Languages
A meme via
cavefelem:
Not counting English your first language, name seven languages you'd like to be able to speak fluently.
Latin I may actually learn someday, I've been wanting to forever. Japanese, Russian, Gaelic and Arabic are really interesting as languages and cultures, but I'll probably never put the effort in to learn even basic stuff properly because I'm lazy. I think I picked up my love for Italian on my first holiday trip there.
As for Saame, I'm interested in and proud of the small languages that still exist up north. Saame is the most likely to survive (as opposed to most of the languages related to Finnish, which for all practical purposes are extinct or very near it) due to effort put into preserving it, but I still think it's appalling how little support it gets from, say, Finland and how little familiarity there is. For example, the tv news in Saame (Oddasat) is on the channel FST5, i.e. the Swedish channel of Finland. The program is on in the middle of the night, and the detailed time varies from day to day. Today it's on at 23:20, last Wed it was on at 22:50. Is it really too much to ask for a regular schedule? Also, we've got two main Finnish broadcasting company channels and they couldn't fit it in? Hearing news on your own language is important, but it wouldn't hurt if the Finnish speaking population would hear some Saame, either.
cavefelem:
Not counting English your first language, name seven languages you'd like to be able to speak fluently.
- Latin; reading and writing would do.
- Japanese; speaking would do.
- Russian, understanding would do, heh.
- Saame (Lappish), the language(s) spoken by 30k-40k Laplanders in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
- Gaelic.
- Arabic.
- Italian.
Latin I may actually learn someday, I've been wanting to forever. Japanese, Russian, Gaelic and Arabic are really interesting as languages and cultures, but I'll probably never put the effort in to learn even basic stuff properly because I'm lazy. I think I picked up my love for Italian on my first holiday trip there.
As for Saame, I'm interested in and proud of the small languages that still exist up north. Saame is the most likely to survive (as opposed to most of the languages related to Finnish, which for all practical purposes are extinct or very near it) due to effort put into preserving it, but I still think it's appalling how little support it gets from, say, Finland and how little familiarity there is. For example, the tv news in Saame (Oddasat) is on the channel FST5, i.e. the Swedish channel of Finland. The program is on in the middle of the night, and the detailed time varies from day to day. Today it's on at 23:20, last Wed it was on at 22:50. Is it really too much to ask for a regular schedule? Also, we've got two main Finnish broadcasting company channels and they couldn't fit it in? Hearing news on your own language is important, but it wouldn't hurt if the Finnish speaking population would hear some Saame, either.