Any other languages?

[Yazichestvo]

Re: Any other languages?

I speak a little bit of Spanish, because I took it for two years in high school. I've also taught myself a little bit of Russian, out of a desire to learn a Slavic language. My ancestry is Polish, but Russian struck me as more useful. I sometimes speak Russian during rituals, and I have conversed with a few visitors from overseas. I also intend to visit Russia and Ukraine some day, so it may come in handy. However, I doubt I'll ever be fluent.

[Jembru]

Re: Any other languages?

^ that's interesting because I have a friend I met through the Tekken scene who speaks a little Spanish and is currently studying Russian! Our clan leader (manji clan: it's a tekken fan thing), is Polish. When I was learning German, I made the mistake of complaining about the four cases of German nouns. She laughed and pointed out Polish has an additional two and even personal nouns inflect for case. If Russian is also like that, it must be a headache to learn.

[Hoho]

Re: Any other languages?

Don't mean to necrobump, but I speak Chinese (mandarin) and have some classical chinese knowledge, if anyone is ever interested!

I'm also a little familiar with Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism and other misc. chinese "mystical" practices. but probably nothing no one can't get with some internet research

[Jembru]

Re: Any other languages?

Jembru, are you going to dazzle us with a soundbyte? I'd be delighted to hear it. I don't speak any other languages, so I guess I'm trying to experience it vicariously through this thread.

I had totally forgotten all about promising to do this. I've agreed to (eek) make a youtube video for a guy who makes awesome Japanese tutorials on there. I'm really nervous about people the world over hearing my crappy Japanese. Then I remembered this thread and thought, why not start on a smaller friendly audience. Assuming I don't die of embarrassment, it might help ease my way.. ^^

So, here's my soundcloud link *blush*

http://soundcloud.com/jembru/jems-example-sentence

It (supposidly) says:

hey everyone, jembru here. Well, I recently learnt an amusing new word, so I felt like using that in a sentence. So, without further ado, please listen..

Heh cute! That piggy has tufty hair!

Thanks for listening!

The back story to this is that one of my Japanese friends recently had a baby and one of her fb contacts wrote 'fusa fusa' on her wall. I thought this was a funky word so have used it at every opportunity since. Yup, including at a poor little baby pig!

[Hoho]

Re: Any other languages?

sounds pretty good to me! for reals.

[Jembru]

Re: Any other languages?

sounds pretty good to me! for reals.

Thanks. My accent is still very 'gaijin', especially as my native accent has such strong vowels compared to Japanese. I've come to accept that if I don't stop being so bashful about speaking in public, I've no chance of reaching my goal by New Year.

Actually, my goal was far too ambitious because I seriously underestimated how much I still had to learn when I started last January. Still, I've decided to just drop myself in the deep end and stop giving a damn about my mistakes! It was a huge block and I feel so much better now I'm not hiding my Japanese any more!

[Hoho]

Re: Any other languages?

yeah shyness is my biggest problem too. i think part of it too is its just weird speaking another language sometimes...

for instance, we were ordering chinese over the phone the other day and everyone was telling me to order it in chinese. we'll to make it simple, here in the usa asian restaurants that cater to non-asians use a number or letter/number system for ordering. so we wanted c10 which is generals tso chicken etc. you don't have that when ordering real chinese food in chinese, it seems so odd. i know the guy wouldn't understand if i said c11 in chinese, it would just cause unnecessary confusion.

then saying, hi i'd like to order c10 and c11 for pickup please, besides the pickup part, don't really know how you fit it in there in chinese, i know they use wai4mai4 but the structure is different, i mean i guess I'd say 我要一个c10和一个c11, 是外卖的. a bit of looking on the net, it looks like i could say, in pinyin b/c im lazy to switch language bars atm, wo yao dian yige c10 he c11 de waimai de.

so anyway, its pretty basic to say, but its just so odd >< i mean, i don't think any chinese people order take out from chinese restaurants? i've heard about chinese people asking for the "secret menu" and i just don't want to get caught up into that :< mainly because i don't know any actual chiense dish names, they're all so complicated besides mapo tofu lol. they like to keep things in 4 character blocks because it looks more "classical chinese" and traditional/refined so they'll add weird things to the dish names. i don't even know ow to say general tso chicken in chinese because it's not real chiense food, nor fortune cookies. i've tried googe'ing fortune cookie many times and have found numerous "words" for it that no one uses.


what's your goal by new years?

also if you don't know, www.guidetojapanese.org is the best, most awesome japanese language learning website. it's better than any book too in my educated linguistic opinion. getting through the whole site will give you almost everything you need to just jump into actual modern japanese and function, learn about topics yourself, and experience the language.

[Jembru]

Re: Any other languages?

Do you get flustered if you have to switch from one language to another too? I was already in the queue at the coffe shop when Miyo came in yesterday and I'd ordered my latte. Then I started small taking in Japanese about Miyo's up and coming job interview and then the cashier asked me if I wanted cake with my latte and I accidentally answered in Japanese. I tried to apologise but my brian was all jumpled and I seemed drunk or something. My face just burnt up with embarrassment! People stare enough as it is because, you know, a white British girl speaking an Asian language, I may as well have a second nose.

Then, to top it all off, I'd been listening to a podcast lesson for lower intermediate on my way to meet her. One of the words it focused on was 'kinchou suru' which as a suru verb, I assume is stolen directly from the Chinese 緊張 then missprounounced! I've known this word for a while, although I tend to use 'dokidoki suru' more, because I think using onomatopoeic words makes me sound cute. Then, when Miyo was telling me she has to do a presentation about clothes for her interview, she ended with 'taihen kinchou shite..' and me, being the ahou that I am, asked her what kinchou means. It wasn't my day for Japanese yesterday. I blame all the 御化け. lol

Anyway, this thread is about languages besides Japanese and German. I only put my soundcloud in here because it was asked for in here. So maybe we should move this ^^

[Willow]

Re: Any other languages?

Slovene, English. Slovene allows me to understand Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian most of the time.

Used to be near-fluent in German, but I haven't used it or been to Germany in years so it's basically regressed to a general understanding but an inability to speak it. Same with French. Spanish I took one year, really disliked it, and haven't looked back. ^^

When I finish school, I'm looking to learn cyrillic since it used to be required in grade-school but for my generation they stopped teaching it.

[lorraine02]

Re: Any other languages?

Chinese and some of english ,
for communicate with my friends from countries is spoken by english.

[Sarkana night]

Re: Any other languages?

Danish, English and I've really improved my Spanish since last year!
Being able to speak Danish alwo allows me to understand both Swedish and Norwegian, but I can't speak it. Just understand it.

[volcaniclastic]

Re: Any other languages?

English, and French to varying degrees. I'm not fluent, but I can hold my own in a conversation, and I'm pretty well read. Really, really basic Hindi and Thai skills, as well as Spanish. I can spout off sentences in each of the three, but I don't really have a grasp of the grammar yet.

[Sarkana night]

Re: Any other languages?

English, and French to varying degrees. I'm not fluent, but I can hold my own in a conversation, and I'm pretty well read. Really, really basic Hindi and Thai skills, as well as Spanish. I can spout off sentences in each of the three, but I don't really have a grasp of the grammar yet.

Hindi and Thai?? Cool!

[Cryfder]

Re: Any other languages?

I am currently learning to speak Welsh! It's slow going, but I am making slow, but steady progress!

[ThorsSon]

Re: Any other languages?

I'm multilingual, I know English, PHP, ASP, C, C++ C#, JavaScript, VBScript, ADO, SQLScript, etc...