Introduction Post

[orchidfire]

So we've gotten a lot of members really quickly, and, as I'm still getting the community set up, I figured that we could introduce ourselves (if you guys want to). :)

Some relevant fields to include in the comments, perhaps:

Name/Alias:
Location:
Native language:
Other language(s): It would be helpful to mark the languages as languages you're proficient in, learning, or simply interested in.
Linguistic background and interests: Could be an academic linguistics background, or just stuff about language and languages you like geeking out about, or that you find language and languages to be a fun hobby. Interpret this in whatever way you'd like.
Anything else:

Code/Form:
<b>Name/Alias:</b> <b>Location:</b> <b>Native language:</b> <b>Other language(s):</b> <b>Linguistic background and interests:</b> <b>Anything else:</b>

Have fun! You are totally welcome to strike up conversation with other members; that's what this post is for, after all!

Comments

[orchidfire]

I'll start:

Name/Alias: Stephany
Location: United States – California and North Carolina
Native language: English
Other language(s): Spanish (5 years; intermediate/advanced); Chinese (heritage language, still learning; intermediate); S'gaw Karen (no proficiency, but interested because there's a significant refugee population that speaks S'gaw Karen in this area); I flirt with a lot of other languages and have had one-night stands with them, too (such as Thai—tried teaching myself the alphabet; didn't get very far).

Linguistic background and interests: I'm majoring in linguistics, and I'm hoping to go into speech-language pathology. I've only taken introductory-level linguistics classes, so I'm not yet able to go in-depth about my interests, but I do find phonology and sociolinguistics to be really fascinating. I also like knowing words from other languages that sound pleasing. My interest in language and languages is just so broad!

Anything else: Not at the moment, except that I'm looking forward to this community being a thriving one on DW. :)

[wonder]

Name/Alias: Tora
Location: Long Beach, California
Native language: English
Other language(s): Japanese (learning), Romance & Germanic languages (interested)
Linguistic background and interests: derp I'm in high school :B but I'm planning to take some classes while in college.
Anything else: Nope!

[gregorgasmic]

Hello! I added you, just to let you know. It is not everyday I meet a high schooler who is actually... interesting? Which I say as a high schooler.

[rooibos]

Name/Alias: Lin
Location: US for the moment. That may change soon.
Native language: English
Other language(s): A little French and even less Spanish. I'm interested in anything and everything.
Linguistic background and interests: I majored in French Lit in college, and want to do on to do graduate work in the same field. I guess my area of study will be global Frenches, including creoles and patois. I'm also interested in global Englishes. Oh, hell, I love everything.
Anything else: I'm really excited about this community!

[ennika]

Name/Alias: Ennika
Location: UK (for another two months, then back to Germany)
Native language: German
Other language(s): English (fluent, lived in both the US and the UK for a year, but my English tends to stick to the American), French (5 years, a long time ago, just started to refresh), Slovak (lived there for a year, good vocab but almost no knowledge of grammar), basic Spanish and Dutch (only one term each, sadly), passive written Norwegian thanks to being somewhat obsessed with the country's music scene. I'm mostly refreshing right now (French & Slovak), and picking up some Norwegian on the side.
Linguistic background and interests: I'm studying English Lit, so I got some lovely but very basic linguistic knowledge forced down my throat. I have to admit I'm not all that interested in Theoretic linguistics, but can get excited about pretty much anything that has a fairly direct relation to social change etc. Second language acquisition is a fun topic too, mostly for the odd stories occasionally involved...
Anything else: nope, not so much...

[absque_setentia]

Name/Alias: Maria
Location: Denmark
Native language: Danish
Other language(s): English (fluent), German and Spanish (enough to get by), some basic French (I've forgotten most of the words), basic Latin, and very basic Japanese. I *think* that's it.
Linguistic background and interests: I study English at the University, which covers linguistics as well, and I pretty much try to learn any language I can get my hands on. Right now, I'm very much into language history (which is a good thing, since I have an exam coming up).
Anything else: I made a very high-pitched noise when I saw this comm. :D

[mshollie]

Name/Alias: Hollie
Location: New Orleans, LA USA
Native language: English
Other language(s): French, Afrikaans (learning), Maori (learning)
Linguistic background and interests: Almost double-majored in French...18 hours shy.
Anything else:Not right now.

[patupaiarehe]

Learning Maori? Are you a kiwi/relative thereof?

