Foreign languages
 

Do you speak any, if so, which ones and how well? How do you feel about learning foreign languages, which ones would you like to learn, how are you going about doing so and so on..:)

I'm currently in the process of learning Italian, because I've always liked it and now that I work for an Italian company, it could be very useful. I went to a few courses a few years back so I have a fair grasp of the basic grammar, and in the last couple of months I've been trying to read as much as I can in Italian (started with comic books and plan to move to daily papers and possibly proper books) and I'm already seeing great improvement.

After I gain satisfactory knowledge of Italian, I plan to move on to Spanish, where, strangely enough, my vocabulary is actually wider than Italian at the moment (our TV program has been saturated with Mexican telenovelas so you can't help but pick up some things). I don't want to mix the two at the mo because they're too similar and I figure I might get confused.

In the far distant future I might give French and German a try. The only non-European language I might be interested in learning at some point is Japanese, but I'm not sure I actually wanna go through the process of learning the spectacularly complicated alphabet.

So speak, parla, habla, tell us all about it...(:

Well, depending on how you define Foreign languages, I speak english pretty well :P

of the languages I speak:

Mo Theanga Dúchasach - go Líofa, nuair a chleachtaim (Irish, fairly fluently when I practice it)
English - fluently
Spanish - passably, to the level of random conversation when I've practiced it; it's been a while but if I were thrown into a few conversations it'd come back pretty quickly
German - I did three years of it in school, picked it up fairly well but my spoken german is pretty atrocious atm from total lack of practice, I can still read it alright though, and understand a fair bit in conversation.

Other than that, my mother speaks French and sends me texts/speaks it at me every now and then so I have a VERY rudimentary understanding of it, though I can pronounce it pretty well from singing it a fair bit in choral music, same with Latin.

Languages I plan on learning: Mandarin/Cantonese/Japanese (two of the three), because I think it will be important, and because I know very little about asian culture and one of the best ways to learn about a people it to learn the language - it's my personal view that the language you speak has a great impact on your personality and the way you view life, certainly it's very easy to show that different languages have different temperaments. Japanese I'm more interested in because I watch a lot of anime, so it would be nice to be able to forego the need for subtitles, and also cause I'd like to go out there when they're not in the middle of a crisis :P

Improving my german and spanish (and my irish!) and maintaining a more fluent standard - this is important to me, as I know I can do this quite easily, and because it's good practice to be able to speak multiple languages. I also want to have the ability to pass on things like that to my chilren when I have them, and to be able to help them when (yes, when!) they're learning other languages.

I've been told Italian is a great language to learn, because it's totally phonetic. makes it a lot easier to speak if you don't have to think about how different letters in the words are going to change the sounds!

However, all of this is definitely waiting until after I'm finished my finals in two months :s

I would love to learn Spanish and Portugese, mainly because Spanish is almost required in any southern state in the US, and Potugese because I would like to seduce a Brazilian woman at some point in my lifetime. But I'm not much of a language learner, have trouble conforming to different sentence structures and speech patterns.

I had a decent understanding of Thai, but that was many years ago and I've probably forgotten most of it. I'd probably get away with making myself understood, but would fail at understanding what was being said to me apart from the odd word. Learning individual words is very easy because like Chinese the words are mostly monosyllabic.
The difficulty lies with it being a tonal language. 5 different tones; high, low, rising, falling and flat. The word for rice = khao can mean several different things if the tone is wrong.

I had a go at learning Spanish a few years ago and as it stands my Spanish isn't bad, but I'm lazy and not getting to use it unless I'm on holiday leaves me pretty rusty.

Over the last couple of years I felt the urge to learn more about Romani.
The problem with Romani is that it's not a written language and never has been.
The language is passed on orally from generation to generation and because of this the language can have minor differences between Romany people around the world depending on what country they live in.
In other words, there are many dialects of Romani.
For example; Romani in England (Anglromani) has been reduced to a form of creole.
This makes learning what is left of the language quite easy because it's just a case of replacing certain English words with the Romani equivalent.
I already had a decent vocabulary of Angloromani passed down from my father and his father before him etc.
The version of Romani I'm most interested in at the moment is Kalderesh(sp?) Romani. A chosen dialect used to standardise the language in the hope of preserving Romani for future generations. This version is closer to the original than most others, although most of the words used are basically the same.
I'm seriously considering taking one of these courses sometime in the future. ROMANI Project - Manchester

I took about five years of French in middle school/high school combined and all I got out of it is how to roughly translate french to someone that knows nothing about French. I can also read it fairly well, enough to get by.

I would like to get the French Rosetta Stone to give me a little brush up on it.

Overall though, Rosetta Stone is awful for teaching someone a new language because they don't touch on the basics of grammar and sentence structures.

I have always wanted to learn Japanese one day.

The main reason I started out on the French path is because they were only offering Spanish and French at my school.

People were saying Spanish was way easier so I went with French for the "challenge" but it wasn't that bad.

I also picked French because it's the language of love or so they say.

