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ferdinando2000bc In reply to RensKnight [2017-04-13 16:41:25 +0000 UTC]

Oh, that's almost perfect! Your interest in foreign languages is something I admire a lot, since I don't really have a second language besides English. About the drawing, you'd be surprised how short it took! I hope in the future I'll get to draw your character in a more detailed way (if you have requests, tell me right away!) Thanks for all your kind words!

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RensKnight In reply to ferdinando2000bc [2017-04-13 17:15:47 +0000 UTC]

You are very welcome!  I have a lot of fun with languages...playing with words and understanding how they are connected between different languages is a great game for me.  My true second language is Spanish.  It is remarkable how, even though France and Italy are closer than Spain and Italy, Spanish and Italian look and sound so much more like each other.  I do have to use Google to help me with some of the vocabulary, but Spanish provides me a lot of the basis for Italian grammar.  When I do use Google, it's easier for me to enter things in Spanish and compare them to Italian.

I did see one error of mine though, after I posted...I messed up a gender with "mostrarlo" considering I had been talking about "una sorpresa."   That IS harder for us English speakers, but the funny thing is, I know where my mistake was.  In my head, the subject changed at that point to "el dibujo," which is Spanish for "drawing."  Oops!!

English does not help as much with other Germanic languages the way Spanish helps me with Italian and Portuguese, because of how massive the influence from Norman French was on us.  English could almost be classified as a Romano-Germanic creole, IMO.  Your skill level with English, however, is absolutely outstanding as I've said before.  You really did have me thinking you were a native English speaker; I almost never see errors, which is really amazing considering how even native speakers here have difficulty with spelling.

I imagine I WOULD be surprised by how little time the drawing took.  For me drawing is a painfully slow thing and that's part of why I do so little of it.  (That and I have an absolutely terrible sense of depth.)  And I really appreciate your interest in drawing my character.  Should you want to draw him again, you are very welcome to.

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ferdinando2000bc In reply to RensKnight [2017-04-13 18:00:38 +0000 UTC]

I sincerely missed that error. Frankly, fluency isn't really about not making mistakes in ortography and such, but constructing the sentence in a way that the reader (or the listener) doesn't really feel the necessity to look for mistakes because, pardon my simplicity, IT FEELS RIGHT. And I swear, it's seriously difficult to do that. Most constructs and collocations and such you either know from having heard or read them, or you don't. Regardless of whether you had to look some words up, that sentence of yours felt Italian, and I actually had to check again who it was that wrote it (since I recently got in touch with other Italian deviants, it wouldn't have been hard for me to mistake one notification for the other), while I can assure you that despite having studied English for approximately TWELVE YEARS I still struggle a lot with fluency and accuracy; I have to thank Doctor Who for most of the things I know about English. I'd really like to learn other languages though, I hope these ole brain cells of mine can take it :-D. I suppose I just sepnt more time drawing I suppose. What changes as you get better and better at drawing is that at first, it takes an hour to get one drawing done and two to hate it; when you get at this level, you hate a drawing as soon as you finish it, so you keep churning them out in hope of a good one till you notice the sun's gone down into the sea and you can't see anything. Now the next step is for me to hate a drawing WHILE I'm doing it, thus being able to fix the things I hate in time like a professional. Anyway, I'm still a looong way from that.

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RensKnight In reply to ferdinando2000bc [2017-04-13 19:48:43 +0000 UTC]

Wow. That is truly a high compliment. O_O Thank you! And what a nice way to think about what fluency really is. It's the same as how I felt reading your work...I didn't think to look for hints that you weren't American or British until I saw your profile. It just felt right.

It helps with Italian, being able to think in Spanish. When I am dealing with Italian, I don't think in English at all, for the most part. I either understand it directly, or translate between Spanish and Italian. The two languages have similar constructions, grammars, and word choices...not always, but enough to guide me. I don't have the grasp of Italian that I do of Spanish, but if I can manage enough for someone to think I'm a Spaniard rather than an American, I feel like I'm doing well.

I was rather embarrassed once on a visit to Italy as a shy teenager, with (at that time) three years of Spanish under my belt, being able to understand and follow instructions that a lady gave me in Italian, but getting stuck and answering in English instead. I still feel like that old lady must have thought I was such a rude American tourist. Now, many years later, even if nothing else came to mind, I would have at least spoken Spanish to get across the point that I could understand but not reply fluently.

But then again, it wasn't until another three years or so, in college, when my thinking truly transitioned into Spanish, if that makes sense. When I reached the point where I would forget what language something was said to me in, because understanding had become so much easier, and where I do little translating when I read, simply knowing. It's different now that Spanish has been a part of my life for almost 21 years.

Still find myself thinking about how I must have looked like an "Ugly American." Hopefully people are more forgiving of kids than adults, though...

