Papa Universe: Languages

Papa Universe 07.20.17	Let's see what kind of a diverse bunch are you...
Papa Universe 07.20.17	Next thread will probably be about your countries of origin...
butcherboy 07.20.17	Fluently: Russian, Turkish, English, French, Bulgarian (which is mostly a twist of Russian and Turkish).. Passably: Spanish, Italian, a constipation of Eastern European and Baltic countries.. Learning: Old Japanese, only for its incredible poetic qualities..
Pajolero 07.20.17	Fluent in Russian and English, somewhat fluent-ish in French. Can ask for directions in Spanish.
DinosaurJones 07.20.17	I can speak English. ...that's it. I can speak a miniscule amount of French. 'MURICA.
Papa Universe 07.20.17	You lads ain't telling me what albums you'd like to get featured with so I just sort of ventured into your 5s and picked some random crap...
DinosaurJones 07.20.17	No problem with that. Discovery is a stone cold classic. One of the first albums I bought, still absolutely adore it, over 15 years later.
Pajolero 07.20.17	Eye, people is probably in my top 3 fav albums of all time so it's all good dude
butcherboy 07.20.17	Blank generation is always the perfect pick for me.. just the best punk album
Papa Universe 07.20.17	bullseye
Pajolero 07.20.17	Also, shoutout to my fellow ruskies on sput
Papa Universe 07.20.17	Why are there so many Russians on here?
butcherboy 07.20.17	на брудершафт!!
Papa Universe 07.20.17	It seems like low-running servers and a shitty layout attracts them...
Winesburgohio 07.20.17	goddamn polyglots English and I read Espanol fluently, trying to comprehend the rapid-fire pace of spoken is another thing... trying to learn Te Reo Maori because tbh it's shameful that I don't know it even conversationally, but struggling. time to persevere!!!
butcherboy 07.20.17	the brutalist elements of the site do remind me of my family's first apartment.. Wine, i learned 'kitchen' Spanish by dating a girl from Cuba, and then one from Belize.. best way to learn, tutors who you can make out with..
Archelirion 07.20.17	I only speak English fluently, but can get by in French, German and Italian, and can do basic things (greetings, order a coffee, petty conversational stuff) in Finnish and Japanese.
Pajolero 07.20.17	Yeah, like that shitty old soviet furniture that every other family had (and some still do) Looks afwul, smells even worse, but gets the job done - sputnik in a nutshell
Winesburgohio 07.20.17	haha omg, i have a copy of "The New York Trilogy" and "Tropic of Cancer" in portuguese that my ex lent me in the hopes i'd pick up the language bc of it's comparitive similarities to Spanish neither the relationship nor the language-learning was successful
Winesburgohio 07.20.17	i'm reading cancer ward and u russian comrades: i am so sorry
Greem 07.20.17	zdarova vsem)
butcherboy 07.20.17	I can only imagine how tough it is to translate Henry miller's drunken stream of consciousness.. can you imagine translating Burroughs' Naked Lunch, fuck!! though I would make an argument that Paul Auster is best read in English.. in Brooklynite English.. haha
Winesburgohio 07.20.17	i hope so, don't want to miss out on it! DUDE Naked Lunch is one of my favourites ever... I guess they'd just substitute the relevant slang and colloquialisms? it would make it a historical and sociological, as well as linguistic task, more so than most translation... i'm intrigued
Archelirion 07.20.17	Similarly, I can imagine translating much of Irvine Welsh's work would be a nightmare, if not impossible to truly recreate
butcherboy 07.20.17	Arch, oh god, that would be a nightmare.. I think Wine is right, footnotes would be the best way, but you still end up losing both flow and ingenuity along the way.. also, Wine, I read naked lunch in English when I was eighteen and have been waiting for an opportunity to call a tenner a sawski since without sounding like a dolt..
Winesburgohio 07.20.17	jesus!!! i think true recreation would be impossible, but every culture has dialects associated with "lower" classes, and different ways of speaking the language, that you could employ i guess???
