking a mix of about 95% English, 5% German. And sometimes it's not between German and English, I fairly consistently can't find the word "(job) application" or "Bewerbung" and all I have is this sign (although I bend stiffly from the wrists, not the fingers), which doesn't really help except for when speaking with hearing friends who also know DGS.

[Viktor77]

D'abord, si on ne partage pas les photos, je ne pense pas qu'il soit tabou ou sexiste. En plus, on a tous le droit de prendre des photos de tout ce qu'on peut voir du point de vue de la propriété publique. Une fois, j'ai pris un cours de photographie où le prof nous a encouragé de prendre des photos des inconnus en publique sans leur accord.

First, if you don't share the photos, I don't think it's taboo or sexist. Further, we all have the right to take photos of everything that can be seen from public property. I once took a photography class where the prof encouraged us to take photos of strangers in public without their permission.

[linguoboy]

Es sagt niemand, dass du das Recht darauf besitzst, Menschen im öffentlichen Bereich zu photographieren. Aber nicht alles, worauf man Recht hat, ist richtig.
No one's saying you don't have the right to photograph people in the public sphere. But not everything you have the right to do is righteous.

[finlay]

なお、米国では権利があると、他の国でも権利があるかどうか、結論できない。
Furthermore, having that right in America doesn't mean you have the right in other countries too.

例えば、フランスだったら違反なんだよ。
Eg. in France this is illegal

[Bristel]

>Πάει καιρός.

*ο καιρός.

Επίσης ο καιρός "περνάει" δεν "πάει".

お久しぶりです。あまり悪くないです。
ボクはより頻繁にここにいたいです。
ohisashiburi desu. amari yokunai desu.
boku wa yori hinpan ni koko ni itai desu.
It's been a while. I'm not so bad.
I want to be here more often.

最近は、Duolingoで日本語を勉強します。テストの27部セクションを通過しました。
saikin wa, Duolingo de nihongo wo benkyou shimasu. tesuto no nijuunana-bu no sekushon wo tsuuka shimashita.
Recently, I've been studying Japanese through Duolingo. I passed twenty seven parts of the test.**

** I don't quite know how to say that I did a placement test and passed 27 parts/sections of the course before starting the rest.

[finlay]

お久しぶりです。あまり悪くないです。
ボクはもっと頻繁にここにいたいです。
ohisashiburi desu. amari warukunai desu.
boku wa yori hinpan ni koko ni itai desu.
It's been a while. I'm not so bad.
I want to be here more often.

~yori means "than ~", not "more", 'hinpan' is not so common, and i don't think i've heard いたい used like that.
you could say ここに最近よりよく来たい (I want to come here more often than recently)

最近は、Duolingoで日本語を勉強しています。レべルチェックの中に27部セクションをパスしました。
saikin wa, Duolingo de nihongo wo benkyou shimasu. tesuto no nijuunana-bu no sekushon wo tsuuka shimashita.
Recently, I've been studying Japanese through Duolingo. I passed twenty seven parts of the test.**

** I don't quite know how to say that I did a placement test and passed 27 parts/sections of the course before starting the rest.

well not like that, because 通過 means "pass through" like a train through a station. you could say 受かった or パスした. for placement test, "level check" is ok. i dunno about "27 bu no section", doesn't sound right though


今日は、古い自転車を処分させてもらった。5年間あったからやっぱり悲しいけど、修理の値段は高すぎたんだ。ホイールも、かごも壊れたので、一万円以上になりそうだった。そんな値段で、新しく買うの方がいいかもしれないなあ。
Today I went and got my old bike scrapped. I've had it for five years, so of course I'm sad but it would be too expensive to repair. The wheel and basket were both broken, and it would be at least ¥10,000 to fix them (~$100). Like for that price I might as well buy a new one...

今不安が出ている。それで？わかんない
i'm feeling anxious now. because of that? dunno...

[Io]

Eg. in France this is illegal

Zut alors!*

Creepshots are illegal in France?! Outrageous! On the other hand there's TubeCrush.

