The idea is simple... Talk about the languages you speak, and the ones you would like to learn. What are they? Why do you like them? What is that you don't like about them? How and where did you learn them? What is your mother language?

Personally...

- (As you *might* have noticed) I speak English. Not really well, but I think I can say I know the basis. But it is not my first language: French is. I don't want to sound pretentious or anything, but I speak French really well. Yet, it is the third language I learnt.
- My mother language is Arabic, it was the first one I learnt as I am Moroccan and was born in Morocco. But my parents speak French more than Arabic, and I started going to a French school when I was 5, thus, I started forgetting Arabic. I was still as able to understand it as before, but I couldn't speak it anymore, past my 8th birthday. (Some other important factors were involded, but it is not necessary to mention them.)
- The second language I learnt was Spanish, because of/thanks to Spanish TV channels and my grandmother, who only spoke Spanish and Arabic. But when we left the city where we were living (Tanger, just in front of Spain), I stopped watching Spanish channels, and left my grandmother as well, and then, forgot Spanish too .
- That's when French comes. It became my first language around 8. As the French school system wants it, I started learning English at 11. And I unexpectedly didn't have any difficulty with it. I have always had the best mark in that subject, without making any effort for that. Unfortunately it is still not enough. I realised my level was not as good as I thought it was.
- The next year, (I was 12) I chose Latin, but I had to stop after a few months, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to start Spanish the following year. I started re-learning Spanish at 13.
- But since I took Spanish at 13, I couldn't take German at 15. I had too many subjects and the teachers wouldn't let me add German. Yet it is the language I really want to learn. I like the sonority of it, and I watch German TV channels just to hear it, even if I don't get a word of it .
- As a consequence, the two languages I can speak the best are French, and English.

As you see the topic is vast, there is a lot to say...

Case's simple....

My first language is Estonian......it's a hell of a complicated language to speak, not to speak of mastering it....fuck...it was one of my weakest subjects at school(I'm a nerd btw....)
Estonian language has the most blissful words such as õueaiaäär(edge of the garden fence) and hauaööõudus(gravenight horror)....now give a try and pronounce them...

Then I speak Russian....at home everyone speaks perfect Russian and Russian television is on all day long but I somehow manage to suck at it if to be honest....but I seem to manage at everyday situations....

French...I suck at it more or less but I manage in everyday conversations....same with Russian...if it comes to deep and profound topics I'm outta words.....

English.....Yeh, I'm able to speak and type it....basically all I have to say....I never liked that language very much...it's just that I learnt it at school and everything is connected to that language...I do find it irritating when Estonian youngsters think it's cool to put some English between Estonian text....

Irish....I suck at it in major levels....but I still have better Irish than fellow MSers Jizzlord and Sidragasum....

Spanish....basically same as my Irish....but I speak it worse.....

I've also had MSN conversations in Serbo-Croatian but that doesn't mean I can speak these languages.....

Gaia Soy Treles(Hello Crazy ppl(in treek))
Well I speek in latavian because its my mother tong, also in english, because study in school, then not so good I can speek in russian because of USSR, and also german because of school, but also I understand bulgarian and ex yugo languages(if thay dont us ekyrlic) manly all slavonic langauges, because thaya re simmilar, (Cz, Svk an polish are harder)lil but understand Swedish

Because of TV fotebal, calcio hehe I undertrsnad lil italain, spanish, portugal... if its conected whit football

I wanna learn ancient greek and modern greek, werry good german, and ancient jusish, ancient celtic, french, italian, spanish, portuagal, arab(Ilham teach me) and ist all

My first language is Serbian, what a surprise, and I speak it excellent

Since all Slavic and most Balkan languages are quite similar, I know Croatian, understand Slovenian and Macedonian. I understand Czech and Slovakian too, but only in written form. You know, when I read some letter or lyrics in these languages, I have general idea what is it all about, and I am registrated on some Czech forum, and I communicate with others easily, they in Czech, and me in Serbian. I also know ancient Slavic, it is pretty different from modern Serbian and Slavic languages, so it ican count as separate language.

