حر, Free, Frei, Gratis, Dohainik... It's your Weekly Free Thread

February 3, 2025 5:39 AM

What can you freely say in one language that you can't in another? Does hearing another language make you feel free? What sort of language do you want to learn for free? Do you like your languages free of gender? Opinions about freedom from definite articles? Or are you more of a "kostenlos" sort of free-preferrer, liking stuff for free? Tell us what's going on these days for you, free or otherwise.
posted by cupcakeninja (82 comments total)

I’ve been doing Duolingo German for several years now as a hedge against a rotting brain, since I find the words hard to pronounce and some of the grammar structure difficult to remember, so it is a good challenge.

So I can’t freely say much of anything in that language, but my favorite words are krank, fenster and neblig.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 5:57 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]

I'm okay in some basic French. I tend to blank on vocabulary after a while and have to switch to English, or have to describe the thing I'm trying to say ("I am looking for....the building....where one eats?") but I've been told my pronunciation is pretty good. I once had a couple of Francophone co-workers I'd practice with, and once when I apologized for my lack of skill they both said that they always understood what I was trying to say.

I also know one or two random phrases in other languages - a handful of things in Irish (a friend taught me), "thank you" in a few Romance languages, and a college classmate taught me a phrase in Mandarin that I will have utterly no use for: 你不是中国报纸。(You are not a Chinese newspaper.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:24 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I can understand a bit of German, and might want to be more fluent; I once tried getting the basics of French down to better understand Anatole France's satirical and pun-filled Penguin Island, but I don't feel like I have the time to really devote to learning a language just to say that I did it. In class we recently watched Rome Open City, an Italian film made about and during the Nazi occupation of Italy at the tail end of WWII, and the subtitles were mostly adequate summaries of what was being said. I knew enough German to get a better gist of things and was the only person reacting to what was said by the Nazis; a couple seats down from me a woman was doing the same for the Italian, which she was somewhat familiar with (but she mentioned that they were talking way too fast).

Film Student Update: Other than my film analysis class I have two things in pre-production: the next film with my teacher/director/friend, and then I've been recruited as cinematographer on a friend's directing final project.

For the directing project, this Thursday we scout for the short film's location by surveying the various bathrooms of the university in hopes of finding the biggest stall that can accommodate up to three actors and a cameraman. I used my influence with professor/director/friend, who is teaching that class, to convince him to buy a super wideangle lens (6mm MFT) for the university's film equipment room, so that we can use it for this project; well, it didn't take much influencing or convincing, he loves excuses to buy useful equipment for the department.

The film for director/professor/friend is about a man being released from jail, to a halfway house for drug recovery and reintegration, and then his life trying to get back on the straight and narrow despite how hard it is to stay on that path; influences for style are the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Christophe Lemaire's runway shows. Director/professor/friend has traditionally been an experimental filmmaker, non-narrative and expressive; the last time we met, he voiced frustration with that genre, because it feels like you're just making movies that only other experimental filmmakers appreciate. This (and another project of his which is in the idea stage) are attempts to try to move to a more narrative fiction style, still keeping some experimental structure; which I can sympathize with, you can be on Path A, doing well and succeeding, and then feel the pull to diverge into uncharted territory.

An actor I know put out a call to his friends on Facebook, looking for a fedora and trenchcoat like a 1950s private investigator. I have a fedora! I offered to lend him the fedora, no questions asked, and he was very appreciative -- this weekend, a different independent film (which I knew was starting production but I'm not involved in) posted some BTS scenes of their first day, and there was my hat on the actor's head! My hat is going to be in a movie!

Lastly: In December, I did some freelance work for ESPN, which is owned by Disney, and last Friday I got a weird $37 deposit from them. So, I logged into my Disney user, which I'm surprised still works, and found that $37 was my annual bonus -- thanks, Walt! But, while logged in, my account had a warning flag: I hadn't completed my onboarding training yet! This led me into a couple hours of watching required videos of how Disney and ESPN do business and how to handle harassment in the workplace and that I'm not supposed to share scripts for future Marvel movies on Twitter (boooo) and if a gift is more than $500 which department I need to report it to and all that fun stuff. I'm wondering how long I'll still be on the books as a current Disney employee; it's pretty clear Disney knows I'm just a day hire (like I don't have a Disney email address) but I'm planning on keeping my record active as long as possible, who knows where it might lead?
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:54 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]

A good friend of mine once stood in front of Mt. Rushmore and went off for a few minutes about the evils of imperialism and ecocidal colonialism, and felt free to do so in front of the tourists because they were speaking in American Sign Language.

Modern Hebrew, my second language (American English is my first), is truly a colonizer language; it doesn't really even have many of its own obscenities, which are generally borrowed from Arabic, Yiddish, and Russian. I have discovered that writing things like "Free Palestine" in Hebrew on signs and stickers really agitates my Zionist neighbors, so that has helped me feel less burdened by having Hebrew in my brain. !שחררו את פלסטין
posted by wicked_sassy at 6:56 AM on February 3 [7 favorites]

I went to Hebrew school for 8 years (ending in... 1985ish?). I do not recall any Hebrew except a select few words and I can count to 10. I took Spanish in 9th and 10th grade, and work with several Spanish speakers, but only know a handful of phrases (though I can understand maybe 5% when they are speaking). Then I took about 5 total semesters of college German. I can conjugate "to be". And count to 10. Much of I think 3rd? semester of German was learning a lot of vocabulary related to vacation spas or something weird like that? (I don't remember any of it.)