My third and final reason for picking French was because there were so many hot chicks in that class and I felt like it was my own personal secret. I told my friend to pick French over Spanish so I did share the wealth somewhat. There were three guys total in my French class and the third guy was gay.

Have you tried Linguaphone?

Never heard of it until now.

I will look into it.

I learned most of my Spanish from it. Put it on my mp3 player and spent hours walking around while speaking to myself.
The only downside I found was that the narrators in the course sounded quite well to do.
Which is fine providing you don't mind sounding like an upper class Spaniard!

Steal it from the internet.

I just looked at the site and I might get the advanced version of the French one.

I'm Malaysian and write, read and speak fluent Malay.

I'm also very fluent in spoken Cantonese and Hakka (Chinese dialects), a smattering of Mandarin and some Hokkien.

I can read basic French.

Српски језик
English language
اللغة العربية
한국어
Русский язык

:D

I took French all throughout school - 13 years of French immersion programs and actual French school. I went to all-French school for a couple of years and it was really fun, except for the punishment for speaking English - after school detention for 2 hours. You couldn't speak English anywhere on school property, even your parents when they would be at the school.

I haven't really spoken French since I graduated high school, because there really isn't any use for it out in Ontario except for educational purposes, really. I'm going to try and get into the Advanced French class at my university in September to brush up on all aspects of French, especially the spoken part.

I also did 3 years of German and 1 year of Spanish in high school. I had an easier grasp of German which is why I continued with it. German and English are part of the same language group and have a similar history, so that's probably why. I understand it fairly well when reading it or hearing someone speak it, but I suck at speaking it because I haven't done so since I left high school. I'm hoping to pick it up again. Spanish just wasn't my thing, even with all the similarities to French. I know the basics, of course, but I don't see myself re-learning it anytime in the future.

One language I'd love to learn is Italian, and I have a good grasp of it already seeing as 90% of musical terms and directions are in Italian. I also hate to say that I come from a Jewish family and I don't know a single word of Hebrew. We're not religious at all and so there was never really a reason to learn it.

I heard that Mandarin Chinese is the hardest language to learn if English is your first language. I'm assuming it's because it's a tone-based language and a word can mean 5 different things depending on the tone used.

Like Scissorman once said: I speak all the ex-Yugoslavian languages except for Slovenian and Macedonian :D (for those of you who don't know they're basically the same language with different names). Even the last two are very similar. I can read and understand a lot especially written, Macedonian more so than Slovenian.

As for the real foreign languages, I speak, write and read in English. That's the only language outside my own that I'm really comfortable with, even to the point that after a considerable time spent in reading English or writing, I would begin to think in English, if that makes sense. Sometimes, when I try to verbally express something, an English word would come to my mind before Serbian. Crazy.

Beside English, I learned French in school for 8 years. But, I've never felt natural with French. That was more like learning only for school, without being exposed to French on many different levels like I was to English. I really regret that now, 'cause I was doing okay. I've never had problems with grammar, reading and translating, nor with feeling the melody of the language and pronunciation. But I was never so comfortable with speaking French without thinking first. And since I always compared it to my knowledge of English, I was never satisfied. (I could never write all this in French :/) That said, I have to brush up on it and continue where I left off.

Other than that, I've always wanted to learn Italian and Russian. Eh, maybe some day.

I wouldn't say I'm fluent in Estonian, but I can speak it fairly well.

I took French in grade 9 in high school. I can say or write only very basic things, but I find I'm not too bad at reading it, as in I can make out the gist of almost anything.

I really have no interest in learning other languages though. I guess I might take a stab at Mandarin one day if it really becomes the "universal" language, but the only reason I picked up Estonian is because of my grandparents, and I would never have made any attempt at French if it wasn't required for school.

smattering! Good word. It is okay if your smattering lies in PutongHua (it sounds ugly)

I speak Mandarin and Cantonese. I have been living in China for three years.

I love Cantonese. I think, depending on who is speaking, Cantonese sounds so exotic and elegant.

tsnot crazy, it's being bilingual. ;)
Gah, that's my problem. I always felt I knew English very well without really having to try (I never paid attention to grammar in class, it always came by ear). And now that I'm actually having to work on learning a new language it seems like a freakin' bitch. Especially because I don't want to just learn the basics, I want to be as good at it as I am with English and I'm not sure if that's possible given that no other language is so dominant and ubiquitous these days. Spanish is the only one that comes close, at least in these parts.

In order to become really proficient in a new language I think it's essential to immerse yourself in the culture of that language. But unless you actually move to that country, it's very very difficult.

If it really becomes the universal language? What universe is that?

Mandarin is actually somewhat inefficient. It could never be the global language.

It is the official language of China, but there are many people who cannot speak it. Besides, it sounds awful.

Now, who wants to learn norwegian, the language the first black metal bands used?
I'll charge 200 kroner an hour.

Kontakt meg gjerne på epost

spis.dritt@jævla_hagenisse.no

Besides English, I am nearly fluent in Spanish. With that, I could probably decipher some Portuguese and some Latin if I had to.

