Thanks to Cavalcade’s query and Sin’s reply, I was reminded of something that I find fascinating since I joined this community. The mastery of multiple languages by many RPGC users is truly amazing. I am thinking of non-Anglophone Europeans and Latin Americans here whose proficiency in English could put some native speakers to shame. Quite a few Canadians on this board have at least a passable knowledge of the “other” official language. And I am certain that many Americans here can say much more than just Una cerveza, por favor in Spanish.
Some RPGCers are full-fledged polyglots; and I always respected, and even admired the ability (talent?) to communicate in different languages.
So, could you describe/list your linguistic skills, por favor?
As for yours truly, I was lucky enough to be born in functionally (but not officially) bilingual city, Kiev; and now I live in a bilingual (more officially, than functionally) country. My Ukrainian is getting rusty lately, but my Russian, English and French are used on a daily basis.
Oh, and since it’s my milestone (1000 posts) thread, if you wish, ask me a question – not too extravagant and complicated, I hope – in the language of your choice.
Linguistically challenged unilingual Anglophones are more than welcome to participate.
I speak both Dutch and English fluently, due to being born in Holland and videogames being in English. My English accent is fucking horrible, though. I can understand a fair amount of German because of obligatory high school classes. I don’t understand a word of French despite obligatory high school classes.
Wil je dat je bezittingen worden geïdentificeerd, y/n?
I am fluent in English, and am in the process of learning French. Someday I hope to be fluent, or at least able to hold my own in conversation and read literature. Right now I can speak and understand simple phrases, and read a bit. I mostly just need to beef up my vocab at this point, and practice some conjugation.
I’d like to pick up Japanese someday too, and maybe some Korean and Chinese to top it off (it’s useful where I live).
Question: À quelle heure levez-vous le matin?
That’s sort of boring though…
How about this: what are three situations in your life where you went to the wrong floor or went in the wrong door (literally, not metaphorically), and did anything funny/scary/weird happen as a result?
<table border = “1”><tr><td>Lang</td><td>Read</td><td>Write</td><td>Aud</td><td>Oral</td><td>lulz</td></tr><tr><td>En</td><td>++++</td><td>++++</td><td>++++</td><td>++++</td><td>A wizard has turned you into a Mudkip. Is this awesome? (Y/N)</td></tr><tr><td>Fr</td><td>+++</td><td>+++</td><td>++</td><td>++</td><td>Un magicien a vous transformé en un Gobou. Est-ce super? (O/N)</td></tr><tr><td>Ch</td><td>++++</td><td>++</td><td>++++</td><td>+++</td><td>一位魔法师把你变成水躍魚了。很爽吧？ （是/否）</td></tr><tr><td>Ja</td><td>+</td><td>+</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>魔術師のために、あなたはミズゴロウに変身。すごい、ね？*(はい/いいえ)</td></tr></table>
*<small>not sure if this one is grammatically sound</small>
I was wondering whether to include “science” as a language because, the way papers are written, it honestly might as well be. I’m tired of reading them
Question: Si on vous donne un choix d’être employé par n’importe quelle entreprise, laquelle serait-elle votre choix?
That’s a very good point. I’m taking Biology this semester, which is the first science class I’ve taken since 2004 in high school. It’s definitely learning a new language, at least at the introductory level.
Well, I can obviously speak/write English very well. Took 4 years of Spanish in High School, so I can understand Spanish, but kinda suck at writing/speaking it. Though I can say/comprehend more phrases than your average person. I know a little Japanese (at least romanization of certain words and such), but it’s a language I would really like to learn and pick up.
I can pronounce German words/phrases fairly well, but this is merely due to me actually sounding German (as told to me by an actual German…go figure). That said, I know little to no German at all…
French: I have what I call cereal-box French, i.e. the sort of words you can glean from the back of a cereal box, which is always half French here in Canada and which is where most of my French reading takes place. 8p I took several years of French in elementary and high school but I can’t really use it well. I can read bits and pieces of it, but that’s largely because many English words come from Latin. I can sort of try to speak it but can’t understand it, because spoken French sounds VERY different from what’s written down, especially when done fast.
