Languages

[America]

I like languages. Learning languages, learning about languages, speaking languages etc etc

I'm currently studying Portuguese, and intend to resume my study of Serbian. I'm partially fluent in Spanish and another language commonly found in central Asia (dont worry about it). I would like to be completely fluent in Spanish, learn Dutch, Portuguese, Serbian and maybe even Arabic.

Who here knows another language, is studying another language, or is interested in languages.

 

[JJM]

cool thread...

I can speak/write(debatable hahaah)...Slovenian as a native speaker lmao,Italian pretty much at home with this one too,my grandma started to teach me when very little,I've learned as kid already,English fucking obviously,started as a kid too watching Cartoon Network lmao,Croatian/Serbian-ish(no it's not the same as Slovenian at all ),learning Spanish atm...

My family comes from France I was told...wanted to learn some...COULD PICK ONLY SPANISH OR FRENCH to learn,I...chose Spanish,it's easier I'd say...closer to Italian
French is beautiful language but pretty fucking hard...
German would be useful to know...but many Germans know English so...

I was always quick to learn languages...special gift maybe...

my relative from Belgium knows...something around 11 languages...dude is a genius...polyglot on a higher level
I could probably do it too but...if you are a more lazy ass cunt as me...huehue

 

[America]

I think German is overrated.

French is fairly useful. It opens up your ability to communicate in France, Quebec and numerous African countries.

I know English, as well as Pashto. I can read Arabic and Serbian, but I have very little idea what I'm saying. I can understand when someone speaks hindi/urdu due to the neighborhood I lived in when I was a child; however, I can't really speak it.

I can form coherent sentences in Spanish, and understand about 40-60% of a native speaker, but it takes me a while to really understand. Really want to be fluent in Spanish. I practice speaking, everyday, but that only gets you so far.

My current interest and study is Portuguese. I am at the point where I can identify words in the slurs that are Portuguese. Since I learned Spanish at school, my hope is that with the fundamentals in my own hands, I will be able to learn and memorize so much more.

Dutch and Serbian are 2 languages that I would like to learn, seriously. Urdu/Hindi and Arabic are kinda 50% done anyways, so I have time to learn that.

I want to learn Dutch because I have a major interest in Suriname, Holland and South Africa. Serbian is just an awesome language. Urdu/Hindi/Arabic are just loose ends that erk me that I don't know how to speak it, same with Spanish.

 

[ADRossi]

English fucking obviously

debatable

 

[crzdcolombian]

I am fluent (read/write) in Spanish and English. I was fluent in Italian but once my grandmother died use it way way less. My grandmother was jewish and learned hebrew so I could do this thing called Birthright which basically they send you to Israel for free . Sadly I did not find myself a Gal Gadot.

In high school I had a crush on this korean girl and had a real good friend who's dad was a pastor at a korean church. He taught me a decent amount of stuff. All excited I asked her out. Only for her to be like " dude.... I'm adopted.... ". Either way still cool to know especially as for work I went to korea and china very frequently. Would like to get fluent in them at least verbally but not having actual letters is a huge FK u.... to anyone trying to learn it.

 

[brehme1989]

I know English, as well as Pashto. I can read Arabic and Serbian, but I have very little idea what I'm saying.

So basically any scribble and you can find a meaning in some sort?

I find it odd to read in a script that's not westernized (Greek-Latin-Slavic essentially have the same roots and are variations of the same structure). I wanted to learn Hebrew, Arabic or some Asian language but I cannot get past that.

 

[Materazzi_23]

I am fluent in Dutch, English and German. I can understand Spanish and say the basic things (I've worked in Barceona for 3 months but that was over 10 years ago). I really want to better my Spanish in terms of speaking and writing and offcourse Italian. Some would say Italian and Spanish look like eachother but is this really so? Spanish is more easy to learn because I have some friends who were born in Colombia so that would not be a problem I can practise with them but I don't know any Italians so that would be harder to learn so I'm thinking to take online courses Italian, somebody got any tips?

 

[brehme1989]

Both are very easy to learn but they have different sounds despite their similarities so I'd suggest getting acquainted with one at a good level before starting the other, because otherwise you'll be mixing up the vocabulary involuntarily. I'm fluent in French and have a good understanding of Latin and took Spanish courses when I was young so learning Italian was very easy for me. I pretty much learned it myself so I have obvious gaps but I can read in those languages. Even with Portuguese I have a strong understanding in writing with some serious vocabulary gaps [I've noticed that they have different words for 'basic' stuff that are usually similar between the rest] due to this French-Latin background.

I guess it becomes more difficult for people without a Romance language background, but at the end of the day, you can learn Italian if you stay there for 1-2 months. Look at professional football players from all over. And these people are not those who are really exemplary schoolboys.

 

[Azul]

My current interest and study is Portuguese. I am at the point where I can identify words in the slurs that are Portuguese. Since I learned Spanish at school, my hope is that with the fundamentals in my own hands, I will be able to learn and memorize so much more.

Português é que é caralho!

I´ve been considering learning Japanese or Russian since a couple of years ago but there aren´t many places that teach them, only one university in Porto from what I could find, but since it´s an university it´s expensive as hell for someone who wants to learn just because.

