The Eurofurence Forum

Eurofurence Information => Programming => Topic started by: OmniSable on 05.05.2015, 17:31:17

Title: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 05.05.2015, 17:31:17
I was thinking about making a simple even where we can just come and talk about languages and how to learn them.

Like, we just discuss the interesting facts about each other's languages, give tips to learners on how we learned languages and what the efficient ways of learning them are, etc. It's not gonna be a lecture or whatever - just a discussion room with a blackboard/whiteboard/flipchart/whatever.

What do you think?
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Ralesk on 08.05.2015, 11:17:07
This is right up my alley :3

I speak Hungarian and English; and to lesser extent German and Dutch.  I'm very rusty about technical terms in linguistics though...
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Fineas on 08.05.2015, 11:56:30
Sounds cool.

My primairy language is: Dutch
And I speak German and English

I would be interested in such an event to see if I can improve learning non-native languages.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 08.05.2015, 13:03:23
Just to clarify. I call it "Polyglot Corner" just for fanciness. You don't have to speak a gazillion of languages to come. Even if you speak one, come nevertheless, this event might be useful for your studies of a foreign language. Even if you still don't know what language to pick for learning, - EF is very multinational, and it is probable that this event will be attended by people speaking many languages. So, collecting trivia will ease your choice. 8)

Ah, it's nice to see that you're interested! I guess I'll try to let Akula know and register the event.

I myself speak Russian, English, Spanish (on an awkward level, IMHO) and trying to learn German (a total beginner right now).
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Sithy on 08.05.2015, 13:10:41
Ooh yes if I have time I'd love to drop by for this! I speak Dutch, English, German and French and I'd love to improve my Russian :)

I don't have much to offer in terms of entertainment though I could bring my Egyptian/Hieroglyph books and write (draw) some phrases xD I also love sci-fi so would talk about that!
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 08.05.2015, 18:19:05
Heheh, yeah, I remember, Sithy, that you're a polyglot. Your presence will be very useful! 8)
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Kanrei on 11.05.2015, 22:48:06
I would be interested too, if I find the time to come. My native language is German, I can speak English and learn at the moment Japanese, French, Korean and Finnish. With Japanese and French, I’m at a intermediate level, I can read children books. I can speak a little bit Japanese, but I’m not really good at French. Korean is  Beginner and Finnish too.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: KyuubiSaoirse on 12.05.2015, 16:55:24
Ooh! I might drop by, too. :)

My native language is Danish, though I speak English fluently, too. Then I speak decent German (at least the Germans tend to understand me), and I can say/understand just a couple sentences in Finnish, Italian and Japanese...
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: KitzKatz on 22.05.2015, 00:46:41
It would be definitely interesting. My native language is Spanish. I can also speak English and am currently learning German and Japanese: the former at an intermediate level, I am afraid (very hard language...); and as for Japanese I am still beginning with it.

Sometimes I read children's books and comics in German (specially animal ones: Fix und Foxi, Janosch and the like). The same goes for Japanese :)
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 22.05.2015, 09:28:21
Allright, the event is confirmed! Unless I don't make it to EF for some reason, it will happen!  :D

And wow, so nice to see so many people interested in this!  ;D
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Sithy on 28.05.2015, 14:50:51
Woopwoop, providing there's no schedule clash, I'll be attending this!
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: MrEvers on 29.05.2015, 13:18:06
Might be interesting, I speak Dutch and English, a bit of French, 5 words of German and some Finnish swear words.
I'm also a beginner in HTML 5, CSS 3 and PHP.  :P
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Fineas on 30.05.2015, 10:46:14
I'm also a beginner in HTML 5, CSS 3 and PHP.  :P

I was compelled to make that joke, but as a (general purpose) programmer my list would grow rather ridiculous :-p
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 31.05.2015, 13:10:39
Since a major part of furries works in programming professionally, programming languages are to be put into a separate event 8p

(not scheduled by me because I'm an enthusiast programmer).
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Reshi on 01.06.2015, 10:53:11
I'll have to see if I can drop by ! My native language is Finnish bug I speak pretty good English and understand Swedish but I can't speak it haha... I was learning Esperanto for fun at one point and can say some phrases. I want to start studying Japanese at sometime soon (Swedish too as I want to learn how to speak it properly)
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: gummi_bjorn on 13.06.2015, 17:08:40
sounds like fun.
i'm from denmark and besides danish i speak german and english, also e few words in french and spanish.
but it's allways fun to learn new phrases i other languages, as minimum how to politely say hello and goodbye.
so if theres no scheduling problems and i can find you i'll be looking in too.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Kanrei on 18.07.2015, 21:18:40
@Reshi I started Esperanto on Duolingo, I think I want to learn it properly now, especially since I meet some people talking Esperanto. ^^
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: kalaallitamaroq on 01.08.2015, 19:38:42
YES! more furry esperantists! I'll try my best to be at the polyglot corner (if I'm not too busy with staff stuff)
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 04.08.2015, 09:31:24
Heeeey, another polyglot! Nice to see you! 8D
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 04.08.2015, 09:34:03
Officially, the Polyglot Corner is supposed to take place at 16:00 on Saturday. But it overlaps many other interesting events, including dance competition.

