Language Begets Language?
So I just got off the phone with mine uncle. Amazingly enough, all this writing and translating of Vulcan phrases is having a startling effect on my German. Onkel F. and I just had the easiest and most subtle conversation since I was over there for a few days last summer. Synonyms were just popping into my head left and right. And not just the regular stuff, but whole sheaves of sayings and colloquialisms.
A meta-part of my brain was strangely active too. It was telling me how much better I was at handling my tenses and, hey, and isn't it nifty how fliegen [to fly] behaves like one of those tricky French verbs that use être to conjugate the passé composé, even though the analogous French verb voler uses avoir to conjugate the simple past tense?
Vulcan, on the other hand, is much simpler. You don't conjugate anything, you just modify. So there are things like
hash-tor [to fly and also I/you/we fly or he flies]
vesht hash-tor [(I/you/he/we) flew]
ki'hash-tor [(I/you/he/we) was/were flying]
This is actually really like Korean and Japanese, where the verbs don't change with different pronouns and the subject is often left for the listener to interpret from the context.
So, as you can tell, I'm pretty excited. I love it when my brain works better! I also love it that this is a totally different experience from when I was learning Korean and the analogous word from every OTHER language would replace the one I was trying to utter. I wonder if it has anything to do with only reading and writing the Vulcan words instead of also speaking them.
A meta-part of my brain was strangely active too. It was telling me how much better I was at handling my tenses and, hey, and isn't it nifty how fliegen [to fly] behaves like one of those tricky French verbs that use être to conjugate the passé composé, even though the analogous French verb voler uses avoir to conjugate the simple past tense?
Vulcan, on the other hand, is much simpler. You don't conjugate anything, you just modify. So there are things like
hash-tor [to fly and also I/you/we fly or he flies]
vesht hash-tor [(I/you/he/we) flew]
ki'hash-tor [(I/you/he/we) was/were flying]
This is actually really like Korean and Japanese, where the verbs don't change with different pronouns and the subject is often left for the listener to interpret from the context.
So, as you can tell, I'm pretty excited. I love it when my brain works better! I also love it that this is a totally different experience from when I was learning Korean and the analogous word from every OTHER language would replace the one I was trying to utter. I wonder if it has anything to do with only reading and writing the Vulcan words instead of also speaking them.