@SFBart: We at BART will forever miss you, Courtney. Courtney asked us tough questions and demanded accountability while being our biggest supporter. We will never forget the joy you expressed when you finally boarded a Fleet of the Future train. Rest In Peace.
@IanColdwater: I’ve heard being a man on the Internet compared to using an adblocker: same Internet, but you see a lot less shit.
So I did this for a few people, so they could experience what it’s like to be a non-man online, at least a bit. To see what it’s like with the adblocker turned off.
1) We're having a playlist competition--everyone submits a song, and then we do some kind of voting to narrow down what our work playlist for the month of May is (to be enjoyed remotely, of course)
2) My department is competing against other departments (including that of Kodiak's sister) to raise money for local food banks (Alameda and Contra Costa). If you happen to have a little extra to give at this time: https://give.foodbankccs.org/ALS
I know some of y'all think the James Beard Awards are... what was the term... self congratulatory circle jerk. Perhaps, but I still enjoy them. Here are the latest nominees for 2020. Restaurants & Chefs at bottom of the list:
The initial battle scene in the German forest is one of the best battle scenes in a film I have ever seen. Absolutely brilliant and worth the price of admission just for it.
The movie is now 20 years old. Also TIL that the actor that played Proximo - the old retired gladiator who bought Maximus from slavery - died during filming. Oliver Reed had a heart attack during a drinking challenge with sailors from a British sailors who were in port leave in Malta. His scenes were all completed with a body double standing in shadows and CGI to mask over the face.
That was a good movie but rotten from an historical purist perspective. A) No Maximus character existed B) Commodus always had a beard in real life. C) Marcus Aurelius was not smothered, he died of natural causes. Still the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer was haunting (winning an Oscar). Gladiator II is in the works - the project was greenlighted by the studios back in 2018. Not sure when it is due to hit the theatres (if they ever open again!)
agree. As a historical buff, I struggle with movies that take artistic license to absurd levels like Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven and to a lesser extent, this one. That said it was entertaining but didn't quite hit the right notes at the end. It was THIS close to being really really good but instead settled for being merely entertaining
Yeah, a lot of the action stuff is good and the leads (Crowe/Phoenix) are too. It looks pretty, as Ridley Scott movies tend to do. But the way the narrative tries to be about restoring democracy to Rome or something is pretty half-baked.
Chicken. Also squash and beets (skipped those) and some leftover rice and then I had some matzah to top up on the carbs. (I don’t generally skip vegetables but beets mean that the next day I’m convinced I have a bleeding ulcer, and I find the type of squash tonight a bit dull unless it’s some kind of northern Indian preparation)
For a lot of folks it must be tacos. I walked up to Safeway and there are dueling taco shops around the corner from each other. Both had a line-up of cars idling outside.
Tuesday's are my night off from cooking typically. i have settled into a schedule where i teach my online class Tue 500p ET. despite some colleges, schools not quite finished w/ the spring term, the first class of my summer session starts today.
so we either have takeout, or leftovers, or easy to heat up stuff.
occasionally if i am working from home and feel motivated earlier in the day i'll put on a pot of tomato sauce and meatballs and let it simmer for a few hours.
The Chevy's recipes are online at various places. We used to have the Chevy's cookbook. My kids love their Beef Fajitas recipe. We went back in March for the first time in a long time and I got the Beef Fajitas and it wasn't as good as I remember. But Chips and Salsa!
No idea. There is going to be a riot soon because my wife is 1) insisting on being the only person to go to the store and 2) focused on “how” rather than “what” is bought. She got a pickup order a couple of days ago from a local equivalent to Whole Foods that didn’t cover a lot of what the girls and I are eating, and is acting like that’s it for several days. I’m plainly going to have to make a run to the “regular” supermarket over her objections.
This would not be an issue under normal circumstances but she’s still working through her original conviction that I will get whisked off by the ‘rona because of my hypertension and family history of stroke, at least she still cares! 😂
Spoiler alert, based on my experience with my daughter, since you have 2 of them, you will always be needed, as there will never be an end to the projects that they will need dad to do and/or pay for!
