Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Topic started by: agagisgroovy on 02 April, 2008, 04:29:28 pm
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Mine are: ;D
English (fluent)
Gaelic (Skye dialect, but can change to Stornoway accent without too much bother. Can sing and get the gist of BBC Radio nan Gaidheal)
German (on Unit 5 of 1st textbook)
French (halfway through third textbook, but I drop in words from German and can't speak very well)
Scots (can understand)
Dutch/Flemish, Italian, Irish and Danish (random words I have picked up from holidays/music)
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I always say that no matter what the local language is, I can usually learn the basic profanities in 30 minutes of the plane putting down!!!
Thus far I managed this in:
Magyar
French
German
Spanish
Italian
Farsi
Urdu
Afrikaans
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English (fluent)
French (learning, should be GCSE A-C level by September)
German (unused since school, but can get by when necessary, next on list to top up after French)
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English
French - used to be fluent, sadly no longer
German - basic
Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse :D
I can read Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish to the extent of being able to understand the front page of a (basic) newspaper, think the Sun rather than the FT. And I tried learning Somali but it appears that my gift for languages extends only to Indo-European ones... the grammar flummoxed me completely. I may have another go some time.
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I was going to make the obvious C, C++, Python, FORTRAN, BASIC, 68K assembly language joke. But I won't.
Basic French and Spanish. Enough to read a menu and order.
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English (the only language in which I'm vaguely proficient)
French O Level 1973. Can manage a basic conversation.
German O Level 1974. Likewise
Hebrew can read and manage basic conversation
Smattering of parental languages: Flemish/Dutch & Danish
I have no knowledge of the prevalent languages in Brent...
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English.
Understandable gesticulations when abroad.
Shouting loudly when gesticulations are not understood.
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Nutty... yACF's answer to Alan Whicker :D
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When drunk, I've found I can speak any language. Anywhere. In the entire world.
Or at least I think I can :P
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English (rusty)
French (rusty)
German (rusty)
Russian (almost completely forgotten)
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English - mother tongue
Swedish - rustily fluent, so I can read Danish, though really struggle spoken Danish. I can read and understand some Norwegian dialects.
German - Intermediate
Magyar - shamefully inadequate, though I can swear adequately and order a beer
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Three mother tongues:
Limburgic
Dutch
German
Learned later:
English, fairly fluent
Esperanto, fairly fluent
French, not yet fluent but enough to get around well
Russian, halting enough for basic conversation and debating with policemen
Lithuanian, forgotten most of it
Only passive knowledge:
Letzeburgisch
Afrikaans
a wide array of German dialects
Some bits and pieces of other European languages
I've published in Dutch, German, English and Esperanto.
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English - reasonably fluent
French - O level 1987, very rusty now
Spanish - A level 1989, very rusty now
German and Greek - hello, goodbye, please and thank you
Spranglaisdeutsch - a mixture of French, Spanish, English and German - very fluent
Urdu - hello and goodbye
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English - can make myself understood
Potteries - a little rusty, better at deciphering it than speaking it now
French - O level 1984 (I'm old :(), really struggle to understand people speaking it, can apologise for not being able to speak it
Spanish - can't even apologise for not being able to speak it
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English
Rough "O" level French
Rougher "O" level German
Motorola 6809 assembly language ;)
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Oh, I have the gift of tongues alright. :P
1. Devonian
2. Profanity
3. Errr...
4. That's it.
H
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Well aren't we all a bunch of cunning linguists? :D
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English
French (rusty in the extreme)
Lack of travel is my excuse. ;)
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English
Potteries-speak
Rubbish,double dutch & nonsense
Limited (To mostly 4 letters) Anglo Saxon
Alan(using Marj's account)
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In a similar fashion:
English (reasonable)
Northern (braw)
French (pas mal)
Gibberish (excels)
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English (quite well actually)
Italian (Conversational)
Rusty French & Spanish
Can read enough German and Latin to get by
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English - C at Higher
Japanese - a smattering from lessons at a previous employer (o hai ;D). No, really: biiru o kudasai. kore wa no mai shei desu. domo arigato gozaimashita etc.
Spanish - Hola, buenos dias, etc.
French - B at Higher, usually a bit rusty till I've been in theatre for a week or two. Comment ca va? Vous et tres belle. Voulez vous +++ NO CARRIER
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English - Still learning
Brummie - Still learning
French - Was good, if a little 1970s street. Now rusty but enough to get on.
