What language(s) do you speak.

[Stegotyranno420]

Lithuanian is conservative, but that is mainly by grammar. From my experience there are plenty of loanwords from Latin(which also have native equivalents). Of course I dont speak it, just saying things I heard and read.
Due to learning Sanskrit, the notion of case systems (nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, ablative, instrumental, dative, locative, ) has become normal for me, despite my first 2 languages either lacking completely or onky having a small number of cases. But Lithuanian has nearly all mentioned, it is more conservative than even Latin and Greek.
I recommend listening to music in that language and understanding the structure of the words, while also doing basic research about the pronouns, grammar, etc. It would give you a nice foundation to pursue the language further, then you can move towards small talk, then understanding complex sentences. Thats how I learned German.

[The Spinosaurus]

Hey, been a while since I messaged on this topic, but wanted to update my language list:

Mandarin Chinese - native speaking, literacy, understanding, and writing
    Technically, I speak a dialect of Mandarin known as Northeastern Chinese, or 东北话, which is functionally Mandarin but largely with different vocabulary, and I have a moderately strong Northeastern accent when I speak Mandarin, so it's similar to just one language.

English - native speaking, literacy, understanding, and writing
    My accent is General American, with some Southern/Texan vowel shifts

French - intermediate understanding, literacy, conversational speaking, mediocre writing
    I've been learning since I last replied, so I'm steadily getting better with learning the grammar and vocabulary. My main problem is just that the grammar doesn't always come naturally, like for example the negative case of verbs in French is adding "ne _verb_ pas" or just "_verb_ pas" in informal spoken French, but because of my Chinese background, which often adds "不" for the negative verb, I often default to "ne _verb_", which is the exact opposite of what I should be doing.

Spanish - beginner to intermediate understanding and literacy, beginner speaking and writing
   My Spanish has gotten out of practice since I last replied, but my understanding has persisted because of the Latin and French connections. I'm now planning on re-learning a lot of the material I forgot, as well as specific dialects. I plan on getting to know Mexican Spanish the best, but still being able to interchange between the Iberian Penninsula and Latin America.

ASL(American Sign Language) - moderate vocabulary and signing, bad expressions and understanding
   ASL as a language is very different in the medium of expressing words, which means it's difficult for me to pass as a native speaker, and I also don't have any friends to practice with, so it currently survives in my brain largely as a party trick.

Latin - intermediate reading, beginner writing
   Latin, like Coptic, Sanskrit, Seal Script, or Qur'anic Arabic, is mostly used in deciphering ancient texts, and mostly religious ones at that. Because of this, I can read inscriptions in museums, but I don't usually read or write, since my favorite areas in history are Chinese at any time or Scandinavian from the neolithic period to right before the end of the viking age(largely because the Christianization and lack of proper sources is really fun to me), so I don't interact with it enough. Now, my opinion on it has changed, and I'd like to learn some more, but it's not high on my list.

Speaking of, we've now reached the end of my list of known languages, since my understanding of other languages is only in random words. So, I will share the languages I will likely learn next.

1. Cantonese - this is a fairly easy switch, not like learning an entirely new system of everything, so I will do this at some point soon.
2. Tagalog
3. Darija(Moroccon Arabic/North African Arabic) - there are different dialects of Darija depending on the country, but I will likely learn Moroccon Darija because I hope to spend some time living there
4. Pali - @Stegotyranno420 I hope you can speak to how easy or difficult this is, but I hope to learn Pali, which will help me get a grasp of Devanagari script and potentially use it to learn how to interchange between some of the various Indo- Aryan languages. I don't know how easy this will be depending on the language.
5. Manchurian - This is the Indigenous Chinese ethnic group that's closest to where my family from, and we're some percentage Manchurian and Mongolian, so I'd like to learn this language, since it's dying out and would be connected to my heritage.
6. Korean - I've learned some vocab as well as a bit of the alphabet, but only through growing up around many Koreans in China, so I'll have to work harder on this.
7. Japanese
8. Manx - I hear it's coming back, and I have some Manx ancestors, so similar to Manchurian it'd be a nice experience
9. Some Bantu language, probably Xhosa - I learned some of the pronunciation and grammar when I learned the National Anthem of South Africa, which I still  consider one of the catchiest national anthems I've heard.
10. Swedish
11. Who knows, the world's the limit!

I know this isn't entirely dinosaur-related, but I was surprised by how captivated I became with linguistics, so I wanted to elaborate a bit. just to make this dinosaur-related, I can't wait for my Mesozoic Life Spinosaurus, which I bought around the last time I replied, since it shipped recently!

alr, signing out, have a nice day! :3

[Stegotyranno420]

Wow, you are even more of a polyglot than I am haha. Very impressive, especially for being in so many different groups, I am still stuck onky in IE languages, Arabic was too hard.

As per Pali, the grammar is far more simple than Sanskrit. Pali is a prakrt and will have some words similar to modern IA languages due to commkn sound shifts.
Given you have Chinese, English, French in your linguistic resume, languages that are not as case oriented, and spanish with a Conjugation level comparable with Pali, altough Pali might be easier.

In short, Pali will be much easier than Sanskrit.


Btw what is your method of learning so many languages? How long have you been learning?  Im struggling to balance Farsi, Sanskrit, Deutsche, and Spanish here 

Anyways, it's great to see you back as well

[The Spinosaurus]

Yeah it's great to be back. I've always lurked around but never replied to anything, but maybe that'll change now!