Recently, in between lying in bed at night staring at the ceiling and worrying about the collapse of the U.S. government, I am actually having a small amount of success doing more art and learning video editing. I am here at my job this morning, wondering if I can sneak in 10 minutes for a daily drawing in a tiny sketchbook I brought to the office in hopes I would convince myself to do that instead of doom scrolling news throughout the day. (No luck there, yet.) :|

I would love to be fluent in Spanish or German, but I don't see that happening because I don't have the discipline or enough burning desire to do that.

I hope everyone is doing ok wherever you are. Happy February? Everything feels weird and unsettled.
posted by Glinn at 7:00 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]

I've recently enjoyed the Radchaai books by Ann Leckie. She engages with language in a lot of interesting ways. Most obvious is that Radchaai (the language) has no gendered pronouns, and for whatever reason everyone defaults to "she/her" pronouns when translating to languages that do use gendered pronouns.

And so since the book is in English, everyone is "she", and you have use subtle clues if you want to know anyone's gender. We know the protagonist is broadly femme, bc someone calls her a "girl" in a gendered language. But most of the characters have no tells. And while I find myself not knowing/not caring for some of them, I also find myself head-canoning the genders of main characters. Which then makes me think about how language shapes my notion of gender, and how if I'd grown up with a more prominent singular they or knowing people who prefer "they" or even"it", I might be able to read this book without a subconscious tendency to force people into genders.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:02 AM on February 3 [9 favorites]

I used to know how to call someone a useless fart in Hausa

I still do, but I used to too

Some of the first 2nd language I learned were cusses in Hausa
posted by ginger.beef at 7:02 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]

My wife and I agreed the other day that polyglots are real life superpower humans. We are not very super.

Just returned from the USVI - nice to spend a few days away feeling secluded from...life. 6 beaches in 5 days and a lot of reef friendly sunscreen really does a number on the old vitamin D intake.
posted by djseafood at 7:02 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

Spring semester starts today! Joy! Terror! Anxiety! Anticipation!
posted by pangolin party at 7:08 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]

As for real languages, my only non-English languages are some years spent learning Latin and ancient Greek. Which was fun and interesting. And they are somewhat useful for science and medicine and law and etymology and occasionally jokes or history, but it does leave me feeling a bit like a proverbial dumb American once the real polyglots start to switch things up. I'm mad my kid's school doesn't really do any non-English languages until long after the prime period for language acquisition.

I think I'll start him on one of the language-learning apps, but I'm a little torn between Spanish, French, and Mandarin. We have a good chunk of speakers of all three in our community. One of his good friends is learning Mandarin, so that would be fun. Or maybe just try each and see which he gravitates toward? I will probably try a bit to keep up with him too, but I know that at my age I am at a serious disadvantage.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:10 AM on February 3

theBigRedKittyPurrs I'll give you a good favorite German word: Backpfeifengesicht, a face badly in need of a smack. It's becoming very handy lately.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:20 AM on February 3 [6 favorites]

I discovered I was (anonymously) the subject of a lively discussion on MetaTalk. I can't even say in English how that makes me feel, let alone in another language.
posted by tommasz at 7:25 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I can't even say in English how that makes me feel, let alone in another language.
posted by tommasz at 7:25 on February 3

It's some kind of emotion, so let's call it "Emotion X" and I support your freedom to feeling it, whatever it is.
posted by otherchaz at 7:37 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]

I guess "conflicted" is the word for how I feel: on one hand, last week we got some amaaaaazing news about one of the kids, which had us over the moon about his future; on the other hand, there is....all this shittery afoot in the land.

So my joy isn't exactly diminished in itself, but I would so like to be able to wallow in it a while without being distracted by the imminent end of the modern, rules- based world. You know?

*sigh* I ought to see if that bread is ready to go in the oven.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:55 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]

One of my goals for this year was to read 12 books in Japanese and 12 books in Spanish; that was, shall we say, overly ambitious. (Though it's barely February, so I have time to catch up, especially if I'm generous in how I count books.)

Read a bad translated paranormal romance in Spanish, then got halfway through Hiromi Kawakami's "Record of a Night Too Brief" and stalled; it's the surrealism combined with the difficulty of the language combined with the fact that I always, always take things too far. Yes, I'm reading a book in Japanese, but am I learning vocabulary? Am I making flash cards? Well, clearly I should be doing that as well! ...And now I'm doing too much and I'm overwhelmed and I skipped three days so I failed.

