• How I came to respect bilingual speakers
    163 replies, posted
I speak Danish, English and German. German is fucking insane.
English isn't hard. At all. My native language is German but I started learning English when I was like 6 or something. Shit's easy now and sometimes I find myself thinking/dreaming in English. I'm still having a hard time with various British accents, though.
I, personally, cannot comprehend how people have difficulties with languages. I fluently speak English, Dutch and French, I study Latin and I can already introduce myself in German after 3 months of lessons. Shitty lessons in high school, that is. But that just means people like me more when I help them, so yeah.
i can speak dutch, turkish and english fluently
[QUOTE=arn0ld;19080107]I've always admired this language because of Sigur Ros.[/QUOTE] I've wanted to move to Iceland just because of that.
I think its great that some people can think about things simultaneously in two or more different languages. Obviously a lot more brain activity required.
Being bilingual is something obvious for me, as I live in the ass of the Europe - Czech Republic. Maternal language here Czech, which is not spoken anywhere else in universe. I always liked English. I learned most of what I know of English from games and computers in general. I was always one of the one of the best at English classes (which are, aside of Czech classes, compulsory here at all fields from like 4th grade). Now I am 17 and I don't have too many chances to practice spoken English, but I can already read and write on kinda usable level (excluding massive amount of grammar and spelling mistakes), and I can usually follow common speech at moderate speed if no strong accent is present. So yes, I think of myself as bilingual. Now for second year, as I am attending (for my studying field compulsory) German classes. Man, shit is stupid. On one side it has small similarities to both languages I know, and on other side it's totally different. It's also very complicated, and at least in my analytic eyes ridiculously redundant and stupid. I am hardly passing with D's, and I am kind of content with it. It's stupid language, it's hard, and I will probably never extensively use it. So these are my 2 cents - English as second language? Fun. German? Fuck no.
[QUOTE=Awesomecaek;19081129] Now for second year, as I am attending (for my studying field compulsory) German classes. Man, shit is stupid. On one side it has small similarities to both languages I know, and on other side it's totally different. It's also very complicated, and at least in my analytic eyes ridiculously redundant and stupid. I am hardly passing with D's, and I am kind of content with it. It's stupid language, it's hard, and I will probably never extensively use it. So these are my 2 cents - English as second language? Fun. German? Fuck no.[/QUOTE] That's pretty fucking subjective. I doubt that Czech would be any easier. If you take a closer look and actually compare German and English you'll find that German is a much more compact language. Our "everyday regular German" is even easier although they're never gonna teach you that. In German, for example, we don't use "do" or "got" like you have it in the English language. The simple verb is enough: I [B]have got[/B] [I]your money[/I], harharhar -> Ich [B]habe[/B] [I]dein Geld[/I], haRRRhaRRhaRR (notice hard, rolling R) At this point i can't be arsed to write any further because my feet are cold. :saddowns:
[hd]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLuYKG-1joI[/hd] Do you still forgive me? :saddowns: (I'm French)
[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] Yay! A fellow Icelander. Yeah, I agree. If you want a real language challenge, learn Icelandic. I think once you learn that, other languages become easier to learn. I started of learning Icelandic and now I can speak that, English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish (even though those three are basically the same language with different accents) and a bit German. It's really saving me in school, Danish and English are two of the four main subjects and since I know those so well, I get good grades.
[QUOTE=Doug52392;19079212]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.[/QUOTE] Same thing here; I learned English thanks to the Internet (really!)
Max, how can you be in two places at once?
[QUOTE=Septimas;19079112]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.[/QUOTE] I'm Danish and I learned English from subtitles and video games. You know nothing. :colbert:
I tried to do German, got exactly 50% in the internal exams and gave up. I did better in Spanish, but as it got harder my marks went down and down until I got around 40%.
Well the thing is, many people who speak 2 languages, learned both when they were young. It is so much easier to learn a language when you are young and more alert to languages. It may seem really hard now and you would think "Oh everyone has this hard time". I have a friend from Afghanistan, and he is trilingual, there are 2 native languages in Afghanistan that they all must learn, and then he learned English. I think he knows some french too. But the point is, learning when you are young means easier.
I'm in my second year of Japanese. We learn big lists of vocab (Colors, furniture, directions, etc.) I forget them after a few weeks. I can write, read and under stand some things though.
[QUOTE=Squad;19081678]Well the thing is, many people who speak 2 languages, learned both when they were young.[/QUOTE] Agree. I can speak both my native language and English fluently because I watched Cartoon Network when I was little. :v:
[QUOTE=R0Lond;19081462]Max, how can you be in two places at once?[/QUOTE] What
Does anyone ever understand what people are saying in a different language but can't actually speak it? My family is vietnamese and this means I hear a BUNCH of vietnamese at home. I can understand what their saying but I can't really "speak" it. I would consider english my native language though and I am taking spanish and I am "ok" with it. Would this make me a 2 and a half lingual speaker?
My primary language is English. However; I've taken 3 years of Spanish, and I'm learning Russian on my own using Rosetta Stone. So far so good.
Learning Spanish If you would call that learning, I'll be lucky if I passed the final
I'm currently learning German at school, can't wait for the day when I can speak it as a second language. Then maybe I'll have a go at some Russian or some shit.
Tanks man.
I speak Spanish and English. I tried learning Russian but I failed the exam.
[QUOTE=Doug52392;19079212]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.[/QUOTE] I have actually learned a decent amount of spanish from my courses, but everyone else in the classroom doesn't learn shit because all the teacher does is give out work, then tell us all the answers to it before picking the papers up. I wish that they would teach something cool, like german, where everything you say sounds fucking badass. It would still sound badass if someone spoke german but said: I am a homosexual man who finds ducks cute. also, I had to stop trying to learn russian because of spanish. :saddowns: [editline]04:12PM[/editline] [QUOTE=Bredirish123;19081856]My primary language is English. However; I've taken 3 years of Spanish, and I'm learning Russian on my own using Rosetta Stone. So far so good.[/QUOTE] is rosetta stone worth it?
I'd study French, Russian and Ancient Greek if I had the time.
I wish I was fluent in French, but all the teachers I've had barely know the language themselves, so it's a bit hard. I've dropped from learning French as soon as I got the choice because the teachers were so godawful. Hopefully next term things will be different. I'm hella rusty, but I should get by on my experience of Spanish class a couple years ago.
Been learning Russian for 3 years and all I can say is: ya ne panimaju pa russki ( I cant understand Russian )
[QUOTE=NinjaPanda;19079203]I've taken French for around six fucking years and I still can't understand shit.[/QUOTE] well when they speak as if they're trying to vomit it's hard for anyone to understand
I think what really fucked up my German knowledge was learning french AT THE SAME TIME. I got the words and rules confused for a year, then dropped french. My german still hasn't recovered :saddowns:
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