thekernel

I think I'm a good listener, though often times I don't always have the perfect thing to say to everyone when they need help. Of course, I use "listener" in a strictly oral-communicative sense; if we were talking about music, I would say I'm an incredible listener.

I feel like English is the greatest language for swearing. Not only are there tons of pre-existing epithets, you can really use your imagination to create your own. I mean, there are "swear generators" on the internet that will invent a new curse phrase for you! That's the power of English for ya.

Much Ado About Nothing, though the Kenneth Branagh movie has some rather unpalatable acting in it. 10 Things I Hate About You was a funny movie interpretation of the Shakespeare play, and in high school I got to act in a play of that. It was fun having the language modernized but the themes kept intact. As far as reading/studying plays goes though, it's much better to read it in its original language.

Sometimes I get a chuckle when people use "defiantly" in place of "definitely". Like, it boggles my brain that people write the word without realizing how little sense it makes. When people misspell things, it's usually because they are writing out the phonetics. But for some reason, "definitely" gets butchered in the exact opposite way.

Same with "psychic" and "physics". It's amazing that people know to put the silent "p" to start the word but still get the phonetics in total disarray.

It is direly useless if you are trying to translate large chunks of text and many sentences. For individual words though, I find it pretty helpful. Translation algorithms will probably take a long time before they become standardized to the grammar rules and syntax of each language. When that happens though, communication barriers will be smaller than ever.

You could always enact punishments on the students you catch with their devices on. My high school teachers would chew out anyone with an audible ring tone. It's plain disrespectful, and they should know that. Don't let them get away with just a warning; take their phones away for the class or give them detention.

I think it varies a lot. In scripts, all you really need is to be descriptive of the scenery and have the dialogue be true to the characters. If one of the characters has bad grammar or a regional dialect, they wouldn't speak "perfect" English.

In terms of novels and the first-person perspective, the writing should reflect what the character's thoughts and words are, and not necessarily in perfect-English terms. However, I think the other writing perspectives ought to be as close to perfect as possible.

There is a romantic and mysterious element to hearing a foreign tongue. I find it fascinating; intelligence is definitely a preferred quality, and fluency in multiple languages demonstrates just that. There is also something inexplicably attractive about the way Spanish/French/Italian sounds. Romantic languages indeed 

I find French to be very beautiful. The way this song's lyrics are sung, it feels so sensual and sounds smooth and silky.

English can really go one way or another, as there are a lot of beautiful sounds as well as ugly ones.

I think what's important in good writing is variation of length. There is a difference between expressing your thoughts concisely or creatively. If you are looking to avoid grammatical errors, you might be better off using shorter sentence lengths. However, if you are confident in your abilities with a language you should be able to avoid grammar problems regardless of how long your sentences are.

I hear this Pulp Fiction quote pretty often :

"And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. "

It is supposed to be from the Bible, right?

Funny, the most popular Pulp Fiction quote I hear is "DOES HE LOOK LIKE A B****". I guess it depends on who you hang around 

"Why so serious?" is a famous quote from a more recent film (Dark Knight). I hear that one quite a lot.

Well, there was this one time where a group of (Asian) girls from my elementary school started pointing at me and giggling. But I guess I'll never truly know what they were saying. Or if they were even pointing at me. I just assumed at the time that I was the principal inspiration of their hysterics.

Absolutely. My mother tongue is natural and free-flowing. I can communicate without much trouble. With a second language, I've had to learn the rules from scratch instead of having them imbued within me since birth. I've had to access memory from my brain to complete thoughts, which I have almost never needed to do with English.

Can't say this is a regular occurrence where I live. If anything tourists tend to keep to themselves, but if they have questions people will help. It's not like, some sort of social faux pas to ask strangers for directions or anything.

I learned from neighbor who immigrated recently to America that she believes native English speakers talk too fast and are somewhat rude. She also told me that the air 'stunk' in America. It took her 30 days to get used to the smell.

That's funny. It seems everyone has the same things to say about a foreign land -- the people speak too fast, it smells funny, and the native speakers are rude. I don't believe this to be a stereotype exclusive to English speakers. My friend almost had the exact gripes with his time in India.

I don't care as much for the language's origin as I do the culture from which it came. The evolution of a language isn't as important as the current language itself. However I find culture very fascinating.

I have a firm grasp of English. This includes spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. I was much better in high school though. I even won the school spelling bee. I read a lot more back then than I do now, and had a lot more practice with the language. I can notice my vocabulary slipping in variety.

"C'est la vie" is a common French phrase used in English. As far as individual words go, English borrows from many, many languages. "Mosquito" has Spanish origins. "Golem" comes from Hebrew. "Schnitzel" is from Germany, though cuisine might not be the most relevant to this topic. 

I'd scorn Oxford Dictionaries for this, but I know they've included silly buzz words and catch phrases for years. Helps keep people interested in their work I guess. But I don't consider it anything but slang.

SWAG actually used to be an acronym for "Stuff We All Get". Some number of years ago it was used to describe things people used to get for free. Nowadays it's been re-purposed as a shortening of "swagger". Funny how one word gets recycled for a new catch phrase. It will have its time and pass, like all colloquialisms, and maybe one day we'll see it used anew for something completely different.

Food vocabulary is about the extent I've learned. In Spanish class we were taught a lot about the culture, which included day to day cuisine as well as holiday foods. But never anything specifically geared towards cooking.

I've always heard that Icelandic is the hardest language to learn in the world. Looking at some scripts and sentences it's hard to disagree. I couldn't say for certain which one I believe to be the hardest as I have never tried learning languages like Arabic, Russian, Icelandic, or Japanese.

Vocabulary is important, but the context in which you arrange your sentences is the foundation of fluency. If you literally ran every word in a sentence through a computerized translator you will not always get perfect results. Idiomatic expressions don't always translate directly either.

Years of French schooling is what made learning Spanish so easy for me.

There's no real analog for English though. It borrows from so many languages; words, grammar, syntax, alphabet, it's got relatives from everywhere.

Some people assume Asian characters have a sort of mystical or exotic property to them. I can see the reasoning but the flaws lie in poor translation. I have friends with English tattoos on them. I can probably assume that there are lots of Asian people with English tattoos. Just be careful, and for god's sake do your research.