I would like to maintain my Japanese, if only for tourism purposes, but I would be fine just doing it in a low-key way if not for my horrible tendency to envy the Reddit otakus with flash card hyperfixations and 30,000 words in their vocabularies.
posted by Jeanne at 8:12 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

Not a polyglot by any means, but I always had a knack for languages. Four years of high school Latin and three years of high school and college Spanish made it easy to pick up enough French and Italian to get by. I can usually piece out written Dutch, but German is harder. Now that I have officially retired and have plenty of time on my hands, maybe I'll try to get better at a couple of those. Provided I am not driven back to work by the total collapse of American society in the next month.
posted by briank at 8:25 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I originally wanted to learn 5 languages--Spanish, French, ASL, German and Italian. I tried the first three and I failed at all of them. I comprehend a bit better than I speak, but I literally cannot remember the words to speak them aloud, I blank out, I become stoopid, I can't tell you my name if you ask me it in another language. I thought ASL would get around this issue, but sadly it did not. I wanted to be bilingual, but my brain categorically refuses to do so. I wish I'd started language learning before high school so maybe I could have had the potential to do so, but it feels too late now, trying to learn a language is exhausting, and I have other things I'd rather do now. It is what it is.

As for my life, third week of Hamlet and we're supposed to be off book tonight. I cannot do that. I have been drilling lines every 10-15 minutes this weekend, and I do not nearly have enough down (just the short lines) to not be calling "Line! Line!" all effing night and embarrassing myself. I've had a week to work on lines (we weren't supposed to do it week one because of changing the script) and it's just not enough. I'm slow to memorize and it takes me around a month to get them all, and this is also the most lines I've had ever. I'm not happy about off book being this week, for sure.

I've (a) recorded the lines in an English accent and listen to those, (b) set up an app to read the other person's lines, (c) handwritten the lines out, plus my usual (d) of reading them aloud incessantly. Usually I have to walk around while reading them to memorize, but it's been pouring for days so walking around enough hasn't been an option. If anyone has anything else to suggest I haven't tried, please let me know. I looked at this one Ask Mefi already too.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:34 AM on February 3 [6 favorites]

I really need to work on my Romanian again before we visit family this summer...

My partner is out of town this week, so all of the kid transportation is on me this week. we will probably eat a bunch of fried chicken and watcha bunch of movies though, with her away.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:45 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

Spouse tested negative for covid this morning. Fingers crossed I'm next!
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:47 AM on February 3 [9 favorites]

I've started following a french patissiere on instagram and although her (highly minimalist) recipes usually have an auto translation, it's very bad, so I've been dusting off my French as I try her bakes. I'd like to say I'm doing this as a conscious effort to draw on both my baking skill/knowledge/resources (because her recipes typically give ingredients and 1-3 steps of process, and nothing else) and my language skills but honestly I'm just doing it because the cakes are so pretty and I wants them, my preciouses.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 8:49 AM on February 3 [9 favorites]

I learnt South African Sign Language to teach at a school for the Deaf. Did that for 12 years. Now I'm thinking of learning isiXhosa because, although I now teach at an English language school, many of my students talk isiXhosa as a first language. The other language I speak is Afrikaans, which despite being made famous as a language of the (white) Apartheid rulers, is actually mostly spoken by non white South Africans. Afrikaans, initially a Dutch dialect, was first written by the descendants of Malay slaves. The first translation of the Koran into Afrikaans was written using Arabic script. And something else, Afrikaans beats English into submission when it comes to swearing. "Jou Ma se...."
posted by BrStekker at 8:58 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]

I took German in High School and remember almost none of it, so that's it for me with languages other than English.
Our oldest dog isn't doing well. She whines when we pick her up, and cries when she gets her eye drops. She also barks when she wants something, which is happening more and more often. (Does she need to go out? Is she hungry? Is she thirsty? What else does she want?) She's on pain meds, but they don't seem to be helping, so I suspect the end is near.
I remember when we put our last dog to sleep. I handled it ok, until I couldn't. Not looking forward to this.
posted by Spike Glee at 9:03 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]

I broke my German Duolingo streak not long ago because I needed a break. I was learning mostly because my husband’s Oma often slips into German when she is talking and I just wanted to get the gist. I got to the point where I could pick up a few key words and ask a question of clarification and maybe even formulate a simple response in German. She seemed to appreciate the effort. Or was at least entertained by it. Her dementia has gotten a lot worse so I don’t see her as much. I’ll pick it up again. I mostly want to keep learning so I can throw the odd phrase at my husband once his Oma is gone. Also, my great grandparents spoke some dialect of German, so it’s interesting to get into that headspace language wise.

Right now I’m just white-knuckling it through winter. Spring needs to come soon. I feel like I can deal with *waves hands around everywhere* better without snow on the ground or dealing with freezing rain.
posted by eekernohan at 9:05 AM on February 3 [5 favorites]

Yeah, I had such tiring physical winter rain cold depression all weekend, I barely did anything at all. I do not get the people who just love winter. I wasn't even sick and I couldn't do much.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:11 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I don't think of our lot as polyglot - I know those guys and they are other worldly! But we are very language aware; the kids are bilingual, my wife was brought up speaking German and Chinese at home with her Mum and Dad, Czech on the streets with her school friends and compulsory Russian at school. Her Dutch is good enough to handle a recent shouting match with local builders who unwisely incurred Madame's wrath... hehe.. that'll larn them! Our friends assume she is a native speaker of English. I am and she is forever correcting my spelling and grammar. Somebody should. I'm the family slacker and don't remotely think of myself as a linguist - certainly not compared to them but I function well enough in Dutch and better than that in French and Japanese. If the topic ever comes up, she says she's rubbish at all 6 and would trade them all for genuine mastery of English - I think she means she wishes she was better at telling English jokes. That for the record is my measure of 'can I speak language X' - can you get the audience to crack up laughing with jokes in their language! Haha. Funzies.
posted by dutchrick at 9:16 AM on February 3 [4 favorites]

I still struggle to communicate clearly and unambiguously in my native American English.

