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Well, I'm not entirely sure what to cover here. I discovered this site a few months ago, only just now worked up the courage (or is it motivation?) to sign up. I suppose I will eventually work out a story, but for now I think I'll probably spend a good bit of time reading more of the stories on the site already. I haven't looked at the editor yet, so I'm a little nervous on that, but I've been working my way through the help section bit by bit. I imagine that should clear some things up for me, eh?

I'm a college student with an as yet undeclared major (it'll likely be Russian area studies and... maybe anthropology or history. Or linguistics. I'm still not sure). Sadly, despite the username, I don't speak Polish beyond a few greetings (and food). I am, predictably, learning Russian (and, on an only somewhat related point, learned some German in high school), but that's as close as I can come at the moment. Hopefully that will someday change. As with my desire to someday learn Canadian French despite little interest in its European counterpart. I'm not sure there's really too much else to say on that front.

I started doing some creative writing in middle school, got a little more serious about it in high school, and although I'm far from a writer most of the time, I do enjoy dabbling in writing a bit of fiction now and then. Not to say I'm actually much good at it, but I try. I'm not a very intense gamer, but I do enjoy my video games now and then—just am usually more a reader than a gamer. Otherwise... I've done some competitive dog training in the past, have always held a passion for history and languages, am extremely fond of certain types of fantasy and science fiction, have a reputation among my classmates as a rabid hockey fan (which, being at the moment a Michigander among Ohioans—though I'll probably transfer next year, mainly because I won't be able to study abroad if I stay where I am—has led to altogether too many “too close to Canada” jokes), and have as yet mostly unrealized dreams of world travel.

I don't suppose there's too much more to say. I'm looking forward to getting involved in this site. And am still trying to figure out what the Bob thing on the other intro threads is about.

Haha, hockey and Firefly do make a pretty good combination. Watching the Wings game on tv even as I type this, actually. Against the Blackhawks. I can't stand Kane... Not as a bad Crosby, though.

I've been a Wings fan since I was a little kid (and thought Slava Fetisov had one of the world's coolest names--which is probably part of the reason I like Russian studies now, oddly enough). Only got into Firefly quite recently, though, when it was recommended to me by a friend of mine (who would wear a Serenity t-shirt at least once a week. I'm surprised he didn't mention it sooner than he did). I'm not sure I have a specific second-place hockey team--I like the Leafs and the Habs all right, though I think mostly because they're Original Six teams that don't annoy me. Can't stand Chicago or Boston right now, and by principle I can't like Colorado. Even though I have a few friends who are diehard Avs fans, which leads to some pretty fun conversations now and then.

Ovechkin is pretty awesome. I'm more a Datsyuk fan myself, and to be honest a couple years ago I didn't like Ovechkin all that much--but he's definitely grown on me. I think it's got something to do with him accepting awards without a false tooth. And that stunt at the skills competition of the All Star game. That was cool.

Haha, probably close to the same thing as the argument with my Avs fan friend about goalies. Good times, good times. Though I still don't see how Roy could be a decent coach, however much interest there might be in him doing it. I just can't see it working out... Then again, I suppose stranger things have happened.

It does seem like a fairly common sentiment that Parisian French is prettier--which may be true, but I figure I have a better chance of spending time in Quebec than in France--at least it's on the same continent, and both Quebec and Montreal are beautiful cities from what I've seen of them. I did spend a day Strasbourg, France when I went to Germany between 11th and 12th grade, but being as my French was limited to "je ne sais pas," "parlez-vous anglais?" "j'ai votre chapeau," "fromage," and "merde," I was rather lost once our trilingual German hosts left us to our own devices. My friends are not exactly talented at teaching foreign languages, given that two weeks and a book taught me more Czech than a month of them trying to teach me French phrases when they found out I was going on a trip to Quebec over the summer...

I've looked through both OMS and Necromancer, both before I joined the site and since. Really enjoyed them both--great work on OMS! I doubt I'd have the patience to actually work out something coherent of that length. Maybe someday I'll try; I suppose one never really knows.