[dunvi]

Name/Alias: Dunvi Dunvi Dunvi

Location: My heart resides in NYC!!!!!!! Okay, I'm done. Grew up NYC, currently in NH for school.

Native language: English

Other language(s): Latin, a little French, hopefully some German by next fall. Familiarity with Italian, if not actual comprehension, and minimally also with Russian and Spanish.

Linguistic background and interests: High school student here. I've taken Latin since 8th grade, and will be reading Virgil in the fall (we're reading Ovid right now, and I'm really interested in reading more of it on my own as Latin poetry hits me as hard as only my favorite English poetry can). I've taken French since Kindergarten, but shamefully nearly failed a 3rd year high school french class because the teacher was not very good and I didn't want to suck up to her. I'm going to learn German intensively over the summer, and I wanted to take Greek next year but was over the credit limit. I might look into it again in college. I'm interested in learning Italian, but for now am fine combining Latin and French knowledge.

Anything else: Most of my language experiences come from singing; I know for a fact that I think German is a very nice language, and I'm not very fond of French. Linguistics is one of those things that intrigues me far more than it have any right to, but can escape me in practice. Especially, the idea of languages is a lot more interesting to me than languages themselves.

[sonjadenise]

Name/Alias: Sonja
Location: Pennsylvania, soon to relocate to California
Native language: English
Other language(s): Japanese (lower-intermediate, self-study), Latin (3 years high school), Spanish (4 years middle/high school)
Linguistic background and interests: It all started when, for convoluted reasons, I was exposed to Japanese in elementary school and learned all the kana in about a week. Now there's about 10 languages I want to study to some degree or another, and I got into linguistics a bit because I really got into conlanging a couple of years ago.
Anything else: I think that's it.

[quil]

Name/Alias: Quil
Location: Greater Boston
Native language: (New England) English
Other language(s): Some Spanish, less Latin, minimal Middle Egyptian. The first two were gotten by school, the third from autodidactic study.
Linguistic background and interests: Primarily I'm interested in ideas and thinking and other fluffy-duffy abstracted stuff. I'm not very good at the actual meat of syntax/sounds, but am working on it.
Anything else: Also got into linguistics via conlanging :)

[horusporus]

Name/Alias: Horusporus
Location: Malaysia
Native language: Malay
Other language(s): English (very very fluent); Japanese (intermediate, but have left it dormant for too long); Spanish (beginner, self-study). Hoping to learn Cantonese within the next few months.
Linguistic background and interests: I'm primarily an etymology dork but I have no academic background in linguistics. I'm fascinated by language evolution. Have done some translation work on a professional basis.
Anything else: My vocab in the languages I know: A++; Grammar? NOT SO MUCH.

[orchidfire]

Ooh, Malay! My boyfriend speaks Indonesian, so I checked out a book on Indonesian and noticed that it also included Malay vocabulary. Would you say that you have some understanding of Indonesian as well, since it's similar to Malay? Or is it like asking a Spanish speaker if they have some understanding of Italian?

[solesakuma]

Name/Alias: Sole
Location: Argentina
Native language: Spanish
Other language(s): English, some French, German (currently in my 4th year), minimal Ancient Greek, two years of Latin, just starting with Japanese!
Linguistic background and interests: Since Argentina's university system is way different from the USA, I'll try to explain. My degree is in Letras, that is, a combination of Literature, Linguistics and Classic Languages. I do admit my focus is on Literature, since the Linguistics area suffers from some very lousy faculty, but I adore languages. A lot.
Anything else: I really hope this comm works well here. :D

[strangelover]

Name/Alias: strangelover
Location: Athens, Greece.
Native language: English, with a side-order of German.
Other language(s): Italian and (Modern) Greek. I can bumble along in a few others.
Linguistic background and interests: I come from a very mixed European family, my maternal grandparents are Irish and Prussian, my paternal grandparents are Italian and Ukrainian. English was rarely used at home.
Anything else: I've lived in seven different countries so far - England, France, Malaysia, Australia, Italy, Germany and now Greece.

[purpletigron]

Name/Alias: Purpletigron
Location: UK
Native language: English (England)
Other language(s): Basic French, interested in Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Japanese, German, Latin, Hindi-Urdu
Linguistic background and interests: Worked in France for two years in an English-speaking environment, failed on multiple attempts to find a French learners class in which to enroll
Anything else: I get to a certain (early) point with self-study of language, and then get stuck without a native speaker with whom to converse.