That's why I put it in quotation marks. Taking into account population projections it looks like a massive part of the world's population will be speaking Mandarin (as in even much more than today). Who knows what the benefits to being able to speak Mandarin then will be? IF it becomes like what english is today to the rest of the world, I'll probably try to learn it.

I was raised in a french-english family for most of my life, so I could pretty much comfortably live in Quebec for many years (I already have, anyways)

My mom's determined to keep me bilingual. That's why I've lived in french/bilingual communities all of my life.

No, Chinese is rather easy. The tones are not critical to conversation. I have a friend here who has a big Chinese vocabulary, but he mispronounces every tone. The people here still understand him. Mandarin has 4 tones: 1. mā 2. má 3. mǎ 4. mà

The differences in these tones is rather emphatic, so it makes it easier to pronounce words correctly.

If you devote a moderate effort into a 6 month course, you would certainly be able to talk to anybody. You'd be able to take your Chinese friends out for dinner; charm pretty women when they walk by you; order food, whatever.

Once you get accustomed to the tones, Chinese is very easy to speak well. I can speak Mandarin better than many GuangZhou natives. My girlfriend is from here in GuangZhou, but my pronunciation of Mandarin is better than hers, although she knows many more words.


Writing Chinese is not too difficult either. The characters follow a combinatorial system of strokes. It seems daunting at first, and then it becomes clear quite soon thereafter.

There seem to be quite a few myths regarding Mandarin. Indeed, languages over here are actually quite easy to learn. Korean? Soooo easy. SImple alphabet. Japanese? Well, half of Japanese is Chinese. Thai? Very similar to Cantonese (my favourite)

I see.

That there are more Chinese speakers than speakers of other languages is a myth. There are more native speakers of Chinese than any other mother-tongue, but English is far more widely spoken. Actually, there are many words in Chinese borrowed from English.

Why does it look like a massive part of the world's population will be speaking Putonghua?

I can speak or know:

French (first language until I was 5 or so)
English
Latin
Ancient Greek
Modern Greek (not brilliantly...I'd get by on holiday)
Arabic (learning it, getting there slowly)
Swedish (learning it still, getting better)
Japanese (basic)
Portuguese (basic stuff, want to get better)
British sign language (200 signs or so)
American Sign Language (100 signs)
Koine Greek (pretty much the same as ancient Greek, but has some forms unique. Found in the Bible)
Italian (REALLY rusty now, can't speak it at all without revision)
Serbian

Yeah, I'm good at languages. Anyone who wants help learning languages can PM me.

I'm not saying it will become a wide-spread language, I was only saying that if it does, I'd make an attempt to learn it.

I'm not claiming to be an expert on Chinese demographics either. It's just my general understanding based on what I've heard in my lifetime that the Chinese population will hold a greater share of the world's population in the near future.

That's so true. It's possible for English, at least easier, without moving to some English speaking country, because, as you said, it's a dominant language and culture. As for Spanish, haha, we have these telenovelas too, but they're slowly being replaced by Turkish telenovelas. I hear they're a big hit. :/ Eh, there are already enough Turkish words in Serbian, we really don't need to be exposed to more.

I'm curious, where did you learn Serbian? I'm assuming that's not your native language going by your location, or is it?

my Mandarin has a heavy Cantonese accent

In our country, I speak two native languages (Filipino & Bisaya) and of course, English. I would love to learn Japanese and German.

could you explain Bisaya? I haven't heard that one before.

A combo of a Teach Yourself book and a few Croatian/Serbian friends at uni, and I just learnt it.


те волим! :bowdown:

So it was you!:



:)

:D

Epic!

I speak English fluently
Spanish (passable)
French (slightly less passable than Spanish)
American Sign Language (a bit. Still takes me a minute to translate others)

I am working on learning:
Romanian
Greek (Modern)
German
Russian

Really? You must be talented. That's great. :)


Haha, um...волим и ја тебе...ваљда :)

Btw, I have to nitpick a bit. It should be: "Волим те" or "Ја те волим"

Hey, the Cyrillic on my computer is actually working. I thought it had some bug or something.

I speak and read English and Turkish fluently.

I used to know French and German at school, forgot em.

Learnt the Arabic alphabet, it's knocking around in my brain somewhere.

Taught my self Spanish so I could watch the cartoons channel on our stolen cable. It got cut off, and I forgot it all. That's the thing, if you're not actively speaking a language you lose it.

I forgot to list that I know ASL pretty well too. It has come in handy on occasion. I'm a little out of practice though :(

Sweet! I was made to learn it in middle school - a girl in our class was deaf, and although she could read lips really well, our teachers decided that learning sign language would still be nice for us to do.

I grew up next door to a girl who was deaf, and her parents were nice enough to teach the neighbourhood kids so we could play with her.

Good thinking of those parents :)

No kidding! I think that girl was the most popular kid on the street! I remember thinking as a young kid, "wow people actually talk with their hands?" and now I realize how useful ASL can actually be.