Mandarin sounds like a big deal, that would probably open doors for you if you took it up again, right?Noir wrote: ↑Fri Aug 13, 2021 11:19 pmI'm jealous. I learned Mandarin when I was younger but haven't really kept up with it. It would be cool to read in another language too; there's so many figurative aspects to language (idioms and such) that get lost in translation.
Do you have a favorite language? Is that allowed?
The figurative aspects to language are the things that make me hold back from just openly asking for work in Portuguese (offering Portuguese to English in a Spanish-speaking country must be lucrative). I know there must be a ton of "false friends" and things that seem one way when they're something else, and you only really know those things when you study and read a lot in a language. That's why I'll probably do some intensive Portuguese classes before I feel confident. I had one client who started sending me stand-up in Portuguese and I had to tell him to stop because culture-specific humor is too risky for my skill level.
I don't have a favorite language but I guess English is the least clunky language I can think of among the ones I know. I feel more comfortable expressing myself in Spanish but I'm aware that it lacks the powers of synthesis that English has. Then there's French, which just sounds better than the rest, but not being native in it I wouldn't call it a favorite.