I speak Russian, very bad actually, and I don't know how to write very good. But I can speak Russian, it would be shame not to know language of our father since he is half Russian. It is very hard for me, grammatic are horrible, same with Serbian, but I learned ours when I was kid, I doubt I would be able to learn it again if I suddenly forget everything

I speak English, well, I am not satisfy with my English knowledge, and grammatics are still my big problem, as you can see from my post, spelling is not very hard to me, when I spell some word correctly once, I never forget how to write it down. And for the first time, I can read and write some foreign language, that is not case with Russian and French.

I speak French, better to say that I understand it, but I am still learning, I don't know how to write except some basic words, but my accent is pretty good, at least other say that.

I know basics of Latin, we had it on uni and I can translate texts and read it. I know many words, but I can't speak it, although, I doubt anyone on earth can same with some Hebrew, we have that class but I usually drinked beer during classes

Finally, I know some Greek, Ancient Greek actually, but I can't speak it for shit. I learned only basics, and I know alphabet, how to write and read, but I suppose it is enough for me.

Yes, I know to say I love you in over 20 languages, and also I know how to swear in over 20 languages, about 5 swears per language not very useful language some would say.

K7....I have questions....what the fuck are Jusish language? And what the fuck is Treek language? My I really can't understand you.....
Ancient celtic you say.....want celtic, I'll teach you some Irish........

Il-Lingwa tieghi huwa l-Malti Translate = My mother tong is Maltese. Many of you here don't know that even our smal nation and land we have our own lang that is Maltese. It is a semitic based lang. but it is a mixed of Arabic, Latin , Eng, and Italian too. Most of the foregin people use to say that our lang is one of the difficult to learn .

My second lang is ENg. This is because at the age of 5 we use to learn it at school, although i admit , i never became a genius about this lang.

Italian is another lang that i use to read and understand well. Even i can speak with it. This is because of the Tv that here most of TV channles are from Italian so i have learn it form the tv Even i have studied it at school.

I wish to learn Latin and Spanish, maybe one day i could learn them

well my languages are Czech (mother tongue), English (have studied it 11 and half years) and German (9 years)...and I want to understand Finnish in order to understand to some texts of Nightwish and Korpiklaani

but i recently saw those English and German still aren't enough - i have met an Italian family lost in our Prague suburb...I knew where they wanted to go (they have written the name of the city part on the piece of paper), but because they didn't understand nor English no German, I was unable to explain it to them...

Hehe, nice thread. As for me its:

English: My mother tongue, since I am half American.

Arabic: This is the second language I learned, which took me a long time to grasp but after hanging out with Arabic friends it greatly improved....and I can read formal Arabic. Its actually a very beautiful language, however the dialect in this country is very harsh and gangsta arabic. Arabic songs are a great example...

Hebrew: I can read, write, and talk at a quite moderate level...which means that I can do everyday actions without much trouble. I can understand Hebrew probably more than Arabic, to which Hebrew is what I consider one of the easiest languages to learn if you have studied Arabic since alot of the words and structure is similar. So basically, if you know arabic, consider learning hebrew.

Japanese: I tought myself Japanese like 6 years ago when I had a long distance relationship, that gave me the motivation for learning the language. I eventually learnt about 1000 chinese charactars, but I couldn't understand informal japanese as much...So now I forgot how to speak and recognize Kanji ( chinese characters ) because I was never able to apply it living in this country. But I noticed I can understand quite well considering that I never really used it...Animae helps!

I want to learn finnish because I have many friends in Finland and is one place I would consider living in one day. Other than that, I want to learn Latin. Such a mystical language too, the interest was set after participating in a choir.

I only know how to speak in two languages: English and Leet. (07|-|3|2 |_4|\|6U4635 |2 73|-| 5U><><0|2z!1!1!1) I tried to learn German, but I failed miserably. However, this isn't to say that my writing is lacking, as I know how to write in the English (also known as Latin script), Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets. As for languages I would like to learn, Czech has always interested me the most. I would also like to learn Latin just to show off.