Zig 07.20.17	Fluent in Portuguese and English. Meh in Spanish and Italian. Know some basic stuff in German and French. Can read some Latin. Burroughs' Naked Lunch is one of the best stuff I've ever read. Love the Beat Generation.
butcherboy 07.20.17	russian is incredibly heavy on slang, i love it for that.. its slang also changes radically from one class to another, my brother and I used to have conversations that my mother couldn't understand at all..
Winesburgohio 07.20.17	put it on him for a sawski
owen 07.20.17	I once read the first chapter of the Dutch Naked Lunch translation out of curiosity, shit was awful. conclusion: please don't translate Burroughs 1st Dutch 2nd English 3rd Italian (still learning though) We had to learn German and French in middle school, but I forgot 90% of those languages
Pajolero 07.20.17	I strongly believe that literature (and especially poetry) does not translate, which is kinda funny coming from a professional translator.
Pajolero 07.20.17	OP you need to update that list stat
Papa Universe 07.20.17	William Gibson is basically untranslatable, as well as Boris Vian and the Strugatskys
Pajolero 07.20.17	Yeah there's no shortage of examples of stuff that just cannot be adequately represented in a different language.
Papa Universe 07.20.17	Like a dictionary
Pajolero 07.20.17	A true classic
butcherboy 07.20.17	I agree on the poetry bit entirely.. I also think some languages interact with others far better.. As an example, Erich Maria Remarque, who writes subtle tragedy so beautifully.. his prose is frail and poignant at the same time, and I've read phenomenal Russian translations of it where it felt just as sensuous and affecting, but the English ones fell flat.. generations of translators and socio-historical understanding play into it too.. in the end though, reading in the original language cannot be beaten.
Pajolero 07.20.17	"reading in the original language cannot be beaten." Amen to that
Papa Universe 07.20.17	I can't remember who was it, whether Anton Chekhov or Dostojevskij or someone else, but some big ol' Russian writer was very keen on translating Shakespeare and loved adding his own ideas into it. Some tiny details, like that Othello kills Desdemona not with a knife, but with a poison. Details like that...
butcherboy 07.20.17	yea, the Russian version of Othello I watched on stage when I was a kid had poison in it, so I guess that translation had seeped into the culture..
Dewinged 07.20.17	Eeetooo... Fluent: Spanish, English, Japanese. Can get laid with:Italian
AsleepInTheBack 07.20.17	Damn, theres all you talented fuckers and I can barely speak English
bloc 07.20.17	English, Gujrati, Hindi
Artuma 07.20.17	fluent: finnish, english passable: swedish used to be sort of passable but not anymore: french
starboystargirl 07.20.17	english french fluent in both
macman76 07.20.17	Fluent: English, Spanish Computer fluent: R, Matlab Computer ehh: python
SandwichBubble 07.20.17	Fluent in English and Malayalam (look it up) Know the French alphabet
hal1ax 07.20.17	i can understand sylvester stallone, but i cannot speak it also i'm at the point where i can hold a conversation with the Mexican people at my work for more than 10 seconds without them laughing at me hysterically
Relinquished 07.20.17	fluent: english, italian, swedish semi-fluent in: spanish confident in conversations in: german, french decent reading comprehension in: russian thank Odin for dictionaries and google
starboystargirl 07.20.17	Great album choice for me. AATG is near perfect. And I'm fluent in both languages.
TheGreatQ 07.20.17	Fluent: English Can read: Spanish Can kinda sorta make out when written: French and Italian
butcherboy 07.20.17	@Unique - just noticed this, what the hell do you mean whatever Old Japanese means? It's an old glyph form of Japanese, it has beautifully compounded translations where stringing two words together can start symbolizing whole notions and feelings. beautiful and made for poetry..
Papa Universe 07.20.17	As you say, darling. Sounds the same to my pleb ears.
owen 07.20.17	glorious nippon glyphs folded over a thousand times
AlexKzillion 07.20.17	Fluent: English I can read/write Latin well enough to get an A in Latin II lol
yanquiuxo 07.20.17	Fluent: Italian (my lenguage), my city's dialect (Carrara) Can read, write and speak decently: English Learned a little of: Spanish
bloc 07.20.17	Why do I get the shitty album. Sounds like racism to me!!!
