|
|
|
|
|
|
by crazygringo
621 days ago
|
|
|
> Today my Chinese is absolutely unusable Something similar happened to me -- did intensive Mandarin study in college followed by a summer in Beijing being totally immersed. Was incredible. Then continued with a language course back home, and watched as my vocabulary shrank -- something like 4 hrs/wk. of class (with homework on top) couldn't even maintain my Mandarin, much less improve it. Today I can't understand a thing -- I've literally forgotten it all except for counting to ten and some basic phrases. In hindsight, it was utterly wasted effort, except for the cultural benefits of the summer abroad. In contrast, I can understand and get by in French and Spanish and Italian just fine, despite having studied those far less. If I'm traveling somewhere I just do a quick review of verb conjugations beforehand. But they just share so many cognates with English. When television is télévision or televisión or televisione it's just not that hard. But when television is diànshì, and virtually every word is brand-new like that... it's just not worth it. (And even when you learn a new word in e.g. Spanish that's totally different from English, you'll often get it "for free" in another one -- e.g. "pretend" is fingir in Spanish, and fingere in Italian.) |
|
|
Me:
Is there a word in English that looks like fingir and is related to "to imagine"?
ChatGPT:
The English word "feign" is related to the Spanish word "fingir." Both words share a common Latin root, fingere, meaning "to shape" or "to form." While "feign" often means pretending or giving a false appearance, it can be connected to "imagine" in the sense of fabricating or creating a scenario in the mind. So, "feign" might be what you're looking for!