Kaltxí

Let's talk about language. Or rather, let me talk about language. I can, from this seated position right now, look at my book shelf and see an interesting and perhaps unusual sight. TONS OF LANGUAGE!

To give a little background, language is something that has fascinated me for a long time and my interest only increases as time passes. Real, constructed, dead or alive I have not yet had contact with a language I have not found at least mildly interesting. I find myself constantly laughing at little things in English like "Hi, how are you today? -Good, thanks." Yeah... I didn't ask how you were behaving, I was asking how you are feeling. I have actively studied Spanish (a long time ago), French, Latin, American Sign Language and English. While not fluent in anything but English, I am slightly conversant in French, ASL and can understand a fair bit of both Latin and English.

Back to the bookshelf, however, and the point of this blog, I have a French/English dictionary, three books on medical Spanish, two intros to ASL, four basic Latin texts (plus a Latin/English dictionary), a book on the languages of Middle Earth by JRR Tolkien (Lord of the Rings languages), a Gaelic/English dictionary and a book on Native American Sign Language…

Now how about the most recent addition to my list of fascinations in the language department? Na’vi. For those of you who have seen Avatar, you will be familiar with this language, for those of you who haven’t, go see Avatar. I realize the extent of the geekdome I am heaping upon myself by admitting this, but linguistically it is fascinating and I intend to become conversant in it as well.

Wish me luck. Perhaps someday I will talk like the tall blue cat people from Pandora.

(Also as a self justification, studying a language, ANY language, increases the ability to learn other language. So this is not a totally worthless venture. When was the last time you thought about word order and conjugating your verbs? Not to mention modifying nouns and adjectives for time, mood, person, etc.)