@Frodo herber language and greek Im trele
@Iaberis - O Paokara O Malaka(Its anti paok song) hehe

Written by Ernis on 18.08.2007 at 19:01

K7....I have questions....what the fuck are Jusish language? And what the fuck is Treek language? My I really can't understand you.....
Ancient celtic you say.....want celtic, I'll teach you some Irish........

LOL maybe he invented it!

OK i speak serbian very well, croatian - all except maybe few weird words, can understand macedonian and some of slovenian with little effort.

Than, I speak English with some flaws in grammar. Can swear in several languages, including Gipsie.

I wanted to learn swedish, not that I gave up, but its not the easiest language, and I dont heve really chance to hear it, so... but i know few words, hope ll learn some more in future.

And im gonna start learning Russian, dont know when or how, but I will...

Written by Bad English on 18.08.2007 at 21:38

@Frodo herber language and greek Im trele
@Iaberis - O Paokara O Malaka(Its anti paok song) hehe

PLEASE!!!!

it's NOT HERBER!!! It's HEBREW!!!!

Are you blindfolded while typing? Or is your keyboard placed downwards?

Ok....and I hope you aren't going to mix Yiddish and Hebrew since Hebrew is a Semitic language and Yiddish Germanic..closely related to German....

wow, it's very interesting to see the many different languages some of you speak, im jealous, hehe. in my case i only speak spanish and english, spanish beacuse it's my mother tongue and official colombian language, and english because of my school. since kindergarten i started to learn the language and that's something i'm very grateful of. i'm also starting to learn latin, beacuse of my univerity studies, hope i get good at it...

then, it's the languages i'd like to learn, and they're several. first, i've always been intersted in german, but i haven't been able to learn it for several reasons in my university. i'd also like to learn russian, swedish, soumi, some arabic tongue and some asian tongue, but these are harder to learn, and there's also the time and money issue that here in Colombia limits a lot of stuff

Well I think in the region ov the world I live in [Caribbean / North America], bilingual and trilingual people are less common. English is the only language I speak fluently. As far as slang /dialect is concerned I know Bahamian dialect very well and am getting to understand Jamaican dialect pretty well .

I take Spanish in school but never really learned it fluently, though I do well in that class like with the assigned work, I don't have much ov an interest in that language to be truthful.

I would like to learn German. Italian also interests me along with French and Japanese. I had option ov learning French in school but is too late to switch now]. The Scandinavian languages are pretty too haha.

Well this is shaming... Like Insineratehymn I only know English (no, other languages are not suxxx0rz) and I would be happy to help others with it considering I'm pretty masterful with the language, but I just realized it's not that useful when I don't really understand anything else. I have some basic French from a couple of years at high school and have recently been slightly re-motivated to get back into it... spoken French is probably pretty bad though. I'm like that with English - I prefer written over spoken any day.

Maori is the official tongue of my country (after English) and I know a fair few words but I would have a hard time stringing a sentence together. Ironically I think my pronunciation of it is good, it's easier than a lot of white people here think.

I also would like to learn German before I die, I've always had an admiration for that country with BMW and ... stuff. I like how it seems pretty aggressive even when it doesn't mean to be Old Greek has always fascinated me, likely because of my interest in the origins of English words. And of course I would like to further my English and French.

Written by Guest on 18.08.2007 at 17:35
the topic is vaste...

Vast or a waste?

Well obviously I speak English as everyone would on this forum. However, my first language believe it or not is Croatian. Having been born there and having my grandma live with us, she doesn't speak any English therefore my main spoken language at home is Croatian, which I speak fluently and can read and write it but not as well as I would like to.

Having learned German throughout a lot of my primary and secondary school years, I can very, very basically speak it. Unfortunately I've forgotten a lot of it but I still can string together a few sentences and understand a bit of it, however it's certainly a language I'd like to improve on.

Lastly, as Aronax said, with the Balkan languages being so similar, I can speak Serbian, Bosnian and can understand most Macedonian.

Hey, this is a good place to ask, I'm supossed to take a TOEFL exam (a test of engilsh as a Foreign language), in order to graduate from univ, so, has somenoe taken this exam? is it hard?, please answer.
By the way, I speak Spanish, my native language, and the dozens of anime series that I've watched brought me some Japanese tini-skills :-)

Very interesting thread, it's fascinating to see the various languages people here speak!

