Foreign languages

[Magnum Apex]

[font=trebuchet ms][color=darkblue]Spanish is my first language, so it's expected that I speak it fluently. I was born in the U.S. but raised in Venezuela, which is something I'm very thankful for. I came to visit America almost every summer. Thanks to these visits and my liking for video games and American television I learned to speak the language. After graduating from high school I moved to Florida and ended up perfecting the language.

I new tongue I'd want to speak? Japanese.[/color][/font]

[Transtic Nerve]

I know Italian, not many peopel can say that, though it's very similar to Spanish, as are many of the Latin based langauges.

I know a bit of Italian, enough to form simple sentences and know a buncha words. Even less Japanese, I know a few sentence and a few words. REAL english. American.... and I'm currently learning spanish at work lol.

[Ratix]

I could teach you some Dutch, German, French, Latin or ancient Greek...

[Shinmaru]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by SpikeSpiegel [/i]
[B]i thought i was the only half spanish moron who couldnt even speak what he hears all the time. i took two years..passed one an failed the other. i can get by with basic crap but not the more complex stuff. i understand it more than i can speak it. speed of the other persons dialect(sp?) doesnt seem to bother me either. i guess thats because i used to live in a predominantly spanish town of every kind of spanish backgound. didnt help me in school though. [/B][/QUOTE]

Heh, I'm half-Mexican, but I'm not a moron. As I said before, I'm not very good at speaking it, but I can understand it fairly well (and, for reference, I got an A- in Spanish 1 and a B- in Spanish 2...it's just that I have a horrible memory).

I live in a predominantly Spanish town, but we only speak English at my house. It's very hard to jump in and learn a language when you've only known one your whole life, especially if you give it the kind of lackadaisical effort that I gave it (especially in Spanish 2).

So, yeah, people are usually surprised when they learn that I don't know much Spanish. Just the basics for me, though, I can usually get by on that when I visit other people's houses. At least I have a decent Spanish accent when I speak it ^_^

[Stuart]

[color=darkred][size=1]I took french in 7th grade... Got boring... dropped out... Language aint mah thang ^_^[/color][/size]

[Kwai]

I'm Japanese, and I went to Japanese schools on Saturdays for about 7 or 8 years so I'm quite fluent with it in both writing and in speaking. Obviously, I can speak/write English as well. I took a bit of Korean, but back then I was quite lazy and had no desire to learn, so all thats left in me from those classes are the ability to read Korean, and a basic knowledge of grammar and such. At the moment, I'm taking Spanish in High School, pero no me gusta español porque el profesor es muy malo o_O.

[Adahn]

Dios mio! Hay tantas cosas que quiero decir, pero perdi mi diccionario en la escuela (tonto). Hay treinta contestas, y empece el "thread" (No se la palabra) ayer. Gracias por todas las contestas, y tratare de comentar en cosas que vi. Primero, lo siento de los "accents", no tengo una cosa que me dice los numeros que usa con "alt". Es mi quinta ano de espanol, y mi profe es muy bueno. El ensena mi clase muy bien, pero es diferente. El usa "TPRS", pero no recuerdo la significa de las letras. Tome el examen AP el ano pasado, mi "junior" ano, y recibi un cuatro, que es bueno. Por mi profe, usamos "tu", porque es como un amigo. Ay, tengo que parar de escribir asi que puedo tranducirlo.

Oh my god! There are so many things that I want to say, but I forgot my dictionary at school (stupid). There are thirty responses, and I started the thread (I don't know the word) yesterday. Thanks for all the replies, and I'll try to comment on things I saw. First, sorry about the accents, I don't have the thing that tells me the numbers you use with "alt". It's my fifth year in Spanish, and my teacher is very good. He teaches my class very well, but it is different. He uses "TPRS", but I don't remember the significance of the letters. I took the AP Spanish exam last year, and got a four, which is good. For my teacher we use you (informal) because he is like a friend. Oh, I have to stop writing so I can translate it :).

Some funny little things about spanish:
ll and ch and rr are their own letters.
For spelling, you will almost never use double consonants except for words like action (accion, prounounced ahk see own).
There is no "w", ever.
Many dialects of spanish completely drop letters, such as Spain, I think, drops the "d" between words that end in "ado", so words like cansado (tired) are prounounced cansao (kahns oww).

[Spikey]

I have been taking japanese for about two days. I am not in collage, I just download programs to help me learn, etc...

I know very few sentences so here are some:

¡?ú?íA ?¢?©?ª?Å?· ?©

That means Konnichi wa, ikaga desu ka

In english that means, Hello, how are you?

I can say good-bye, wich of course is Sayonara, but that's about all I know. Know I have been studying japanese culture for a year now, but thats not foriegn language. :)

[Xai]

[color=crimson]I'm on my second year of Spanish..:) I can understand and write stuff, but I'm not very good in actually speaking it.:sweat: It was my worst class last year, but I have a 93 so far this year.