Hebrew: I’m not fluent but can get by (better than French). My biggest problems are simply in vocabulary; I can tell you how to say “spear” or “cow” but not “telephone” or “income tax”. Most of what I learned was from religious texts. 8p Luckily many of the most recent words are simply loanwords from English (e.g. “Internet”).
Japanese: I know a couple of hundred words, mainly from anime or video games. I have flashes of understanding but can’t do anything like carry a conversation. I can read katakana and knew hiragana at one point but no longer. I never learned kanji.
Yiddish: Again, bits and pieces, missing a lot of vocabulary.
Finnish (Go figure, kampelaa kiitos.)
English (Go fish, a slice of trout would be nice.)
Swedish (The other official language of the country, lax om det är möjligt)
German (I understand what you say, but what you hear or read from me isn’t pretty, Dorsch, bitte.)
Handful of Estonian, as it is a related language.
As for your question: What’s your favourite fish… dish?
Thanks Cless, here’s a continuation:
Velho on muuttanut sinut mutanokoseksi. Onko tämä mahtavaa? (K/E)
Spanish: Almost fluent. I can read and write spanish perfectly; however, my conversational skills are not fully-developed. I was excellent at it for a long time, until I moved to Northern California. Still, for all intents and purposes, I know spanish.
Portuguese: I can read a little bit of it, cos of how similar it is to spanish.
Japanese: I can’t really read much Japanese at all, but I taught katakana to myself without reading any books; just a bunch of educated guesses and the random piece of knowledge that ‘japanese characters are two letters, except vowels and n in certain cases’. I’m proud of this
English, and Irish (Irish Gaelic if you want to get stupidly specific. I guess I could probably read or speak Scotch Gaelic too, so far as I know the two are pretty similar).
I used to be pretty good at French, that’s obviously gone well down since I stopped going to high school. But I think Cless asked “If you could be given your choice of employement (something something, possibly in any enterprise?), what would be your choice?” If that’s right, kickass. I’m not horrible at it!
Apart from that, I guess I speak math pretty well.
extremely basic spanish, due to having to take two semesters of it. Actually, I still have to take a third to graduate, so maybe I’ll end up semi-fluent.
Only English, but I know a HELL of a lot of it- not trying to show off my linguistic e-dick or anything but my vocabulary would be top 1% of all native English speakers- possibly top 0.1%, I dunno. Comes from all the Scrabble I play.
I’ve tried learning new languages, but I have enough trouble mastering english. I always wanted to learn Russian, though, since it really is a beautiful language. maybe someday.
Portuguese is my native language. I learned English so I could play RPG`s like Final Fantasy and later on Spanish because, well, because I wanted to. I can read some French and Italian (justg a little, though).
Spanish and English: Perfectly fluent, probably with skill in both that surpasses native speakers since I’m specifically studying to become a translator, which implies getting to know how the languages work down to the bare bones.
Italian and Portuguese: Thanks to these two being so etymologically close to Spanish, I can understand it being spoken and sort of carry a conversation. Also, thanks to my grandfather, I know how to curse in Italian like a pro.
Latin: Sort of learning it now, due to one of my teachers’ very illogical idea of what her course should be about.
Japanese: Whatever I picked up from watching too much anime. Completely useless in real life, I’m sure. I can make out katakana to an extent as well, side effect from scourging through Japanese sites.
I could once feasibly claim to know English, Latin and Japanese. I was actually trying to play FF4j at one point and succeeding. Now my Latin is limited to slow Latin-to-English guesswork, and my Japanese consists of hiragana, katakana, and random phrases and bits of syntax that my teachers stressed.
English is my main language. I took Spanish in high school but that was so long ago that even when I took my honeymoon to Cancun, I only understood very little.
Do programming languages count? I know HTML, CSS, Basic, and some C and C++.
My wife tries to get me to understand sign language, but she only gives me one finger salutes, which is about the only sign I know.
A moderate amount of Russian (better reading or hearing than writing or speaking), tatterdemalion bits of Norwegian, rad English, good enough French to live there for a couple months and read Camus, basic Romani, about as much Pawnee as anybody really knows any more, tragically mediocre Latin, two whole sentences of Finnish (“Drive quietly over the bridge,” and “Flat ground is in danger of freezing”), various forms of cant, a few programming languages, and the names of kick-boxing techniques in Thai. I used to know some Scottish Gaelic, but that’s pretty much gone.