My mother tongue is Marathi, and it's also my first language. It's an Indo-Aryan language, spoken mostly in the Indian state of Maharashtra, the capital of which is Mumbai (Bombay), where I was born. Despite leaving India for Australia when I was 2, we still speak Marathi at home. My mum's family is originally from a village near the Goa-Maharashtra border, so it is her first language, and while my dad's family isn't from Maharashtra, he was born and brought up in Mumbai, and so can speak it fluently. Despite having never been formally schooled in it, I still can read and write in it, but it's at a very basic level (perhaps like a 10-year-old).

My second language (in order of learning) is Hindi, which is another Indo-Aryan language, and the most widely spoken language in India. I picked up this one because my parents often talk to each other in Hindi, and whenever we go back to India, Hindi is the medium of conversation in most regions when you don't know the regional tongue (except in the far South, where English is the second language). Oh, and most major Indian movies are in Hindi, so whenever you watch a so-called 'Bollywood' film, the language will most likely be Hindi. Since Hindi and Marathi scripts are almost identical (both use the Devanagari script), my literacy in Hindi is about the same as in Marathi. The relationship between Hindi and Marathi is roughly the same as the relationship between English and German - they aren't mutually intelligible, but a lot of the words are similar.

My third language is English. In very formal situations, this is what I'm most comfortable speaking, because this was the medium of instruction during my schooling. I won't bother going into any details here, since everyone here speaks English, and obviously can read and write in it!

My fourth language is French. I have been learning it for around 8 years now, so I'm relatively fluent. I'm double-majoring in this at university at the moment, and my knowledge of grammatical terms and nuances is definitely best in this language, because in Australia we don't get taught complex grammar in English. I wouldn't be able to tell you what the subjunctive mood of the pluperfect tense in the first person singular is for the verb 'to play' in English, but I can tell you that it is 'que j'eusse joué' in French! I also worked in a French school last year in between finishing high school and starting university, so my spoken French improved a lot there.

I can understand a few other Indian languages because of my fluency in Hindi and Marathi. For example, Konkani (very similar to Marathi, my mother's parents speak it often to each other), Punjabi and Urdu (in low registers, both are very similar to Hindi, and very popular in music and cinema) are pretty easy to master if you can speak related tongues. I can also comprehend Sanskrit (the language of Hindu scripture) to a reasonable degree, and know a little bit of Tamil (which is my father's first language). I used to learn Japanese, but I've forgotten 99% of it, and I'm totally useless for that now.

I'd love to learn Tamil properly, because I'm an Iyer and it's the language of my father's community (and therefore mine too). Whenever my paternal grandparents are here, my proficiency increases, because they converse in it, but they also speak fluent Marathi, Hindi and English, so I'm often lazy and respond in one of those languages. I'd also love to learn Farsi (Persian), because it's a beautiful language, and when you know Farsi and Hindi, you can automatically adapt your Urdu to suit whatever situation. Sanskrit is another thing I'd love to study, but I don't really have much opportunity here. I'll probably end up teaching myself sometime!

As for European languages, I'd really like to study German, and possibly Latin as well. After Latin, I'd assume learning Spanish and Italian would become considerably easier! Hell, there are too many languages I want to learn, and there probably isn't enough time to learn them all as well as I want to, but I'll give it a shot anyway. Anyone want to teach me German over MSN?

i was born in India,Marashtra but we usually speak in English,my dad is from Mangalore soo he talks to his brother or sisters whatever in konkani and i have no idea what they say...anyways i don't even know hindi well i can understand and when i say something in hindi i sound like a jackass ... i would love to learn konkani for sure and also German and Finnish ... i learn abit of arabic since i live in Dubai , i can read but can't understand what im reading , i also study french in school i understand but i still don't too well in the language ... soo yeah thats about it

Written by Judas on 19.08.2007 at 10:35
the subjunctive mood of the pluperfect tense in the first person singular is for the verb 'to play' in English

