Languages

[Delightful]

I SPEEKS EENGLEESH.

I FEELS DUMM.

Especially if that's the best English you got! :P :)

[Orlion Blight he/him]

I want to learn all languages. I love it.

Of course, I'm failing Spanish, so I doubt I could actually become fluent in anything other than English.

 

 

Correction: you're failing the Scholastic delivery of Spanish teaching. Don't let that keep you down. Don't let school's grades decide for you what you do, or don't know; or even what you're capable of knowing. School is great for some subjects with certain people. the thing is, is that anyone is capable of learning anything. You've learned something: school is not the best medium for you in particular to learn Spanish, and likely other languages. Try different ways. Podcasts have become a relatively ignored, and yet amazing, tool in teaching and learning. Youtube his hundreds of channels on languages. Try reading books in other languages, and decipher them into English (treat it like a game,) then translate other things by hand into a different language.

 

You could directly incorporate the few words you do know into your own daily lexicon. For example, I have taken to signing the words or letters I know in ASL as I speak them. So maybe when you're writing notes for stuff, or writing schedules, you write them in whatever langue you're learning.

 

Or you could find a friend who speaks Spanish, and see if they'll help you.

 

Learning a language is a lifelong commitment, there are thousands of ways to do it. So keep trying

 

Agreed. In my experience and observation, the curriculum for learning Spanish in high school and college is atrocious. If it's anything like what I went through, it's a whole lot of pointless busy work (re-writing the same sentence fifty times with only a change in the conjugation of the verb and such maddening work). Any beauty, rhythm, or art is often lost and reserved for only the few masochistic enough to persevere through years of that basura. 

[Kasimir he/him]

I'm hoping this doesn't count as thread Awakening, but I just want to check: given the number of people who've talked about their language learning experiences or proficiencies--is it possible to find anyone who might be interested in practising a language with a 17S partner?

 

I can't offer srs bsns Chinese, but I'd be interested if anyone wants to fail at practise their German together Don't ask me about Greek or Irish though. I'm pretty sure that the Greek economy will fix itself up before I actually speak Greek properly >>

[Ookla the Absent]

Mostly fluent in English y español,  und ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch.

My mother speaks also Japanese, my father knows some Italian, and my grandfather knows way too many languages.

[Sera]

- I have native Portuguese proficiency

- I can read English very well, write clearly, understand clear accents, and barely speak due my own thick accent. That makes me a functional mute. :|

 

If you threw me in an English-speaking country right now I'd, no kidding, silently gesture a lot and always have pen & paper on me.

 

Due shared language roots I can:

- Glean the meaning of written and spoken Spanish, and also make myself understood (but I dislike Spanish)

- Glean the meaning of written and spoken Italian, having decent pronunciation, though I probably don't know enough to make myself understood because it's full of false cognates with Portuguese

- Understand a couple of words in Japanese, having good pronunciation due shared phonemes with Portuguese. I can only read romaji words, and no kanjis

 

 

I'd like to... You know, speak properly in English someday (I'm currently working on it), and perhaps also learn Japanese. The pronunciation is easy for me, and I like this language. Maybe Italian and French as well, in some far point of the future.

[Zathoth]

I am a native swedish speaker, I am pretty decent in english and I tried to learn Lojban, turns out completely regular and logical is a challenge too.

[Left he/him]

Native English, took two years of Japanese which taught me one syllabary and a smattering of vocab I've forgotten, and a lot of Japanese culture.

Im applying for an immersion program next summer to learn either Hindi Turkish or Farsi.

[+Slowswift]

Native English speaker here, with three years of Latin and a year of French.

I've forgotten just about all of it.

[Pinnacle-Ferring he/him]

I grew up bilingual. I can speak English and Hebrew fluently.

I know a smattering of words from other Latin-based languages i.e. French, German, etc. and I can sometimes puzzle out some text, but when I hear them spoken I usually can't make out heads or tails of it.

Edit- I guess I can also say that I know basic Aramaic. I'm a religious Jew and I always like to say that Aramaic is to Judaism like Latin is to Catholicism. It just comes with the package I guess.

Edited February 16, 2016 by Pinnacle-Ferring

[Sunbird she/her]

I'm a native English speaker, but I've taken 2.5 years of German classes at BYU, so I can make myself understood in most mundane, everyday topics all right. I've been able to stumble through a few novels in German--mostly ones I've read before in English, though, like Cornelia Funke's Dragon Rider (Drachenreiter is the German title) and Dan Wells's John Cleaver books.

