I had a pet spider named Charlotte

She died when I was eight.

Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself. Some of you may know me from Y!A as Medusa.

I'm thirteen and not nearly as well read as most people here, I am catching up though. English isn't my first language, so I hope you will excuse my poor grammar and spelling.

I'm more of a reader than a writer, math and history are my favorite subjects, even though I don't really get math. I just started reading Emma by Jane Austen today. I used have a kitten named Toto and a parakeet named Lucifer.

That pretty much sums me up.

Oh, and I want to thank Solveig for making this site.

(I'm already abusing the smileys)

Heyla and welcome!

I sort of had a pet spider named Jake; I found him in my room and my little brother has always been arachnophobic so I wouldn't let anyone kill my spider. It kept my brother away.

It's Saiyoko from Y!A, as you may have figured out since I'm spectacularly unoriginal when choosing a name.

Enjoy our Treehouse haven!

(These smileys are ridiculously fun. )

Here we may hide away, without trolls and the like. We can make chat without being reported and have fun intellectual discussions. And use wicked awesome smileys.

Hehe, it's great!

WELCOME MEDUSA

Hi there, Medusa I'm not a native speaker either, so we'll just be known as the "guys with the accent"

Hey, Medusa!

Did you seriously have a pet spider named Charlotte? When I was little, my brother and I had an unnamed Asian beetle we kept in the piece of a board game. Oh yeah.


Anyways, welcome!

Tourterelle wrote:

Hey, Medusa!

Did you seriously have a pet spider named Charlotte? When I was little, my brother and I had an unnamed Asian beetle we kept in the piece of a board game. Oh yeah.


Anyways, welcome!

Thanks. I found Charlotte in my grandmother's garden and took her home in an airplane. Good times.

Hey, Medusa!! Ooh, a pet spider. My sister is deathly afraid of spiders; seeing one makes her cry, and that being the case, I've always wanted to get one. My mom won't allow it, though.

Sorry about Charlotte.

English isn't my first language, either. And I would like to say I'm more of a writer than a reader, but I haven't been writing that long. I've been reading all of my life, though. Ever since I first learned English. I was obsessed, but my obsession has lessened. Unfortunately. I used to have a kitten named Patches and I have a parakeet named Pumpkin. He likes to hang onto everything, and when I go somewhere, he flies onto my shoulder and stays there.

History--as I said in the other post--isn't my favorite subject. However, I've always liked Math. I want to learn as much of it as I can. I'm hoping I'll be able to take in Calculus and that it won't nearly be as difficult as I've heard it is.

How's Emma? Is it a good book?

Emma is brilliant! Funny, insightful, and with a heroine that you can ridicule as much as you like, and then go and dream about Mr Knightley!

Funny? I like funny! I'll put that one on my never-ending reading list. Hopefully, it'll stay never-ending, because the day I reach the end of my reading list, I'll be depressed.

Hmmm, Emma's alright. Emma is definitely one of Austen's most well-developed characters, but I found the plot to be a bit too thin at times. It seemed to drag a bit. Now I understand why so many people told me not to read Emma first when I started Jane Austen.

Welcome, Medusa!
Your grammar isn't poor at all-- to the contrary, you type a lot more coherently than a lot of native-English speakers do.
Goldfish and Solveig-- I didn't know English was your guys' second language! English is my first language, and the second Latin (I know it's dead, but it's helped a lot with my English skills). I took Spanish for 2 years and didn't learn a single thing because I didn't have a very good teacher-- all we ever did was worksheets and he never explained anything to us.

What are your guys' native languages?

Well, German Which is why those buttons are still in German... I happen to be there, and the buttons refuse to cross the Atlantic

Thanks for the welcomes, everyone.

I just started on Emma and so far I'm enjoying it. Mr. Knightley is simply hilarious, I haven't laughed with a book in while. Arabic is my first language and I would say that Spanish is my second. It's easier for me to read in English than to write in it, I never seem to know where to use punctuation. I'm more of a reader than a writer, I wish it were the opposite.

