Question #89

[weofodthignen]

If they invented RNA transfusion and you got a free coupon to have native competence in one language implanted in you (you could keep the knowledge by using it regularly, or let it fade away), what language would it be?

Bonus follow-ups: (a) Would it have been the same language when you were in school? (b) Is there any language you would pay to learn?

Comments

[weofodthignen]

Gothic. (I don't want to know where they would get the RNA.)

When I was young it would probably have been Sanskrit - my interests have narrowed.

I might pay for Vulcan.

[mdehners]

Japanese. Been a Japanophile since Primary School when I found a book written for Americans that my grandmother had bought when they were occupying Japan in the early 50's...
Cheers,
Pat

[puca]

P.Gmc. . . . assuming there was ever such a thing. Wot do scholars know if they weren't there? All presumption. :-p

[dsgood]

Spanish.

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

The most endangered one. I'd have to research at the time what that would be. *ponder* I'd probably pick a Native American one, if I could find one with native speakers willing to talk with me. But I'd pick something with speakers in the single digits, so I could make a bump in the language's lifespan. If I could afford to buy languages that way, I'd do it. If I could afford to offer scholarships for other people to learn languages, I'd do that too.

Yeah, there are some common languages that I'd love to acquire at full fluency, plus some others that I just love. But I would start with the ones that need me, not the ones I just want.

[dubhain]

Spanish. Simply for practicality.
Ojibwe and Gaelic are tempting, though.

And no, in school it would've been German.

I'd pay to learn Spanish. May do so, in future.

I'd love to have native fluency in several languages. The above, plus Russian, French, Latin...I could go on, and on.

[arlie]

Difficult choice, made more difficult by reading others' comments.

However, my original temptation was to pick a language as unlike English as possible, so as to increase the repertoire of languages I'd be able to learn to a decent level by more conventional means. I.e. Non-Indo-European, using lots of sounds I can't presently differentiate or pronounce, and using grammatical forms unlike english, french, spanish, german, latin, old norse.

In high school I'm not sure what I'd have picked, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been thinking in the above terms. So it probably would have been Attic Greek or similar - assuming the RNA were available.

Pay to learn? By the RNA method, the list is infinite, given an affordable price. By conventional means? Well, I've never yet learned a language entirely for free, so see above list for examples ;-) (Even studying on my own, I buy primers, dictionaries, grammars, etc.)

[weofodthignen]

Oh go on, name a language as different from English as possible :-D