On Language and Linguistics

When I get up in the morning it is not always easy for me to think in English. I sometimes have to stop before speaking, because I realize that I was about to say something in French or another language. At times I have to think about if what I am about to say makes sense in English. I have difficulty anglicize words and names that I first learned in other languages. I am not trying to be pretentious. It is just the way my brain works. If I did not work on Saturdays I would say "Слава Богу, сегодня пятница" every Friday. (That is "Thank God it's Friday.") I sometimes say things in different languages at work to throw people off. Some of the people at work say things in Spanish to people who do not speak Spanish, and they expect to be understand. I may start saying things to them in other languages to remind them how it feels. Most of the people at work are nice. I am trying to get them to speak to me more in Spanish. I knew few people from Mexico when I was learning Spanish, so I am having to get used to the dialect. Yes, I know there is more than one Mexican dialect.

I wish I had more people with whom I could discuss languages. For me linguistics is a very interesting subject. I would like to learn about it. One thing I want to know is why we use the word "Czech" which is a Polish word. It means the same thing that is does in English, but the English pronunciation is different. Another language I would like to learn is Romanian. It is a Romance language, but it also has Slavic influences. I want to learn more about the development of the Spanish and Portuguese languages. "Falar" in Portuguese and "hablar" in Spanish mean the same thing, to speak. They are similar to each other. If I remember correctly the letter f and the letter h are linked linguistically. I love languages and other things I can do with my tongue. A Russian instructor was discussing cases, and she said that in inflected languages, the ones that use cases, the word order was not as important as in non-inflected languages. The ending of the word would give sense to the sentence. She did not like that in English the sentences, "The dog bites the man" and "The man bites the dog" did not mean the same thing. In an inflected language, because of word endings if the correct endings were correct, the words could put in either order. There are rules of syntax, and words do usually flow more naturally in a certain order. Nevertheless the form of the word is more important than the placement of the word in the sentence.

I guess I got carried away with that, oh well.