Hi thanks for looking at my query. I recently as a joke changed some writing on the board of a friends EAL (English as an Additional Language) classroom from English to German. She liked the idea, but using Google Translate resulted in an overly formal phrasing that made it seem more a demand than a suggestion or polite request.

So my ask, if you speak (or I guess write) another language I would love to request you take a moment to translate “Please stack chairs at the end of the day” into whichever language you can help me with, it should be a polite request though.

I’m really not sure what the composition of her class is but she is a fan of languages as a whole so even if it’s not a language that is represented in her class I am sure it will be a bit of fun and a talking point to figure it out.

If you have the time and the skills to help I really appreciate it, otherwise I appreciate you taking the time to read this post. Have a fantastic day.

  • shads@lemy.lolOPEnglish
    2·
    21 hours ago

    Awesome, you actually answered all the questions I had bubbling away in my head but didn’t want to be too presumptive in asking. More decades ago than I care admit, I did a 25 hour Latin course. Very little of it stuck with me but it seems like Esperanto could fill a similar niche to the one I was trying to fill by learning latin, as a bridging language to be more capable in the Romance languages. I’m sure there are studies out there on language as sociology, as the largest con-lan I am aware of I wonder how deep that research runs? Another thing for me to read up on I guess.

    Thanks again!

    • Fondots@lemmy.world
      1·
      20 hours ago

      I’ve never dived too deep into in, but I know there has been some research into native Esperanto speakers (denaskuloj) because that’s a thing that exists

      • shads@lemy.lolOPEnglish
        1·
        20 hours ago

        And isn’t that amazing, a conciously constructed language having native speakers is just kind of amazing. So much of English is legacy cruft that has accumulated organically since it seperated from Old English, and so much of Old English was likewise accumulated from its antecedents. A language, any language with a clear dilineation has an opportunity to start with a clean slate that is informed but not slaved to the past. Things like vowel orders can be made as rules without having more exceptions than complying words. Brilliant.