I think that may be "to have played", not 100% sure though One of the bonuses I got from having interest again in French this year is that it made me check out some of the more complex grammatical things in English =)

Written by MeGaDeTh_fReAk on 19.08.2007 at 11:51

i was born in India,Marashtra but we usually speak in English,my dad is from Mangalore soo he talks to his brother or sisters whatever in konkani and i have no idea what they say...anyways i don't even know hindi well i can understand and when i say something in hindi i sound like a jackass ... i would love to learn konkani for sure and also German and Finnish ... i learn abit of arabic since i live in Dubai , i can read but can't understand what im reading , i also study french in school i understand but i still don't too well in the language ... soo yeah thats about it

Konkani bhaasha visarukkh kama nahi! ("Don't forget the Konkani language!" in the Malvani dialect of Konkani, spoken by my maternal grandparents) In your summer holidays you should go to Mangalore and spend time with your relatives, that way you'll pick it up in no time, it's not all that difficult. You can understand Hindi too, and some words are the same, so...

Written by Syk on 19.08.2007 at 11:57

Written by Judas on 19.08.2007 at 10:35
the subjunctive mood of the pluperfect tense in the first person singular is for the verb 'to play' in English

I think that may be "to have played", not 100% sure though One of the bonuses I got from having interest again in French this year is that it made me check out some of the more complex grammatical things in English =)

So, "if I had played" is the pluperfect subjunctive? Whoa, it's always a weird feeling to think about a language that comes to you naturally in grammatical terms! I remember getting a real come-uppance when I visited Nepal in Year 11, on a school trip. We went to this little village school, and the English class were learning the causative form of verbs, and the teacher gave us all a sheet to do with the rest of the class. Needless to say, the Nepali kids, learning English as a foreign language, performed better than we did...

I speak Bulgarian,German,English and Norwegian,and I also understand:Swedish,Danish and Dutch.

Quote:

Written by Judas on 19.08.2007 at 15:36

Written by Judas on 19.08.2007 at 10:35
the subjunctive mood of the pluperfect tense in the first person singular is for the verb 'to play' in English

I think that may be "to have played", not 100% sure though One of the bonuses I got from having interest again in French this year is that it made me check out some of the more complex grammatical things in English =)

So, "if I had played" is the pluperfect subjunctive? Whoa, it's always a weird feeling to think about a language that comes to you naturally in grammatical terms! I remember getting a real come-uppance when I visited Nepal in Year 11, on a school trip. We went to this little village school, and the English class were learning the causative form of verbs, and the teacher gave us all a sheet to do with the rest of the class. Needless to say, the Nepali kids, learning English as a foreign language, performed better than we did...

Que j'eusse joué roughly means "that I would have played" or something....actually this kind of form isn't used in spoken French....you use "que j'aie joué"....
"J'eusse joué" means "I would've played"....this wouldn't be used in spoken French either....instead "j'aurais joué"....

In fact all these forms which employ "eusse" and "fusse" are obsolete in modern French language and you meet them only in older written texts....basically like "thou/thee" and "shall" in English.....actually even more obsolete.....
Our French teacher mentioned, if I remember correctly, how a child in France...her relative probably....was surprised when started to study these forms and said "Eusse? Fusse? Ca n'existe pas!"(This doesn't exist).....

Written by Ernis on 19.08.2007 at 17:55


Que j'eusse joué roughly means "that I would have played" or something....actually this kind of form isn't used in spoken French....you use "que j'aie joué"....
"J'eusse joué" means "I would've played"....this wouldn't be used in spoken French either....instead "j'aurais joué"....

In fact all these forms which employ "eusse" and "fusse" are obsolete in modern French language and you meet them only in older written texts....basically like "thou/thee" and "shall" in English.....actually even more obsolete.....
Our French teacher mentioned, if I remember correctly, how a child in France...her relative probably....was surprised when started to study these forms and said "Eusse? Fusse? Ca n'existe pas!"(This doesn't exist).....

I would just like to correct something if you don't mind ...

It is true that the use of the subjunctive is rare in everyday life... But it is not obsolete. It is not an old form of French, but simply CORRECT French. And unfortunately people don't speak French, or even write it correctly anymore.

