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Post by dirtyoldman on Apr 11, 2023 1:06:30 GMT -5
Latin and Greek also interest me, though Latin more for historical purposes than actually speaking it. ![:P](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/tongue.png) I did Latin for three years at school which I was actually quite good at although I was crap at French. Doing French on Duolingo, theres a bit of Latin that I still remember that's helping me with the 6 different endings of verbs (1st, 2nd and 3rd person then the plurals) as they're kinda similar.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Apr 11, 2023 3:25:50 GMT -5
English is more or less my second language. That said, there's enough people here in the Philippines that can understand English.
In general, while I post here and elsewhere in English, offline di ako masyado mag Ingles pag nagsasalita.
Can understand just enough Japanese to follow some streams, but not enough for conversation. And, much to my regret, it's a lot more knowledge compared to my grasp of my dad's Ilocano dialect, which is different from the basic Tagalog dialect.
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Post by yokohamacpfc on Apr 11, 2023 4:31:20 GMT -5
I speak Japanese as I live here and my wife and kid are Japanese so it's important. I dislike the term fluent because if you learn a language in adulthood there is probably always going to be a fair bit you can't do but my criteria is that if my English-speaking job ever fell through I needn't go on welfare or live off my family I could survive in a Japanese only workplace (albeit probably retail or construction). If anyone is studying I recommend an online course called Wanikani, it's invaluable for making you literate by teaching all 2000 kanji used in daily life along with their readings and vocab from them using mnemonics and a spaced repetition system review pattern that puts the information into your long term memory. It's paid but the first few levels are free to give you a taste.
I can understand a fair bit of Korean due to spending time over there and a bit of shared vocabulary with Japanese and it's easy to read and write, when I get the time I will put a bit of effort into becoming conversational.
Finished the French and Spanish courses on Duolingo and found them both easy but there's a bit of a difference between Duo and having a chat in the languages, maybe one day. Couldn't get far in the Chinese course due to poor pronunciation (the Chinese course makes you record your voice), am currently learning Indonesian, and wanted to learn Thai or Tagalog but they aren't there yet.
Memrise is a good alternative to Duolingo as users create their own courses and upload them for others in the community, just download them on a desktop as on a phone you only have access to Memrises in-house courses which aren't that good (if you download the courses from the desktop they still show in your phone or tablet).
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Post by YAKMAN is ICHIBAN on Apr 11, 2023 7:55:19 GMT -5
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Ultimo Gallos
Grimlock
Dreams SUCK!Nightmares live FOREVER!
Posts: 14,732
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Post by Ultimo Gallos on Apr 11, 2023 19:34:28 GMT -5
Took Spanish in high school. Then didnt use it for years forgot most of it. Learned enough I can usually get the gist of what is being said back in the late 90s.
Hell I got some neighbors that I can understand every 4th word they say. Imagine a real life Boomhauer,but instead of being a Texas Ranger they sell truck parts and supplies.
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schma
Hank Scorpio
Somebody stop him! He's supposed to die!
Posts: 7,012
Member is Online
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Post by schma on Apr 11, 2023 20:59:05 GMT -5
I really regret not applying myself more in French class. I took it until Grade 9 (prerequisite in my province here in Canada) but I should have kept going. I was pretty good at it and might have eventually hit fluency. Instead I just half remember a bunch of French stuff and kick myself for not realizing the value of bilingualism when I was young enough to really do something about it.
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Post by Lance Uppercut on Apr 12, 2023 0:24:05 GMT -5
I'm a bit of a linguaphile. I like studying languages, thought I'd never say I can "speak" them super well.
My family is Korean, so I'm trying to learn that proper. I grew up with enough to get by and understand the nuances, so learning it as an adult with textbooks and grammar is interesting but not as hard if I was learning from scratch. I live in LA, so always wanted to learn Spanish. Understand what all those signs mean, and what everyone is saying on tv, and what the random people I meet off the street are saying.
I learned Japanese because I was big into anime despite not wanting to be lumped in with the weebs. Also I made a good friend with a Japanese-American guy who taught me some more natural stuff. The crossover with Korean made things really easier with things like Word order, Topic vs. subject particles. I actually learned Japanese well first before I decided to fix my korean and bring it up to an even level. Things in my life just kept gravitating me to the Japanese. That Japanese friend, the japanese classes, Japanese people in my Korean classes, then my family moved to part of town that was highly concentrated with Japanese business and community centers (yet no Korean or Chinese) and I got a job at a Japanese market. Working there I learned a lot of words about foods and vegetables, holidays, Honorific and humbling expressions.
My friend in university was a business major and wanted to learn Mandarin Chinese because business people thought "Chinese was the language of the future" for some reason and he wanted me to take a class with him. I took it because by that point I had the language bug and was curious about just how people understood each other in that "ching chong" language and thousands of characters. That was just interesting because of all things involved:
it's words that are the root of many Japanese and korean words Then there's traditional characters, and simplified characters Then the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese (which always confused me since on tv and movies words and characters are speaking "Chinese" but the words didn't always match the words I was learning). I finally started learning Cantonese last year because a bunch of my coworkers left my work and I was bored and the new woman at work was willing to teach it to me and I took it as a challenge to learn something new to keep me busy at work and see how fast I could learn it using all the tricks I picked up learning Mandarin over the years. Also, in California, the older Chinese population and families are actually Cantonese based. Not to mention the HK movies, and Kung fu explosion of the 70's, most Chinese foods we're familiar with etc. So learning Cantonese feels like getting the full chinese experience.
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Post by saneiac on Apr 12, 2023 1:08:03 GMT -5
Languages in which, at some point in my life, I could form new sentences and hold (sometimes very) limited conversations:
English Spanish German Portuguese Turkish Mandarin
Languages in which I know some words and phrases (please and thank you level stuff, plus numbers and some engineering words):
Italian Russian Urdu
English is my native language. I took both Spanish and German in high school, at the same time. For the rest of them, my job took me to the countries where they are spoken for months at a time, so I tried to learn. Portuguese is so similar to Spanish that I picked it up quickly, but it kind of ruined my pronunciation in Spanish afterwards.
I actually took 6 semesters of Mandarin at a "continuing education" college a few years ago, but I'm old now and it doesn't stick like it used to. In March I started it on duolingo as well. My wife is native Chinese, and most of her family doesn't speak English at all, so I really want to learn it.
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Sam Punk
Hank Scorpio
Own Nothing, Be Happy
Posts: 6,317
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Post by Sam Punk on Apr 12, 2023 2:55:12 GMT -5
english - passably spanish - badly
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