I speak, read and write Spanish and English natively. I speak basic German and French. I'm learning Portuguese and Italian also. The only times it ever comes in handy is when I'm speaking to other native speakers at functions and try to get points across or ordering food/beer. It mainly helps understanding music from other countries as well.
I speak: Portuguese, Dutch and English fluently. Not fluently, but well enough in that I can get the point across: German, Spanish and French. It's pretty sweet, especially on roadtrips, where they refer to me as 'the translator'. Yep.
I can understand Persian and speak it like a retard, but my relatives understand me so I'm okay with it. Does anyone have any experience with the actual Rosetta Stone program? I've always been wondering if it works as well as they say it does.
Rosetta Stone is well-marketed, but it's not particularly good. Not a complete waste but in no way worth the money. Cheaper and more effective language textbook series are FSI, Pimsleur, and Assimil.
Pimsleur is fantastic if you want to get a handle on the accent. I personally use Michel Thomas Method for my languages and enjoy the fact you don't sound like a robot in the fact they teach you the "proper" way to say things and they also teach you the common everyday way to say things. His accent is pretty bad on some languages, but the man has got the actual teaching method on lock down. Rosetta Stone is OK at best. I hate the fact you have to sit in front of a computer.
I can speak English fluently (obviously) and I can understand Afrikaans and get through most of the basics (I include swearing here, of course - you can never really master a language until you can string foul language together coherently), but that's about it. I don't know if many of you remember EddieClayton from the old RMMB (he was Dutch - he had an avater of Kurt Cobain) - I used to PM him in Afrikaans and he'd reply in Dutch - as languages go, they're pretty close, despite the 200+ year geogrpahical isolation difference. I could probably pick up German if I wasn't a terrible student.
I took French for a few years and 10 years ago used to be fairly decent at it. My accent was good enough that when I was in France I passed as French a couple times. However, years of not using it has brought me down to almost useless. It's amazing what lack of use will do to a language and how quickly it goes. I can still understand a lot of spoken French (at least enough to get the general idea of what someone is saying). My reading comprehension is very low now, and when I try to speak it is pretty pathetic. At some point I'd like to pick it up again. I learned a little bit of German when I spent a month in Austria but I remember almost none of it now. Languages are definitely not a natural ability for me. I had to work very hard at French to get to the level that I got to.
English is my mother tongue. I'm pretty damn awesome at it. It comes in handy pretty much everywhere. Spanish is probably my second-best language, despite not bothering to learn it until I had left California. I studied it for about a year, and used it for about a month in Granada. The grades I earned there were the best out of all my college-level stuff. I'm not really sure what to think about that. It came in handy in Spain, and when talking to other Spanish speakers without cluing in those who don't. should be handy if/when I make it back to the Spanish-speaking world. I learned German in high school, 3 years plus some time in that neck of the woods has kept it not-absolutely-terrible, but my vocabulary is quite limited. I used the Rosetta Stone for this a bit in my freshman year of high school, when I was stuck taking Latin. It came in handy when I was traveling this summer, and wen I was living in Frankfurt a few years ago. I took Mandarin in summer 2009, I'm not very good at it but I think I could benefit from further study, it seems like a pretty logical language to me. Then again, maybe I just study better in summer. Hopefully I can improve this when I get back to my college, maybe even get to see China next summer. It's a really fun language to know a bit of, especially around racist-ass Chinese. It can come in handy in Chinatowns around the world, too. I studied French when I was studying Mandarin, it was an OK language, since I know English and some Latin. I'm not a master, but I can read it OK and would probably improve with study. It came in handy in Belgium, and when chatting with Francophones. I studied Arabic at the local community college back when I was in high school. I probably would have benefited from wiser time management. I cannot say that I speak the language, but I can sure make the squiggly lines decently. Odds are this language would require a significant amount of effort for me to improve, but once I'm satisfied with the other languages of similar international value, then I'll probably push myself to study it. It's only been useful to me when chatting with some Muslim classmates from high school, and when studying in Granada (Generalife = Janat-al-Arif, stuff like that). Currently, I am in Moscow, studying Russian. We'll see how this goes. Studying languages is hard when you know that the people you're talking to will understand you in you native tongue. Well, studying languages is hard, period. That's why I've mainly stuck to things related to English.