If you have to write a letter, or a book, or just at school, the use of "plus-que-parfait du subjonctif" (pluperfect subjunctive) is more than recommended, otherwise you are wrong. I have used these complex tenses all the time these last two years, as I was in a section that demanded a complete mastery of French. (No, they don't in the scientifict and economic sections of French highschools )

And if people don't use it anymore, it's because they don't read anymore. And the problem is that when they read, they just read stupid books, and despise classic writings.

If Judas or Joel are interested, I could recommend them a great book, by Jean Jaques Rousseau: Les Rêveries D'un Promeneur Solitaire. Some... let's say...easy philosophy, a perfect writing style, autobiographic passages, introspections, punctuated with his subtle sense of humour, all this, in about 100 pages. He died before finishing it .

Written by Eternal Flames on 19.08.2007 at 05:11

Well obviously I speak English as everyone would on this forum. However, my first language believe it or not is Croatian. Having been born there and having my grandma live with us, she doesn't speak any English therefore my main spoken language at home is Croatian, which I speak fluently and can read and write it but not as well as I would like to.

Having learned German throughout a lot of my primary and secondary school years, I can very, very basically speak it. Unfortunately I've forgotten a lot of it but I still can string together a few sentences and understand a bit of it, however it's certainly a language I'd like to improve on.

Lastly, as Aronax said, with the Balkan languages being so similar, I can speak Serbian, Bosnian and can understand most Macedonian.

I don't want to pretend smart ass, but Bosnian can't be considered as language, same as Montenegrin.

Zivela!

Written by Guest on 19.08.2007 at 20:01

Written by Ernis on 19.08.2007 at 17:55


Que j'eusse joué roughly means "that I would have played" or something....actually this kind of form isn't used in spoken French....you use "que j'aie joué"....
"J'eusse joué" means "I would've played"....this wouldn't be used in spoken French either....instead "j'aurais joué"....

In fact all these forms which employ "eusse" and "fusse" are obsolete in modern French language and you meet them only in older written texts....basically like "thou/thee" and "shall" in English.....actually even more obsolete.....
Our French teacher mentioned, if I remember correctly, how a child in France...her relative probably....was surprised when started to study these forms and said "Eusse? Fusse? Ca n'existe pas!"(This doesn't exist).....

I would just like to correct something if you don't mind ...

It is true that the use of the subjunctive is rare in everyday life... But it is not obsolete. It is not an old form of French, but simply CORRECT French. And unfortunately people don't speak French, or even write it correctly anymore.

If you have to write a letter, or a book, or just at school, the use of "plus-que-parfait du subjonctif" (pluperfect subjunctive) is more than recommended, otherwise you are wrong. I have used these complex tenses all the time these last two years, as I was in a section that demanded a complete mastery of French. (No, they don't in the scientifict and economic sections of French highschools )

And if people don't use it anymore, it's because they don't read anymore. And the problem is that when they read, they just read stupid books, and despise classic writings.

If Judas or Joel are interested, I could recommend them a great book, by Jean Jaques Rousseau: Les Rêveries D'un Promeneur Solitaire. Some... let's say...easy philosophy, a perfect writing style, autobiographic passages, introspections, punctuated with his subtle sense of humour, all this, in about 100 pages. He died before finishing it .

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll see if it's in the university library tomorrow! I enjoy using what are frequently referred to as 'les temps littéraires', for the precise reason you stated: they are correct French! Fortunately, here in Australia the texts we use when studying French are usually classics by authors like Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac et al. to teach us the nuances of the language. I won't deny that using some of these constructions in everyday speech would sound incredibly pretentious, but it's good to remember them, otherwise French will start resembling English, which is rapidly losing ground to 'Ebonics'.

Finnish is my mother tongue, so I'm obviously quite good at it. Then I speak and write English fluently (at least I hope so...)

