Random Chat

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Yeah there was a time there was like a core group of really active members on here––and then there were like a million new people and a lot of the old people stopped talking on here ... and now it's far less active than it used to be, even though there are so many members! A lot of the original members are in college now so I guess most of them got too busy to get on here as often. Buuut I'm still here and I'm finished with college now. o_o

Also, hi Anastasia!!! You haven't been around here in a while. :P

[Isaac]

Sam~~ we cannot see the moon, and yet the waves still rise~~ wrote: "@hayden- any new ideas for some writing? (i'm a horrible person, though, i still haven't read picket fences.)

@anastasia- oh, man. craziness!"

I HAVE an idea, but I'm not as dedicated to it (yet). I'm trying to muster up as much eagerness for it as I had with Picket Fences but I'm still really hung up on Joshua and Ben.

Brigid *Flying Kick-a-pow!* wrote: "Yeah there was a time there was like a core group of really active members on here––and then there were like a million new people and a lot of the old people stopped talking on here ... and now it'..."

I was one of the younger members of the second wave of the super big, active group. I joined the summer after my sixth grade year and now I'm almost done with high school. O_o I've spent half a decade of my life on this group.

[Megan]

I was just thinking about how much I missed these groups being super active and chatting with everybody and then I found this discussion! I was pretty busy for a while but now I'm not in school and not working (currently) so I have like all the free time in the world, hahaha.

[Anastasia]

Brigid *Flying Kick-a-pow!* wrote: "Yeah there was a time there was like a core group of really active members on here––and then there were like a million new people and a lot of the old people stopped talking on here ... and now it'..."

Hi, there, Brigid! :) I've been writing and revising a novel (the latter of which is really kicking my butt). But I'm here now, and I'd really love to get active again.

[Isaac]

Megan [I'm okay, I'm alright] wrote: "I was just thinking about how much I missed these groups being super active and chatting with everybody and then I found this discussion! I was pretty busy for a while but now I'm not in school and..."

I know, I'm always so bored because I have no social life and my online social life is dead a lot too?? What am I supposed to do this is why I'm so emo

[Sam~~ we cannot see the moon, and yet the waves still rise~~]

^^yeah, i feel ya there, hayden. :/

[Anastasia]

Weird, random question (figured I'd post it here, haha): Does anyone else make fanart of their own characters? Or am I the only one?

[Isaac]

I would if I could draw! I want to draw Joshua and Ben and Gloria and Diana soooooo bad but I have no drawing experience whatsoever. :(

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

@Hayden - Yeahhh I remember you being in that huge wave of newbies. It's funny because now I have like two large-ish groups of Goodreads friends––the ones from the first "wave" of WWAC and another group of friends from the second wave. :D

@Anastasia - Hope the writing/revising are going well! I hear ya, revising is a huge pain ... that tends to be the stage where I give up, haha. But I believe in you! ;) Lol I used to make fan art of my own characters when I was like 15, when I was in that phase of drawing really bad manga-style art. (I think I have pictures of it posted online somewhere .... gosh, I should dig that up.) I haven't done so recently, but now that I'm slightly better at drawing maybe I'll try it again.

Edit: ohhhh boy I found some of it. Makes me feel so old. :P

[Isaac]

Brigid *Flying Kick-a-pow!* wrote: "@Hayden - Yeahhh I remember you being in that huge wave of newbies. It's funny because now I have like two large-ish groups of Goodreads friends––the ones from the first "wave" of WWAC and another ..."

I apologize for however I acted before like, 2014. I was so bad in 2010/2011.

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Haha I don't remember you being that bad. I think we argued once or twice but I always liked you. :D

[Sam~~ we cannot see the moon, and yet the waves still rise~~]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAYDEN!! (: ✨

[Dana]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Hayden!! You're so insanely talented & I hope you have a really good year!!

[Isaac]

omg it's just now 12:01 on the 14th so I just missed these posts ;_; tysm ♥

[Anastasia]

Happy belated birthday, Hayden! Sorry I missed it. Did you have a good day?

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

YES HAPPY LATE BIRTHDAY HAYDEN! <3

[Isaac]

Yes I did have a nice birthday ♥

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Yay! :D

[Mindy]

Is it too late to wish you a happy birthday? Well even if it is- HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
I have been so insanely busy lately- because guess what? I started college!!! I really didn't know how it would work out...so I just kind of plunged in. I am taking online classes because I work and have my daughter, but it has been amazing! It's really interesting as it is my first college experience.

[Isaac]

It's not too late, thank you. x3 And good luck with the college thing! I'm glad it's been working out so far.

[Sam~~ we cannot see the moon, and yet the waves still rise~~]

that's awesome, mindy! (:

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Congrats Mindy, that's great! :D

[Mindy]

Thanks everyone

[tesni]

related but not related: I got my A-Level results today and I've gotten into my first choice of university! I start at the end of September. How exciting! I'm so happy; I've been looking forward to university for years and years and now it's finally here.