Another language I'm interested in is Japanese, shame my school doesn't offer it.[/color]

[Break]

[size=1][color=CC0000]I'm not sure if.. Latin counts.. it's kinda old and dead. lol

I took latin because I like all the kooky words you find, and how much all of these words relate to modern english. It's amazing that from one day in a latin lesson, you can learn maybe 5 or 10 new words and also 5 or 10 new english words derived from the latin. It's so cool.

*tries to think of something cool to say*

Um... [i]caudex es? nonne haec intelligo es?[/i]

That means "Are you an idiot? Surely you can understand this?"

^^;; I know a lot more; I use super cool words to make depressing, poetic sentences, lol.

[b]Edit:[/b] Oh yeah, I'm just starting my second year of latin at school and [i]hope[/i] to take it further.[/size][/color]

[Guest Drakelord186]

Right now i take spanish. Im not that bad, i can read MOST of it and I'm not too bad at speaking it. But I really want to take Japanese! One of my biggest goals is to read an all japanese manga wit out one of my japanese friends helping me. I might be able 2 take it next year though...

[Vertigo]

J'apprendais francais, mais j'ai vuloir(sp?) apprendre japonais.
Maintenant, j'apprend japanois et non francais.

I was taking french, but I wanted to take Japanese. Now, I'm taking Japanese and not French. I took french for two years and Latin for three before I got sick of Romance languages.

[Mitch]

[size=1]Virus (werus) means Poison in Latin. Yay.

Let me see. Tandem. That means, "At last," in Latin. In english it means things lined up in pairs, single file. Where do you get that from that?

Tandem was a bike, or something. And the person that rode in the back was "At last."

Makes sense to me.

Vir means (a/the) man in Latin...and it's one of the only words that is male in Latin that is singular, and male, but doesn't end in "us."

Heh. So in class today a kid accidently said "Virus," in the sentence, "Virus defessa."

Tired poison lol.


Yeah. I am taking Latin this year and I love it a lot more than Spanish, which I took last year. I feel stupid for not just taking Latin first off, but ah well.

Me gusta...leche.

Bah.

Spanish is really hard for me to remember, I didn't like the language itself.

Anyways, [i]sixty[/i] percent of the words in english have some Latin derivative. So this will help me a lot, I hope, with becoming a better writer. Plus in Latin we actually are going over some grammar. I'm glad for that too. [/size]

[outlawstar69]

Hello all. This is I think my second post, but I've been reading for a while (I was going to register a long time ago, when ever the boards were first started, but I didn't. Now I kinda wish I had...) Anyway, I too want to learn some foreign languages. Mainly Arabic, because of my heritage, but also Japanese. I've picked up some japanese just from watching subbed anime for a while (nane seems to mean "what", baka means "bozo/idiot/dummy etc"). I had the program that the people over at [url]www.unforgettablelanguages.com[/url] made for japanese learning. It uses a way of teaching it to you that makes it stick in your head. For example, the word for dog is Inu, and they tell you a sentence to visualize in your head like this one: "Imagine there was a dog, and 'e knew he was a dog." I have a question for all you people out there: Does anyone know a good site to learn arabic? That site told me they're making an arabic one, but they haven't yet. Can any one help? I have my aol name in my profile I believe.

[Sara]

[size=1]I would seriously [i]love[/i] to take Latin, heh. I've always wanted to. /

Well, not [i]always[/i], always, but for the last several years.[/size]

[OtakuSennen]

I've been teaching myself some basic Japanese through computer programs and little workbooks and such means for about half a year now.. I'll go on and off though, and I'll often end up reviewing quite a bit.

But here's some of the basics used in a short conversation that I can think of off the top of my head.. And I know my grammar and sentence structure all really stinks.. ^_^' I barely remember three particle words entirely.

h?Z?C?P?³?ñ! ?ö?H?æ ?ë????·!h
h?ö?H?æ ?c????·¤ ?L?m?³?ñ."
h?ä?³?C ?f?X ?©Hh
g?Í?¢A?ä?³?C ?Å?·BBh
g?¾?¢!h
h?Í?¢BBh

Roman letters:
"Seike-san! Ohayo gozimasu!"
"Ohayo gozimasu, Kino-san.."
"Ogenki desu ka?"
"Hai, ogenki desu.."
"Ii!"
"Hai.."

English translation:

Seike! Good Morning!
Good Morning, Kino..
How are you doing?
I'm doing well..
Good!
Yes..

Oh, I'm oh so wonderful... I know 2 key phrases and question words, plus some basic particles. ~_~

[Sweet Setsuna]

Japanese is my native language, so of course I speak that. I'm currently taking my third year of english, but there are some words I still stumble on. For the most part I'm quite fluent in english now.

[Adahn]

The best way I can think of someone learning japonese would probably be to study abroad in college. I'm rather good at Spanish, probably because of the technique in which it was taught. The first year was classic grammar/structure, and a few low frequency words and phrases. Second through fifth year was completely different. We became immersed in thousands of high-frequency words, and developed fluency instead of just cramming in new words and grammar. It had a lot to do with stories. We'd get a story with 5-10 words we didn't know, and we'd act it out 2-3 times until all of them were ingrained in our memory. It might seem slower and take longer, but I could go to any Spanish speaking country and hold my ground in any conversation. I can already write over 200 words in ten minutes, which is superior to what most college students can do. I'll probably take Spanish in college, but I'm majoring in biochemistry. A spanish-speaking biochemist might be a worthwhile asset to any research company :).