Ah! Well, it seems like every site has its Bob, then. I've never really understood the appeal in account-armies, but it's good to know that I am not a Bob-suspect XD

I believe the first time I played it, before I joined the site (and I will thank you for your story providing diversion from a roommate who believed that spraying Axe around the room and watching the Disney channel was a good idea), I believe I got the one god ending that time--if I remember correctly, I did like it and it was a good ending. I just don't remember it perfectly now because that was a month ago or more. I went with love at the crossroads this time because I chose the other way the first time, I believe. I actually really liked the early departure from the academy endings, though. Nice to have a path to go where you essentially fail the quest, but yet there's still an interesting ending to the whole thing.

*reads "...likely be Russian area studies..."* *eyebrows raise, grin forms*

Trzcina, can I be your friend?

It's nice to see a new user with some - how should I put this...? - ability to write. lol While I'm not a hockey fan...at all...I am Russian, which is close enough to Polish, dammit! But I too am taking German in High School because it's better than Spanish, and once I get into college I'll take Russian. One of my greatest regrets right now is not knowing Russian, which is absolutely unacceptable. Just...GAH! DAMN!

Anyway, it's good to see you've done your research on the good stories on the site and "he who cannot be named and whose balls shall never drop". lol I'm sure you'll be right at home on this site, since JJJ loves you. I mean come on, JJJ loves you from your first post. Kudos my man! Now you'll just have to learn how to thwart my advances. lol And Zero. Oh, Zero is just as bad as Bob, but thing is: He doesn't stop! I'd avoid him if I were you.

So good luck with any stories you might write, and good luck with your life!

Well, you'd think a site that is essentially a writing site would draw more literate members... But perhaps not.

Haha, well, I'm a Russian studies major even if undeclared, and yet I don't have any known Russian ancestry. Half Polish, though, which as you say is close enough. Slavic languages and cultures are all quite similar, really. Then again, given Polish history, I wouldn't be shocked to find out there is some Russian background in there somewhere.

Yeah, I took one year of Spanish--boring as hell. The teacher liked me, but to be honest I didn't really pay attention. I don't remember much, and I tend to automatically translate anything I try to say into German, but I can still understand a little. Then I switched to German and the absolutely batshit crazy teacher I got stuck with, but I enjoyed that, at least. I'm essentially doing the same thing--German in high school, Russian in college. Like Russian better, though my professor is really no better than my high school German teacher was. Kinda makes me glad I plan to transfer, as she's the only Russian professor at the school I'm at right now. It's a good language, though, and not nearly as difficult as people seem to think it would be. At least noun genders make sense (a or я feminine, o or e neuter, any consonant masculine), unlike the crazy unpredictable German ones! Plus there's a lot of good stuff to read in Russian out there. Not to say that there isn't in German, too, but I like Russian literature better than its German counterpart.

Yeah, well the great thing about my German class is that my teacher is by definition the greatest teacher ever. She's hyper-energetic, and doesn't even drink coffee. Oh man, you should see her when she does! Hahaha! I love the language and my teacher is awesome, so I'm sticking with Deutsch until college.

As for Russian letters, I learned how to roll my r's thanks to it (which is absolutely essential for all other languages, which makes English dangerously strange because it's the only language that doesn't have rolled r's), but I'm still mastering

Ы which is next to impossible for just about any other language to pronounce without enough training. I can pronounce it fine enough, but it's still awkward. I do have the accent down though. lol

Ñ‹ is hard. Try repeating its noise progressively louder with a language tutor in a crowded room. The reactions you'll get are actually pretty entertaining. I can do it well enough if I'm just speaking, but to pronounce the letter by itself--ugh. Not easy. I honestly have no idea what my accent sounds like when I'm speaking Russian. Or German, for that matter. Though my German tends to decay into Denglish pretty quickly.

Well, English is a weird language in many ways. Doesn't roll r's, can say 'th,' has no real concensus on silent letters, has diphthongs galore, and so on. I guess it's just what tends to happen when you mix a Germanic language with French, it turns out strange.

Well, Gretzky was in my opinion a bit of a cherry picker. Now, he was still a great player (though I'll be the first to admit that I never got to watch him play during his career--well, I probably did watch some of the mid-late '90s games, but I don't really remember noticing him then. I was pretty young), but I don't think he was the best ever as some would say. Ovechkin is a superb player, but again I don't think he's unrivaled. There are a lot of good ones out there--and Kane and Crosby are not among them, however much they might think themselves to be. Just decent-playing celebrities with stupid streaks.