[Megan]

That's awesome, Tesni!

[Anastasia]

Congrats, Tesni! That's wonderful!

[Sam~~ we cannot see the moon, and yet the waves still rise~~]

Congrats, tesni!! You're studying languages, right?

[Isaac]

Yay Tesni!!! Congrats!!!

[tesni]

Megan [I'm okay, I'm alright] wrote: "That's awesome, Tesni!"

Anastasia wrote: "Congrats, Tesni! That's wonderful!"

Sam~~ we cannot see the moon, and yet the waves still rise~~ wrote: "Congrats, tesni!! You're studying languages, right?"

Hayden wrote: "Yay Tesni!!! Congrats!!!"


thank you all! <3 Yes, French and Russian for my sins.

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Wow that's amazing, congrats!!!!! <3

[Azaria]

Anyone write screenplays here?

[Bidemi]

I know it's a little late, but congrats Tesni, even though I don't know you all to well either. My brother also did A-levels, unprecedented results.
How did you learn Russian, I want to but my French teacher says I have to know Latin first which is irritating because some people are like why bother with Latin, it's a dead language. Any advise Tesni?

[Isaac]

Azaria wrote: "Anyone write screenplays here?"

I've dabbled with them but screenplays are difficult for me. There used to be someone who hung around here all the time that writes screenplays frequently, but he's busy doing college stuff (which he sometimes writes screenplays for).

[tesni]

Brigid *Flying Kick-a-pow!* wrote: "Wow that's amazing, congrats!!!!! <3"

Thank you! <3


Bidemi wrote: "I know it's a little late, but congrats Tesni, even though I don't know you all to well either. My brother also did A-levels, unprecedented results.
How did you learn Russian, I want to but my Fren..."

thank you! I started learning Russian when I was twelve - I was very lucky, really, because it so happened that a Russian woman used to work at my old primary school, so however many years later when I expressed interest in learning it one of my friend's mothers who still knew her put us back in contact. For an our every week for the last six years we've met in her kitchen or mine. It's been lots of fun.

No no no!!! You don't have to learn Latin at all!!! I can understand where your teacher is coming from and I can see how it would help but...he's wrong. I am very enthusiastic about these things so here is a long and rambling explanation under the cut:

(view spoiler)[It's true that despite the fact its a dead language (I would know, I've started doing Biblical Hebrew this summer, dead languages 4 lyfe) there are a lot of benefits to Latin, and though I don't speak it myself I am pretty envious of my friends who've had the opportunity to do it. However:

- Despite the decline in teaching it in state schools, we have this idea that Latin is the like...Master Language of Languages™ that's like the Ultimate Key 2 Language Study™ and...it's really not. It's certainly true that Latin has had a huge, huge influence upon many European languages, especially Indo-European ones in Europe (the Roman Empire certainly got around, after all), it's not the be all and end all and not knowing it shouldn't make you feel like you can't study other modern European languages. Knowing how and why to say amo, amas, amat isn't going to make saying lyublyu, lyubish', lyubit any easier than saying j'aime, tu aimes, il aime is going to make it any easier. Reading this point back in retrospect this is the essence of what I mean to say, so you can basically ignore the rest of this if you like.

- Irrelevant point you can skip if you like: besides, I think this view is pretty narrow anyway because it disregards the fact many languages both within Europe (Finnish and Hungarian, Basque, the Kartvelian and Northeastern and Northwestern Caucasian languages) and those outside of it (language families such as Afro-Asiatic! Dravidian! Turkic! Na-Dené! We could go on all day) historically and linguistically and culturally have like...literally nothing to do with Latin and thus it would perhaps (perhaps!!) only be of some help to you in ways I shall move on to later.

- The reason I could see why your teacher would think Latin is a good prerequisite for Russian is because of its grammar. Both languages have six cases, both decline according to gender and case (Russian declines also according to number and so I presume Latin does too?), neither use articles, both are just...notoriously hard, etc! However...

- a lot of the similarities between them are, arguably, simply because they're both Indo-European languages and are just from different branches (Romance & Slavonic respectively) of the same tree - there's no magical link between Latin and Russian specifically that makes learning Russian after having done Latin easier, especially when there are still considerable differences (lexically, culturally, etc etc) between them and Russian is far closer to other modern languages such as Polish, Czech and so on - so these might instead, arguably, give you a better head start than Latin would. I could equally say 'you have to learn Polish before you do Russian!' because a knowledge of would make learning Russian easier and vice versa (for different reasons than Latin, perhaps), but a) it's not essential!!! there's nothing worse than forcing yourself to study something you don't want to study and b) it wouldn't make learning Polish easier and like...you have to start somewhere, so I don't see why that somewhere can't be Russian. Nevertheless...

