Basically, by age 50, no language you learned in high school remains, and if in college, a few words. UNLESS you actually majored in it; then you retain more. But the only people it really sticks to have lived in an immersive environment.
I may have said this before here, but one thing that surprised me was that situations that happened in German I found hard to translate later on when relating them to American friends, because the attitudes and assumptions of the people in those situations were so bound up in the Germanness of the whole thing. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone, but I feel like that must be a thing.
I have this potentially phantom memory that there is an album out there of Pachelbel's Canon in D with each track as if it had been written by some other famous composer: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Copeland.
I'm referring to such constructions as ne [verb] pas, ne [verb] que, ne [verb] jamais, etc.
In Spanish, the negative precedes the verb:
No lo quiero.
In Anglo-Saxon languages, the negative follows the (helping) verb:
I do not like that.
Doch das Messer, sieht man nicht.
So do the two dif...
But "je ne sais rien" is the same as "no sé nada", so it is not as different as he claims. The extra pas when you don't need another negative word is the weird thing.
> English summary: in old French, ne was used alone, and it still can sometimes. Quickly additional words were used to emphasize. Nowadays those additional words often must be used. While they hadn't a negative meaning at the start, they acquired one and may now be used in some contexts without ne in their negative meaning.
In Spanish, you do not reduce anything. So no is strong enough. In French, stuff gets really reduced, so they need a stressed word to make sure you hear the non.
In the oldest time, you could have the "strong" form non, hence nonobstant, nonchalant, non-recevoir... But the most common form of the negation was in fact ne alone. Eventually emphatic elements were added, which varied depending on context: Je ne mange mie ("I don't eat a crumb"), je ne vois go...
ceci and cela is pretty much all you get: cette chose ci, cette chose là.
Oh, you need to know something important.
There are also three grades of here/there.
esto aquí; eso ahí; aquello allí.
There are also acá and allá forms for less precise things, more areas than points.
There is no 2nd-person version with -á though.
ahí is pronounced the same as English aye. So "por ahí" means "out there", but not like "por allá" which is way further away.
"Ven para acá" means "Come over (by, around, near) here". "Ven aquí" is more precise, demanding you come to this very point.
"más allá" means "beyond".
Or further away.
The point is that you have three grades: yo/cerca de mí/aquí/esto, tú/cerca de ti/ahí/eso, otra persona/cerca de él/allí/aquello. It all fits together.
Yes, translation is always paraphrasing. It takes me much, much longer to read something in Spanish to someone if I have to pronounce it aloud in English than it takes me to read and understand it, spoken or not, without translation.
My piano teacher in college once said that virtually almost every chord sounds better slightly broken. That may be why so many things end with big arpeggios.
I have no choice a lot of times: I can't hit a 10th.
@RegDwigнt - do you happen to have a link to the SE "style guide" by any chance? A new user asked for it and if you know it, it will save me a lot of searching. Thanks.
@ABeautifulMind depression is a disease that is characterised as being in a depressive state for long periods of time, typically for no easily explicable reason. It can be fatal.
@MattE.Эллен On some days I feel OK, but on other days I feel extremely tired, confused, anxious, guilty and hopeless. This is apart from my OCD and PTSD. Does that sound like depression to you?
Say you're meditating with vakra shanda yoga, and that you marketing behavior analyst/guru advised a meditation technique that blabla blabla and put ten bottles of energy drink on your desk, 7 obviously empty
Yeah looking straight at where the snow is coming from is a strangle mind bending experience, all these white things just appearing so slowly out of slight less white.
I think one undeniable aspect of American exceptionalism is that we have the worst natural disasters. Hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, maybe floods. We have earthquakes galore but those aren't the worst of the world.
I'm referring to such constructions as ne [verb] pas, ne [verb] que, ne [verb] jamais, etc.
In Spanish, the negative precedes the verb:
No lo quiero.
In Anglo-Saxon languages, the negative follows the (helping) verb:
I do not like that.
Doch das Messer, sieht man nicht.
So do the two dif...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…