German - Dieing through lack of use.
Japenese - Was getting there. But now probably faded away.
Bollox - I'm told that this is what I talk most of the time.
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Danish
Swedish
Norwegian
English
some german and Flemish
a little spanish, and dutch and French.
That's what you get out of living in a small country.
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Apart from the obvious:
French
Russian (fluent reading, less fluent speaking)
Employing bits of French, Latin and general nous, I can generally make some kind of sense of written Italian and Spanish. Occasionally even the sense intended by the writer...
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Danish (Native)
Swedish (If forced)
English (Fluent)
German (Very rusty, used to be fluent)
Basic Japanese
A smattering of Korean
Enough French to order the wrong thing from the menu.
Can't understand Norwegian at all, despite being virtually the same as Danish. (Can read it, though)
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Fluent in bovine scatology, profanity and inanity. ;)
Probably forgotten most of what little French and German I learned at school. :-[
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English
Cantonese, getting increasingly more rusty as time goes by
Mandarin, ditto. In both dialects, my vocab is limited to family/non work situations. I can watch a sitcom, but the news confuses me.
French AO Level French for Business studies. It was the doss option in 6th form, as you just had to learn to write a business letter in French and you could pass with that and your GCSE knowledge. Got increasingly confused when French people started using 'Bonne journee', that phrase wasn't around in my school days. How dare they bring in new phrases. Will only try speak French now when drunk.
Latin GCSE. Not really a language, but I can remember the first lines of all the latin poems in translation.
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English
Australian (some would say it counts as a language in its own right :D)
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English - proper
Inglish - sarf lunnon
Jeg kan Norsk - Bokmaal
Scots - Aye, ken that I do.
Doric - just about.
Lochee - sometimes.
French - rusty, corroded and a few dents and scratches.
German, Italian, Spanish - Can order beer and breakfast.
Gibberish and Rubbish - fluent in every detail.
..d
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English (fluent)
French (fluent)
Portuguese (advanced level)
All of the above well enough to do business in and have casual or intellectual chit chats!
Spanish (basic/intermediate)
German (basic; "rusty" in fact as I never use it although I stuied it for 6 years)
Plan to work on my Spanish to limit my reliance on Portugnol.
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Doric - just about.
How did you learn that? :-\ ;D
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OT - sorry...
Swedish (If forced)
I travelled to Bornholm once from Sweden. I went to the campsite office & talked to them in Swedish. They were efficient, but cool. I gave them they my (UK) passport for ID, and the atmosphere immediately changed and they were very friendly as I was English.
The equivalent is the Scots & the English - though more civilised, of course!
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Languages I speak:
English (including London, Norfolk, Dorset, Somerset & Scots)
Languages I can murder:
German (highly dodgy, up to GCSE)
French (advised not to take GCSE)
Also:
Japanese - 1,2,3,4,5.
Russian - big hedgehog (it may come in useful)
Latin - father / mother is in the garden
Scots Gaelic - Can I have a whiskey / black coffee / water please?
Danish - bread & cheese
Ancient Greek - alas sister!
Not surprisingly much arm-waving accompanies any attempt to communicate in another language...
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OT - sorry...
Swedish (If forced)
I travelled to Bornholm once from Sweden. I went to the campsite office & talked to them in Swedish. They were efficient, but cool. I gave them they my (UK) passport for ID, and the atmosphere immediately changed and they were very friendly as I was English.
The equivalent is the Scots & the English - though more civilised, of course!
AIUI Bornholm is Danish and Danes manage Swedish with a struggle. Swedish and Danish are fairly different, but Danish and Norwegian are very similar, especially in written form.
Scandinavians are not inhibited about trying other languages, unlike us Brits, who mostly do not excel in this field.
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English (assorted)
French (needs improving if I am to remain M. le Maire)
German (now rather rusty)
DCL
I can pick the bones out of written Dutch, Spanish and Italian given enough time.