Don't know yet. Tomorrow No 3 will be here and I'm making fried chicken sandwiches. I'm going to find a recipe online and try to make the Chick-Fil-A sauce.
At Cal, of course. Dept. of Near Eastern Studies, Ancient Egyptian Languages/Classics double major in L&S. 3rd year Egyptian only had 5 students in the class.
Exactly. The Occupy movement had the wind taken out of their sails when every extreme left wingnut starting street camping. I predicted and have so far been proven right that the ReOpen cause will attract gun-nuts, anti-vaxxers, Qanon conspiracy followers, religious opportunists, Illinois/other states' nazis/klan.
I'm fine with him collecting checks and taking up a roster spot on Seattle before inevitably sitting out for a good portion of the season due to minor injuries/age.
Since I know both Mandarin and English (the two most spoken languages right now), I don't really want to learn another language.
Nonetheless, in middle school I was basically forced to take an year of Spanish. Although my school thought that I was such a language genius (because I learned English out of necessity) that they allowed me to just learn Spanish by listening to tape in the library (where I ended up doing other homework and playing Oregon Trail).
I then took two years of German in high school where we only covered about one plus year of material (school went to block scheduling and the German teacher decided that one can only learn so much language in a day despite twice the length of class time).
I switched school and took one year of French because German wasn't offered.
I actually had to pass a language test in Mandarin while at Cal to graduate because I never went to the 3rd year in any of my middle/high school foreign language courses.
I sort of understand Taiwanese but that's not really spoken much in my house growing up. I also technically don't remember enough Chinese characters off the top of my head to write any complicated things in Mandarin.
Spanish in middle and HS since 7th grade. i still have a pretty good grasp of it, but i am certainly not fluent. it is a great help in Europe. in places like Italy, i just speak Spanish and it works out fine.
aside from that ancient Greek at Cal, and Sanskrit in grad school each for a few years. but those you cant really speak w/ anyone.
i grew up speaking Bengali at home and am more or less bilingual. we also learned to read and write up to a middle school level.
Same written form, completely mutually unintelligible. A Mandarin reader reading text in Taiwanese would recognize the characters but have a completely different pronunciation (and many of the words might have different meanings), then add the differences in grammar and then it would make very little sense. Further, as Buckeye referenced, Taiwanese is a form of Hokkien. Taiwanese speakers would be able to communicate with other Hokkien speaking people (say in the Quanzhou in China, in Philippines, or in Malaysia), but there would be a difference in accent and vocabulary.
They're different languages (and note that I'm using the linguistic, rather political, definition of language here, in that two different languages are mutually unintelligible)
Taiwanese incorporates a lot of loanwords from Japanese. For example, if you did a direct translation from Mandarin for apple, the Taiwanese would sound something like pung-go, but in Taiwan, we say lin-go for apple. Some of the loanwords were themselves loanwords, like pahn for bread (that's not a great approximation, it's "pa" but the a is nasalized).
There are also some words or phrases in Taiwanese where I'm not sure if it's a family thing or can be generalized to Taiwan. For instance, if my family is talking about reversing into a parking space, they'll say, "ba-ku," which I think is from Japanese (saying "back").
Very interesting! Makes sense there would be more Japanese influence; though I wonder how things have changed over time through the political history and migrations to/from the mainland.
I didn't have to take a foreign in high school, so I didn't; really wish I did. Took some French at Berkeley, which I liked, but was bad about going to the lab, so my pronunciation is pretty awful.
I have not, but I've seen one at work on a ski slope in Japan. Young kid (teen) went yard sale; he sat up but couldn't stand up (knee). My buddy skied off to get help; I sat with the kid. He speaks limited English; I speak only English (and HS French)! Ski patrol shows up. Chinese kid, Japanese ski patrol, American witness. Ski patrol whips out the translation device to communicate with the kid. Whew!
I used Duo Lingo for a couple months before our trip to Paris last year and got comfortable enough to order at a restaurant (with some pointing) and exchange pleasantries with those we met. Turned out to be more than enough for Paris and many people seemed pleased to have me make an effort before switching to English.
I crammed about 6 weeks of German on Duolingo before a trip there last December. Was useless (and uncomfortable) for saying much more than "thank you", but was able to read signs and things tolerably well.
