i think one of the things that interested me about regina is her russian background. because I am a hxc language nerd. and proud of it...

being an english speaker there was no real pressure for me to speak anyother language growing up. no one i knew spoke anything but english. if you stay in the US you only need english (though spanish is catching up wth us here)
anyways...i have no ethnicity that i know exactly. i am a mutt, and this makes me sad, because language ties in so much with culture.

ive been taking french for 4 years...and love it. we started a french club and are nerdy together sharing language happenings(like in french how the Je form of etre and suivre are the same... weird!)

anyways... i love bilangual people, and trilangual and more. and regina really strikes a cord with me for partially this reason. the bilangual brain also intrests me.

and i wonder if regina thinks predominantly in russian, because she said in an interview she feels she "truly expresses herself in english".....???

mmmhh.... interesting prospect. anyone who is bilangual ,which i know many people who post are from different countries, please share any weird things about your two language habits. i love to hear about these.

my canadian friend when she gets mad her french comes out. any kind of weird little stories like this i love to hear!!!! post please!!!!!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: PerksOfAWallflower,

I took 1 1/2 semesters of Russian before I quit college, 15 years ago. I can speak and write well enough in English, but I think it seriously helps to have a grasp of the mechanics of your own language, before attempting to learn another. When I met Regina last year I so wanted to remember something witty in Russian, but all I could remember was "che eta portfile", that I'm sure I just mispelled, which means "where is my briefcase".

Man, I had a serious crush on my Russian teacher, she was very fashionable, had fantastic red hair, and spoke English, Russian, French, German, and Spanish!

Well, I'm a portuguese speaker and I absolutely hated English until I was 15. When I turned that age, for some reason I decided that I wanted to learn it, so I taught myself. I really thought it would be harder, but movies, cable TV and the Internet really helped me!

I'm majoring in Languages (God only knows if I'll finish it) and in our freshmen year, we learn some basic stuff, but when we get to our sophomore year, we get to choose another language to major. I thought about English, cuz I really like it... but we don't really get to choose this other language, we get it depending on our grades. Unfortunately, I'm not as smart as I wish I was, so I was afraid I wouldn't get a high enough grade to get into English, so I decided I was going to study German. But in my 2nd semester in College, I read Tolstoi's "The death of Ivan Ilitch" and I fell in love with it. After that I was really torn between majoring in Russian or German. I ended up choosing German, which now I think was a BIG mistake. Why? I can't learn this language! I feel so stupid in my German classes, it's awful. So now I think I'll go back to Russian, but it's even harder than German, so I don't know.

You were talking about "language nerds" and I consider myself one, not because I can comunicate in 2 lanaguages, but because I'm really interested in words... I don't know how to explain it, but language gives you all these tools and I love seeing how people use them, you know? For exemple: Loveology (and Reginasaurus) are 2 brilliant songs in that aspect. She uses a suffix that has a meaning known by pretty much everybody (-logy) with a radical that usually doesn't accept that suffix, like... well pretty much every word in this song. lol And she makes up new words that make so much sense. Not to mention all the amazing metaphors she creates in other songs. I think this is one of the many reasons I admire her so much, she knows the tools she has and she's not afraid of using them. If I were majoring in English, I would definitely write a Morphology paper on one of the said songs.

I think now you understand why I consider myself a "language nerd". *is really embarassed*

Russian is exclusively rich on word forms. Any creative person dealing verbal creativity in other language, involuntarily aspires to enrich language. Joseph Brodsky is remarkable example of it, whose English poetry became continuation of his Russian roots.
We have opened Russian-speaking community LiveJournal. Welcome!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Alexey,

... im so glad we have all these language nerds here! and yes Alexey it is understandable that your use of one language is enriched with another...french has helped me write engish essays because the french use fancy words...hahha (like scolded in french is repremanded). and it helps my writing look more educated. the only thing i realy dislike is in my second language of french i sound so childish because it is very hard to express my most profound thoughs with a limited vocabulary... this bugs me so much because we try to have debates in french and im stuck saying for example "um...people who hurt others are bad, yea..because its wrong and thats why" i just sound uneducated. but hopefully with more studying and practice i will learn to be more profound in both languages.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: PerksOfAWallflower,

Dear PerksOfAWallflower:

Do not despair It is very hard to express youself in a foreign language. I became a language nerd by necessity - my familly just immigrated and I had no choice (Englishis my second language). I felt very stupid not being able to communicate even basic things. It just takes a lot of practice and "not being shy about making mistakes". Nobody expects you to be perfect.
Il serra mon plaisir de pratiquer en peux Français avec vous!
Hope I said it right

I can't speak english, but read free and easy. Paradox! I read without the dictionary! But all the same the main thing that people each other understood, is not dependent on in what language they speak and never were at war.
Do not laugh my English and I shall not laugh your Russian )

Marry Ann, where are you from?