Of course, a significant part of that struggle is that many native American English speakers have trouble comprehending their own language.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:20 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I should just go ahead and learn Spanish. I live in Austin, Texas and can speak just enough to tell the grocery delivery person I only speak a little Spanish. Half the time, they speak just about the same amount of English. What I really need to do is to trade Spanish lessons for English lessons.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 10:16 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]

Spike Glee, I'm so sorry, that's a rough time to go through.

I was pleased this week that my half-assed Duolingo efforts (+9 years of public school teaching) has resulted in French good enough that I could understand the French parts of Justin Trudeau's speech on Saturday. It's a bit "easy mode" French since he speaks slowly and clearly (in both languages) but still.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:38 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

What I really need to do is to trade Spanish lessons for English lessons.

One of the nice things about Austin and many other bigger cities is you can do that! There are prob other networks, but this is one that I've heard of (though haven't used personally (yet)).
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:43 AM on February 3

I used to travel internationally for work and had about a 1 year's worth of high school German, French, and Spanish. I used to describe my skills as being like the average pre-schooler. I could ask for things, I could state some things, but it was all in the present tense and mostly about me. I want, I like, I am doing, etc. It served me very well to be able to indicate I knew that their language was pre-eminent, not English. Most places welcomed the effort. My skills in Japanese, Italian, and Portuguese were much less developed, but still appreciated as a gesture. Chinese and Arabic I simply gave up on, I'm afraid to say.
posted by drossdragon at 10:45 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]

My favourite (inconsequential) thing to be angry about right now is Duolingo. Why is their app so bad!? Yet I keep using it because I want to learn Italian and also want to mindlessly play something on my phone sometimes, and don't know of any good alternatives.

But why are they repeating the same word 25 times at me, when I mastered it after the second time? Why are there a million chests to open and XPs and random leaderboards, when what really gives me a sense of satisfaction is just...progressing with the language. Why, in this day and age of tech and algorithms, do they not have a freakin algorithm that adjusts the pace of lessons based on my performance and progress!?

Mamma mia.
posted by EarnestDeer at 10:52 AM on February 3 [3 favorites]

Mark Twain's The Awful German Language is always good for a giggle or two. I don't speak German but I studied Latin for a bit and agree with Twain that declining nouns is the worst.
Spanish is my second language after English. I'm nowhere near fluent but it does help me at work since we have a good-sized Spanish-speaking population in my area.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 10:52 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

But why are they repeating the same word 25 times at me, when I mastered it after the second time?

It's all about spaced repetition. You review the same material a little later in time, then again a bit later than that, etc. It helps reinforce the lesson. Duolingo claims to use this algorithm in their stuff. I preferred the Pimsleur CDs to learn beginning German.
posted by JoeZydeco at 11:00 AM on February 3 [1 favorite]

Data may be my language now, which I'm not sure I'm happy about, but may be stuck with.

I counted all the things in the IRL Get Stuff Done thread for January, here, and made it around 544 things that we did between us. There's a new thread for February, and I have suggested we widen it to share creative and other projects; I can't be the only one who would love to see pictures of what others are doing.
posted by paduasoy at 11:08 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

Does hearing another language make you feel free?

I find it very relaxing to be able to just chill while everyone around is speaking in Finnish
posted by infini at 11:12 AM on February 3

After nearly three years of not getting past Go with Arabic, I feel like there is finally some traction under these boots. All praise is for God!

The current course I'm enrolled in, which emphasizes classical Arabic, does a brilliant job with introducing you to just enough grammar to be able to compose simple sentences. The instructor has aptly likened the process to building with Legos; you can stay very simple and move on to more complex designs when you're ready. Of course what I'm doing now has been made easier by all the seemingly failed attempts that have gone before.

Why yes, of course I need to know both classical Arabic (Qur'an / literary) and conversational Modern Standard Arabic. Fortunately, this instructor is game to teach a class that exact combination, as is a part-time Islamic studies program I'm starting at the end of the month, God willing. Now I just have to get a little braver to start using simple MSA with the many, many Moroccans who live near me :-)
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 11:22 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I listen to a lot of bossa nova on Pandora. I know a smattering of Spanish but no Portuguese. I noticed the word 'saudade' coming up a lot (kind of like how so many Spanish songs have 'corizon'.) I looked it up and saw it's often said to be untranslatable. Funny, but I kind of feel like I know the feeling anyway -- like when I think about Elis Regina's music.
posted by TwoToneRow at 11:52 AM on February 3 [2 favorites]

↪ a useless fart in Hausa
Hausa is it? My SO was born in the heart of Hausa country and grew up with her mother and aunties switching seamlessly among arabic, english, french, hausa and extravagant gesture. I have had occasion to work these phrases into the conversation:

• Giwa a garin wani, zomo-ni: an elephant in another town is a rabbit
• Tusa ba ta hura wuta: farting won’t bring the fire to flame.