*The Economist had 'zut alors!' on its front page recently and I saw a discussion on France 24 where everybody on the panel agreed it's something nobody says in France, very oldfashioned but apparently it's still taught in the UK, I think someone even called it being part of "British French" or something.

[Risla]

Finlay, je mélange toujours les deux. Jal peut témoigner de combien de temps j'ai mélangé le néerlandais et l'allemand. Mais je fais pareil avec le français et l'espagnol.

Finlay, I always mix the two. Jal can attest to how many times I have mixed up Dutch and German. But it's the same for me with French and Spanish.

まあさ、フランス語と日本語を混同したこともある…恥ずかしいわ
Mais Viktor, j'ai mazété le japonais to le français quelque fois. Je me suis embarrassé wa
but Viktor, I also mix up Japanese and French many times. it's embarrassing lmao

(this is the kind of thing that happens, I forget the word for the French thing and my POS brain spits out the Japanese word conjugated as if it's French. I don't know how to actually say "mix up" in French off the top of my head but my brain is going, "... must be 'mazéter', that sounds right" and what's worse, it also happens the other way – I forgot the Japanese word for cardboard box and I was about to say "boîte" and having to stop myself)

(see also: the time I couldn't remember the Latin word for "eat" and my brain decided that tabeo, tabere, tebi, tabitum sounded roughly accurate. this is not related at all to the Latin word for eat, but it did spawn a short-lived conlang project)

まだ私は時々日本語とオジブエー語をよく混同している。誰も分からへん！
I still mix up Ojibwe and Japanese sometimes. Nobody understands me!

(my brain occasionally spits out things like "aakoziyaanから、あんまりbwaanawitoosiwaan ji-運動する. "since I'm sick, I can't really exercise," and then I have to edit it to make it comprehensible to literally anyone else in the world)

[finlay]

Eg. in France this is illegal

Zut alors!*

Creepshots are illegal in France?! Outrageous! On the other hand there's TubeCrush.

*The Economist had 'zut alors!' on its front page recently and I saw a discussion on France 24 where everybody on the panel agreed it's something nobody says in France, very oldfashioned but apparently it's still taught in the UK, I think someone even called it being part of "British French" or something.

教えるというより、誰も知っている文章だけだと思うかな。フランス語のステレオタイプみたい
I wouldn't say taught, it's more just a phrase that everyone knows. Like a stereotype of French.

[Qwynegold]

Genau. "Oorsmeer" bedeutet auch "Ohrenschmalz".
Indeed. "Oorsmeer" also means "ear grease".

よかった！「smeer」ってのはバターという意味だと思ったんだ。＊ぞっと＊
Yokatta! "Smeer"tte no wa bataa to iu imi da to omottan da. *zotto*
Thank goodness! I thought "smeer" meant butter. *shudders*

[din]

Non, mais «smeren» veut aussi dire tartiner, et à cause de ta remarque, je ne peux pas m'empêcher d'imaginer quelqu'un qui se fait un sandwich au cire d'oreille...
No, but 'smeren' also means to spread, and because of what you said I can't help but imagine someone putting ear wax on their sandwich...

[jmcd]

The Economist had 'zut alors!' on its front page recently and I saw a discussion on France 24 where everybody on the panel agreed it's something nobody says in France, very oldfashioned but apparently it's still taught in the UK, I think someone even called it being part of "British French" or something.

Kann man das mit 'so-so' in französischen Englisch vergleichen?
Can we compare this to 'so-so' in French English?

[ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪]

Я не знаю, почему эта ветка погибла, но нам надо её спасти!
Je ne sais pas, pourquoi ce fil est mort, mais nous devons le sauver!
Ich weiße nicht, warum dieser Diskussionsfaden ist gestorben, aber wir müssen ihr retten!
EDIT (I forgot about the translation, again): I don't know why this thread died but we have to save it!