I've also studied German for 9 years, but to be honest I couldn't even order anything at the restaurant or manage in other everyday situations. My report card says it's as good as my English, but I disagree... I just hate all those rections. My brains are too small to remember what preposition I should use with some verb. It seems like there are no rules in that language. Or if there are, there are also thousands of exceptions and exceptions of the exceptions. Another nerv wrecking thing in German language is the use of he articles. In English it's simple to choose a or an, but in German there's no logic in whether the word needs der, das or die with it.

And as a Finn I also have the questionable right to study Swedish. Everyone here has to study it for at least 3 years and one has to know the basics in just about every job. But luckily Swedish is very easy and I speak and write it fluently, although I have neither spoken nor written it in 6 monhs, so I might have forgotten it all. Knowing Swedish also helps me to understand some of Norwegian.

I'd like to learn some Portuguese. I've tried to study it by myself, but I always forget everything. I'd also like to learn either Italian or French, but they belong to another language family from English, Swedish and German, so it'd be quite a challenge...

Written by Guest on 19.08.2007 at 20:01

If Judas or Joel are interested, I could recommend them a great book, by Jean Jaques Rousseau: Les Rêveries D'un Promeneur Solitaire. Some... let's say...easy philosophy, a perfect writing style, autobiographic passages, introspections, punctuated with his subtle sense of humour, all this, in about 100 pages. He died before finishing it .

Gnarly, I'll try to track a copy down tomorrow .

First/native language is English. Pretty boring here haha.

I also speak French, but with what seems to be ever decreasing fluency. Been studying it since I was 13/14, spent 3 weeks in France. I really need to go back soon so I can finally push myself into safe/permanent fluency, though. Hopefully I'll get to do that next year. Yay.

Finally, there's German. I studied it for one year at university, which is supposedly about equal to doing it through high school. My mother teaches it, too, so I also know a bunch of dumb/unexpected stuff (songs, etc.). Could never write any of this stuff, though haha. Once I'm satisfied with my French I'ma get awesome at German.

And if we're going to get ridiculous, there's Japanese. I did it for a few years in high school, and I can barely remember any of it. It's still fun to be a dickhead with friends and ask "Cameron-san, genki desu ka?" and that kind of stuff.

Written by Ernotar on 21.08.2007 at 15:19

in German there's no logic in whether the word needs der, das or die with it.

I'd like to learn some Portuguese. I've tried to study it by myself, but I always forget everything. I'd also like to learn either Italian or French, but they belong to another language family from English, Swedish and German, so it'd be quite a challenge...

There is a perfect logic.....der, das and die are used according to the gender of the noun....der is used with masculine, die with feminine and das with neutral nouns...die's also the article of plural.....simple....

Portuguese, Italian and French are related...and actually they aren't from different language family....both Romance and Germanic languages belong to the Indo-European language family along with Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Armenian, Greek, Aryan and other language groups....Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Samegiella, Votic, Selkup, Turkish, Mongolian etc belong to the Uralic-Altaic language family.....

Besides English, as a perfect mutated language, has borrowed most of its modern vocabulary from Latin....a thing which makes studying Romance languages not that awfully challenging....try to learn Celtic or Slavic languages...that may be more difficult for these languages have more "original" words which haven't been copied from Latin or Greek....and of course....a major challenge would be Hungarian or Basque......

@ Frodo Of Steel Yes, I know those basic groups of words and can add der, das or die when it's "a clear word" like der Mann (a man) or die Frau (a woman). But then there are thousands of words that don't belong in those groups and one just has to learn them by heart. Finnish has no articles and complicated rules of using them, so it takes some time from me to learn this whole new system. I just hope it's not such a big deal, if I say der, instead of das, except from those words that loo similar, but have a different meaning depending on the article.

I meant that dividing into Germanic and Romance language. They differ from each other quite a lot. If you know English, you can guess the meaning of many German and Swedish words. If you know French, it's the same thing with Italian.

Well, of course learning any of those languages that have words with 8 consonants after each other would be more than difficult, not to talk about the pronunciation. Also any of the languages with different letters are out of my list. It'd be good for me to start learning Russian, because it'd make me a wanted employee, but the letters are very different and also the roots of my family being in Carelia, would make studying Russian hard to explain for instance to my granny...