I 'had' years of french, and less german and latin in school. Found I couldn't buy a croissant in Paris without pointing. My Dutch is much better [tho still crap] from 6 months on the shop floor in Rotterdam.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:07 PM on February 3 [3 favorites]

pro-tip: don't leave your smoked gouda cheez-its in reach of your cat, unless you like them pre-licked.
posted by supermedusa at 12:08 PM on February 3 [5 favorites]

Tax season has started and day one went well. I took over as the leader now for 3 towns, two of which run on weekdays while I am working. I knew this would be the issue when I accepted the position, and I said so. We had snow on Saturday, we have more snow today and will have more on the next two days in our schedule, Thursday and Saturday again. We are so lucky that the people who take our appointments are making reminder calls the day before so they can reschedule people who don't want to come in this weather.
posted by soelo at 12:11 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]

Poop, my friend who joined the cast has already dropped out. Big poop there.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:19 PM on February 3 [4 favorites]

I noticed the word 'saudade' coming up a lot

an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent someone or something.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:39 PM on February 3 [3 favorites]

I know how to say a single phrase in German with apparently decent pronounciation. When I tell people this, they assume it's how to order a beer or something but it's this:

Ich habe eine Idee: Heute Nacht gehen wir ins Kino. Aber ich habe kein Geld. Kannst du für mich bezahlen?

which in English is:

I have an idea, let's go to the movies tonight. However, I have no money, can you pay for me?

This always amuses German-speaking people.
posted by signal at 1:06 PM on February 3 [4 favorites]

On things that can't be said in English, the Spanish ser and estar are pretty useful, IMO, and the English make vs. do, which are a single word in Spanish, is also pretty cool.
posted by signal at 1:07 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]

Years ago planning a cycling trip across Europe I found a neat little book written for cyclists with key information for all the pre-1990 European area countries. Each chapter had a section of about 100 essential words; numbers, bread, milk, water, camping ground, … and some phrases; my derailleur is broken, I need an inner tube…

The first time I used it was in Geneva. At that point I didn't know of Switzerland’s sharp language divides, or that I was in a French-speaking area, I’d lost a small Allen bolt for a pannier rack so I asked in a bicycle shop, first in French (from my book) – response “completely blank look”, show phrase in book “shrug”, try German phrase (which I was more comfortable with) – the person humphed and turned their back on me and walked away! I was later told by German speakers that some French speaking Swiss still hated the Germans for the war and refused to engage with the language.

The book was useful for the rest of the trip though - I have forgotten it’s title and author, but it was very useful. Travel pre-web you never knew much about the way ahead - which is as it should be.
posted by unearthed at 1:56 PM on February 3 [3 favorites]

On my first trip to Europe in 1992 when I was 21, I was gifted like 3/4 of an old Let's Go guide book. For each country it had a small language section.
I learned the numbers from 1 to 10 and how to say "Sorry, I don't speak [your language], do you speak English or Spanish?" in Turkish, Greek, German, French, Portuguese, and Italian.
A little politeness and meeting people halfway goes a long way.
Have forgotten most of it, alas.

My most memorable language escapades include: a fun conversation with a Serbian soldier in Greek (which neither of us spoke); speaking with a bunch of little kids in their native Greek; clarifying that a young woman who approached me in Prague expected to be paid at the end of the night, in German (which I don't speak) and politely declining; working as a tour guide in a town I didn't know in German; having a complicated conversation in French (which I don't speak) with a shopkeeper in Paris about the woman whose house we were supposed to stay at but she wasn't there; and many long, illuminating conversations with Brazilian taxi-drivers in what might have been Portuguese or maybe Portuñol.
posted by signal at 2:26 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I realize that I am an old and I am Southern, so my tastes my not be your tastes.

But I'm listening to a ton of vintage soul music these last few weeks and what with [gestures around at you know exactly what] it is helping. Stax, soul blues, the whole thing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:47 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]

Backpfeifengesicht

What a perfect example of what makes German such a fun language. It may become my new favorite word, even if I never learn how to pronounce correctly.

having a complicated conversation in French (which I don't speak) with a shopkeeper in Paris about the woman whose house we were supposed to stay at but she wasn't there

I had a very animated conversation with an elderly gentleman in Chartes who was trying to prevent a group of fellow tourists from feeding a meter. Apparently parking was kostenlos at that moment in time and he was NOT HAVING IT to the point that he would physically block the meter when they tried to put money in it. One of the group flagged us down and begged us to help. I convinced them to just go along and sneak back later and put some money in if they did not feel good about it.