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Mine are: ;D
English (fluent)
Gaelic (Skye dialect, but can change to Stornoway accent without too much bother. Can sing and get the gist of BBC Radio nan Gaidheal)
German (on Unit 5 of 1st textbook)
French (halfway through third textbook, but I drop in words from German and can't speak very well)
Scots (can understand)
Dutch/Flemish, Italian, Irish and Danish (random words I have picked up from holidays/music)
I found out yesterday that my 14 yr old son (yr 2 secondary school) is being put in for intermediate gaelic this year - that's 2 years ahead of time (a yr 4+ qualification) not bad for an white settler from a non-gaelic speaking family.
(His math's teacher also wanted him to sit the standard grade maths exam too, but his superiors stopped him from doing so because of the extra tuition and disruption to the rest of the class)
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Doric - just about.
How did you learn that? :-\ ;D
I'm staying on the north east coast, jist a wee stap fra aberdeen..
And I have a dictionary to help out now and then..
..d
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English, Geordie and Maccam ;D ;D ;D
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OT - sorry...
Swedish (If forced)
I travelled to Bornholm once from Sweden. I went to the campsite office & talked to them in Swedish. They were efficient, but cool. I gave them they my (UK) passport for ID, and the atmosphere immediately changed and they were very friendly as I was English.
The equivalent is the Scots & the English - though more civilised, of course!
AIUI Bornholm is Danish and Danes manage Swedish with a struggle.
Struggle = with their arms firmly twisted up their backs :)
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I can speak in tongues.
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Doric - just about.
How did you learn that? :-\ ;D
I'm staying on the north east coast, jist a wee stap fra aberdeen..
And I have a dictionary to help out now and then..
..d
I spent a week near Inverurie last summer and picked up nothing but the word for bumblebee ('foggy bumble', would you believe?) and the word 'focht', which means tired, not f*cked. I thought they were all very foul mouthed at first.
My french is OK - I get along fine in conversation and can read newspapers.
My Latin and ancient Greek are good, and I've been reading a bit of middle english mixed with church latin recently, which is very good brain exercise.
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I feel very humble in the presence of some much linguistic talent...
English Posh version ( Queens English )
Not so posh version
Like wot e said
Regional Devon
Dorset
Norfolk
Cambridgeshire
Lincolnshire
French Only when in deep and serious need and accompanied by many Ello Ello varieties
German The only phrase I know is " I am Pregnant " ( Dont ask )
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Enough French and German to get by (politeness, directions, food & beer), and a smattering of Makaton...
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Makaton?
<Google></Google>
Ooh, interesting.
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Observation: Still don't know what people mean when they use the word 'fluent'. Usually they don't either. It appears to mean something more than 'halting' or 'beginner level' but often not much more.
Shrank from attempting an answer to this question when it came up elsewhere some time back :-[. Now I'm trying to be less private and more assertive
French, German: did A level ages ago and it's all still there if a bit slow to emerge, French more so
Chinese: a BA some time back. haven't used for a while but there are few days when words and phrases come back, usually with a smile. Found I could read Zeng Jinyan's blog (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeng_Jinyan) ok this morning
Japanese: lived there for much of the 80s. The non-English language I feel most comfortable in. Can read newspapers and easier fiction
Latin: another A level; could still recite most conjugations and declensions; Latin comes up at work regularly but find classical Latin texts much harder to make sense of than Chinese or Japanese
Turkish, Italian, Spanish: survival knowledge, with enough grammatical background to build on if need be
Potteries-speak: mother's language; knowledge is (sadly) mostly passive; looking forward to meeting Alan again to practise :D Does the publication 'Arfur Towk Rate in Staffycher' still exist?
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My CV claims fluency in assembly language. :-[
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Potteries-speak: mother language; knowledge is (sadly) mostly passive; looking forward to meeting Alan again to practise :D Does the publication 'Arfur Towk Rate in Staffycher' still exist?
So, does the phrase 'crimes a paris' mean anything to you?
And the obvious question, Vale or City?
Another Stokie and proud(?) of it.
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German - I can explain to a hotel receptionist that I've locked my passport, all of my money and the instructions in the safe without first finding out how to open it.
French - I can manage a stilted conversation about where I've come from, the weather, where I'm going and why we're cycling, all while tasting wine in a cave.
I can order the menu item I've never heard of in both!
Dave
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Observation: Still don't know what people mean when they use the word 'fluent'. Usually they don't either. It appears to mean something more than 'halting' or 'beginner level' but often not much more.
I was fluent in French when I found I was dreaming in French. The only language apart from English that I've ever had fluency in (able to join in any conversation on any given subject, use puns, dream and think in).