[nerakrose]

Name/Alias: nerakrose
Location: finland
Native language: icelandic/danish
Other language(s): english, german (studied for 8 years), finnish (learning), read and understand swedish+norwegian
Linguistic background and interests: i was born in iceland and then moved to denmark. i'm very interested in the germanic language family but my favourite language is finno-ugric (finnish), which i'm learning right now.
Anything else: i should be studying swedish right now for my entrance exams, but i'm procrastinating. i do that a lot.

[geekmama]

Name/Alias: Sybil
Location: Indiana, USA
Native language: English
Other language(s): French (learning, personal study, no formal education), Japanese (flirted with, interested in), Khmer (interested in)
Linguistic background and interests: I don't have any formal education except for some unfinished Spanish and French classes from high school. My partner speaks French which is why I'm focusing on study that first, I loved Japanese long before I met him but conveniently his brother speaks Japanese and my first "boyfriend" was the first generation of his family to be born in America so I picked up a curiosity for Khmer from hearing him talk to his parents in it.
Anything else: My partner and I are planning to move to France the year our Spawn (due in October) turns 5.

[hazelnutti]

Name/Alias: Kara
Location: California, though currently in Massachusetts for the school year
Native language: English
Other language(s): Mandarin Chinese (heritage speaker-- I can order food, gossip, and hold basic inane conversations without difficulty, but discussing economics or the Chinese bureaucracy would give me headaches), Japanese (4 years in HS, 2 in college, which leaves me with the ability to watch dramas and read comics aimed at preteens, uhm), French (starting this summer), German (it's in the queue, is all I can say). I also really want to take like, Latin or ancient Greek, but I would need more time in my life. Woe. :(
Linguistic background and interests: I was once a English Lit. major, until my intro linguistics class stole my heart. I've only worked through a tiny bit of my major, though. Probably most interested in the linguistic anthropology side of things, though phonology and language acquisition also spark my interest.
Anything else: The existence of this comm makes my life a little better!

[tralfamadore]

Name/Alias: Namid

Location: Missouri, United States

Native language: English

Other language(s): American Sign Language (Intermediate Proficiency) - At one time my skills were much more advanced than they are currently. I do use ASL on a daily basis, but almost exclusively with preschoolers. Therefore, I am only signing on a very basic level.
Spanish (Basic Proficiency) - After years of Spanish courses followed by years of letting the language fall by the wayside, I must admit that I am better at reading and comprehending the language than I am at speaking it. I can muddle my way through a casual conversation, but unfortunately the arts and politics are lost causes for me to discuss.
Lakota (Interested - No Proficiency) - I have a decent understanding of the phonetic structure and syntax of the language, and can rattle off a few phrases, but that is the extent of my knowledge here.
Sinhala (Interested - No Proficiency) - A long-time family friend of mine is Sinhalese, and gave a brief attempt at teaching me some basics of the language when I was merely a child. I hardly retained anything, but it's a language I am interested in learning more about.

Linguistic background and interests: My interest in linguistics has been mostly reserved for the languages that I hold a decent amount of proficiency in. Learning languages is somewhat of a difficulty for me, but once I have mastered them, I cling to them with a fierce sort of fascination for all that they are capable of. For example, I am extremely interested in language and gender, how language is used in minority groups, and the language of disability.

Anything else: I'm sadly uncertain of how much assistance I will truly be to the community, but I cannot wait to see it launch and follow along as it blossoms.

[eva]

Name/Alias: Eva (duh)
Location: Germany
Native language: German
Other language(s): English (more or less fluent, with room for more colloquial expressions/cultural references and the likes), French (getting worse all the time), Latin (basic), some Italian, can more or less make sense of easy Dutch, Spanish, and Scandinavian things. Also some Sindarin vocabulary.
Linguistic background and interests: I like learning languages, mainly because I have found that doing so through reading books and websites and watching news and movies/TV shows really broadens your world view. I'm also looking to do my musicology PhD on a subject that will involve reading much English literature, so developing my English skills is particularly useful.
Anything else: Nope

[ex_venice330]

Name/Alias: Nora
Location: MD, USA
Native language: English
Other language(s): Spanish (also grew up with it), very basic Arabic (grew up with this too), Japanese (studied for 5+ years) and starting Italian.
Linguistic background and interests: I'm a Japanese Studies major but I discovered my love of languages in general through it. If I had the time I'd switch to linguistics or anthropology for a major but now I just kind of want to graduate ASAP, so I do a lot of independent study. I'd like to learn more languages in the future-- I can't think of one that isn't interesting to me!
Anything else: I'm excited for this community, yay? :)

[wekhter]

Another community to be double-watching, it seems!

