what are you reading? - Page 21

Leto · 06-08-2006, 09:56 AM

Impressive, always wanted to learn at least one asian language, but except a very few words in Thaï and in Japanese (mostly food names and sport terms), I have no clue whatsoever. Must take time to learn at least one someday.

06-08-2006, 12:08 PM

Here it was pretty much growing up in a neighbourhood where people spoke all sorts of languages. You just pick it up and end up speaking it. I can't write decently in them though; aside from Malay. The Asian languages are also quite close to each other so if you know Malay you could speak Indonesian and even understand some Hindi. If you can speak Tamil you can manage with Kannada and Malayalam. If you can do Hokkien you can deal with Cantonese and even some Mandarin.

Alexa · 06-09-2006, 01:11 AM

Wow. Quite impressive !

Who speak Kannada ? Sorry, I'm not familiar with asian languages.

steve12553 · 06-09-2006, 03:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nesacat

It is powerful. I heard someone read excerpts of the Divine Comedy in Italian once and it was wonderful. I speak Malay, Tamil, Hokkien, Kannada, Malayalam, enough Hindi to manage when I need to in India and they don't understand Tamil or Kannada or Malayalam.

And here I sit, blatantly mono-lingual reading people who speak languages that I never heard of.

Wait, does Klingon count?

06-09-2006, 03:36 AM

Klingon would count if Elvish does as well.

Kannada is one of the local languages in India ... they speak it in Karnataka State.

Phyllis Sidheuaine · 06-09-2006, 09:56 AM

I'm taking some "time off" and reading all of my cookbooks, cooking magazines and cat fanciers' magazines.

Phyllis Sidheuaine

littlemissattitude · 06-21-2006, 08:27 AM

I suppose I can't claim to be completely mono-lingual. I can read enough Spanish to read billboards and figure out the TV listings for the local Spanish-language tv stations, and I can understand a little spoken Spanish. But it would be unusual if I hadn't picked up some (aside from in classes), as the town I live in has areas where more billboards are in Spanish than are in English, and we have almost as many broadcast TV channels in Spanish as we have English channels. I"ve even picked up some Spanish watching American movies dubbed into Spanish.

I also understand some written Latin, from two semesters of Latin class.

Leto · 06-21-2006, 09:03 AM

So you could read Italian and Portuguese too.

BTW, to be back at the original pupose of the thread, read recently a very good autobiography : "Gift of Power" by Archie Fire Lame Deer, telling about his life as a Sioux and a "medecine-man" in 20th century USA. Very, very interesting and with funny scoop about Hollywood movies.

littlemissattitude · 06-22-2006, 12:12 AM

Leto...That is a great book. I read it for a Sociology of Relgion course a few years ago (it was one of seven or eight books were were assigned that looked at different religious traditions). Wish I still had it; I'd like to read it again. Unfortunately, it was one of the books that didn't get brought along when I moved last year.

06-22-2006, 07:13 AM

Recently read Paper by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani. I have to confess to originally picking up the book because it was simply lovely to look at and had the one word for a title. The writing flows, almost like poetry and you can 'see' all that the writer is describing.

It's a tale of the history of paper and follows a scribe in 19th Century Persia who is on a quest for the perfect ream of paper. On his journey he encounters all the many kinds of paper .. straw paper, rag paper, silk paper and even spirit paper. The book is peopled with very memorable characters, who are not named, just called by the roles they play in life.

It's very much a literary delight and a wonderful potrait of the desire to somehow leave something behind that will stand the test of time ... in this case words on paper.