It's amazing how quickly you lose it if you don't use it. :(
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Observation: Still don't know what people mean when they use the word 'fluent'. Usually they don't either. It appears to mean something more than 'halting' or 'beginner level' but often not much more.
I was fluent in French when I found I was dreaming in French. The only language apart from English that I've ever had fluency in (able to join in any conversation on any given subject, use puns, dream and think in).
It's amazing how quickly you lose it if you don't use it. :(
I've never dreamt in French; I'd like to try it, maybe it would be about singes in arbres, Eddie Izzard, and Pavlov's cat.
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Enough French and German to get by (politeness, directions, food & beer), and a smattering of Makaton...
Similar here - except I've got stage 2 BSL rather than Makaton (which I can usually understand...)
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My personal definition of fluent is 'able to answer telephone to caller who only speaks <language>
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English
Greek Cypriot
Bits of Turkish, French and Japanese
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No one has mentioned Slovak so far, so I can add that to our list.
My personal definition of fluent is 'able to answer telephone to caller who only speaks <language>
I found that to be one of the hardest things to do as the caller cannot see me and just prattles on, especially those cold callers selling something. Face to face I notice people tend to sense when I have not understood something before I let them know.
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Very strong thread necromancy going on here.
You've gone back to almost the beginning of time.
ETA - I can do Polski and Greek, in addition to my rudimentary knowledge of English.
My Swahili is limited to a couple of phrases. Literally.
(Yeah, I did take out a copy of 'Teach yourself Swahili' from the library (remember those?) when I was in my teens.)
Its stuff you do at that age.
Who on here hasn't woken up and said 'Fuck it, I'm going to learn Swahili today'?
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I'll bite:
English: Native speaker.
British Sign Language (BSL): Intermediate in that I can understand 50-90% of a signer/conversation but it's very variable, reception is better than production by miles. I studied it for 4-5yrs in classes but I have a mishmash of community derived signing accents.
German: GCSE, rusty, can read better than hear/speak.
French: GCSE, forgotten almost all of it.
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English - Still learning
Brummie - Still learning
French - Was good, if a little 1970s street. Now rusty but enough to get on.
German - Dieing through lack of use.
Japenese - Was getting there. But now probably faded away.
Bollox - I'm told that this is what I talk most of the time.
Welsh. Disappointed that it's not coming on as quickly as I hoped it would, but slowly improving.
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Crikey! Ancient thread alert!
Observation: Still don't know what people mean when they use the word 'fluent'. Usually they don't either. It appears to mean something more than 'halting' or 'beginner level' but often not much more.
I was fluent in French when I found I was dreaming in French. The only language apart from English that I've ever had fluency in (able to join in any conversation on any given subject, use puns, dream and think in).
It's amazing how quickly you lose it if you don't use it. :(
I've never dreamt in French; I'd like to try it, maybe it would be about singes in arbres, Eddie Izzard, and Pavlov's cat.
I remember the first time I dreamt in French. I'd been living in Bordeaux for around three months - it was my year abroad as part of my degree course. Felt very strange.
My French is good enough that I can watch something in French on TV and usually follow it without looking at the subtitles, though I might miss some details. Speaking is good enough to get by in France. Reading is not nearly as good as it should be considering I supposedly have a degree in French (which, tbh, I barely passed).
I always had more of an affinity with German but I gave that up after A-level.
I studied Italian for a year as an extra course at uni. Was supposed to be A-level standard by the end of the course but I was nowhere near. I can just about get by in Italy as a tourist though.
Spanish I can just about get by on guesswork by cobbling together bits of French and Italian.
I'm completely at sea with Slavic languages, and as for anything beyond Europe...
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I did French as far as A level - "Whitmarsh*" French. I did a bit more at teachers' training college, but I don't think it was any more advanced. About 10 years ago Jan and I spent about 10 days touring Brittany on the tandem. On the last night we camped at St. Malo and went to a nearby pizza place for our meal. I was astonished at how easy I found it to converse with a bloke at an adjacent table, and the waitress when she came for our order, given that it was pretty well 40 years since I had last studied French.
*Whitmarsh French is a term which was commonplace when I was teaching, as W. F. Whitmarsh had written a whole sequence of French text books which seemed to be utterly ubiquitous. They were mostly quite old-fashioned and failed to reflect many post-war changes to the language. A quick look at Amazon reveals quite a few titles dated between 1950 and 1970-ish.