Papa Universe 07.20.17	Cause you ain't got any rating, so I can't pick one from your 5s.
bloc 07.20.17	Lol touche
yanquiuxo 07.20.17	''slightly less drunk, but slightly more yelly Italian'' i like this
BlazinBlitzer 07.20.17	Fluent: English Know some stuff about: Spanish I guess I'm trying to learn but I keep putting it off: French, Italian, Dutch, German Album: Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
LeftyMcRighty 07.20.17	Fluent - English Can survive in-country - Spanish Can read, write and speak (properly but not "conversationally") - Korean Can say "Guten Tag! Ein bier bitte!" - German
ZombieToyDuck 07.20.17	thanks for the shoutout Unique! Glad you got inspired!
Papa Universe 07.20.17	And what do you converse in?
LeftyMcRighty 07.20.17	Merkin.
Papa Universe 07.20.17	merkin /ˈməːkɪn/ noun an artificial covering of hair for the pubic area.
Papa Universe 07.20.17	You're an odd person.
anarchistfish 07.20.17	fluent: english french can read & kind of write (still learning basically): portuguese learning (but basically still shit): russian
LeftyMcRighty 07.20.17	OH, Korean, you mean? Conversational Hangul is much shorter and choppier than the long form. I struggle to keep up
LeftyMcRighty 07.20.17	HAHA!! perhaps, but not THAT odd!
ZombieToyDuck 07.20.17	I converse a little bit of spanish and obv english, but very basic spanish tbh
LeftyMcRighty 07.20.17	Merkin = American
Papa Universe 07.20.17	I was originally asking DeadlyNightShade, but since you assumed the role of a discussioner, I suppose I might as well ask you how's your day been going?
rabidfish 07.20.17	fluent in english and spanish basic hebrew and portuguese learning japanese
RogueNine 07.20.17	A little: French Even less: Italian
ZombieToyDuck 07.20.17	Digging that 5'd that eh?
Risodo 07.20.17	Speak: Portuguese (Brazilian) Almost fluent: English Trying to get into: Spanish
RogueNine 07.21.17	Rofl, you nailed it Unique.
Satellite 07.21.17	english and semi-fluent in spanish. getting better every day because my gf's from peru and 25% of my patients speak spanish exclusively.
hal1ax 07.21.17	i've really wanted to learn German // Russian for a while. maybe i'll start with German... I hear Russian is a nightmare to learn.
Satellite 07.21.17	yeah any language that requires learning an entirely new alphabet = fuck that
hal1ax 07.21.17	yea fuck that indeed. someone (i think my spanish prof in college) told me that Russian and Mandarin Chinese rank among the most difficult to learn. It's a shame because i think Russian sounds fckin awesome.
Winesburgohio 07.21.17	"also i'm at the point where i can hold a conversation with the Mexican people at my work for more than 10 seconds without them laughing at me hysterically" lmao, now all u need is to the same but with a group of Cubans and ur fluent confirmed
Satellite 07.21.17	or argentinians. shit sounds like a spanish-italian hybrid.
anarchistfish 07.21.17	Cyrillic isn't even that hard to learn. You can probably do it in a day
betray 07.21.17	english, french fluently passable italian and spanish cultured af
Artuma 07.21.17	"Damn, theres all you talented fuckers and I can barely speak English" here, outside of our native language (finnish) we also have to learn english and swedish, it's mandatory. it's also very popular to learn a fourth language as well, which is usually german, spanish, french or russian. it's not really even a matter of talent, we're just forced to communicate in many languages which is obviously really important
Pajolero 07.21.17	"Cyrillic isn't even that hard to learn. You can probably do it in a day" Yea, learning the alphabet is probably the easiest thing about studying our language. I can only imagine what an utter nightmare our grammar is for someone with little/no experience with slavic languages/culture.
Dedes 07.21.17	I speak English and know enough German to sing along to some Rammstein songs. I also learned Latin but forgot basically everything.
hal1ax 07.21.17	Art, out of curiosity, why are you guys mandated to learn Swedish and not Norwegian ?
guitarded_chuck 07.21.17	bunch of heathens itt
Pajolero 07.22.17	hal1ax, it's their second official language I think. Which has to do with the history of the country (Finns used to be under Swedes rule for a long ass time).
Artuma 07.22.17	it's our second official language yeah, that's why