Oh, and I'll be looking forward to reading your new project whenever it comes out!

I like what I've read of yours thus far.

Wait, my project? What was I working on...? lol

If I can't sleep at night, I just practice my Ñ‹ until I get drowsy. Hahaha, it works like a charm! As for German, I am the sex when it comes to pronunciation. And I always write ß for the 'ss's. I wonder if the Nazi's did that... lol

You have a good point about English combining Germanic with French. It's just funny how dramatically a modernization of English would alter English, mainly in terms of spelling. The 'gh's in words like 'straight' would be thrown out, no doubt. And 'c' would be right out. lol Well unless it's used as a 'ch' sound.

Not you, JJJ. I think I replied to both of you in one message--oh well.

Haha, can't say I've ever tried pronouncing single letters to make myself fall asleep! My German pronunciation was better than  my classmates', but that's honestly not saying much. We were almost at the end of first year when some kid asks, "What does 'ich' mean again?" And he wasn't alone in that question. That's how patehtic that class was. Eszets are fun. But they can be obnoxious when people who don't know they're just a double s try to pronounce them and go for "b."

A modernization of English spelling would be terrifying... Good for people learning the language, but there'd start to be even more  confusion between strait and straight, they're/their/there, and all that. Sometimes it'd be good, but god... That'd be a lot of work. To make it really make sense we'd need something like the Czech diacritical marks, but I don't want to see most Americans have to re-learn the language. People seem to have enough trouble with learning English grammar and spelling the first time.

Well, not a Pens fan either... Didn't really have an opinion on them until 2008 playoffs, though, to be honest. I'm sick of seeing them in the finals. Then again, I suppose you might feel the same way about the Wings. And I can't stand Crosby... And Malkin isn't much better...

As for football, well, I've never been a huge fan, but part of that might stem from the fact that the proudest we've been of the Lions in years is that they managed to lose every game last season. At least it's not quite as bad this year, but I'm not sure that such a feat can be repeated anytime soon!

Well, at this point I intend to stay for a while--this seems like a pretty neat site, and relatively friendly boards. Even if there is a love of trying to sniff out clone accounts XD And I think I'm from too far east to be JJJ or his sibling.

Oh, definitely. As I said, he was an amazing player. I just have a soft spot for the more defensive forwards, I think--probably because I've gotten so used to seeing them with the styles of players the Wings so often have. Little guys that are nevertheless amazing at what they do. I'm honestly not all that familiar with the west coast players and teams, though one would think I would be--Western Conference is Western Conference. Like anyone, he was mediocre in some areas--but he was unrivaled at what did. I'll give him that. And having a great supporting cast means a lot to any player, I think. Even the most defensive forwards can't do much without other guys around them. It is very much a team sport. Gretzky was a great of his era, Ovechkin is a great of his--hell, Rocket Richard was a great of his. Comparing between eras is hard, to say the least. The game has changed.

Ovechkin does seem to be pretty amazing. I think there are a fair number of players now who would give the older greats a definite run for their money--but the game develops as time goes on, and in a lot of ways it's different from what it used to be. I think part of it may be the greater number of European/Russian players in the league today than at Gretzky's peak--many of the really amazing guys we have now are from countries that didn't get players in the NHL until the early '90s, and even then took some time to really hit their stride. There's a lot of relatively unsung but absolutely amazing players around today, and part of that is the not-quite-fluent-in-English foreign player. Which I suppose Ovechkin is, but he's one of the better known ones. They'd like to make Crosby out to be a second Mario Lemieux, but in both cases it has a lot to do with a club that doesn't have much talent otherwise, I'm afraid.

Aw, that's unfortunate. Hopefully it goes back to working. I like talking hockey XD

that was happening to me to, but I switched to firefox and then it worked.

I've been on Firefox from the start... Would that be causing the problem or simply hiding it from me? I dunno.

It's all your fault, Tzrcina. You brought the plight to us!