Also didn't have as much need for it since the office I was visiting made English the default for conversation.
Oh yeah, German isn't too bad for English speakers. I spent 6 weeks in Austria once and was able to order in restaurants and conduct basic transactions in German by the end of it.
Spanish in HS and one class at Cal. When I moved to DC I would go to Puerto Rico once or twice a year for work and some of it would start to come back just as I was leaving. At this point not much of it left.
I took three years of Spanish in high school, although my skills have become rusty (especially in MD where I almost never hear people speaking Spanish). I've been working on using it more recently: making grocery lists in Spanish, talking to my wife in Spanish, etc. She's much more fluent in Spanish than I am, so she's a helpful tutor.
FET: when we're out in places where no one speaks Spanish (especially abroad, in places like Australia), we'll speak Spanish to each other when we don't want people to know what we're saying (mostly when we're making fun of something/someone nearby).
I felt very comfortable speaking Spanish after taking three years in high school. Tried to pick it back up in college in my soph year and lasted two classes before dropping it for another class that provided the same GE. I would love to get back to the basic conversational level, but my conjugation is dog shit. I can understand people speaking slowly and can read it well enough to know what the gist of a sentence is, but I am way too self conscious to try to speak it outside the home.
One thing I noticed practicing with native speakers--when you speak another language poorly, you sound like an idiot, and people will treat you like one. Sometimes.
I think that can depend on if that person is multilingual though. If the person genuinely only speaks one language they may sincerely appreciate your efforts to communicate, instead of just speaking English louder and slower to them
Be careful with this. My French colleagues used to speak English in meetings with my boss and me, but switch to French when they wanted to discuss how to position something to us or handle some sticky manner. Little did they realize we both spoke French enough to understand their convos!
Cantonese works pretty well as a secret language . . . .except in touristy places in China.
When I went to India with my best friend from college, we got sick of telling people we were from the US (because we're both Chinese-American, no one believed us. Everyone thought we were Korea) - so for a while we told everyone we were from various Central and South American countries (Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Brazil) - we got caught once by a couple from Mexico who overheard us, but luckily my friend is fluent in Spanish - she lived in Peru and Ecuador for 6 years.
I went to Cedar Point with three Taiwanese people, two of whom kept commenting on other people's appearances in Mandarin, "Oh, that person's hot!" "Wow, that person's fat!"
It made me really uncomfortable, and while I spoke up about how people might be able to understand them, what I really wanted to say was, "Even if other people can't understand you, you're still assholes."
My brother and I were once at Magic Mountain and used numbers for this purpose so we could be assholes without people realizing. The two categories we settled on were “line cutters” and “the French.”
FET: I was in a remote place in Asia, there was a group of younger guys from Mexico. One of them thought it would be funny to call me something derogatory in Mexican slang - probably thinking he was safe calling an Asian that in the middle of Asia. He was surprised when I cussed him out in Spanish telling him that I know Mexican slang too.
I speak English and elementary Spanish. Surprisingly, I've had to use a lot of it over the last 2 years, so I am thinking of brushing up on it because my vocabulary is no bueno and I don't conjugate non-present tense verbs without needing to really think about it. I can also order beer in about two dozen languages.
FET: I was at a place where everyone was stuck together in a small place overnight and nobody spoke the same language -- so we all spoke really bad Spanish. It's amazing how fun and easy it is to speak a language when nobody cares or expects proper grammar.
Reminds me of the I Love Lucy episode in France where Lucy got arrested. Had to get 3 people to translate French to German to Spanish to English I think.
travel languages are a handful of phrases - asking how much, understanding numbers 1-10, where is the bathroom, etc. etc. Bangkok and Tokyo are the two places I've been the most in my life without actually having lived there (probably close to 20 times apiece)
https://twitter.com/SFBART/status/1257756394805014528?s=20
@SFBart: We at BART will forever miss you, Courtney. Courtney asked us tough questions and demanded accountability while being our biggest supporter. We will never forget the joy you expressed when you finally boarded a Fleet of the Future train. Rest In Peace.
https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/05/04/san-francisco-transit-advocate-clings-to-life-after-getting-caught-in-mission-shootout/
I'm not completely sure who the pictured person is, but apparently, they (and my workplace) were involved in some scientific results? https://twitter.com/abhikghosh/status/1257768416594800642?s=20
https://twitter.com/IanColdwater/status/1257722669375635458?s=20
@IanColdwater: I’ve heard being a man on the Internet compared to using an adblocker: same Internet, but you see a lot less shit.