I speak tourist level French, which is to say I can say hello and goodbye and understand a menu.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 2:52 PM on February 3 [2 favorites]

I hadn’t expected it to come today, but I was thrilled to receive in the mail Fungos, the Brazilian edition of Fungi, an anthology of fungal horror stories that Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia put out back in 2012. I didn’t make the standard/paperback edition, but I did land a story in the hardback/expanded edition. And I didn’t know for sure if I’d be in this edition, but lo and behold when I looked at the table of contents—me! The book’s beautiful, and my “O êxodo do Grimório Greifswald” is magnificent. As far as I can tell without reading Portuguese, anyway.
posted by cupcakeninja at 3:28 PM on February 3 [4 favorites]

I have a Danish-Swedish-English-German phrase book from 1862 which has some good dialogues. Here's one with a tailor:

- How do you wish to have your waistcoat made?
- Make it after the present fashion. Only let it not come down so low.
- What sort of buttons will you have?
- I will have them covered with the same stuff.
- Very well.
- Make me a pair of trowsers with straps. Make them full wide. I like to be at my ease.
- Never fear. Will you have your trowsers come very high?
- Let them come up so high. I won't have them come down quite as low as they wear them now.
- It is the fashion to wear them very low.
- Yes, but it is a ridiculous fashion.
- They shall be made exactly as you like.
- Remember that I must have this against next Sunday, without fail.
- You shall have it on Sunday morning.
- Mind, for if you disappoint me, this will be the last work you ever do for me.
posted by paduasoy at 4:03 PM on February 3 [5 favorites]

What a perfect example of what makes German such a fun language.

This is an enjoyable sentence.

Also, quick question: where are the political outrage threads with thousands of comments? Did we just decide we weren't doing that? Is everyone really tired? Or what?
posted by DeepSeaHaggis at 4:06 PM on February 3

I was fairly fluent in Spanish while I was in college (a *long* while ago). I went to Japan just after college and learned quite a lot of Japanese in the year I lived there. The interesting thing is that the vowel and consonant sounds are basically the same, so absent context a word might be either language. I managed to keep the language spheres apart while I lived in Japan (except that one day when I met a Japanese-Peruvian student and my brain broke). But in the years since, I hear a word in one of those languages, and I have to really think about what it means, and which language I'm hearing. Now I'm not fluent in either one. I think I need to go all in on relearning one of them, probably Spanish.
posted by sagehen at 4:08 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]

Here's one with a tailor:

A similar one, regarding a damaged pair of trousers, but in Greek:

"Euripides?"
"Yeah, Eumenides?"
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:31 PM on February 3 [4 favorites]

Well, surprisingly I was able to understand that sentence signal wrote. So I guess a little German stuck.

Spike Glee, so sorry about your dog friend.
posted by Glinn at 7:12 PM on February 3

One of my best friends in high school, who came to the US from Ukraine as a tween, taught me the Cyrillic alphabet and a handful of truly random Russian words to pass the time in chemistry class. That got me interested enough to take two years of college Russian. Now I find myself in a truly weird place where I can sound out most things from a written page of Russian, because it’s straightforwardly phonetic in a way that English is not, but my vocabulary and grammar are so rusty and limited that I won’t actually understand most of what I’m saying.

I work with Spanish interpreters a lot to speak to patients in my day job. I still can’t understand a lot of full sentences or conversations at high speed, but I have learned some of the names for the equipment I ask about all the time; bastón for cane is one that immediately comes to mind.
posted by ActionPopulated at 7:33 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]

Ooh, there's this fun book I have that's a collection of words in other languages for which there is no direct English translation - but for which there SHOULD be, because the concepts are awesome. It's called They Have A Word For It, and the author makes the case that each of these words is a window into a whole new way of thinking about the world - or, at least, is just damn useful.

The review I linked to has a couple of good examples, but one of my own favorites is (not certain on the spelling) "Fizzelgig". I think it's Yiddish, and it is that flustered state you get into when someone's trying to micromanage you.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:39 PM on February 3 [4 favorites]

My mother's native tongue was Welsh, but despite being married for over 60 years my father never picked up more than a couple of words. I think she was trying to forget her heritage when they married and moved to London, and she never spoke it in the home. It's one of my regrets that I didn't have the chance to absorb it when young. But living with her and visiting relatives means that the language sort of makes sense, and I apparently have decent enough pronunciation. Getting to grips with learning is one of my when-I-retire projects.
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 8:02 PM on February 3 [1 favorite]

"Fizzelgig". I think it's Yiddish, and it is that flustered state you get into when someone's trying to micromanage you.

...And it just makes you want to scream?
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:33 PM on February 3

It always makes me laugh, and perhaps despair a little bit, when the AI-bros talk about language translation as though AI has solved the problem. Yeah, Google Translate is a true marvel if you need to get by, but I firmly believe people need to keep learning other languages, and we need some people to learn them to a high level and master the skills of mediating between languages. (Yes I have a dog in this race because I make my living translating things...)

I know French very well, speak reasonable German and have done four years of Russian classes which adds up to a moderate amount of Russian. Duolingo helped me to get by pretty well on a recent trip to Italy. Spanish is a big gap, though I'm unlikely to spend significant time anywhere Spanish-speaking soon.
posted by altolinguistic at 12:43 AM on February 4 [3 favorites]

