in reply to Re^7: Perl module documentation language conventions
in thread Perl module documentation language conventions

Apparently, your Slavic languages are more similar to Greek which can be considerably reordered without changing the meaning of the sentence, only its focus. Thai, however, is more structured, akin to English. English is better able, on account of being a better developed language, of representing complex thoughts and sentence structures. Thai has no punctuation; though Lao does.

I'm a native English speaker; fluent/fully literate in Spanish; conversationally fluent in both Thai and Lao, and able to read both, but my spelling in both is poor; and speak beginning level Chinese--enough to get around town, ask for directions, prices, basic family relationships, etc. I only learned to read about 300 Chinese characters--not enough to read a newspaper, which they say requires about ten times that. But I've forgotten a lot of that now.

Presently, I'm learning Biblical Hebrew and Greek, Hmong (which I can read), and a little Karen. I can type Karen (at about 18wpm--it uses the shift key for nearly half the characters), but can't read it! I've been taught just enough (consonants, vowels, etc.) to help locals develop software utilities for spellchecking, word-wrapping, etc. in Karen--tools which never before existed: it's still not in Google's translation list. To the untrained eye, written Karen looks like Burmese--which Google does have in its repertoire; but they are mutually unintelligible. I suppose I could type Burmese nearly as well, but again, I wouldn't understand a word of it.

I've learned bits of other languages along the way (like French which I can often understand in written form)--but mostly not enough to be worthy of mention. Including Chinese, where I was more limited, I have taught in five languages--perhaps that's the answer to "what languages do you actually speak?" But I'm only fluent in four.

Blessings,

~Polyglot~

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