- it's certainly true that I've been helped by the fact that Russian is my third language - my second language is actually German and I began studying it about three years before I began Russian. German grammar is also pretty complicated, but I do come across things in either language where I'm like 'oh, that's like Russian!' or 'they have this in German too!' More than that, however, it simply makes it easier to grasp concepts that exist in all Indo-European languages: perfects and imperfects, conditionals and subjunctives, datives and accusatives, prepositions and conjunctions, etc. Therefore, if you do French, many of these will probably already be familiar to you and learning Russian will probably be easier for you than it will be for someone who, say, speaks only English (partly because we never think so critically about our native languages as we do those we study, partly because then foreign language study is a new thing for them, partly because imo the education system in the UK does a poor job of teaching grammar and the technicalities of language!), simply because a lot of the concepts are more familiar to you and so they're easier to 'get'.

- also! the difficulties of different languages are all relative to a variety of different factors and thus I try not to think about languages in terms of 'easy' or 'hard' at all these days.

tl;dr learning another European language before you start Russian certainly helps but you don't have to, and if you do, it doesn't have to be Latin.

~*~ the end ~*~
(hide spoiler)]

[Mindy]

Wow congrats Tesni! That's really interesting...I actually speak Yiddish which is very similar to German and I also speak French being that I grew up in Montreal. Way to go! So which college is it?

[Isaac]

Mindy wrote: "Wow congrats Tesni! That's really interesting...I actually speak Yiddish which is very similar to German and I also speak French being that I grew up in Montreal. Way to go! So which college is it?"

omg you speak Yiddish? That's neat.

[[deleted user]]

HI!

[tesni]

Mindy wrote: "Wow congrats Tesni! That's really interesting...I actually speak Yiddish which is very similar to German and I also speak French being that I grew up in Montreal. Way to go! So which college is it?"

I'd rather not say the name of the university on a public group, but as both it and I are in England and as it's neither Oxford or Cambridge I don't know if you'd know of it anyway.

yes, I remember you saying you did! I've never (to my knowledge) spoken to a Yiddish speaker before - mostly here they live in London and Manchester, I think. I wonder if I were speaking German and you were speaking Yiddish how much the other would be able to understand!

[Mindy]

I know I can read German, but since the accent is so different it's hard to understand when speaking. I did actually overhear someone speaking it on the subway and I caught a word here or there but I didn't totally get it.

[Isaac]

Hearing anyone speak any language you're not really familiar with is terrible. I'm great at reading and writing in different languages, decent at speaking, and terrible at listening, but I think that's true for most people.

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Same here. I took ten years of Spanish classes and I still can't really understand it when I hear it spoken out loud. I also have a horrible accent because I can't roll my R's at all. :P I can read it pretty much fluently, though. I'm currently learning German also (just on Duolingo) but it's only been like two months, haha.

[Dana]

Duolingo <3

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Yassss.

[Mindy]

Okay so I submitted something to a small magazine and it was rejected but at the end they wrote:
Please feel free to submit more of your writing.
Is that a positive sign or just being polite?

[Isaac]

It's being encouraging. Just because they didn't accept this one doesn't mean they'll never accept you ever.

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Could be either, but honestly that's a pretty standard form rejection. But as Hayden said, even if they didn't publish you this time that doesn't mean they wouldn't publish another of your stories. Also, there are hundreds of literary magazines out there! No matter how many rejections you get, you just have to keep trying. ;)

[Dana]

WOW I'M SO CLOSE TO REACHING MY YEARLY BOOK GOAL FOR THE FIRST TIME IN YEARSSS

41/50 SO FAR AND THAT FEELS GOOOOOOOD

hopefully I can make it this year.

[Brigid ✩, No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.]

Yaaaay Dana! :D

I haven't met my book goal in like three years but right now I'm at 45/50 so I'm hoping I can make it. I'm kinda "cheating" by reading a bunch of middle-grade books. ;)

[Mindy]

Hi, it's been like forever- just wanted to share a bit of good news...
First of all, I had a baby boy in November. He is the cutest thing ever.
Second of all, I got a new job teaching writing and literature in a small Hasidic school (I know I am young but it's ESL). I LOVE my new job- no explanation needed.
And best news for you guys- I finally got my first piece accepted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's not tons of money, just 75$ but it's a real legitimate magazine (Family First) publishing something I wrote! I finally feel like this CAN happen.

[Megan]

Mindy wrote: "Hi, it's been like forever- just wanted to share a bit of good news...
First of all, I had a baby boy in November. He is the cutest thing ever.
Second of all, I got a new job teaching writing and ..."

Aw yay that's all so awesome! Congratulations! :)