Jesus, can you? I know Arabs who can't grasp a lick of that horseshit. It was a required part of the curriculum when I studied MSA abroad, and usually we just sat there looking angry because those dicks decided vowels were just, you know, optional. I think a girl cried in class once. Easily the most frustrating academic pursuit of my young life. Personally, the amount of education and paperwork I possess implies a far, far more developed understanding of Modern Standard than I actually have. I can read it, I can write it, but I'll be damned if I can understand any of it well enough to save my life. It's a mixture of laziness, a sub-par undergraduate program and the fact that there's very little logical connection between spoken Arabic and spoken English. It's not like Spanish or French, where at least some of the vocabulary is derivative and you might have a few years of high school-level study under your belt before you try for a B.A. If you want to learn and retain it to where it becomes a profitable skill, the average person needs immersion. Total, constant, every-day, years-long immersion. If a company wants to pay me to do it, I'll sign the dotted line tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.
I r speak Inglish gud. I also speak and write a little Japanese, though kanji is a killer. I know enough Spanish and French to count, swear, and say "I don't understand your language."
To all of you fluent in other languages, what would you say your favourite language to swear in is and why? Mine would have to be arabic. One of the many reasons is that for example, they have a sentence for fucking any religious deity which the recipient believes in the ass, upside down and incorporating their grandmother, mother and sister all at once.
I minored in Mandarin in college, but can only remember a couple phrases, so...just English for me. But, I'm also pretty good with symbolic logic. Does this count as another language? It gives you an alternate means of expressing certain types of ideas. Pretty limited use; it's like when someone doesn't know how to express something in one language, but there's a very good word for the idea in another language.
My favourite swear word is tabarnak, a Quebecois specialty (part of the unholy trinity of tabarnak, calice and ostie). It combines venting one's frustration with a very potent form of social criticism against the (once extremely powerful) Catholic church in Quebec, and if there's one thing I can get behind, it's that. But also, some Quebecers can say it with such panache and gusto that it kind of makes up for how messed up the rest of their language is compared to real French.
Do tell. Myself: Tamil - Native speaker, this is still all I can speak whenever my dad's around. He translates ancient scriptures from around the 9th century AD into English as a hobby. For reference, that's around the time Beowulf was written. He taught me the "proper" version of the language, so of course I don't know any swear words or any slang whatsoever. It's roughly equivalent to someone from the 18th century or so taking a time machine to the present and attempting to survey members of the Tea Party for their political opinions. People from Tamil Nadu (in India) tell me I have a Sri Lankan accent, presumably because Sri Lankan Tamils speak better Tamil than Tamil Nadu Tamils. Speaking of curse words. If you know some Tamil that page is fucking golden. Example: kaiyil panam illaadhavanin pulambal - the laments of a man without money in his hand becomes dabba dance aaduthu - he's dancing the box dance My favorite curse: English - I'm pretty good bro. German - I studied it for 7 years but unfortunately in the past 2 years it's all but flown out of my head. I'm pretty good with the accent though, and could probably pick it back up. Arabic - I'm in my 3rd year of learning Modern Standard and my first year of Egyptian colloquial (I'm studying abroad in Cairo at the moment). When I get over my lack of confidence in the language I think I'll improve greatly. I'm already better than a lot of other study abroad students, which doesn't say much but does make me feel better about myself.
I read and write English (obviously) and Russian natively. I vastly prefer swearing in Russian, just because Russian curses never really entered my day to day speech and thus didn't lose their potency. Plus, there's just something incredibly pleasant about swearing in your native tongue. Really connects you with your roots or something. I'm also able to understand (and speak/write, to a lesser extent) French passably, but my speaking and writing vocabulary is that of a three year old. "Qu'est-ce que c'est le 'teepee for my bunghole'?" and all that.
I'm pretty sure the best language to swear in is Maltese, Ja liba kurnut! (I've just called you a sperm and that your wife gets fucked by other men, and all in three words). Apart from Maltese, which is my mother language, I also speak english as a second language and a little italian. English may be the worst language to swear in, although with a little creativity you'll do just fine. Even though I started learning english when I was 5, and I use english everyday, to read, write, watch tv, etc, I don't practice speaking the language that often, so I sometimes stutter. Interestingly enough I speak english quite fluently when I'm drunk, but if I'm speaking in front of a class at university, then the stuttering returns.