 

Funny story: the reason I originally decided I wanted to learn German was because of the Marvel character Nightcrawler from the X-Men. (This was after I watched the original trilogy of X-Men movies for the first time. )

Edited February 16, 2016 by Sunbird

[Arraenae]

I'm a native speaker of English, and I know a smattering of Chinese. I can speak it, but having an intelligent conversation with it is difficult for me.

[Mestiv he/him]

No surprise from me. I speak Polish as my native language and I know English well enough to communicate as indicated by my presence here 

[RippleGylf she/her]

Native American English speaker, and I've been learning French for 4 years now.

[Oversleep]

Native Polish here. And I'm fluent in it. Now, it would seem it's not big deal to be fluent in your own language, right? Nope. There's a ton of mistakes people do every day. Since I'm a little bit grammar nazi I sometimes correct my family during conversation. Usually I'm right, often we end up discussing which form is correct (maybe both?), sometimes a dictionary is needed... Polish is hard. Don't get me started on writing - there are some sounds you can write in two different ways. There are rules which describe when and which way is correct, but many people often do mistakes. (I suppose it's like people who write "should of" instead of "should've").

I am also fluent in English - I can read books in English and understand them, but to get all the words I still would need a dictionary. I have no idea what my speaking skills are - I can talk quite well, but probably my accent is messed up. I watch some TV series without subtitles, at first I watched 40 minute episode for like an hour to understand what they said, but now it's better. Usually.

I was learning German for...six years in school, but never learned.
Now I will have a one semester of language and I can pick whatever I want. After playing Assasin's Creed in original I started to love Italian, but I think I will pick Japanese. I heard grammar is not that complicated.

Edited February 16, 2016 by Oversleep

[DreamEternal]

Native speaker of portuguese, I've been taught how to speak english since an young age and can do so fluently enough to make myself understood, although my acent is still very unsubtle, and I often pause to find the right words.

I believe ability to write in english does not need to be described, yes? Or my ability to read in english, since the only book Brandon wrote I read in my own language was Mistborn: The Final Empire.

Edited February 16, 2016 by DreamEternal

[Delightful]

I grew up bilingual. I can speak English and Hebrew fluently.

I know a smattering of words from other Latin-based languages i.e. French, German, etc. and I can sometimes puzzle out some text, but when I hear them spoken I usually can't make out heads or tails of it.

Edit- I guess I can also say that I know basic Aramaic. I'm a religious Jew and I always like to say that Aramaic is to Judaism like Latin is to Catholicism. It just comes with the package I guess.

Aramaic comes with the package for guys; I know very little of it.

[Pestis the Spider she/her]

I am a native Polish speaker. That's my first language and the language I know best. However right now I am technically bilingual, as I use English on daily basis, I think in English a lot and so on. So basically I am totally fluent in English, and only my accent really differentiates me from an average English native speaker (my accent is very Polish ). However despite my accent I am rather easily understandable, so it's all good. 

 

I also used to speak quite decent German, but forgot most of it, because of lack of practice. 

 

I also know some basic Italian, and some extremely basic Chinese. 

 

At some point I would like to continue learning German, Italian and Chinese, and also learn Swedish. However, currently I have no time and no money for that.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Pestis the Spider

[ChickenPlague he/him]

Native: Latvian

Fluent: English

Bearable: German

Pretty bad: Russian

Edited February 24, 2016 by ChickenPlague

[Delightful]

I have ancestors from Latvia! Though they probably spoke Yiddish.

What's Latvias claim to fame these days?

[ChickenPlague he/him]

What's Latvias claim to fame these days?

Some basketball player? I don't know really.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

I was born in Pakistan and moved to Australia when I was 3. So I grew up bilingual. I speak, read and write Urdu and English.

I can read Arabic.

I can understand some Latin and Ancient Greek.

Yes. That's me

[Sunbird she/her]

I was born in Pakistan and moved to Australia when I was 3. So I grew up bilingual. I speak, read and write Urdu and English.

I can read Arabic.

I can understand some Latin and Ancient Greek.

Yes. That's me

 

Wow, upvote for knowing exotic languages!

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

Wow, upvote for knowing exotic languages!

is that why I am the one of the only people here who has some upvotes for this?

It's actually no big deal, I may not know many people who can speak/understand Ancient Greek but I DO know a tonne of Urdu speakers and some Latin ones

 

(when I first sa Latvia here I instantly thought Latveria lol)

Edited February 29, 2016 by A peasant among wolves

[Delightful]

If we're giving out points for ancient languages I can read Biblical Hebrew....

[Mestiv he/him]

If we're giving out points for ancient languages I can read Biblical Hebrew....

Gratulacje, punkt dla Ciebie!