Name/Alias: wekhter
Location: United States, East Coast
Native language: American English (though I learned how to spell from predominantly British message boards, so...)
Other language(s): Pretty near fluent in French (from France), though I haven't officially studied it in ~4 years so my grammar's absolutely shot. Currently self-studying Spanish, Japanese, Italian and German, to various degrees of success.
Linguistic background and interests: I took French in school and unlike the rest of my classmates, actually took the language to heart, so I've extremely high reading comprehension and excellent speaking skills even if my grammar leaves much to be desired. I have a hard time with Canadian French. Due to a summer crash course in etymologies + my aforementioned French knowledge I'm pretty good at understanding romance languages, though for the life of me I can't understand Portuguese. At this point I can read Japanese to some degree but can't understand the spoken language.
Anything else: I know enough spoken Thai to go purchase Candy Land and then play it, but not much else. :3 Rather shameful, considering I'm Thai, but the tones trip me up...

[today]

Name/Alias: Brittany
Location: Arizona, United States
Native language: English
Other language(s): From pretty proficient to fairly ... not at all: Spanish, Japanese, French, Chinese, German, ASL, Latin. I study a few of these in school.
Linguistic background and interests: Majoring in linguistics at the University of Arizona, probably going to go to graduate school for teaching English as a foreign language. But that's far, far into the future.
Anything else: Nah, I think that's it. The community looks good!

[speak_candidly]

Yay, University of Arizona! One of my favorite professors is an alum (he specializes in Shoshoni), and another lectured for a UoA class when we were down in Ecuador last summer. Good program, just not my interests -- I would rather do anything than study a dying language for the sake of preservation.

They should probably take my credentials away.

[travels]

Name/Alias: travels
Location: Germany

Native language: German
Other language(s): English (nine years, advanced level), French (seven years, advanced level), Latin (three years), Italian (two years); short encounters with Spanish, Arabic, Swahili

Linguistic background and interests: I finished our equivalent of high school last year and am now waiting to be accepted at university for an English (literature) degree. Afterwards, I'm hoping to get into linguistics or professional writing. I also love to travel and have thus used every chance I had so far to pick up new languages.
Anything else: Nope.

[patupaiarehe]

Name/Alias: Clare
Location: Venezia, Italia
Native language: English
Other language(s): Italian (I'm more or less fluent), German (proficient would be a stretch, but I'm not completely useless, either), Maori (I can rattle off a few things, but sadly the two years I spent learning seemed to have vanished), Spanish (the next on my list to learn), Arabic (the one to learn after Spanish)
Linguistic background and interests: The only linguistic background I have is German and Maori in high school, and the experience of having non-english speakers hanging round the place a lot at my house (exchange students)
Anything else:I came to Italy 8 months ago, speaking about a tablespoon's worth of Italian. While learning Italian, I've also learnt how great it is to communicate in someone's native language, and how fun languages are just in general.

[mummimamma]

Name/Alias: Mummimamma

Location: Bergen, Norway

Native language: Norwegian

Other language(s): Yes, to various level of lack of fluency.

Linguistic background and interests: I did my thesis in Latin and am currently teaching Norwegian as a second language. My frequent coffee breaks mostly consist of discussions with my co-workers about comparative linguistics, language change, second language aquisistion and metaphor theory. We are reaaaaallly boring.

Anything else: Languages are fun. But you knew that, right?

[anglo_don_juan]

Name/Alias: Naomi

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Native language: English

Other language(s):
Know Some: Spanish (took 7 years in high school but have let it lay dormant for a long time), German (have studied for about a year - not too good at it yet), Russian (ditto), Yiddish (I'm mostly picking this up from my MIL)
Want to Learn: Hebrew (I'm converting to Judaism), ASL (I work in the child care field, it would be so useful!), Arabic

Linguistic background and interests: My maternal grandparents speak German and my paternal roots are in Great Britain. I am very familiar with British English, though I mostly speak a mangled version of American. I spent a lot of years in the American south and am intrigued about the differences in that dialect in relation to the one I live with now (Upper midwest/Minnesota.)

Anything else: I've been a member of the LJ Linguaphiles group for several years. I don't contribute much because I am not that knowledgable, but REALLY enjoy reading all the posts.