Wow. Could you bless the board with a bit of background on how you got to know so many languages at such a young age? Focus: English first language. Used to be pretty close to fluent in French, functional at best now. If fully immersed I think I could pick it back up.
1) English...duh 2) French. Two years of college study, and about 6 months of just learning while living abroad. I can converse pretty decently, but not enough to get into any type of deep, meaningful conversations. I can pass the time bullshitting with you, get around the country asking the necessary questions, but that's about the extent of it. 3) Spanish. One year of high school, one year of college. Despite not studying it that extensively, it seems like a fairly easy language to learn. I can order meals, ask directions, or at least describe what I'm doing or trying to do, but that's about it. The best thing I can say about it is that I don't have to bust out the Spanish/English dictionary when reading McCarthy novels. 4) Latin. I know, I know, it's a dead language. But after studying it for about 5 years I can say it was my favorite language to learn. I find all that stuff about the Romans fascinating, which went a long way in my determination to pick it up. It's been a good while since I've tried to speak it or use (because face it, why would I?), but I can still read it fairly well. I still remember having to try to read Virgil's The Aeneid in Latin. Shiiiiiiit.
Sure, I love languages so I'm happy to talk about myself in that vein for a bit. My mom is from Montreal so I grew up bilingual (French and English). In high school I took 2 years of Spanish, then spent 3 weeks studying immersive Spanish in Costa Rica. I don't know why the immersion study helped so much but I arrived in country struggling just to introduce myself; but by week two I was having dreams in Spanish and by the third week I was conversationally fluent. That was when I was 16. It's been almost 5 years since I've used my Spanish so it's definitely a struggle now—though I could probably get it back with a few weeks of immersion. Then I started studying Modern Standard Arabic in college at 17, and I'm now in my fourth year of study. (This language is so ridiculously hard, I don't know how to put it into words—but to give you an idea of its complexity, I have a grammar reference book that is 500 pages long. There are no exercises in that book, it's just 500 pages of grammar deconstruction. The standard college textbook for studying Arabic is three volumes, 450 pages each, and you typically go through one volume per year.) I've been studying MSA probably 20 hours a week, and although I probably speak it better than the average native Arabic dialect speaker, it still feels like I'm nowhere close to mastering it. Two summers ago, I was in Morocco for 3 months. The first half of that was in an immersive MSA program, after that I just kind of traveled around the country and paid more attention to the Moroccan dialect, since I was traveling to areas where most people didn't speak MSA. I never learned how to speak it but I was able to understand it well enough to follow conversations. I was also in the south of Morocco for about a month and managed to pick up some Berber—only enough to follow the gist of conversations and respond with vague but appropriate comments. Most people I spoke with thought my Berber was much better than it was, but to be honest I was basically faking it. I did pass off as Moroccan by the end of the trip though. On my trip home from Morocco, I picked up an Italian Newsweek and found I could read it with full comprehension. I got to listen to a lot of Italian tourists in Morocco which might have helped. But more likely, I think anyone who speaks two of the three romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian) will be able to understand the third one by default. Last summer, I started studying Farsi. I met with a tutor 1.5 hours a week but otherwise it was self-taught. I covered the first two semesters of Farsi in about three months and successfully placed into second-year college Farsi, although I decided in the end to instead focus on Arabic. I achieved this by studying about an hour a day, using 3 different textbooks and making about 800 flashcards. My reading comprehension was well above the first year level but my speaking was way below, given the nature of studying it solo. It's still pretty basic, but well enough that I could live in an immersive country and start hacking at the language. As far as how I picked up all the languages, yes probably much of that can be attributed to a natural aptitude for it. But I think much of my talent for languages comes from having a good memory and being very diligent about memorizing vocabulary—no matter how good you are at a language, you can't understand shit if you don't know the vocab. And conversely, you can derive a lot of meaning out of unfamiliar sentence structure if you recognize a lot of words. The second thing that has helped me is knowing basic linguistics and grammar concepts, e.g. being able to recognize prepositions, reflexive verbs, participles, etc. That makes it a lot easier to make sense of foreign grammar rules and keep them straight. And finally, each new language is easier than the last, given that you have more experience and have more languages to draw reference grammar/vocab from.
Nothing fancy here. Spanish: Born in Venezuela and lived there until right before A turned 13. Although I live in CA I hardly use it on a day to day basis. Italian: I can probably read and understand children books, but that's about it.