I've occasionally had a googledabble into Whitmarsh, but never come up with anything about him. Astonishingly, no-one has ever seen fit to give him the honour of a Wikipedia entry. I think I read, a long time ago before the internet was a thing, that he was a pupil at my old place, King Edward VI School, Chelmsford, but I'm unable to prove this. I would think that he's been dead quite a long time.
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No one has mentioned Slovak so far, so I can add that to our list.
My personal definition of fluent is 'able to answer telephone to caller who only speaks <language>
I found that to be one of the hardest things to do as the caller cannot see me and just prattles on, especially those cold callers selling something. Face to face I notice people tend to sense when I have not understood something before I let them know.
That tells me more about the cold caller.
Over the years I've given customer service in 4 different languages (Dutch, German, English, French). I could do it in 2 other ones as well if needed.
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SSE reasonably good when I feel like it
Scots - basic Fife and Doric as is in general usage while mixed with the above
Mein Deutsch ist slecht.
Mijn Nederlandse is niet goede
Chan eil mi nan Gàidhlig agat
Je non parla pa francais
And I seem to have my norse Hej spot on, which is how I found myself speaking in Angus Scots in a 7eleven in aarhus.
Knowing a bit of English, Scots and german/Dutch along with some regional variations is pretty handy for getting the jist of written modern norse, like kenning that quine is Scots for woman, comes fro. The same route as Queen soon makes you realize what a kvinna is.
Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk
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My late friend Hairy McSteve, Furryboottoon born and bred, was alleged to sound like a drunk Dane when he lapsed into full-on Doric ;D
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My late friend Hairy McSteve, Furryboottoon born and bred, was alleged to sound like a drunk Dane when he lapsed into full-on Doric ;D
Yonscosyecannaetellwhitthursayingataw.
Sent from my BKL-L09 using Tapatalk
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English: fluent with senior pauses
French: used to be extremely fluent, but now decaying after our lockdowns and generally avoiding social contact.
German: as French, but also decaying since I retired and no longer needed it for business. I used to be able to make Stuttgarters think I came from Schwabenland.
These days I need closed captions in films, and find English-language films with CCs in French almost impossible to follow. Come to that, French CCs on French films are often there and gone before I can read them.
@Wow: I suffered from Whitmarsh when I was at school. Came to France with a vocabulary straight out of Simenon.
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Reading is not nearly as good as it should be...
You don't need to tell me - I was born there.
I can do English reasonably well, a bit of German (less than my A-grade A-Level would suggest), and enough French to make myself understood most of the time. I can do 'holiday Spanish' and 'holiday Italian', too.
Mrs L grew up in Kenya so our family patois is littered with Swahili phrases (polepole ~ slow, bisibisi ~ screwdriver, shilingi mingi ~ expensive...)
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My definition of being able to speak a language is when you can say something without translating from your native tongue, which is a watershed as far as I am concerned.
Fluency is a graded thing, all too often you can hear something and radically misunderstand. Some of that is language (simple vocabulary), some is usage where the meaning differs from the words, some is accent. Either way, it can make for interesting situation.
My own list of languages I can switch into is much shorter than it used to be: French, Spanish, German, Hebrew. The list of those I had some familiarity with but have fallen into disrepair through lack of use is more esoteric: Italian, Mandarin, Georgian, Portuguese, Dutch and I can just about read cyrillic
Watching Netflix stuff in the original language is helping compensate for lack of travel. One interesting (?) observation is that - at least for me - keeping fluency in one alternate language helps them all.
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My definition of being able to speak a language is when you can say something without translating from your native tongue, which is a watershed as far as I am concerned.
Also when you know the native word for something but can't translate it back into English without thinking hard about it - often down to subtle nuances of meaning and slightly different usage.
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I obviously don't like to learn foreign as it merely encourages them. Having grown up fluent in Erewashian, it's not a dialect that readily adapts to foreign pronunciation, or for that matter, English. That's why DH Lawrence adaptations are always done by people speaking that mangy idiot-tongue Yorkshire.