I've contacted the orgs, I'll try to move it to a morning time instead. Say, 11:30. Barely any events there, so anybody will be able to attend.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 05.08.2015, 07:34:41
Update. Unfortunately, the event cannot be moved in the official schedule any more.

Guess the only thing we can do now is to move it ourselves or not move at all. What do you think?
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: meo on 05.08.2015, 14:43:21
Beware that, if you move it someones will not get the information and wait for your panel at the wrong time.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 05.08.2015, 20:17:44
I think it would be better to leave it as-is then. It will take place on Saturday at 16:00, as scheduled.

I will try to be more consistent with my event requests in 2017, so they wouldn't overlap with other events.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Kanrei on 08.08.2015, 09:43:44
Yeah it is sure difficult to not overlap stuff, I would also have been interested in the Anthropomorphic Anatomy panel the same time. ^^ But I do prefer the polyglot panel, so I will come there.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Cosmik on 14.08.2015, 01:12:41
I'm so looking forward to this.  I speak English and very little, very bad high school German.  I've started French online, but I love languages and can't wait to meet everyone. :)
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: meo on 14.08.2015, 09:10:47
As the Anthropomorphic Anatomy panel is a Supersponsor event...I stay with the Polyglot one instead.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 25.08.2015, 15:38:39
I think this panel went really good. We had been sitting'n'chatting for 2 hours and still could not get enough.
Many thanks to everyone who came, and I'm open to your feedback.

I think I'll be making more of these at the upcoming cons.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Kanrei on 25.08.2015, 22:54:50
Yeah it was really interesting, even though I had to go earlier. ^^ Hope next year this will be again.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Ralesk on 30.08.2015, 02:55:16
Yep, it was fun :)

Next year let's try to squeeze the language collection & intro bit a bit more, so more time is left for everything else.  Maybe those of us who think about going next year could try to prepare with something similar as what Amaroq had, a badge with languages.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Kanrei on 02.09.2015, 23:56:55
Yeah a badge would be a good idea, we can have paper ready, so people forgetting it, can write down and wear that then maybe.
If we want to have a statistic again, which languages are popular, maybe we can just write down everyone themselves, which languages they are native of, fluent or learning.
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 03.09.2015, 13:43:38
Interesting suggestion. If over 20 people come, the introduction will take quite a while, so it's better for people to write it themselves.

Also, I gotta think of something if this event becomes popular. With 30+ people it would be difficult to support one conversation circle. Maybe attendees will split into groups. I guess we will require a bigger room if that happens.

P.S. The next iteration of PC shall take place at NordicFuzzCon2016, so if anyone is coming, drop by!  ;)
https://forum.nordicfuzzcon.org/posts/t717-Polyglot-Corner-at-NFC2016 (https://forum.nordicfuzzcon.org/posts/t717-Polyglot-Corner-at-NFC2016)
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: Kanrei on 27.09.2015, 17:28:56
Maybe we can made it more like a meet then or something. I mean like, we meet and walk around in the room talk with this and that person. (Hmm don’t know, I felt maybe so we could come more into conversation with each other.)
 I was at a polyglot meet-up in Zürich and there we made it like this, that we wrote down the languages we can and then we talked to each other, but mother tongue and English wasn’t allowed. (Oh maybe we could make something like that too. I’m not sure if we should do that all the time, maybe a part of it. Don’t know, if people would like to do that.)
Anyway I think you should choose 3 hours or so, for your meet-up. (I don’t know how long it went, after I was gone)
Title: Re: Polyglot Corner. Or simply, a meetup of language enthusiasts.
Post by: OmniSable on 30.04.2018, 15:36:18
Ok, I've sent a request. I expect to run this event once again this year.

I requested a timeframe in the evening, so if you work in the Dealers' Den you would have an opportunity to attend.

I will try to make it more like a meet 'n greet kind of event. A projector will be set up to show some language-related videos in the background to set up the atmosphere.
Also, I will bring some learning materials, including some vintage Soviet German language textbooks. And I encourage you to bring your language-related stuff to show to people.