[Viktor77]

Me alegro que, con un poco de pratica, mi español vuelva a la memoria. Pensaba que lo perdí pero aparentemente estaba siempre ahí, escondido en mi mente. Por ejemplo, platicaba con un amigo mexicano del arte y el verbo "tratarse de" me acabó de venir a la memoria, un verbo que hube perdido por 3 años...pero estaba todavía ahí. Me encanta también como puedo usar mi francés para hablar español. Hablábamos de transporte publico y dije yo "¿te desplazas en bicicleta?" Traducido directemente del verbo francés "se déplacer." No sabía la palabra antes, la he solamente advinado usando mi francés.

I'm happy to see that, with some practice, my Spanish is coming back to me. I thought I had lost it but apparently it was always there, hidden in my mind. For example, I was speaking with a Mexican friend about art and the verb "tratarse de" came right back to me, a verb I had forgotten for 3 years...but it was still there. I also really like how I can use my French to speak Spanish. We were talking about public transportation and I said "te desplazas en bicicleta?" Translated directly from the French verb "se déplacer." I didn't know the word before, I just guessed it using my French!

[Ziz]

Me alegro que, con un poco de pratica, mi español vuelva a la memoria. Pensaba que lo perdí pero aparentemente estaba siempre ahí, escondido en mi mente. Por ejemplo, platicaba con un amigo mexicano del arte y el verbo "tratarse de" me acabó de venir a la memoria, un verbo que hube perdido por 3 años...pero estaba todavía ahí. Me encanta también como puedo usar mi francés para hablar español. Hablábamos de transporte publico y dije yo "¿te desplazas en bicicleta?" Traducido directemente del verbo francés "se déplacer." No sabía la palabra antes, la he solamente advinado usando mi francés.

I'm happy to see that, with some practice, my Spanish is coming back to me. I thought I had lost it but apparently it was always there, hidden in my mind. For example, I was speaking with a Mexican friend about art and the verb "tratarse de" came right back to me, a verb I had forgotten for 3 years...but it was still there. I also really like how I can use my French to speak Spanish. We were talking about public transportation and I said "te desplazas en bicicleta?" Translated directly from the French verb "se déplacer." I didn't know the word before, I just guessed it using my French!

Ya no hablo español, pero hace mucho tiempo que no veo a nadie escribiendo aquí en español, así que te voy a decir lo que he visto de incorrecto en lo que has escrito.
I don't speak Spanish anymore, but it's been a while since I've seen somebody writing here in Spanish, so I'll tell you what mistakes I've seen in what you wrote.

- You use past perfect in English but not in Spanish, even though it exists as había + participle (pensaba que lo había perdido).
- To me, aparentemente sounds literal and unidiomatic; I would just use parece que.
- Acabar de + verb means that the subject just now finished verbing, not the sort of emphaticky meaningless just that expresses emotion (I'm just not hungry ≠ acabo de tener hambre)

Tal vez me haya equivocado. Espero que vuelva alguien con más facultad en español para corregirnos.
Maybe I've made a mistake. I hope somebody with more facility in Spanish comes back to correct us.

[Ziz]

Vandaag wil ik iets in Nederlands schrijven. Of Vlaams. De zuidelijke dialecten klinken mooier, maar het is lolliger om woorden met een nordelijk accent te zagen.

Ik moet meer tijd aan het leren van talen besteden, maar het is moeilijk om Hebreeuws uit mijn hoofd te duwen, omdat ik het elke daag spreken moet. Misschien zal ik naar taal oefening groepen zoeken.

Today I want to write something in Dutch. Or Flemish. The southern dialects sound nicer but it’s more fun to say words with a northern accent.

I should devote more time to language learning, but it’s hard to push Hebrew out of my head because I have to speak it every day. Maybe I’ll look for language practice groups.

היום אני רוצה לכתוב משהו בהולנדית. או בפלמית. הניבים הדרומיים נשמעים יותר יפה, אבל יותר כיף להגיד מילים בניב צפוני.