Currently I am above average for our country in English even though I really want to express myself better. I still find many limitation in my vocabulary. I´m working on it, mostly online, speaking is the hardest because I don´t have anyone to talk to in English, only when I´m on vacations and that´s not enough to improve. I don´t know quite how to put it, in my mind I´m 2 steps ahead of the conversation but I have to slow down because I can´t put into actual sounds what my mind is thinking in English, it´s super weird.

I can understand Spanish quite easily, because it´s not that different from Portuguese, but I can´t write.

I learned French in school but I didn´t like it. I also had a French/Portuguese gf and picked a lot of things during those years though, I find it fairly easy to understand simple sentences in writing no so much when someone is talking to you.

 

[Quantum]

Why on God's holy name would somebody want to learn Portuguese?

I lived in Colombia for a couple of years, the school I went to had several other Brazilian students. We were pretty popular among Colombians, so when we left, the school introduced Portuguese classes for the rest of them. I always found adorable that others were interested in learning a new language because of their foreign friends.

Learned Spanish in Colombia, obviously.

Joining FIF made me realize my English isn't nearly as good as I thought it were. Whenever I travel I speak it with a deliberately Russian-mob accent, just for fun.

Tried to learn French twice, had to drop out of classes on both occasions.

Once worked with an intern who spoke Arabic. I wish I spoke it too, I hear that's important for MI6.

 

[JJM]

debatable

U dickhead :trollol:

 

[crzdcolombian]

Why on God's holy name would somebody want to learn Portuguese?

I lived in Colombia for a couple of years, the school I went to had several other Brazilian students. We were pretty popular among Colombians, so when we left, the school introduced Portuguese classes for the rest of them. I always found adorable that others were interested in learning a new language because of their foreign friends.

Learned Spanish in Colombia, obviously.

Joining FIF made me realize my English isn't nearly as good as I thought it were. Whenever I travel I speak it with a deliberately Russian-mob accent, just for fun.

Tried to learn French twice, had to drop out of classes on both occasions.

Once worked with an intern who spoke Arabic. I wish I spoke it too, I hear that's important for MI6.

Are you the actor who played Pablo Escobar by any chance...: you have the same backstoy

 

[Quantum]

Are you the actor who played Pablo Escobar by any chance...: you have the same backstoy

Fortunately, I consider my Spanish better than Wagner Moura's (at least the first couple of episodes, they were the only ones I watched).

 

[crzdcolombian]

Fortunately, I consider my Spanish better than Wagner Moura's (at least the first couple of episodes, they were the only ones I watched).

Yea I didn’t like him. His accent was distracting and very noticeable for a Spanish speaker

 

[America]

Portuguese is awesome.

I wanna practice it more often.

 

[Wings]

I am fluent (read/write) in Spanish and English. I was fluent in Italian but once my grandmother died use it way way less. My grandmother was jewish and learned hebrew so I could do this thing called Birthright which basically they send you to Israel for free . Sadly I did not find myself a Gal Gadot.

In high school I had a crush on this korean girl and had a real good friend who's dad was a pastor at a korean church. He taught me a decent amount of stuff. All excited I asked her out. Only for her to be like " dude.... I'm adopted.... ". Either way still cool to know especially as for work I went to korea and china very frequently. Would like to get fluent in them at least verbally but not having actual letters is a huge FK u.... to anyone trying to learn it.

Korean does have letters...

 

[Wunderboy]

Anyone here a non-native speaker of Mandarin, Japanese or Korean ever studied or picked them up and was successful at learning the characters?

I'm interested in learning Japanese Kana (and eventually Kanji) and was wondering what a good approach was to properly studying/memorizing a new and completely foreign written language system.

 

[Wings]

Anyone here a non-native speaker of Mandarin, Japanese or Korean ever studied or picked them up and was successful at learning the characters?

I'm interested in learning Japanese Kana (and eventually Kanji) and was wondering what a good approach was to properly studying/memorizing a new and completely foreign written language system.

I studied Mandarin as my foreign language when I was in high school, with no Chinese background. I learned enough to read a decent amount and write some of the more commonly used characters. Sadly, because of the nature of Chinese writing, I do not think there is a more efficient way than just memorizing characters as they come up in your study. Yes, a lot of characters feature smaller characters, but they are not incorporated in a systematic way. How characters are formed from smaller ones, at least from an outsider's perspective, does not seem to have a consistent method behind it, so trying to decipher the meaning of an unfamiliar character from its component parts is not particularly helpful. It's doubly annoying because the pronunciation of the characters similarly has little consistency behind it. I don't know too much about Japanese, but my understanding is that kanji is the same as Chinese characters, so rote memorization is probably the best way. Can't think of a way around it.

If kana is more of an alphabetic system, I would memorize the sounds of each letter, then try forming words from that. Pretty straightforward, no?

 

[Wunderboy]

That's the way I'm going about it, in regards to learning kana. Since hiragana and katakana are purely phonetic, it certainly is very straightforward.
I suppose the biggest hurdle is having to learn two sets of characters for each phonetic (i.e. "ma" is ま in hiragana and マ in katakana). Definitely not complaining though! I was just curious if anyone had gone through anything similar and found an efficient method.

With kanji, I was afraid that was the case.
It doesn't help that there are thousands upon thousands of Chinese characters..


And then to be pretty well versed in the written language, you'd have to learn all three "branches" since any given sentence will contain a mixture with each one.
Insanely daunting. Difficult to know where to begin, really.

 

[America]

Does anyone know Afrikaans?