Well, I'm always disappointed by how many European languages I know compared to the non-Euro languages, but I'm glad that Pali is easier than Sanskrit, but it means I'm one step away from reading the Vedas in their original language:,(.  /hj

For me, I just learn the basic grammar and vocab for daily life for living languages, since that will be the first steps to basic conversational fluency. For literacy and whatnot, I suggest auditory media in a language you're not used to with subtitles in the language you're trying to learn, because your mind seems to catch on to the only part it can understand. Balancing languages is different. I think it might be better to keep your active languages at a minimum, but it depends on the similarity of languages.

[Stegotyranno420]

Vedic is very hard, because it appears inconsistent.

Many of the words and sounds are jumbled up.
-for example, śudh-tas (purified) becomes śuddhaH (H representing visvarga)
word order is extremely flexible.
-sanskrit is usually SOV, but "aśvānviraH apaśyat" means "The man saw the horse"
Conjugations and declensions are mixed.
-i see alot of transliterations where the nominative masculine ending for -a stems is -o (like pali actually) when it should be -aH/-as
they right it for example "aśvo" but it should be "aśvas"
And there are so many synonyms
-viras, manušyas, martas, nar, all mean man, striy, gna, jani, nari, all mean woman, so on
you can learn so much vocab and still be stumped.


Things like this make me doubt the oral preservation of the vedas, or atleast the idea ot is 100 the same. For 2000+ years without writing and prakrt influences, there must be some changes, which could ezplain the word-joining. Also, later mandalas are from the Magadha area(Northeast) as opposed to Rgvedic Punjab(Northwest). Pali is also from the east.
Now Im not saying for sure modern vedic reciting is completely deviant or influenced by pali, but rather I just use this of an example to show its not 100% accurate either.
As i read rhe vedas, i will provide more examples.

Even for me, who has experience in Sanskrit, its difficult.
While I would love to read Vedas, Vedic Sanskrit is too inconsistent for me at this point.

To be honest, I also seek to create a "standardized" version of sanskrit or a common Aryan language, clear of the inconsistencies that affected the literature. Even more archaic than Vedic, even more structural than Paninis grammar.More in tie to its European roots. Its more of a personal quest to be closer to the Aryans of prehistory.
Nonetheless, I still hope to be able to read literature.
Interestingly, I do better at writing than reading.
I made poems in German, Farsi, and Sanskrit.

[The Spinosaurus]

So cool! Care to share some? When I write Chinese poetry in the classical style, I sometimes get frustrated with some of the stricter limitations on how the poetry can be written, or sometimes I end up with hybrid-chinglish-pidgin poetry.

It's pretty funny how interested I am in dead languages now when I used to be so adamantly against them. I'd love to learn more about reconstructed languages, like Proto-Germanic, or some of the Sino-Tibetan languages.

Do you usually stick to linguistics, or do you dabble in phonology, etymology, even the culture and history of the ethnic groups the languages belong to?

[Stegotyranno420]

So cool! Care to share some? When I write Chinese poetry in the classical style, I sometimes get frustrated with some of the stricter limitations on how the poetry can be written, or sometimes I end up with hybrid-chinglish-pidgin poetry.

It's pretty funny how interested I am in dead languages now when I used to be so adamantly against them. I'd love to learn more about reconstructed languages, like Proto-Germanic, or some of the Sino-Tibetan languages.

Do you usually stick to linguistics, or do you dabble in phonology, etymology, even the culture and history of the ethnic groups the languages belong to?

I can send some by PM, send me a message if interested.
I have no problems with dead languages, it is up to us, children of today, to keep them for children of the future? How hard would understanding the common Aryan root of Europeans, Iranians and Indics be if we never preserved Sanskrt, Latin and Greek? Yes maybe we could have found out later, but the problem is the lack of preservation would hinder our scientific progress(just like in paleo).
As per learning proto-languages? Im kind of against. They are nor genuine, and should only be treated as guides and tools.
The only Proto Languages that make sense to learn is the oldest possible member of a large group (like PIE) as it is the least discrimating and the most ancient too.
I learn Sanskrit so I can pass on this Aryan tradition onto my future children. Do you know how much of a flex it is to have your kids be the only native speakers of an ancient language. This will be the language used in the household, as it is rare and holds weight in tradition. Of course they must learn english, punjabi, etc to function in the outside world, but teaching them a complex language at an early age will help them aquire multiple langauges easier.

Im gonna do an experiment and make one kid learn a bucnh of languages young and the other learn normal amount (2/3) but learn computer languages young     
and to answer your last part, absolutely 

Now heres a bit of a discussion starter, and its very vague too but who cares lol-
what do you think happens to languages(and culture/religion) in general when a species becomes spacefaring and begins to become older than 1million years?
Many people will say language will continue to chabge dramatically, probably even more extreme, but I am of the opinion when a civilization reaches a point of spacefaring, strong, unified and strict language and culture is needed to unify the civilization and the "average" culture of the society begins to fossilize. Or atleast the "lingua franca"
At least thats the plan i have for my novel.

It interests me as we obviously dont have any refferences.

[brontosauruschuck]

tlhIngan Hol boyughbe'! baQa'!

[The Spinosaurus]

I think our best references are the silk roads or colonization and the heights of the various empires that formed. Language will always change, no matter how much governing bodies like Academie Francaise wishes it not so. During those periods, there were various lingua francas in different regions, like Mediterranean lingua franca in the west during the silk roads, or English throughout the British Empire. My guess is that a lingua franca will emerge, likely English or the language of the nation that develops importance the fastest, and most languages will become influenced by it. Some languages will die out, likely smaller ones like Manchurian or other ones on their last legs due to the government restrictions currently. Culture, most certainly won't stay stagnant because as we see all around us, people are wildly different and therefore those differences will only be exacerbated in groups, leading to culture. I also doubt space travel will happen too soon, so it will depend on the state of the world and its culture to adapt.