So I did this for a few people, so they could experience what it’s like to be a non-man online, at least a bit. To see what it’s like with the adblocker turned off.
Two work notes:
1) We're having a playlist competition--everyone submits a song, and then we do some kind of voting to narrow down what our work playlist for the month of May is (to be enjoyed remotely, of course)
2) My department is competing against other departments (including that of Kodiak's sister) to raise money for local food banks (Alameda and Contra Costa). If you happen to have a little extra to give at this time: https://give.foodbankccs.org/ALS
James Beard Awards 2020
I know some of y'all think the James Beard Awards are... what was the term... self congratulatory circle jerk. Perhaps, but I still enjoy them. Here are the latest nominees for 2020. Restaurants & Chefs at bottom of the list:
https://www.jamesbeard.org/blog/the-2020-james-beard-award-nominees
Gladiator
Never seen it
The initial battle scene in the German forest is one of the best battle scenes in a film I have ever seen. Absolutely brilliant and worth the price of admission just for it.
True that, long time since I've seen that movie.
At my signal, unleash hell
Sounds like Wilcox talking to the D before the game!
The movie is now 20 years old. Also TIL that the actor that played Proximo - the old retired gladiator who bought Maximus from slavery - died during filming. Oliver Reed had a heart attack during a drinking challenge with sailors from a British sailors who were in port leave in Malta. His scenes were all completed with a body double standing in shadows and CGI to mask over the face.
That was a good movie but rotten from an historical purist perspective. A) No Maximus character existed B) Commodus always had a beard in real life. C) Marcus Aurelius was not smothered, he died of natural causes. Still the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer was haunting (winning an Oscar). Gladiator II is in the works - the project was greenlighted by the studios back in 2018. Not sure when it is due to hit the theatres (if they ever open again!)
This is a movie I've always found perfectly fine, but not quite the modern classic it wanted to be.
I would have voted Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the Oscar.
Much better choice, BTW re-watched Amarcord this weekend, and it was not exactly the movie I remember it to be.
agree. As a historical buff, I struggle with movies that take artistic license to absurd levels like Braveheart, Kingdom of Heaven and to a lesser extent, this one. That said it was entertaining but didn't quite hit the right notes at the end. It was THIS close to being really really good but instead settled for being merely entertaining
Yeah, a lot of the action stuff is good and the leads (Crowe/Phoenix) are too. It looks pretty, as Ridley Scott movies tend to do. But the way the narrative tries to be about restoring democracy to Rome or something is pretty half-baked.
Were you not entertained?
At last I have found the words, (didn't quite hit the right notes at the end), for the de minimis of what was otherwise a pretty good film.
Latin, all years of H.S. only because I was told "your sister did it, we did it, now you"
That'll be useful when you invent that time machine.
Or if you need a lingua franca and work in the Vatican.
Or if you want to improve your English grammar
Or if you sing classical choral music
Gregorian chants?
and hymns, requiems, masses,,,
Ave Maria and such.
Today in the 'rona.
Economist: Summary from NE Journal of Medicine answering "how long does la Rona last on different surfaces?"
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/03/19/how-long-can-the-novel-coronavirus-survive-on-surfaces-and-in-the-air?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/dailycharthowlongcanthenovelcoronavirussurviveonsurfacesandintheairgraphicdetail
Accountability Tuesday: What's your workout today?
most likely either nothing, or a couple mile walk this eve.
two 1 mile dog walks, morning and afternoon.
Eating nachos this evening...
Planning to put in 10k on the rowing machine later and hopefully get in a walk after dinner.
It’s not looking good for the either of these but I guess there’s still time In the day.
Maybe I'll do some rowing today too, that sounds good.
hopefully some running. Somewhere between 3.5 to 4 mi probably. If I decide not to skip it like I did yesterday.
