Foreign Languages

[Caveat Lector]

I actually began to learn Japanese a couple years ago in order to read this one Japanese VN. It wasn't a total success, but I did at least learn the hiragana alphabet, along with katakana (though I still have a bit of difficulty differentiating between a few--the katakana for "ke" and "ku" trip me up in particular, as do the various r's). I also learned quite a bit of kanji, too, thanks to this awesome online kanji dictionary: http://nihongo.j-talk.com/search/kanjis ... rch=criter

I did also have a kanji dictionary book, but it didn't quite cover EVERYTHING I needed to know, hence the online dictionary.

I'm not 100% fluent in Japanese, though. I'd probably get very lost and confused very quickly if, say, I tried to watch an anime episode in Japanese without subtitles. I'd still catch key phrases here and there and string together sentences, but I'd need to rewind and slow it down. I also couldn't fluently read an untranslated light novel from beginning to end without any online kanji dictionary. It's a bit easier with manga, though, since it's both visual and I can go at my own pace to look up certain words and phrases. And I do still catch various phrasings of something when I'm watching anime subbed. I can still read quite a bit of Japanese, but I wouldn't call myself an expert. At the very least, I probably would not be hopelessly lost if I went to Japan and lost a kanji dictionary.

As for other languages, it's compulsory for Canadian schools to teach French in all grade schools (or at least where I live, not sure if it's the same everywhere else, but it probably is), so I've had French drilled into my head from an early age. But I'm STILL not a HUGE expert in that, either. I do know a couple of key words and phrases, but I'm not sure how much I know is French-French or Quebecois-French. My French skills are probably about the same as my Japanese skills.

[spearcarrier]

I feel like such a language failure here! When I was younger I wanted to work for the UN and know like 12 dozen language. Funny how life is like, "HA! You want WHAT? Here's a cookie. You can have a cookie."

When I was going to school the budget was a bit bigger. So. I got to study 3 languages in school. Woo hoo. And then they took one away from the Curriculum. My languages listed here are listed in relative order of skill, although the truth it doesn't matter. The only one I ever get practice at is English so the others might as well be a level -10.

American English (yes, there's a difference, and yes of course I know words and phrases from Australian and England English. But only because I read a lot. Ain't nothing like having a teacher accuse you of being presumptuous because you use a phrase you grew up using and he explains it's a dead phrase and such ways of talking are no longer in use.)

French - studied it for years and couldn't get very far. I still study it sometimes and I'm always looking for shows comparable to Wak Fu so I can train my ear more. I want to speak it, darn it! I guess it would help if I could find easy French things to read and interact with.

Spanish - Studied it for years as well. I don't have time to study more than one language so I just notice it from time to time these days.

Latin! My Latin teacher is my aunt, so I get to bug her with questions from time to time even today. But MiSi I'm sure you're a higher level than me. I can't even pick words apart.

American Sign Language

Mandarin - Got to study that in college. But I had to drop out. Speaking the language was easy and came naturally. However I am convinced I am kanji dyslexic.

Japanese - mostly stuff I learned from being a couch potato

Mohegan

And then there's the long list of languages we poked at briefly in Linguistics 101, including Klingon. I love languages. I've also been playing with Korean lately, because... 'Merica.

[hiko27]

Tagalog's, I guess, my native tongue, but from a very young age, I suck at it. It was pretty much my lowest grade when I was back in the Philippines. My grades were almost always close to a D. And also because my siblings sucked at Tagalog as well. My parents didn't really educate us much on Tagalog, so meh. I can understand it though, I'm okay with writing but very bad at speaking in terms of grammar.

English's the language I'm best at. English placement test at my CC, aced that shit. Got into Eng 101 immediately going into college. And coming here when I was 15, high school made us write an essay about what we did over the summer (HAHA I did nothing, just slept), to figure out if we're going to ESL. Didn't go to ESL. The funny thing is I've always been better at English, and that I mostly learned from watching/reading. I read mostly English books, I only watched English subbed (or sometimes dubbed) anime, and pretty much strayed away from Filipino channels. I watched a whole lot of Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Animax. I was on the internet a whole lot. And I was also yearbook editor my senior year at high school, I was mostly design editor but I did proofread a few articles from time to time, so I guess that attributed to my better English? Speaking American English, I'm totally good with that. I came here, adjusted my accent a few days after, and my friends thought I was born here. Had them fooled lol. But accent was because I watched a whole lot of cartoons.

Japanese, self-studied about two years ago, but in reality, I only really studied it for a year and a half, or less. Was going to take the N5 (or N4, I don't remember) last year but I couldn't go as I was sick THE FREAKING DAY OF THE TEST. Might try going for N3 this year. But anyways, uhm, I've translated (still am) a novel, a few manga here and there, a drama CD. Not very good at speaking Japanese though, or creating my own sentences since it's been a year since my last Japanese class, but meh, I try. But I can quickly understand spoken Japanese, that is, if they don't slur their words together that much. I've known the kana alphabet (well, most of it) ever since elementary? I forget, I think it's around sixth grade when I started studying it. I should really continue my studies.