Even though that might be true (lol) and getting back on the language topic, my class is not as bad as your class. I mean at least we all know what "Ich" means - aside from this one bafoon who thankfully isn't in my class anymore now that he switched his schedule - and it's probably because Frau does a great job of teaching us, ie: pounding the words into our cortexes with sheer repition...and games. There's not one class that doesn't involve a game. The normal game is pictionary or charades, but we spice things up with Jeopardy and Pyramid. Good stuff.

And as for the glitches, I was thrown off last night by some weird malfunction that involved system errors and red letters.

Ah, well, I used to be a computer-killer. At least, if you asked my parents. Maybe I'm a bearer of maladies for formatting now, too!

I wish we played games! Well, games that made sense. Mine would start talking about something, call someone (usually me or the one other person who ever knew what was going on) and start naming things we'd have to draw. But when the drawing consists of a giant nose to sniff out ill-behaved children and bread (if I remember correctly), it tends not to really teach much. And she never really knew what she was telling us, it seemed, so it rarely worked well.

In my Russian class, we occasionally play games, but they tend to be more sentence-diagramming games than anything else. Which does help to pound the grammar into our brains, but not much else. Most of the time. There are people in that class who don't understand the point of verb conjugation yet. So that's a problem. I apparently always end up in poorly done language classes. Maybe it'll be better next year.

It's up to the people in the class to make the class good, and without rubbing my balls in your face, my class and entire school is just awesome. So suck it. And yeah, that was without rubbing my balls in your face. lol

As for verb conjugation, it doesn't make much pragmatic sense to me, but I can deal with it. I just don't understand when the conjugations are called "masculine" and "feminine", but then apparently a chair is masculine or whatever. At most, all you need is "masculine", "feminine", and "inanimate/neutral".

Well, with 6000 kids in the school, there's bound to be plenty of duds mixed in with a few good ones. Or at least that's how I always saw it. And it's good you like your school--I was rather indifferent to mine, and I actively dislike my college. Hence transferring. I'd say that out of classes of about 30-40 kids, there were usually up to maybe 5 really good students. The rest ranged from just there to attempting not to do well. And it didn't really matter what subject--even AP English (and definitely AP World History) had its share of kids there for no real reason other than that their parents told them to take it.

See, that's why I like Russian noun genders. I may not understand why they are what they are, but at least there's a way to logically figure it out from the word. German seems like everything was just randomly assigned for no real reason.

Yeah, the "irregular" verbs in Spanish or German confuse me even more. Why have the rules if you're just going to bloody break them, especially if the irregulars are more common than the regular verbs?! Like seriously what the fudge - how does that make sense?! Geez, some languages make no sense. At least English has simple conjugation, even though it doesn't make the noobs who are forced to take language classes ready for conjugation in other languages...even though it is all ultimately ridiculously pointless.

Well, English does have some bizarre irregulars, but at least it's mostly done away with cases. Those get frustrating sometimes, too.

I never took enough Spanish to get to irregulars--German irregulars can get weird, though. So do Russian irregulars, but at least they're mostly just separate categories.

There's definitely a big difference between the people who take languages because they have to and those that do because they want to ...

I've been inventing languages since I was a wee lil lad, and right now I'm working on one that...I haven't decided a name for, but it's cool anyway. lol And the language has no conjugation except for time tenses (present, past, future, maybe I'll add some perfects and such). If you want to state plurality, you either state the number or just say the word for 'multiple' which essentially works as an adjective. There's a whole structure to the words and grammar and THERE'S NO IRREGULARS, and it's quite a simple language to master so now I just need to iron out the basic vocabulary and then go from there. Yesh, I am a language nerd. Whahaha!

As for kids in the class, there will forever be people in language classes who just are no good at language. And they are there to make you feel awesome. lol

I tend to lose focus before I finish working one out; at one time I was working on inventing a fairly simple language. Problem is, I try to go the authentic route on vocab and work out what words a culture would have first, and I end up losing patience with that and fall into just deriving words from combinations of existant languages. Got pretty far once on one that was a conglomerate of Finnish, Russian, German, and a bit of some other ones. Really not much like any of those, but it was fun nevertheless. Just didn't get too far on it. I should probably dig the files out of my old computer and try to work on it again. And linguistics is amazing; it deserves nerds!