2.5mi run with one dog
1mi walk with the other dog
30-45min Nike Training workout
Down 12lbs . . .
Zoom Body Pump in A.M. 4 mile walk at Noon. Yin Yoga at 3. Hatha Flow at 5:30
45 minutes on the bike, then 30 minutes stretching, sit-ups, push-ups
Ran eight miles then about twenty minutes of stretching/yoga.
Rode the bike for about an hour this morning, so I'm good for today.
What's for dinner?
Chicken. Also squash and beets (skipped those) and some leftover rice and then I had some matzah to top up on the carbs. (I don’t generally skip vegetables but beets mean that the next day I’m convinced I have a bleeding ulcer, and I find the type of squash tonight a bit dull unless it’s some kind of northern Indian preparation)
For a lot of folks it must be tacos. I walked up to Safeway and there are dueling taco shops around the corner from each other. Both had a line-up of cars idling outside.
Tuesday's are my night off from cooking typically. i have settled into a schedule where i teach my online class Tue 500p ET. despite some colleges, schools not quite finished w/ the spring term, the first class of my summer session starts today.
so we either have takeout, or leftovers, or easy to heat up stuff.
occasionally if i am working from home and feel motivated earlier in the day i'll put on a pot of tomato sauce and meatballs and let it simmer for a few hours.
I know most of you scoff at my Chevy's love, but I was going to order from them for dinner. BUT THEIR WEBSITE IS DOWN :(
CINCO DE MAYO IS SAVED
Los Moles has reopened
Scoff!
i like Chevy's. they have some of the tastiest tortillas.
AND THE CORN STUFF
The corn stuff is easy to make....mix some drained canned corn w/some coarse corn meal/masa and honey. bake until delicious.
oooh
https://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/1309283/chevys-sweet-corn-tomalito/
The Chevy's recipes are online at various places. We used to have the Chevy's cookbook. My kids love their Beef Fajitas recipe. We went back in March for the first time in a long time and I got the Beef Fajitas and it wasn't as good as I remember. But Chips and Salsa!
best chips and salsa as well.
A coppa/pear/mozzarella salad
Taco Tuesday as an observation of the date. And the fact that the other half is 110% in support of anything involving "mayo".
I let my kids pick dinner from a new cookbook their grandmother sent them, so tonight we are having some travesty called "taco dogs".
I'd hit it.
Scoff!
/smh
no idea. maybe some nachos for an appetizer though. (bought chips on the weekend)
Probably gonna get some takeout Mexican
No idea. There is going to be a riot soon because my wife is 1) insisting on being the only person to go to the store and 2) focused on “how” rather than “what” is bought. She got a pickup order a couple of days ago from a local equivalent to Whole Foods that didn’t cover a lot of what the girls and I are eating, and is acting like that’s it for several days. I’m plainly going to have to make a run to the “regular” supermarket over her objections.
I feel ya. fortunately the mrs prefers to have nothing to do with the shopping. I make a list with youngest and hope for the best.
We had a surprisingly calm conversation about it perhaps because I led with “I’d like to be part of the solution here.”
Does she read DBD?
Nope!
aww
I need cookies like yesterday
You didn't hold back a supply of Girl Scout cookies?
Could I order you some Jeni's?
This would not be an issue under normal circumstances but she’s still working through her original conviction that I will get whisked off by the ‘rona because of my hypertension and family history of stroke, at least she still cares! 😂
You are probably an economic asset.
Maybe. At least until we hit retirement age, then it’s just a race to actuarial bottom for me
Spoiler alert, based on my experience with my daughter, since you have 2 of them, you will always be needed, as there will never be an end to the projects that they will need dad to do and/or pay for!
Only time will tell
Chicken tacos and cilantro lime rice. Unfortunately, I've realized we're lacking tequila.
Don't know yet. Tomorrow No 3 will be here and I'm making fried chicken sandwiches. I'm going to find a recipe online and try to make the Chick-Fil-A sauce.
Pozole w/ homemade double-boiled broth. Roasted bell peppers stuffed w/ minced pork/beef/bacon/rice. Red beans & coconut rice. Corn w/ queso blanco. Sauteed kale w/ oven roasted cherry tomato/garlic. Margaritas & Modelo Negro.
this sounds pretty excellent
Gordo's run this evening.