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ferdinando2000bc In reply to RensKnight [2017-04-13 21:32:33 +0000 UTC]

I personally don't think Italians (most of them, at least) expect tourists to know the local language; and I certainly believe that lady wouldn't expect someone so young to know it to that extent. I used to be extremely clumsy with my English when I went abroad because I couldn't quite understand speech yet; fortunately people there were very patient and politely suffered my unintelligible attempts at answering their questions. However, I must say we Italians tend to see foreigners in a rather stereotypical way...probably because of some kind of unyelding pride or sense of nationalistic superiority (which curiously doesn't prevent us from grumbling at every single problem of our country.); Americans are kind of a delicate subject, because Italy was one of the targets of the Marshall Plan, and we don't like to admit that we needed help (consider also the cultural influence that came with that, not to mention the enormous amount of Italians who fled for America during the modern era!), regardless of the political agreements that had to be made in the post-war society. I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty much oblivious of what really happened. I want and need to fix this as soon as we get to that time period at school, because, I'm told, its relevance is critical. But anyway, I don't think one can really say that a folk, or a nation, has certain attributes, at least not when the situation requires to interact with actual people and not consider a (extremely approximate and possibly misguiding) statistical model. "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."( That was K in Men in Black, if you haven't watched it yet or you don't remember, but knowing the extent of your geek power, I doubt this was necessary) However, we should not underestimate the power of large numbers. Today, even the unique can be influenced by a trend that randomly goes viral, and that's exactly what happens with stereotypes. I've never met an American, did you know that? And yet my "nation" provided me with an archetype I can employ when I don't feel like thinking. That's the thing with ideas, they work like natural selection:  it's not the best ones, or the most beautiful, or the most logical, that survive. It's those which can spread faster, simplier, with more offspring. Flies and jellyfish, I bet, are gonna be around long after humans are bantha fodder. I have also been struck with the realisation that this reasoning could be applied to memes, too.

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RensKnight In reply to ferdinando2000bc [2017-04-14 02:02:41 +0000 UTC]

I am glad you think people would cut a teenager some slack.   When I DID try to speak Italian with people, they were extremely nice.

I can at least say that from the perspective of my own family, we weren't thinking of the Marshall Plan or World War II when we visited Italy.  While it is known that Italy was one of the Axis powers at one point, it wasn't something that we really thought about the way we did while in Germany.  (What Germany has done to preserve the most shameful elements of its history is truly admirable in my mind.  It takes courage to keep those painful memories displayed for people to learn from them.) 

What overwhelms Americans in all of Europe--and most of all in places like Rome--is a sense of the incredibly ancient things that have become part of the everyday in those countries.  It is a mystical experience, really.  In very, very few places in America do we have anything older than 200 years, and we have a bad habit of tearing things down that are even 50 or 75 years old, unless they are put on the Historic Register.  Seeing the legacies of ancient civilizations is absolutely overwhelming.  So I can at least tell you that rather than looking down on anyone, some Americans visiting Italy instead feel very, very small.

And yes, I LOVE that quote from Men in Black!

I think it is very, very important in the world we live in to try to regard people simply as individuals.  It's far too easy to judge people without even knowing them, on characteristics that are irrelevant.

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ferdinando2000bc In reply to RensKnight [2017-04-14 08:51:01 +0000 UTC]

Your perspective on the cultural heritage of the ancient eras is fascinating and one that I share. As much as they may be "everyday" and commonplace for some of us, I can assure you it's a mesmerising experience for everyone. Heh, explains why the Sith love Korriban so much despite having had their brains marinated in Sith culture for all their life! Also, it's great to see that we can all be human and most importantly humane regardless of our origin: kind of reminds me of how Austrian and Italian soldiers agreed on an unofficial ceasefire during World War I (I might have got my World Wars jumbled up, mind that) during Christmas, and celebrated together as if nothing had ever happened. Maybe somthing like that is gonna happen on Spectres of the Empire, but most of all I hope it's something that could still happen in our world; we are fast to judge and talk of people as if they were demons, but maybe deep inside there's a spark of awareness, some unsullied instinct of fellowship that might guide us through this brave new world of bureaucracy and formality.

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RensKnight In reply to ferdinando2000bc [2017-04-14 13:59:40 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, I would imagine Korriban holds a similar place in the minds of the Sith, or perhaps like the relics of the ancient Egyptians.

I do remember something like that taking place during World War I. There is also an instance where American and German soldiers heard each other singing "Silent Night," a Christmas carol that we both have in our respective languages, and sang together.

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ferdinando2000bc In reply to RensKnight [2017-04-14 14:30:25 +0000 UTC]

Heartwarming, isn't it? The realisation of what brings us all along in the great general mish mash of fears and wars and loss and creepy grinning pears. Makes me wish the people who sent those soldiers to fight each other thought about that too, but again, maybe they did, but they felt other things were more important... I don't think I'm in condition to blame anyone for anything, especially when that "anything" is factual history.

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