[eleanor]

[size=1] Well, actually, I didn't pay [b]any[/b] attention in Spanish last year, which was extremely bad because last year was my first year...

So this is my second year. I basically know how to conjugate regular verbs, some irregular verbs, and we just started to learn the preterite tense. =_= I [i]hate[/i] preterite, it means we have more endings to learn...

I know to speak the basic stuff. Like where you live, how old you are, how are you doing, food, the beach, school, and birthdays/parties. We're now learning about Spain and its history and whatnot. Basically, I never study, but I usually gets As on my quizzes and tests. Good memory, I guess.

Dan Rugh: The "No me gusta tu." would be my fault, I guess. You see, our teacher was reviewing the 'Birthdays/Parties' chapter and she went around asking if we would go to her birthday party. Eventually, this guy said, "No.", which was follwed by a "Por que?"

So he just said, "No me gusta tu." and the teacher laughed.

Hm...I'm in my 7th year of Korean school, and if I go on at the pace I'm going, I'll be able to graduate that school in Sophomore year [I'm eigth grade right now] and take the SAT II for Korean. :P

The high school I'm going to offers Japanese, but there's absolutely no way I'm going to quit Spanish for it. I think Spanish is going to be [i]much[/i] more useful for me in the future, and I think it would be better to learn Chinese rather than Japanese. It's quite possible that China may be a world power when I grow up.[/size]

[stardust]

I'm in my first year of german,I like it very much,it's so hard tho. Guten tag.

[Sara]

[size=1]Really? I thought German was very easy. A lot of it is very similar to English, especially first year stuff.

I don't know; maybe I just have a head for language.[/size]

[Max]

I just starting learning spanish this year and so far i know only the very easy words. We all think our teacher is bi-poler, one miniute she is all calm and reviewing the vocabulary and the next miniute is is all freaked out and saying advanced spanish words all excitedly. That is not the worst though she makes us act out the words so we have to run and jump around the room tuching our heads, the walls, someone elses head and so forth. Maybe its her way of teaching but I wish it wasent.

[wrist cutter]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Spikey [/i]
[B]¡?ú?íA ?¢?©?ª?Å?· ?©
[/B][/QUOTE]

Heh heh, Japanese newbie mistake #1: using ?í as the particle "wa". While that symbol is phonetically "wa", as a particle you use the symbol ?Í (which is "ha"). ?Í is pronounced "ha" in every situation EXCEPT when being used as a particle. You might be thinking it's not being used as such, but both greetings "konnichiwa" and "konbanwa" use ?Í:
?±?ñ?É?¿?Í
?±?ñ?Î?ñ?Í

Don't worry, I made these same mistakes when I started too. Everyone does heh. Oddly, I've actually seen some Japanese make that mistake with "konnichiwa" before... I don't know if they just can't spell or if they're trying to be stylistic or something.

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by OtakuSennen [/i]
[B]h?Z?C?P?³?ñ! ?ö?H?æ ?ë????·!h
h?ö?H?æ ?c????·¤ ?L?m?³?ñ."
h?ä?³?C ?f?X ?©Hh
g?Í?¢A?ä?³?C ?Å?·BBh
g?¾?¢!h
h?Í?¢BBh [/B][/QUOTE]

Heh. Just guessing at symbols were we? I thought I was going out of my mind at first, trying to guess at these words. Correct version:

?¹?¢?¯?³?ñI ?¨?Í?æ?¤?²?´?¢?Ü?·B
?¨?Í?æ?¤?²?´?¢?Ü?·A?«?Ì?³?ñBBB
?¨?³?C?Å?·?©B
?Í?¢A?¨?³?C?Å?·B
?¢?¢I
?Í?¢BBB

There are kanji for "ohayou gozaimasu", but I personally never see them used. Common words like that are usually just scribbled out in hiragana, as opposed to writing the kanji.

There are also some grammatical errors. For example, you don't use the honorific "o" when speaking of yourself. So the response would not be "ogenki desu" but just "genki desu". As you know, when you end a sentence with the particle "ka", it becomes a question. Because of this, a question mark is not needed and a plain period is preffered. When there is no spoken "ka", and the sentence is a question due to voice inflection, than a question mark is to be used.

Nice to see some other people learning Japanese.

[Adahn]

Wow, I'm glad I'm learning Spanish. All those japanese rules boggle my mind! As for Max, your teacher probably uses the same strategy mine does. Tough it out, it works better than you could ever imagine. You'll be speaking spanish faster than you can think in no time at all.

[wrist cutter]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Adahn [/i]
[B]All those japanese rules boggle my mind![/B][/QUOTE]

Well, I was explaining it to people who already have an idea of the workings of Japanese. If I were to explain it to someone with no experience in the language, of course I'd explain much more. Really, it's not as hard as it seems.