Are you good at languages?

Originally Posted by spb_lady

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i had to look in wikipedia what's tetum

shame on me

Meh, only about 700,000 speakers worldwide, not the most useful language for traveling.

Originally Posted by foodguy

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i speak a little spanish, used to speak a lot more. then i learned italian. completely f*cked my spanish ... and now that I haven't practiced in a couple of years ... my Italian, too. they're very similar, but inverted in some ways ... i start speaking spanish and realize i'm using spanish nouns and verbs but italian pronouns.

Same thing happened to me with French and Italian. It is ok, though, because conversing with French people is highly overrated.

Mandarin (native)
English
Spanish (high school and college)

Originally Posted by iammatt

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Same thing happened to me with French and Italian. It is ok, though, because conversing with French people is highly overrated.

most of what i want to say to them i can communicate quite easily by snapping my fingers.

Originally Posted by foodguy

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most of what i want to say to them i can communicate quite easily by snapping my fingers.
Or gesturing with them.

I speak only English, but since I'm stuck in a barren wasteland for the next few month, I'm teaching myself French. It's going well, but my pronounciation obviously suffers, and I find I have a terrible ear for it. (I find it quite hard to follow french, but can kinda/not really read it.)

Speaking four languages, all learnt at school:

German - native
English - ever since i´ve went to 5th grade
Spanish - solamente por tres anos, pero esta sufficiendo para hablar con mujeres lindas
French - je l´ai appris en à cole, mais je l´utilise seulement pour conversations en ebay

Anyway, it´s great to speak different languages. Even if you´re not perfect in it, people will likely be impressed that you, at least, tried to

(having said that, nevermind my spelling / grammar faults )

Originally Posted by spoozy

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Anyway, it´s great to speak different languages. Even if you´re not perfect in it, people will likely be impressed that you, at least, tried to

seems like guys here were much more impressed by me being a fake, then by me trying to speak english

Originally Posted by spb_lady

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seems like guys here were much more impressed by me being a fake, then by me trying to speak english

Must have got to do with the fact that you lack balls

yeah i pretty good at talking many language

Originally Posted by Xiaogou

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Mandarin, Cantonese & Vietnamese

you cant count chinese ranguage twice!

No, but that doesn't stop me from speaking (in this case: writing) them!

As a friend of mine said, true fluency is when people on the other end of the phone think they're talking to a native...the friend who said this is American and he learned Mandarin. He knew he mastered it when Chinese telemarketers thought he was a plain old ***********.

fluent:
english
russian
spanish
french

Can converese in and understand because of associated languages I know:
Italian, portugese, georgian

If you grew up speaking 2 languages, its very very easy to pick up a similar language. Also for whatever reason I am really good at impressions/impersonations, so I have a bit of an ear for picking up the speaking subtleties to perfect my impressions. I can do a range of American regional accents plus the usual aussie/UK and the politically incorrect impressions of various accents.

A note about English: it's a hard language to learn, if not one of the hardest. I've heard first generation chinese-italians speaking near perfect italian but you will never see a first generation chinese speaking english at the same level of proficiency.

I would really like to, but don't think I could learn: Mandarin/Cantonese, Japanese, Korean....emphasis on the Chinese dialects, as I do know some Japanese and Korean (two close languages somewhat) vocab and super basic conversation (way too embarrassed to try and use it unless asking something direct like "where is ____&quot

Chinese dialects have so many subtleties for the western ear that you cross a fine line between a simple phrase and a personal insult if you don't catch the subtleties of speech.

Originally Posted by foodguy

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i speak a little spanish, used to speak a lot more. then i learned italian. completely f*cked my spanish ... and now that I haven't practiced in a couple of years ... my Italian, too. they're very similar, but inverted in some ways ... i start speaking spanish and realize i'm using spanish nouns and verbs but italian pronouns.

Yup, same here, but with French and Spanish. Frustrating. Spent a few years in school studying French, then onto Spanish for a year, and I've just switched back to French.

I do like the idea of being fluent in an excessive amount of languages, few things improves your social status as much.

I'll probably focus on French for now, and then move on and finish the Spanish. If I have time I'd love to learn even more. Italian is extremely beautiful, and I've always had a thing for Arabic.

Mind you, this is my mother tongue, so most languages sound beautiful to me.

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Originally Posted by iammatt

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Same thing happened to me with French and Italian. It is ok, though, because conversing with French people is highly overrated.

Same problem as well, occasionally mixing french/spanish/italian, moreso the italian and spanish and sometimes the portugese

I only learned french to use in Africa through, not to speak to actual french people

Just English. And jive talk.
But I wish I was multilingual and find it difficult to remember even the most rudimentary words and phrases while traveling.