My thought as well. Mrs Slug would be a very happy, "YES!", I'm sure.
Latin, some Arabic, Egyptian hieroglyphs, a bit of Spanish and French
how did you learn Egyptian hieroglyphs?
At Cal, of course. Dept. of Near Eastern Studies, Ancient Egyptian Languages/Classics double major in L&S. 3rd year Egyptian only had 5 students in the class.
Tell the DBD two truths and one lie about yourself.
I don't really want to respond to this request. But I'm doing it anyway. Because I think DBD is such a noble endeavor.
Cinco
de Mayo?
did you know that "de Mayo" means "Of Mayonnaise" in English?
It’s Pete Buttigieg day in South Bend
OUR CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY
The Wisconsin Chief Justice forgets that she’s supposed to keep these thoughts as her inner monologue
https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1257708274583027714?s=21
White House is trying to play with numbers, presumably their audience is old President “great at math” and the people who want to believe him
https://twitter.com/justinwolfers/status/1257735124600446979?s=21
https://twitter.com/i/status/1257348720988913666
That Lincoln Project ad is very effective.
Most people are okay with taking time to figure out when / how to reopen https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/americans-widely-oppose-reopening-most-businesses-despite-easing-of-restrictions-in-some-states-post-u-md-poll-finds/2020/05/04/495ddc3a-8e36-11ea-9e23-6914ee410a5f_story.html
Remember when I said that the gun nuts hadn't shown up at our state's ReOpen protests yet. Welp. That's changed. I, for one, welcome them.
Good of you to welcome nuts. Is there a logic to this?
makes it clear who is behind the ReOpen movement, for those who are simply worried about the economy.
Exactly. The Occupy movement had the wind taken out of their sails when every extreme left wingnut starting street camping. I predicted and have so far been proven right that the ReOpen cause will attract gun-nuts, anti-vaxxers, Qanon conspiracy followers, religious opportunists, Illinois/other states' nazis/klan.
PRO
With ESPN showing Korean baseball here's a good article on bat flips in the KBO.
http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/17668845/korean-bat-flip
watched bears v twin and heroes v tigers last night.
are the Dreams any good this year? I know them from Hot Stove League
Go Bears!
Wrestling.
Ted DiBiase - the "Million Dollar Man" in part of a $4m scam of Mississippi welfare money. I guess art imitates life.
https://nypost.com/2020/02/07/son-of-wwe-legend-million-dollar-man-arrested-in-4m-welfare-scam/
so is Brett Favre
Marshawn says he is thinking of going Beast Mode again in Seattle
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/29134758/marshawn-lynch-talks-return-seahawks-rb-says
Go Marshawn.
I kinda want him to quit while he's healthy
I'm fine with him collecting checks and taking up a roster spot on Seattle before inevitably sitting out for a good portion of the season due to minor injuries/age.
CAL
Go Bears
Waddya doing on Saturday? How about attending the virtual Cal football fan day?
https://calbears.com/news/2020/5/5/general-cal-football-to-host-virtual-fan-fest-saturday.aspx
Languages
Since I know both Mandarin and English (the two most spoken languages right now), I don't really want to learn another language.
Nonetheless, in middle school I was basically forced to take an year of Spanish. Although my school thought that I was such a language genius (because I learned English out of necessity) that they allowed me to just learn Spanish by listening to tape in the library (where I ended up doing other homework and playing Oregon Trail).
I then took two years of German in high school where we only covered about one plus year of material (school went to block scheduling and the German teacher decided that one can only learn so much language in a day despite twice the length of class time).
I switched school and took one year of French because German wasn't offered.
I actually had to pass a language test in Mandarin while at Cal to graduate because I never went to the 3rd year in any of my middle/high school foreign language courses.
I sort of understand Taiwanese but that's not really spoken much in my house growing up. I also technically don't remember enough Chinese characters off the top of my head to write any complicated things in Mandarin.
can you type?