We did reduce our French teacher to frequently reviewing her life and career choices, I'm sure she was on the morning-break absinthe in the staffroom. I believe a select few at my comprehensive did do German O Level, but I think the teacher eventually tied himself to a supermarket canal and threw himself in the canal. I feel sure Latin wasn't an option but it was the sort of school that didn't have a full set of keys on the music class xylophone. The delights of a mid-80s mining town.
I did sign up to learn basic Japanese and then the covid-era intervened, I should resume at some point, I don't much fancy doing it online, I want some Mind Your Language comedy. I do struggle with foreign, I have a weird speech thing where I can't say some words but I don't know which words until I'm about to say them. In English, I'm adept at stepping around these linguistic landmines and choosing another place to put my mouth, but that's a benefit of having a wide vocabulary. More challenging in foreignese where you don't have that extensive thesaurus to command.
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You have canals in your supermarkets up there :jurek: Not even Venice is that sophisticated!
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The slow migration of supermarket trolleys to the local canal was a wonder to behold, they were the metallic wildebeest of the East Midlands savannah. I say this as the once-upon-a-time Trolley Recovery Operative for the local Co-op. I could make a single recovery op take all Saturday afternoon, which was better than cleaning the fruit and veg section.
Plus if I found any trolleys that belonged to other supermarkets, they'd pay me an off-the-book recovery bounty.
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Much like barakta, I'm a native English speaker with conversational BSL that's atrophied from lack of use. Since most of my exposure these days is through video, my reception's okay (accent permitting) but my brain goes faster than my hands and I end up in a muddle.
My definition of being able to speak a language is when you can say something without translating from your native tongue, which is a watershed as far as I am concerned.
But very much this. The nature of sign languages is that they're just more natural for visual/spacial descriptions than one-dimensional speech, so I'll often find myself using BSL proforms for emphasis, even with non-signers.
I've got a shit GCSE in German, which to date has mostly been used for translating B&M instruction manuals and booking campsites. I once found myself in a xkcd://466 (https://xkcd.com/466/) situation and learned to use ipchains (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipchains) with nothing but the SUSE German manpages to work from.
The reason I have a shit GCSE in German rather than the default French is because at primary school, our French teacher was more interested in talking about food than teaching us much of the language. So by the time I got to secondary - where I had a native French speaker for a form tutor as well as French lessons - I was two years behind everyone else and thoroughly lost. German, on the other hand, was taught from scratch.
That said, last time I found myself in a Dutch supermarket reading the trilinugal ingredients list on something, I found the French version most useful, so some of the food vocabulary must have stuck.
But ultimately, I'm one of those people who can only learn languages by actually using them. Which is fairly rubbish when you're BRITISH and have to actively seek out other languages.
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https://frenchteachernet.blogspot.com/2010/06/whitmarsh.html
I found that blog entry on a French teacher's page. I found it interesting, but if Whitmarsh published his first book in 1935, it's not surprising he's old hat!
But I shouldn't knock it. Somehow, the study of Whitmarsh instilled somewhere in my brain the ability, after a 40 year gap, to be able to hold a perfectly acceptable conversation in French after just a week or so's visiting shops, bars and campsites. But then I think I've got a very weird brain.
When I started teaching in the mid-1970s, I even used a (much more colourful) Whitmarsh text-book then.
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I used to speak German fairly fluently, well enough to pass as German in Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland (where admittedly they don't speak proper German, anyway), though in Germany itself people generally reckoned I was Dutch. This may be because I once had an Ostfriesische girlfriend, and the accent may have rubbed off.
My Russian is more recent, and whilst I've never reached the same level of fluency I can certainly get by in it. Though as it's become more and more difficult to travel to Russia, my main use for the language nowadays is in understanding conversational Polish (I reckon I can follow about half).
In the same way I can generally read and understand Dutch, once I worked out the weird spelling and pronunciation, but attempts at conversational Dutch have been limited by the fact that most of the Dutch speak better English than the English.
I once tried to learn Czech, but gave up as it was too difficult.
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English, as in London, but not quite within the sound of Bow bells to qualify as a cockney.
French at school; amazing how much I can muster when in rural France with no option to use English.
Japanese, through marriage, lack of recent visits hasn't helped but can get by on my own in Japan. Can't read beyond major place names and common terms (eg ladies and gents!), so feel very illiterate, but every restaurant has a show window of highly detailed plastic models so no danger of starving. We sent both kids to Saturday Japanese school, which has been of enormous benefit to them.
