44 replies to this topic

[PrejudiceSucks]

German is expressive-tastic, that's why I love it.

I can also read the Russian alphabet, I forgot to mention that.

Ooh! Ooh! And I can say 'Hot Chocolate' in  Flemish. But that's about it.

I'm a Brit, we expect people to speak our language wherever we go and don't expect people to speak theirs when they come here.

That said, on part of my geography coursework I had to do a questionairre to 5 people and one of the tourists I asked was German and couldn't speak English. I filled all of the information in and I'm pretty sure that it was accurate.

[DeathDude]

Well I Know English and am pretty fluent in Spanish as well, still learning but I can carry on a conversation and such, also helpful that I have relatives that know the language

[taikara]

Tom Henrik, on Jul 20 2005, 09:33 AM, said:

I am a devil at saying "Genre" 

Yes, you are

@a1s: Cold

I suppose now we get to see whether my fluent Russian friend was being a jerk when I asked how to say it

Je ne sais pas / Je'n sais pas

Himmler is indeed correct, both are acceptable.

Japanese

"My name is Tai, nice to meet you."

(rather awful) Norwegian

"What is that?"

Dutch

A small bit of a children's song Kon-Tiki taught me

[A. J. Raffles]

You've got a nice voice, Tai.

The Norwegian sounded a bit like a friend of mine speaking Danish.

[taikara]

A. J. Raffles, on Jul 20 2005, 02:36 PM, said:

You've got a nice voice, Tai.

The Norwegian sounded a bit like a friend of mine speaking Danish.

Thanks

And I knew Tom was just being nice

[A. J. Raffles]

I don't think he was. There's almost certainly a dialect which sounds exactly like that. Probably somewhere near the Danish border.

[taikara]

hehe... Tom says I shouldn't worry so much about my pronunciation, because no matter how I say it, it's almost guaranteed that there's a dialect that sounds the same  

[Tom Henrik]

True

Norwegian dialects are scary

[MdaG]

We have a dialect in the southern part of Sweden that's easier for Danish people to understand that most Swedes  

[Flop]

I speak Danish and English. I understand Swedish and Norwegian when spoken (slowly) and written, and most Swedes and Norwegians I've spoken to, understand Danish (when spoken slowly). I have a passing knowledge of French, Spanish and German, but am not able to have an actual conversation in either of those languages.

I'd like to say that I can speak Japanese, but I can't . We've focused mainly on history and culture so far, but next year I expect them to focus more on the language. Maybe you could give me some pointers, Tai.  

After they teach me Japanese, I hope to learn some Russian as well (might be a couple of years into the future ).

Edit: @Tai+A.J.: Nah, it sounds more like Norwegian than Danish to me (which is a good thing, since it's supposed to be Norwegian ).

[PrejudiceSucks]

Russian is a top-class language. I can't speak very much, but I love the sound of it.

[Doc Adrian]

I feel really underclassed here...I speak English and even that could use more work

I am not afraid to talk to people that might speak English when I am abroad though, and I even talk normally and don't shout "DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH "

I took French for a while in High School but never picked it up beyond how to say important things like "Here is the Airport" and "I don't know"
I pick up a few important words whenever I visit though like "Restroom"

My school didn't offer much for foreign languages-  they just had Spanish and French, my French is bad and the spanish was very formal and useless in most places.  When I tried to speak the Norwegian from my "Travel Norway" audio tapes my cousin told me I spoke like an old man and the dialect I use is a bit out dated.

[PrejudiceSucks]

Oh well, there we are.

Ooh!

If it counts I can program IF and that's a language unto itself.

[A. J. Raffles]

PrejudiceSucks, on Jul 21 2005, 09:42 AM, said:

Oh well, there we are.

Ooh!

If it counts I can program IF and that's a language unto itself.

Don't forget you speak Shizzle as well.

[PrejudiceSucks]

That's damn trizzle, my sizzle...

I can spizzle any hip-hizzle languizzle.