PerksOfAWallflower, if it makes you feel any better, I can't express myself in any of the languages I can speak . But seriously, it's really hard to express yourself using words. Even people we think are really articulate can't express themseves the way they want. Just keep in mind that words aren't graffic representatives of the world, our feelings or our opinions.

Alexey, I won't laugh at your English or your Portuguese (if you ever try to speak it), but you'll surely laugh at my Russian. The only word I know is a dirty word! lol

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Cynthia,

I know that words
Great and mightly russian
Nobody knows some kind of japanees or suakhily, but russian everybody
My friend Cirilo make score at Dynamo - Spartak russian futsal championatship today. Do you like futsal?

I love football. We have some brazilian players in Russia. The one that comes to mind is Vagner Love, he plays on CSKA Moscow. There's another Brazilian in this team, but I can't remeber his name and he even plays in our national team. We have brazilian football players pretty much everywhere! lol

Hi Cynthia
As you said language is a very tricky medium of expression. Maybe that is the reason some people sing? Personally, the best way of self-expression for me is dancing.
Now back to the language issue. As Regina, I was born in Moscow. When the iron curtain fell we left for Israel. I cannot believe Regina is performing in Tel-Aviv today and I am not there! Now I live in New York - do not know for how long yet. The bottom line is that I prefer to read in Russian, speak in Hebrew, and write in English - different language for every means of communication I know I am weird - but that is life. I did not choose it, it just happened and all I can do is adjust and learn the languages. At some point I even studied a little bit of French linguistics and I loved it. I think that the best way to acquire a new language is linguistic courses - structural analysis really helps with getting the grammar.
Your English is great, but you migh also consider posting in Portuguese (with some translation) so more people could participate in this forum.

quote:

Your English is great, but you migh also consider posting in Portuguese (with some translation) so more people could participate in this forum.

First of all: Thank you!
Second of all: I'd love to post in portuguese, but there are only 2 portuguese speakers here, me and "Dourado", so it's not really necessary. But if more of us joins this board (and I believe it'll happen, especially with brazilians, we are worse than ants, we are EVERYWHERE), I'll be more than happy to discuss Regina in my own language here.

ahhh...these replys excite me....i have so many questions!
first order of buisness. marry ann. i had a question about judism, there arent as many jewish families where i live. I know that jewish children go to hebrew school and they must read from the torah for their bat/barmitzvahs. but do most american/ anywhere but israel jewish kids continue to learn hebrew and speak it fluenty??? (
and Oui, je veux practicer mon francais avec vous. Mais mon francaise est tres mauvais... haha

second order... for those of you who learned a language later in life and often practice it fluently do you ever have thoughs in this language? i know people who grew up bilangually who think in both languages but i wonder about second languages?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: PerksOfAWallflower,

I'm from the Netherlands (living there still) so my first Language is Dutch. In the Netherlands at least one second language is compulsory at most schools so I learned English as second language when I was 10 years old or so. Whenever I had a school assignment for English I at least tried tried to think in the other language and I must say that nowadays I frequently think in English (just out of the blue)... maybe it's all those English records I hear and Shakespeare stuff I read . Needless to say, I had high marks in most language classes and feel I can speak and write English without much problems.

quote:

for those of you who learned a language later in life and often practice it fluently do you ever have thoughs in this language? i know people who grew up bilangually who think in both languages but i wonder about second languages?

Well, it depends on the subject. I know it may sound strange, but if I'm thinking about a suject that I usually discuss in English - such as music, movies and TV shows - I'll think in English. If the subject is soccer or any other subject I usually discuss in "real life" - such as... well, pretty much everything -, I'll think in Portuguese.

My favorite subject in college so far was Psycholinguistics. I really recommend it to anyone who's fascinated by how humans acquire, use, and understand language. It's one of the most interesting things I have ever studied. Unfortunately, I only had a brief presentantion of the subject, but I'll certainly take the whole course really soon.