A little bit of Korean, mostly from listening to kpop songs and watching dramas and shows. Tried to study it a few years ago, but was too lazy, I wanted to study one language at a time. I do know a few markers like 은 and 는, since the grammar structure is fairly similar to Japanese.

Spanish -- seeing as I know Tagalog, I do know some words. Our high school also forced us to study a foreign language if we want to get into a UC (which I followed, but didn't really apply to one back then), so I took two years of Spanish. I can somewhat create my own sentences, and understand it, but if they talk too fast (and some DO talk fast), I get lost. My bestfriend's Mexican, and her mom speaks Spanish to both her daughters so yeah. My other friend is Peruvian, so he does talk to his parents in Spanish from time to time. I'm pretty much surrounded by Spanish-speaking people, my neighbors are Hispanic I believe.

I do know a bit of almost every language out there (like a few Latin words, German, Italian, French) but then that's pretty much they're all related to each other, but I mostly learned them from games, or from observing similar words in the English language.

Sadly, don't know Mandarin, but my dentist once suggested to help me out at getting into a Chinese language school one time... I almost considered it.

[Pickoloh]

I grew up in Iceland, so I'm completely fluent in Icelandic. Since my father is from New York, though, I learned English at the same time. Since they were used interchangeably, I don't have a noticeable American accent while speaking Icelandic, and don't have an Icelandic accent while speaking English. I've also been studying French for 8 years now, and can get by on my own and navigate, though I wouldn't consider myself completely fluent.

[tamacitas]

Progress for lifetime? Well...

5/5 Indonesian since it's my mama lingua
3/5 English. Seriously, my English now is waaaaay worse than my English when I was at elementary school. :\
1/5 Japanese. Although that, I am really, really happy in case I can read difficult Kanji and understand a sentence. Dat moment tho <3
0.1/5 French. French. Is. Kinda easy to pronounce. But. It's. HARD TO UNDERSTAND SPOKEN SENTENCES.
0.01/5 Chinese since I'm coming from a Chinese family...
0.001/5 Spanish, German, Swedish. Know some phrases...
0.00001/5 Russian and Korean. Know the phrases fewer than trio above, but I can only read :<
I only know 'Rakastan sinua' for Suomi (it's thank you, right?) and 'Jeg alskar thig' (that's how it's pronounced, if I'm not wrong) (I love you~) for Icelandic.
And Italian! I only know 'vaffanculo' and 'ti amo', and 'grazie'. VAAAAFFAAAANCULOOOO-

And this

I find most Russians really appreciate it if you make an effort with their language, since it's also very difficult for them to learn ours.

Is absolutely true. I know Спасибо 'cuz of my Russian friend. Russians are really, really nice when it comes to foreigners learning their own language.

[FonaCall]

Hello. Rivaldi here. We are from the Philippines. As you may or may not know, Filipino and English are both official languages here, and aside from the non-English vernacular spoken at home, which may or may not be Filipino/Tagalog, people here have English as a mandatory subject. Sadly, English is more of a lingua franca than Filipino, particularly in the cases where people hail from non-Tagalog-speaking regions and have their native language and English as their only languages.

That said, here is our fluency rating for the languages we know.

5/5 English - We know enough to be conversational, and we can write formally as well.
4/5 Filipino/Tagalog - This rating is compared to our English. We know enough to be conversational, but not enough for very formal papers. We tend to lack in vocabulary, and end up using more Taglish than we'd like.
2/5 Japanese - We had classes in college for this. We can read and write kana and some Kanji, and we also know some basic sentence patterns and expressions. We're a little rusty though, and vocabulary and speaking are our weak points. We haven't taken the JLPT yet, so I do not know how much more we really need to learn.

Some other languages we can sing in, but not speak, read, nor write yet:
- Chinese
- Korean
- Italian

[SinaAzad]

my turn now !

Persian/Farsi/Parsi 4.9/5
as it is my mother tongue but the language is very massive when it comes to synonyms Oh god ! so yeah I encounter a new word from time to time , and when it comes to writing formal papers ... that's a different language lol

English 3/5
to be honest I was going to give myself a 4, but after my failure in writing a story in English I'm going to give myself a 3 !
I tend get English books instead of Persian books for my university and have no problem talking with other people.

Turkish 1/5
I'm forgetting it all ... I could understand the news , watch movies and even speak in Turkish like 10 years ago but now ...

Japanese 1/5

I can understand 80% of the words and talk a bit , but i have a hard time writing or reading stuff, I can just read and write in hiragana and katakana but my knowledge of Kanji is limited to 60 (if I still remember them all !)characters !


C++ 2/5
Python 3.x 1/5