Spanish in middle and HS since 7th grade. i still have a pretty good grasp of it, but i am certainly not fluent. it is a great help in Europe. in places like Italy, i just speak Spanish and it works out fine.
aside from that ancient Greek at Cal, and Sanskrit in grad school each for a few years. but those you cant really speak w/ anyone.
i grew up speaking Bengali at home and am more or less bilingual. we also learned to read and write up to a middle school level.
took a couple years spanish in HS. retained almost none.
I took French in high school and college, and I think it was in pretty good shape for awhile, but has definitely deteriorated...tragique!
Fluent listener in English, Mandarin, Taiwanese
Fluent speaker in English, Mandarin
Fluent writer in English
I've never been to Taiwan; how close (or different) are Mandarin and Taiwanese?
Same written form, completely mutually unintelligible. A Mandarin reader reading text in Taiwanese would recognize the characters but have a completely different pronunciation (and many of the words might have different meanings), then add the differences in grammar and then it would make very little sense. Further, as Buckeye referenced, Taiwanese is a form of Hokkien. Taiwanese speakers would be able to communicate with other Hokkien speaking people (say in the Quanzhou in China, in Philippines, or in Malaysia), but there would be a difference in accent and vocabulary.
They're different languages (and note that I'm using the linguistic, rather political, definition of language here, in that two different languages are mutually unintelligible)
More information here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokkien
Taiwanese incorporates a lot of loanwords from Japanese. For example, if you did a direct translation from Mandarin for apple, the Taiwanese would sound something like pung-go, but in Taiwan, we say lin-go for apple. Some of the loanwords were themselves loanwords, like pahn for bread (that's not a great approximation, it's "pa" but the a is nasalized).
There are also some words or phrases in Taiwanese where I'm not sure if it's a family thing or can be generalized to Taiwan. For instance, if my family is talking about reversing into a parking space, they'll say, "ba-ku," which I think is from Japanese (saying "back").
Very interesting! Makes sense there would be more Japanese influence; though I wonder how things have changed over time through the political history and migrations to/from the mainland.
I didn't have to take a foreign in high school, so I didn't; really wish I did. Took some French at Berkeley, which I liked, but was bad about going to the lab, so my pronunciation is pretty awful.
Has anyone ever tried one of those multilingual translation devices?
I have not, but I've seen one at work on a ski slope in Japan. Young kid (teen) went yard sale; he sat up but couldn't stand up (knee). My buddy skied off to get help; I sat with the kid. He speaks limited English; I speak only English (and HS French)! Ski patrol shows up. Chinese kid, Japanese ski patrol, American witness. Ski patrol whips out the translation device to communicate with the kid. Whew!
What does "went yard sale" mean?
I assume fell and gloves, goggles, hat, all flew off in different directions.
How about Google Translate: https://www.facebook.com/tsunoo.rhilty/videos/118769396477460/
haha....I'd only seen the tuna one.
Took 3+ years each of Russian and Spanish many years ago. Trying to maintain with Duolingo. Have dabbled with Mandarin, German, French.
I used Duo Lingo for a couple months before our trip to Paris last year and got comfortable enough to order at a restaurant (with some pointing) and exchange pleasantries with those we met. Turned out to be more than enough for Paris and many people seemed pleased to have me make an effort before switching to English.
I crammed about 6 weeks of German on Duolingo before a trip there last December. Was useless (and uncomfortable) for saying much more than "thank you", but was able to read signs and things tolerably well.
Also didn't have as much need for it since the office I was visiting made English the default for conversation.
Oh yeah, German isn't too bad for English speakers. I spent 6 weeks in Austria once and was able to order in restaurants and conduct basic transactions in German by the end of it.
Some Gujarati I picked up from family (I'm illiterate and speak like a child)
High school French (which I was good at)
I took 1 semester of Swedish in college (I liked it, but had no time for more)
2 years of Mandarin in grad school (now all but completely forgotten)
Between studying French and growing up in California, I can suss out some basic things in Spanish if necessary.
Dutch (elementary school)
French (elementary school, jr high, college)
Latin (4 yrs in high school)
Japanese (1 year in college, what a shit show that was)
I can muddle through tourist conversations in French if need be. I’m usually better with basic comprehension than speech .