Our old house is showing it's age, leaking like a sieve, from above and below ( the Rhine is just outside the front door), creaks like a Spanish galleon in a storm, draughty enough to fly a feather from the front door to the attic in a heartbeat - it's nearly 300 hundred years old, a youngster compared to the next door neighbour, his was built in 1642. I love our place even so. It's huge, ramshackle (to be polite) and comfortable. Let's a soul breathe. There's space for everyone and everything. Even me. I bagged the attic when we moved in. It's vast. The high point of the precipitously steep roof and so of the ceiling is nearly 6 metres. 12 metres long, 7 wide. No one else wanted it. The floor was a mess. Huge thick old pine boards eaten by woodworm. Holes in the roof (the first winter I used to amuse myself watching my breath spiral slowly upwards and disappear thru a hole thru which the moon shone brightly). No heating. We took it in turns to bag a room for ourselves. I went last, happy that they were all happy to have claimed a great place for themselves. I never regretted the outcome. Now it groans under the weight of a gazillion books, and even more cds and lps ( I stopped counting them years ago and shifted to linear measures - it was 120 metres of music at one point, no idea now). I worked on it for years, loved every minute of it. A wonderful friend, whom I met pretty much on the street, actually sitting on a bench I'd placed on the pavement outside by our front door, moved in for 4 months while he was sorting his life out, summoned a few friends from Poland who also moved in and together we worked on the house. The amount of vodka I shifted nightly was one reason I quit drinking years and years ago. He loved the music too and decided the acoustics weren't good enough up there in the attic. He relaid the floor three times after insulating and planking out the huge roof to get it right. Memories, memories, memories.

I bought it on a 125% mortgage 30 years ago. People said I was mad. I wasn't fussed in the least. I fixed the interest rate for 15 years, knew I could pay the interest and was happy to give the keys back to the bank after I'd had my years in the house.... it gives me pleasure every day. I'm parked downstairs now, gawking up at the ceiling beams, 300 years old, and showing it, great splits and cracks, unchanged in the last 3 decades,18 inches wide at a guess, 10 inches deep, 24 foot long, Roman numerals on the side. Their purpose? To make it easier to recognise whose they were and in what order to place them after they'd been fished out of the Rhine by the front door. Yes, river delivery, float them down the Rhine from the forests upstream (all of which have long since disappeared).

The house on the other side of us is even more interesting. Actually, it is not officially a house at all but an alley way in which homeless folks lived in the 18th century. A dozen doors down from us is an old refuge which has been feeding the poor and welcoming the homeless for over a 1,000 years - incredible but true ( less uplifting is the 16th century orphanage round the corner which housed orphans collected from all over the country and put the to work in the local textile industry where there was a labour shortage). But I'm rambling now, much like the house itself and next door's will have to wait until the spirits move me next!
posted by dutchrick at 2:09 AM on February 4 [9 favorites]

p.s. what's this got to do with language? Haha. I was musing on a Dutch word and wondering if our house was gezellig and whether a house could be gezellig. Got me thinking...
posted by dutchrick at 2:11 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]

...having a complicated conversation in French (which I don't speak)...

I learned a bit of French as a kid, and then studied German in 4th-6th grades, and high school. During college I visited a friend in Paris, including a big house party of other students who she knew. None of them spoke much English and I had basically no French -- but I was told more than once that year that my drunken German was pretty good, and seemed to carry me through.

Not sure if that would make my German teachers proud or sad.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:35 AM on February 4 [3 favorites]

Metafilter friends! My covid test was negative this morning! Still going to take a while to completely recover (this has been exhausting) but I am so excited and happy even though I have a ton of stuff to do!
posted by gentlyepigrams at 9:18 AM on February 4 [12 favorites]

Once again, I posted online that we need another actor. Happily, a theater friend expressed interest. Fingers crossed!

I also finished my sweater, which I'm quite happy with. Gonna need to make a skirt to match it since I still have more yarn about.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:35 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]

I am currently free of two more rotten teeth, and the pain of them; the dentist seemed amused when I took pictures with my finger beside them to show size. Getting old bad teeth pulled is my literal way of getting rid of a bad past, and planning something nice for that space. It won't matter what language I mumble in for the next few days, so I'll just wear a mask and smize as much as possible.
EmpressCallipygos, I have that same book-- it's delightful!
posted by winesong at 10:46 AM on February 4 [6 favorites]

I am currently free of two more rotten teeth ... planning something nice for that space.

Like, a kid's playhouse? A raised vegetable bed? Extra storage? Stealth laser installation?
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:08 AM on February 4 [2 favorites]

signal: I learned the numbers from 1 to 10 and how to say "Sorry, I don't speak [your language], do you speak English or Spanish?" in Turkish, Greek, German, French, Portuguese, and Italian.

In my sillier years, I learned how to count from 1 to 10 in Turkish from a know-it-all-friend. I would casually mention this accomplishment from time to time. Then someone I'd just met, upon hearing my claim, said politely, "So do it!". He was Turkish. Whatever I'd been taught wasn't Turkish. It was utter gibberish. I felt a total clot.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 12:05 PM on February 4 [4 favorites]

Weird thing: I went to book a place to stay on Hotels.com for this summer and there was hardly anything available in Romania and no aparthotels and very few locally owned places. I wondered if we were coming on a festival weekend, but the prices weren't higher. I checked on Booking.com and there were 10x as many choices.

I wonder if Hotels.com changed their terms or something and pissed people off, locally, or maybe even on a wider level.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:13 PM on February 4

My teens think I can speak 5 languages. But only 1 of them fluently.