אני צריך להשקיע יותר זמן בלימוד שפות, אבל קשה להוציא עברית מהמוח כי אני חייב לדבר אותה כל יום. אולי אני אחפש קבוצות לאימון בשפות.

[Imralu]

Kann man das mit 'so-so' in französischen Englisch vergleichen?
Can we compare this to 'so-so' in French English?

Si Kiingereza cha Kifaransa tu. Ninafikiri hiyo inafundishwa pote. Wanafunzi wangu wa waliotoka Asia walisema sikuzote hiyo.
It's not just French English. I think that's taught everywhere. My students from Asia said this all the time.

[Imralu]

Siwezi kulala.
I can't sleep.

Watu ambao nilikaa nao na mimi tulitafuta mtu ambaye wawili wetu tunaweza kukaa naye kwa sababu mmoja anayekaa hapa atahama akitoka mjini
The people who I live with and I are looking for a person who two of us can live with because one of the people who lives here is going to move out of town.

Leo tulikutana na mwanamke mswidi na ninampenda na ninataka atahamia lakini sijui ikiwa mtu mwengine atayekaa anampenda na sasa ubongo wangu kunionyesha majadiliano mengi kati yetu.
Today we met a Swedish woman and I like her and want her to move in with us but I don't know if the other person who will stay here likes her and now my brain is showing me a lot of conversations between us.

(Translated into English as an approximation of my clumsy Swahili. There is no word for flatmate as far as I have found, so that makes it harder.)

[jal]

Vandaag wil ik iets in het Nederlands schrijven. Of Vlaams. De zuidelijke dialecten klinken mooier, maar het is lolliger om woorden met een noordelijk accent te zeggen*.

*"zagen" means "to saw". You're probably mixing up Dutch and German :).

Ik moet* meer tijd aan het leren van talen besteden, maar het is moeilijk om Hebreeuws uit mijn hoofd te duwen**, omdat ik het elke daag spreken moet***. Misschien zal^ ik naar taaloefengroepen^^ zoeken.

*This assumes some external accountability, comparable to English "have to". "should" is better translated with "zou moeten" (so "ik zou meer tijd aan het leren van talen moeten besteden")
**This is not idiomatic, though perfectly understandable. I'd use "krijgen" instead of "duwen" if you don't want to rephrase it.
***I prefer "moet spreken", but "spreken moet" isn't wrong.
^"zal" is not idiomatic for me here. "ga" would be better, and "op zoek" instead of "zoeken" (so "Misschien ga ik op zoek naar ...").
^^Not an actual term, I'm not sure what it's called in Dutch. Perhaps it would be paraphrased ("een groep om talen mee te oefenen" or something).

Außer Englisch, hab ik niemals die Gelegenheit, eine Fremdsprache zu üben. Abgesehen davon, kenne ich auch zu wenig Fremdsprachen - nur Englisch und Deutsch, und ein bischen Französisch.
Except for English, I don't have the opportunity to practice a foreign language. And besides, I know too few foreign languages - just English and German, and a bit of French.


JAL

[ˈd̪ʲɛ.gɔ kɾuˑl̪]

Moi aussi, je voudrais que j'aie plus de cours des langues étrangères - je pense que je suis doué de l'habileté linguistique et je me gaspille en apprenant les vies des musiciens classiques.
Я тоже, я бы хотел чтобы у меня было больше уроков иностранных языков - я думаю, что я одарённый умением языковым и я себя трачу учась о жизнях классических музыкантов.
Me too, I'd like that I had more foreign languages lessons - I think I'm gifted a linguistic skill and I waste myself learning about classical musicians' lives.

[Io]

Can we compare this to 'so-so' in French English?

It's not just French English. I think that's taught everywhere. My students from Asia said this all the time.

What's the deal with «so-so»? Nobody says it and it's old fashioned?! I remember an anecdote about Ronald Reagan responding to a question how his meeting with Desmond Tutu went he's quoted to have replied «so-so».

[Travis B.]

Since when is so-so dated?