Math is one of my favorite subjects, even though I'm not very good at it. In fact, I'm terrible at it. I love World History and I have a strong dislike for US History. Although, I think it's just the textbook that I hate.

My native language is English. I took four years of Spanish in high school, and learned... well, very nearly nothing. Wait, I learned some neat wrestling moves and where to buy really spicy peppers. That's about it.

When I ran off to be a vet tech I ended up learning medical Latin, which if isn't counted as a second language really ought to be. It certainly felt like learning one.

I've been thinking of studying Latin, as it has so many roots in English and other languages (I think). Is it very difficult to learn?

Arabic is your first language, Medusa? That's cool! I understand a little Arabic, but not a lot. My mom (most of my family) speaks it, but only when she's speaking to an Arab, or when she has to tell a relative something that has to do with us (like when she's about to give us a huge gift, but doesn't want us to know just yet) I pretend not to know what she's saying, but most times I can figure it out.

My first language is actually Swahili. You know "hakuna matata"? Yup. Swahili. I understand more than one language, but English and Swahili are the only two I speak. I want to learn a lot more: Italian, Spanish, even German, French (I've always wanted to learn French), and Greek.

My sister right now is learning Spanish; she walks around the house speaking Spanish and listens to a lot of Spanish music, over and over and over again. I've taken in a few things, so it's not all bad.

Italian is easy once you learn Spanish, or so my mother says. My family from my father's side is Arab (Jordanian), my can't understand Arabic so it's "code-speak" for us. I can read in Arabic but I can't write very long paragraphs in it. I''ll have to find a French native to teach me French. I can not pronounce a...single...thing...in...French. What are some important words in Swahili? Like "books", "sleep", "quiet".

(I'm obsessed with the smileys)

My chemistry teacher lived in Egypt for all of high school and speaks fluent Arabic. It's nifty. I wish I spoke cool languages like Swahili and Italian and Arabic and Chinese, but my school only offers Spanish, French (BLEGH), German, and Latin. Oh and Medusa (or whoever it was who asked about it, I can't remember, I'm too spacy), I LOVE my Latin class. It helps a lot with your English skills since so many English words come from Latin. Latin is weird though, because the word order isn't what's important, like in other languages; rather, it's the ending of the words that is important. Word order really doesn't matter in Latin-- you can have the adverb first, the verb last, and the subject in the middle, as long as the endings to the words are grammatically correct. Depending on what grammatical part of the sentence a word is (so, direct object, indirect object, subject, showing possession of something, adjective, etc), it will have a certain ending. For instance, saying, "Amo terram Romanorum" means, "I love the land of Rome", but saying "Romanus amavit terram" means "A Roman loved the land". And depending on whether or not the word is feminine, masculine, or neuter, the endings to the words change, and just as with many other languages, the past, present, imperfect, perfect, etc tense of verbs have different conjugation endings. Am I making any sense? So, yes, Latin can be a bit confusing and it's harder than most other languages (I'm only in Latin 1 and so far it's been pretty easy, but Latin 2 and 3 are both supposed to be killer classes), but the nice thing about it is that it's really consistent. There aren't many exceptions to the rules, whereas languages like French have hundreds of irregular verbs and more exceptions to the rule than words that actually follow the rule . The grammar aspect of Latin has already helped me improve my writing a lot.

Medusa wrote:

Italian is easy once you learn Spanish, or so my mother says. My family from my father's side is Arab (Jordanian), my can't understand Arabic so it's "code-speak" for us. I can read in Arabic but I can't write very long paragraphs in it. I''ll have to find a French native to teach me French. I can not pronounce a...single...thing...in...French. What are some important words in Swahili? Like "books", "sleep", "quiet".

(I'm obsessed with the smileys)

Oh, I just remembered another language I'd love to learn. Hindi. I do watch Indian films, so I understand just a tiny bit.