I also studied Latin at school, which helped my English mostly, as I can recognise unfamiliar words derived from Latin, and grammatical constructs.
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The slow migration of supermarket trolleys to the local canal was a wonder to behold...
I have heard it said that Belgian canals are full of rowing-machines, but only by low-born curs.
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I used to speak German fairly fluently, well enough to pass as German in Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland (where admittedly they don't speak proper German, anyway), though in Germany itself people generally reckoned I was Dutch. This may be because I once had an Ostfriesische girlfriend, and the accent may have rubbed off.
Schweizerdeutsch is so far removed from pukka German that even Miss von Brandenburg had difficulty understanding the Natives in Laupen (near Bern) when we found ourselves racing Funny Bikes there in 1994. Conversing in German with a bloke from Schwalbe in Battle Mountain in 2002 had him pegging my German as Hessisch. Not really a surprise given that Miss von Brandenburg hails from that part of the world.
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Grutze, ciao
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In the eight years I have lived in Germany my language skill has gone from 2nd year Uni to fluent. Fluent in my case means I understand everything that is said to me in many different situations (work, social) and can understand the nuances in what is said. My spoken German is very good but littered with incorrect endings/genders, which fortunately no-one seems to mind.
My last job here was mostly in English but my current job is all in German. Interestingly, two of my main work contacts are French and we all speak German to each other.
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My definition of being able to speak a language is when you can say something without translating from your native tongue, which is a watershed as far as I am concerned.
If you're raised monolingual, then this is indeed a watershed moment. If you were raised multilingual you'll have troubles translating from one language to another anyway so the point of not translating from (one ore more of) your native tongues is reached very rapidly.
When I learned Lithuanian in a crash course backin the days while studying in Vilnius 3 out of the 5sessions were in English, the other 2 in French. I'd use dictionaries in English, German and Esperanto and my small grammar glossary was in German. So my notes are all over the places constantly swapping between various languages. No way I could then even start with translating from any given language into Lithuanian ;).
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I used to be fluent in German, but didn't use it for 20 years so it is now very rusty, although I sometimes think in German still. Just short phrases -- my brain often serves up "Wo bist du?" instead of the English, or "Was ist es?" I have studied/am studying Latin, Russian, French, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic, but wouldn't describe myself as even competent at any of them. I understand and speak Scots as well as English and Scottish English, although the really broad Doric still flummoxes me when mumbled or spoken very quickly (or both, which seems to happen a lot where I live). I can read ingredients lists in pretty much any Indo-European language, and can understand the gist of most Germanic languages, although often couldn't tell you exactly what was said.
Sam
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Yesterday evening I watched an episode of Sherlock with my stepdaughter. We normally watch in English with German subtitles (she is keen on improving her English) but this episode had no subtitles at all. So we went for German soundtrack so she could understand it.
I have clearly turned a corner in German as I could understand the rapid-fire Cumberbatch monologues in German.
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and can understand the gist of most Germanic languages, although often couldn't tell you exactly what was said.
The 3 branches of the modern Germanics (Well ignore the 2 insular here) seem to congregate on cognates, or at least overlap.
I've already mentioned kvinna and quine.
Once I had it sorted that a g can make a g or wy sound in Danish I seemed to grt a fair whack more.
Brand is another one, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and some German dialects prefer it for Fire.
But of course the danes pronounce d's as a stop, and then the Norwegians drop the d for an extra n and then their r is silent and a sounds like the scots ai sound as in Aberdeen.
The biggest problem I have with the Germanics is the vowel sounds and the oddities in consonants, at least the English changed the k in Kirk to a Ch when they softened it, the swedes softened it to a Sh but kept the K.
Anywhere else I'd have had the pronunciation of Kotbullar spot on.
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Pouches of cat food can be very instructive.
Salmon in 20 languages: Observe which take the 'salmon' route, which take the 'laks' route, learn the spelling in Cyrillic and repeat for chicken & beef...
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Pouches of cat food can be very instructive.
Salmon in 20 languages: Observe which take the 'salmon' route, which take the 'laks' route, learn the spelling in Cyrillic and repeat for chicken & beef...
Лосось
I think the pouches are colour-coded, but being colour-blind, I have to read the label. Because I have a cat who regards it as a mortal offense if you try to feed him anything with tuna in it.