Haha, I suppose that's true.

Well what I did for my language was I constructed an entire history and culture for the civilization, and then made the language. It's easier when you have a foundation and can derive a sound of the language from the history and culture. It's all over-analyzation. lol I've made quite a comprehensive history, going back to the society's origin when the first people settled down in a remote valley in the Caucasus mountains, to an alternate World War 2 where Nazi Germany invaded in 1942 and then this society fought alongside Russia when pushing back to Berlin. And then after WW2, the Russians wanted the civilization to join the USSR, but the government of the civilization was like a feudalistic republic - families were the political parties and ruled as separate states that convened in the intertribal congress - so they didn't want Communism, which eventually led to a revolution in 1982 that split the families between the Republicans and the Communists. After the Communists were defeated, the families were banished into the surrounding mountains of the Caucasuses, as most defeated and shamed families were forced to do. The civilization caught flak from the UN over violating some code or something, but did not let the families return. The families settled in nearby countries, mostly in the USSR. After the Cold War ended, the families either remained in their countries or tried to return, and even to this day, there is controversy over letting the families back in.

Yeah, so that's a basic history of the civilization. And no, I don't have a name for it yet. lol

As for the language being influenced by the history and culture, the grammar is very structural and uncompromising, but at least it's simple and pragmatic. There's no conjugation other than tenses, nouns are indicated as direct object or subject, and there are indicator articles that go in-between nouns and their adjectives. For example:

"The little boy happily flies his big, yellow kyte in the sky."

"De-Cilu-e-natce et-Kayt-e-ganzce-e-lufce zoruwa yoi-Zortziyu"

(literally) "[Subject]-Boy-[adjective marker]-little [direct object]-Kyte-[adjective marker]-big-[adjective marker]-yellow flies [having to do with]-Sky.

So the language follows 'Subject - Direct Object - Verb' and the "yoi-" is essentially an adjective marker that shows the following word is related to the rest of the sentence, but is not involved with the base S-DO-V setup. The "wa" at the end of "zoruwa" indicates it's a verb and is in the present tense.

Also, "e" makes a 'schwa' or 'ah' sound (depends on dialect; 'ah' is royal, 'schwa' is more common), "c" makes the 'sh' sound, and "a" makes the 'ai' (eye) sound.

...and this structure is due to the value of tradition and order in the culture. The sounds are very earthy and not very pretty-sounding, but they sound proper.

Wow, very nice! I never got that far with one. I have to say, I like the idea of building a language around an alternate history. I should try it sometime; I always have some ideas for alternate history stories floating around, so maybe I can start to work out a language from one of those. It'd be kind of fun.

I have to say, it looks good for a language from the Caucasus. It looks--and from what I can do with pronunciation without ever hearing it, sounds--suited to where you place it.

Thanks, man. I've been working on the grammar and such for about 2 years now, and I still have very little done. lol But using the alternate history and constructing a culture really helps when defining sounds and idioms and grammar because you need a basis for a language in terms of culture, and that's why Esperanto and other artificial languages are considered fake; the language steals from the sounds and the culture of other Romantic languages. If you want a language to sound cool, it needs to be completely unique, and maybe you can throw some influence from surrounding lands. Take "Kayt" for example. It's pronounced just about exactly the same as "Kyte" and it's copied from when the Europeans brought a kyte to show as a gift to the Leader of the civilization when they were first interacting diplomatically. Little details like that help to improve the genuinity (right?) of the language. Alternate histories help you make events that let your language's civilization fit in with history, and while it's always good to stick close to the real timeline, adding the history of the civilization itself and then adding events to the global history when it is affected by the civilization really flesh out the civilization's uniqueness historically.

Yes; I was guessing that "Kayt" would be essentially a loanword--like the Russian джинсы and чипсы being russifications of English words for things introduced via English. And besides being helpful in making a language, alternate histories are just plain -fun-. And I would definitely say they help make a more authentic sounding language--to be more distinct helps to emphasize continued independence; for something located in the Caucasus, heavier Russian influence would suggest more subjugation to imperialism, and so on. Always fascinating stuff.

History nerds unite! lol

History nerds are awesome.

Most of the rest of the world just doesn't know it yet.