Anyway, I realize that once I learn Spanish, Italian should be a piece of cake since a lot of the words are similar. I've always been obsessed with Italy and Italians; my mom says it's in my blood. I wish I could read in Arabic, but I can't. I did try teaching myself Arabic and it's that effort I put in the reason as to why I understand as much as I do right now.

I can't pronounce a single thing in French either, but I've always loved Paris and when/if I go there, I want to go there and not seem totally like a tourist.

Books: Kitabu (kee-ta-bu) (which is singular and you'll notice, is very close to Arabic's: kitab. That is its root, actually.) Also, booku (boo-ku), which has its root in the English word.)

Sleep: This one's easy: lala. In a sentence it'd be: Ama lala. (a-mae la-la) It means: She's/he's asleep.

Quiet: Nyamaza. This one's a toughie for someone who's not a native speaker. You have to pronounce the N, the Y, and the A together to pronounce it correctly. It means: Be quiet. So it'd be: NYA-ma-za.

Epiphany wrote:

My chemistry teacher lived in Egypt for all of high school and speaks fluent Arabic. It's nifty. I wish I spoke cool languages like Swahili and Italian and Arabic and Chinese, but my school only offers Spanish, French (BLEGH), German, and Latin. Oh and Medusa (or whoever it was who asked about it, I can't remember, I'm too spacy), I LOVE my Latin class. It helps a lot with your English skills since so many English words come from Latin. Latin is weird though, because the word order isn't what's important, like in other languages; rather, it's the ending of the words that is important. Word order really doesn't matter in Latin-- you can have the adverb first, the verb last, and the subject in the middle, as long as the endings to the words are grammatically correct. Depending on what grammatical part of the sentence a word is (so, direct object, indirect object, subject, showing possession of something, adjective, etc), it will have a certain ending. For instance, saying, "Amo terram Romanorum" means, "I love the land of Rome", but saying "Romanus amavit terram" means "A Roman loved the land". And depending on whether or not the word is feminine, masculine, or neuter, the endings to the words change, and just as with many other languages, the past, present, imperfect, perfect, etc tense of verbs have different conjugation endings. Am I making any sense? So, yes, Latin can be a bit confusing and it's harder than most other languages (I'm only in Latin 1 and so far it's been pretty easy, but Latin 2 and 3 are both supposed to be killer classes), but the nice thing about it is that it's really consistent. There aren't many exceptions to the rules, whereas languages like French have hundreds of irregular verbs and more exceptions to the rule than words that actually follow the rule . The grammar aspect of Latin has already helped me improve my writing a lot.

My mom's friend just recently returned from Egypt. She says it's lovely and recommends the country, not that I needed the recommendation; I'd love to travel everywhere.

Before I'd decided on being homeschooled, I thought about taking Latin once I went to high school, solely because not many people would be taking the class. It's a "dead" language, as some people like to call it. And it would help tremendously with learning more and more of the English language and where the words came from, stuff like that. I never knew that about Latin. Wow. Now that sounds nifty.

In Swahili, there are some words that change depending on what gender the person who's saying it is, but most of the words stay the same. But in Swahili there are many dialects. Unfortunately, my mom has mixed all of them together, then she's like "In this dialect, this means that," and our response is always "Well maybe you should've stuck to one dialect!" So, while we can go to another person's house who speaks Swahili, we'll be saying two different things to each other. That is the difficulty of African languages, some people have told me. You can walk a mile and it'll seem like you're in a completely different country because the language has already changed. And you also have to be careful, because while some things may be offensive in one dialect, it might be a friendly thing to say in another.

I love languages, though.

Thanks for taking the time to explain Latin to me, Epiphany. *hugs* I'm going to save that post for reference. I have an old Latin & Greek roots booklet that I should dig up. Is it weird that I find Latin romantic?

I know a couple of words in Urdu, my friend is trying to teach me more, but I just don't get it. "Sleep" in Arabic sounds a lot like Nyamaza, but I'm not sure how to write out the pronunciation here. The very most that I can say in French is "Madam", and even that sounds strange coming from me. I have Paris as #3 on my "Places to Visit During My Life" list.