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Which languages do you speak / read / write?

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Alfons

Sun May 28 2006, 10:18AM

Registered Member #134 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 10:44PM
Location: Belgium
Posts: 86

nik282000 wrote ...

I am currently learning italian curse words because the electrical forman speaks about 8 words of english.

Nice... I visited Italy a couple of months ago and tried to learn every curse word there is in Italian, because they all sound so nice

(btw; does anyone know any nice ones?)

Bored Chemist wrote ...

I wonder who among those who claim to speak English, actually speak American. Anyway, I speak English and French (very badly). (Obvoiusly, when work sent me to Belgium, they sent me to the Flemish bit so my limited ability in French was no use at all)

At my school, the teacher really hates an American pronounciation. We read both American and English texts; for example Shakespeare, James Joyce, Annie Proulx, Edgar Allan Poe etc... so the vocabulary we know may be a mixed form, but the pronounciation of non-typically-American-words certainly is British English.

Bored Chemist wrote ...
I'm currently trying to learn visual basic, but I'm not sure if that's a language or a state of mind.

Maz

Sun May 28 2006, 02:43PM

Registered Member #111 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 01:04AM
Location: Menasha,Wisconsin
Posts: 65

Native born English speaker (whether it be Americanised is no season not to call it english)

Also i am nearly fluent in japanese

nihongo ga dekiru?

Alfons

Sun May 28 2006, 05:00PM

Registered Member #134 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 10:44PM
Location: Belgium
Posts: 86

Maz wrote ...

nihongo ga dekiru?

The only japanese I know is "Sashimi o taberareru." (I can eat raw fish)

ä½ è¯´ æ±‰è¯ å—ï¼Ÿ

joshua_

Sun May 28 2006, 08:52PM

Registered Member #61 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:50AM
Location: Mountain View, CA
Posts: 43

I speak English natively (and, by extension, read and write it natively).

I've taken four years of Spanish (well, five, but two of them were ultra slow.. the sum of them comprised Spanish 1). I've lived in Spain with a host family for two weeks; when I did that, I was able to get around pretty well.

I went to Italy, and I know a few basic things that I can say in Italian (grazie, prego, ...).

I know a few grammatical constructs in Hebrew, with the emphasis on "a few". I know about as much Japanese.

I can probably get the gist of many Romance languages, given enough time parsing, but...

I'd really love to go back to Spain and spend some more time there, hopefully really getting the language down this time. There's only so much I can do in two weeks -- and even less that I can do in five years at home...

Mike

Sun May 28 2006, 10:44PM

Registered Member #58 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:40AM
Location: Tri-Cities, Washington, US
Posts: 317

I speak English as my native language, I have also taken 2 years of Spanish but am aiming for 4 years.

I also have Italian roots and have visited Italy and can speak some common words from there. My Grandparents on the other hand are fluent in Italian, I have heard them speak easily with relatives in Italy.

Mike

Simon

Mon May 29 2006, 01:56AM

Registered Member #32 Joined: Sat Feb 04 2006, 08:58AM
Location: Australia
Posts: 549

Maz wrote ...

Also i am nearly fluent in japanese

A, sou. (watashi wa romaji ga suki janai...)

My Operations Research lecturer (all about carting A to B most efficiently, etc, I signed up thinking it was an algebra course...

) uses "optimize". I guess he got that from US textbooks (I'm in Australia for those who don't know).

That's, well, forgivable but he also writes things like,

"???Now we find the maximum point?? Minimum point?"

Then there's other "business English" (you know, "incentivise", et al). I've just started working in a warehouse for extra money. One of the orders came with the comment, "Please attention Jodie on receipt."

Whatever happened to simple actual verbs like "tell"?

Bored Chemist

Mon May 29 2006, 08:58AM

Registered Member #193 Joined: Fri Feb 17 2006, 07:04AM
Location: sheffield
Posts: 1022

There is a solution to that bastardisation of English. You just have to use the words correctly. For example "attention" comes from the same root as attend- like the French atendre it means to wait.
So on receipt you wait for Jodie.
When someone asks you what you are doing and why you didn't tell Jodie the thing had arrived you explain that you were, so far as the instruction made sense to you, doing what you were told.

Wilson

Mon May 29 2006, 12:30PM

Registered Member #78 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 11:27AM
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 133

I'm fluent in english, and chinese. Although i probably couldn't read/write a passage in the latter, even if my life depended on it.
æ—¥æœ¬èªžã‚‚ã§ãã¾ã™ï½žã€€.....Well as far as several years of high school japanese goes

Steve Conner

Mon May 29 2006, 02:27PM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

Bored Chemist: What do you do when you get the sack after a few days of such insolence? Turn up at work the next day wearing a sack?

I speak English, French, a little bit of German, and about ten words of Scottish Gaelic. :-/ As far as computer languages go, I know Fortran, C, Agilent VEE, Labview, a bit of PHP, and two assembly languages. So either computer languages are easier to learn, or I get on better with computers than humans.

Alfons

Mon May 29 2006, 03:27PM

Registered Member #134 Joined: Fri Feb 10 2006, 10:44PM
Location: Belgium
Posts: 86

Wilson wrote ...

æ—¥æœ¬èªžã‚‚ã§ãã¾ã™ï½žã€€.....Well as far as several years of high school japanese goes

"Is Japanese possible too?" (if the online translators are correct)

ä¸ï¼Œæˆ‘ ä¸ è®² æ—¥è¯ï¼Œæ±‰è¯ å¤Ÿ éš¾ã€‚(No, I don't speak Japanese, Chinese is difficult enough)

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