• How I came to respect bilingual speakers
    163 replies, posted
Yes, this isn't centered around school, its a coincidence that i am learning a second language there so no flames about that. This started off at the beginning of the year, i decided to take a class to understand a different language, i went in thinking "This is going to be pretty cool, shouldn't be TOO hard." Big fucking understatement. Ive struggled in the class the entire time, and it made me respect people who can speak 2 different languages a bit more, knowing how difficult it is to just get started. So now when i go into my local fast food restaurant and see a hispanic person manning the drive through and i tell him my order, if he fucks it up, i still wont get that mad because i know its difficult to understand a different language. Let alone a different language and accents topped onto it. tldr I have more respect for bilingual speakers since ive taken a class to teach me the language and its hard as shit.
I've taken French for around six fucking years and I still can't understand shit.
Learning languages though school (especially in high school) sucks. They teach you all of the grammar and shit like conjugation and agglutination too early, and you really don't get a good understanding of the language. I took three years of Spanish classes in high school and barely passed, yet I can't speak Spanish to save my life, but any language I learn on my own I can speak well.
Well it's nice to see that some people respect that. I'm icelandic. And it's a fact that icelandic is one of the hardest languages in the world. ( we have fuck loads of rules and shit in our language )
I'm just guessing that your first language is English and your learning Spanish? Or are you learning something else?
My girlfriend is a german foreign exchange student and she speaks english spanish french and suprisingly, german. i only speak one language myself, but ill let you guys try to figure that out by yourselves, should keep you busy ^.^
I'm first generation chinese-american. (I think thats if your parents are chinese and they moved here) My parents speak mandarin at home all the time and I took chinese for 10 years beginning when I was 4. I'm bilingual alright. But I don't have accented english. I have accented chinese. I get so much shit from relatives in china
Well, in most european countries you learn english pretty fast, as I understand it (excluding the UK, of course. Well, you do learn english quite fast there too, but that's not what I meant) They say that once you've learned three different languages, the rest will be far easier. So I hope everything will be awesome then I'm done learning german. Also, I thought you were talking about speakers, like, for a computer, or a stereo, when I saw the title.
[QUOTE=Cowie1337;19079273]I'm first generation chinese-american. (I think thats if your parents are chinese and they moved here) My parents speak mandarin at home all the time and I took chinese for 10 years beginning when I was 4. I'm bilingual alright. But I don't have accented english. I have accented chinese. I get so much shit from relatives in china[/QUOTE] dude i want to get a chinese tattoo on my arm that stands for general badass, can you show me which symbol that would be
[QUOTE=UserDirk580;19079255]I'm just guessing that your first language is English and your learning Spanish? Or are you learning something else?[/QUOTE] My first language is English and i am learning Spanish. Apparently learning English is a lot more difficult than other languages because we use different rules according to different languages. I met a foreign exchange student from Mexico (no border jokes k) He speaks English perfectly, Japanese perfectly, and Spanish perfectly. I shat bricks when he started a presentation and switched between all 3 languages throughout the presentation.
You learn other languages much better at a younger age, as you learn naturally. Chances are people who are bi-lingual didn't learn english/etc when they were in middle/high school, they probibly learned it when they were young. Learning a language when you are young and surrounded by both languages heavily is much "easier" to do than trying to brute-force another language into your brain after you've already established one in your head as your only language.
I took Latin for 7 years, and I can't speak it to save my life. Granted, I will never need to and the classes were based mainly on reading Latin, I still can't understand anything spoken. We learned grammar too early so it all became very technical, and only when I took college Latin did we move into practical reading. Now I can read fairly well and have a good background, but it's not really practical . . .
Total immersion is where it's at. I began work at a bilingual (see: Majority Spanish speakers) school this last semester and I've learned more Spanish without even taking a class than I have in my three years of Spanish.
I couldn't speak different languages, I failed at Spanish and French. Couldn't get my head around all the differences. I still got a B at GCSE in French, I only knew one tense. GCSEs are piss.
Thank you OP :)
some people also have a better understanding of language than others and learn new languages faster
[QUOTE=Wheeze201;19079247]Well it's nice to see that some people respect that. I'm icelandic. And it's a fact that icelandic is one of the hardest languages in the world. ( we have fuck loads of rules and shit in our language )[/QUOTE] Actually, English is the hardest to learn language. Say you speak Spanish, (like me), and you wish to learn English, the grammatical rule variations between the two languages make the two languages contradict. Thus making Spanglish pendejo.
6 years living in Finland and I still can't speak the language worth a damn.
I was expecting at least a story. Possibly a twist or two. But a [i]moral?[/i] Christ.
[QUOTE=OhSnap!;19079668]Actually, English is the hardest to learn language. Say you speak Spanish, (like me), and you wish to learn English, the grammatical rule variations between the two languages make the two languages contradict. Thus making Spanglish pendejo.[/QUOTE] I would've imagined it would be easier, considering there aren't as many conjugations of verbs in English. On another note, from what I hear, Asian languages are easier to learn how to speak, but are a bitch to learn how to write.
It's not too hard to learn English, but you have to see an use for it. For example all software, manuals, support, movies, games and much more is in English. I guess that's why I cared in school about my grades in English but not in German. The hardest thing is the accent. I might be moving to the UK for a year and get involved with some English people to learn the accent.
i've been "learning" german for 3 fucking years and I keep being put back into the next tier class even though I've barely passed each time
I'm trilingual, give me stuff.
[QUOTE=Virtanen;19079846]I'm trilingual, give me stuff.[/QUOTE] :woof:
We started learning English in elementary school. There's a huge difference between learning a whole language in a year or so or gradually learning it for your whole life.
[QUOTE=Robber;19079883]We started learning English in elementary school. There's a huge difference between learning a whole language in a year or so or gradually learning it for your whole life.[/QUOTE] that's the way to learn different languages start in elementary school but the american school system can't seem to see that's the right way to do it
I spent 2 years learning French and I can't understand a word. I dropped it 2 years ago though :downs:
[QUOTE=Wheeze201;19079247]Well it's nice to see that some people respect that. I'm icelandic. And it's a fact that icelandic is one of the hardest languages in the world. ( we have fuck loads of rules and shit in our language )[/QUOTE] I've always admired this language because of Sigur Ros.
4 Years of spanish and I can't understand shit.
You think that shit's hard? Try Arabic. It's like a Spanglish-Frenchy Clusterfuck that's read right to left. A lot of fun to speak though.
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