My Mexican Spanish is ok so I am told. Guess I have some funny slang. The French haaaate my accent but seem to understand me just fine when I get bitchy with them right back lol. The Italians are super generous about my terrible grammar and too polite forms for some of the regions of Italy. The Japanese long ago stopped telling me my Japanese was good, and eventually started asking if one of my parents was Japanese - but I cannot write in Japanese at all, and hardly know any kanji.

None of these are flexes, I know enough of these various languages to know how much I still suck at them, but maybe my brain just knows how to retain language patterns at this point, and I’m excellent at picking up context clues.
posted by edithkeeler at 2:46 PM on February 4 [2 favorites]

I had to drive home from work and I'm surprised I survived. Even the car was warning me of low visibility and I'm surprised I didn't hydroplane off the freeway. It was either "risk giant puddles" or "drive 35-40 mph in the middle lane and have people pissed at me." GEE, WOULDN'T IT BE NICE TO BE ABLE TO WORK FROM HOME ON A DAY LIKE THIS?!?!?

When I finally got home, I called the director, said how bad it was, and asked to do rehearsal on Zoom. God bless, he agreed and we phone tree'd people. One didn't answer and uh...well, hope she got the message.

Look, I even MADE PHONE CALLS TODAY over this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:17 PM on February 4 [3 favorites]

Yesterday in the car SO and I wrote a letter: SO is German-speaking the letter was German. And this is the thing with German - every sentence is a puzzle-box. For it to make sense at the end it has to do certain things at the beginning, yet those things at the beginning don't necessarily define what will happen at the end. hrmmm. The only consolation is watching/listening to someone you know is "smart" write a letter - and the fact that they read it three times, each time fixing grammar.

Mark Twain was right.

And then on the other hand, Rilke: (who is - for the above cited reason- to a degree untranslatable )
posted by From Bklyn at 1:00 AM on February 5 [4 favorites]

I was supposed to get a day off but my manager texted me at 3 pm to ask if I could go to the hospital and sit with one of the guys I take care of on the weekends. Jimmy said he was having thoughts of hurting himself.

Mobile crisis brought him here. They are trying to find him a bed in a psychiatric facility but nobody who takes his insurance has anything available so he's been on a bed in the hallway by the ER since 10:30 this morning. They can't put him in a room without admitting him and they won't admit him.

He is really big and they don't have gowns that fit him so he's nude under a blanket and feeling very uncomfortable. He had diarrhea earlier and it took too long to get him to a toilet so he soiled all his clothes.

Security dragged someone by and locked her in a room within earshot and she's been screaming ever since.

His nurse got our hopes up about a facility with an opening but then they said no because he uses a CPAP. We could be here a while.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 11:30 PM on February 5 [2 favorites]

Mr. Yuck, you do the work of the angels. Thank you for doing it and thank you for telling us about it. You help me, a stranger a thousand miles away, to keep things in perspective, to help keep me honest and to count my blessings - one of which is you.
posted by dutchrick at 4:38 AM on February 6 [2 favorites]

I just ran across this great video of Liz Phair doing Exile in Guyville live last November. You can hear the audience singing along to every song.
posted by Catblack at 6:55 AM on February 6 [1 favorite]

(Oh I see it's a video from 2023... I think I woke up this morning in last year, and for good reason.)
posted by Catblack at 7:05 AM on February 6

Recruiters who dismiss job applicants for being "overqualified" are hereby ordered to stuff their heads in a bucket of tofu.

The Empress has spoken.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:46 PM on February 6 [2 favorites]

I've been binge reading The Wandering Inn for a bit over two months now, after I got back into LitRPG with Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's pretty much taken over the rest of my entertainment, and I've read about 50,000 pages in that time. It sounds ludicrous, and rightly so.
posted by Marticus at 1:59 PM on February 6

I just finished Longbourn and oh my goodness, what a lovely, happy, perfect ending. I needed something a touch unrealistic.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 2:34 PM on February 6

I promise I won't give the update every thirty days forever, but I'm now three months without drinking. So that's a good thing.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 5:58 AM on February 7 [8 favorites]

Hey DOT, I remember a couple three four years ago you started a dry January thread on Metatalk. I'm glad you update.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 6:02 PM on February 7

The guy I spent a night with at the hospital has been relocated to a substandard facility. Another guy from the house is visiting family. I am alone with Gary.

He didn't take his meds this morning or afternoon or evening so he's pretty unresponsive and he's hitting himself in the head. I can't find the remote for the Roku so I can't put on The Wizard of Oz.

He was institutionalized in 1968, when he was 14. He was in those places until 1994. He was beaten, that much anyone can tell. He is very possessive about food and his coloring books that he likes to flip through.

I tried music tonight. There's nothing in his file about that. Shostakovich calmed him down. The quartets.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:59 PM on February 7 [3 favorites]

I’m on a steroid burst due to an upper respiratory infection causing an asthma flare-up, which means I needed to temporarily stop my woman-going-through-the-change medication for a few days since the combination has a history of not-playing-nice together in some people.

And my executive functioning, which was pretty damn good before starting the change and manageable with the medication, just stuttered to a halt, resulting in spouse taking over in the cooking of a meal we are taking to share with his family tomorrow. On the upside, I recognized what was going on really quickly and announced that I needed to step back before I started screaming like the inner banshee that is me.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 1:18 PM on February 8