Spanish 7th and 8th grade and then 3 years in HS. Have forgotten most of it.
not sure if it is still the case, but as of a year or two ago, Danielli was still teaching Spanish at Campo
I think she still is. She's probably been there for 50+ years. That class was the worst. I had more fun in Curry's class.
Spanish in HS and one class at Cal. When I moved to DC I would go to Puerto Rico once or twice a year for work and some of it would start to come back just as I was leaving. At this point not much of it left.
I took three years of Spanish in high school, although my skills have become rusty (especially in MD where I almost never hear people speaking Spanish). I've been working on using it more recently: making grocery lists in Spanish, talking to my wife in Spanish, etc. She's much more fluent in Spanish than I am, so she's a helpful tutor.
FET: when we're out in places where no one speaks Spanish (especially abroad, in places like Australia), we'll speak Spanish to each other when we don't want people to know what we're saying (mostly when we're making fun of something/someone nearby).
I felt very comfortable speaking Spanish after taking three years in high school. Tried to pick it back up in college in my soph year and lasted two classes before dropping it for another class that provided the same GE. I would love to get back to the basic conversational level, but my conjugation is dog shit. I can understand people speaking slowly and can read it well enough to know what the gist of a sentence is, but I am way too self conscious to try to speak it outside the home.
One thing I noticed practicing with native speakers--when you speak another language poorly, you sound like an idiot, and people will treat you like one. Sometimes.
I think that can depend on if that person is multilingual though. If the person genuinely only speaks one language they may sincerely appreciate your efforts to communicate, instead of just speaking English louder and slower to them
Be careful with this. My French colleagues used to speak English in meetings with my boss and me, but switch to French when they wanted to discuss how to position something to us or handle some sticky manner. Little did they realize we both spoke French enough to understand their convos!
Cantonese works pretty well as a secret language . . . .except in touristy places in China.
When I went to India with my best friend from college, we got sick of telling people we were from the US (because we're both Chinese-American, no one believed us. Everyone thought we were Korea) - so for a while we told everyone we were from various Central and South American countries (Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Brazil) - we got caught once by a couple from Mexico who overheard us, but luckily my friend is fluent in Spanish - she lived in Peru and Ecuador for 6 years.
We try to be pretty vigilant in vetting our surroundings first--we haven't been called out yet!
I went to Cedar Point with three Taiwanese people, two of whom kept commenting on other people's appearances in Mandarin, "Oh, that person's hot!" "Wow, that person's fat!"
It made me really uncomfortable, and while I spoke up about how people might be able to understand them, what I really wanted to say was, "Even if other people can't understand you, you're still assholes."
My brother and I were once at Magic Mountain and used numbers for this purpose so we could be assholes without people realizing. The two categories we settled on were “line cutters” and “the French.”
hahaha
FET: I was in a remote place in Asia, there was a group of younger guys from Mexico. One of them thought it would be funny to call me something derogatory in Mexican slang - probably thinking he was safe calling an Asian that in the middle of Asia. He was surprised when I cussed him out in Spanish telling him that I know Mexican slang too.
I speak English and elementary Spanish. Surprisingly, I've had to use a lot of it over the last 2 years, so I am thinking of brushing up on it because my vocabulary is no bueno and I don't conjugate non-present tense verbs without needing to really think about it. I can also order beer in about two dozen languages.
FET: I was at a place where everyone was stuck together in a small place overnight and nobody spoke the same language -- so we all spoke really bad Spanish. It's amazing how fun and easy it is to speak a language when nobody cares or expects proper grammar.
In my two months in Bangkok there were many many many conversations between people which I overheard where English was the lingua franca.
Reminds me of the I Love Lucy episode in France where Lucy got arrested. Had to get 3 people to translate French to German to Spanish to English I think.
Spanish.
Two. I currently speak English, and I talk “Turkey” when it is warranted.
wait, what??
French
Three - English, Cantonese, and Mandarin
I also speak travel Thai, Japanese, and I discovered when I was in Spain, Spanish, even though I've never studied the language at all.
A real underachiever, eh? ;-)
travel languages are a handful of phrases - asking how much, understanding numbers 1-10, where is the bathroom, etc. etc. Bangkok and Tokyo are the two places I've been the most in my life without actually having lived there (probably close to 20 times apiece)