Chawlk

1. Drawar
2. Fenxy
3. Decaflon
4. Two Credits
5. Wriging
6. Loose Suits
7. Chixe
8. Dud3s
9. Wing Colors

 

If I had the time I would KILL to learn a couple languages.

I want to know how to speak... FLUENT

German, Japanese and Spanish

I'm learning German and Japanese, albeit quite slowly. It's mostly just whatever phrases I can pick up. Though Japanese, I actually have the handbook of characters to learn from, plus since I already know Mandarin, learning Japanese isn't so hard.

German on the other hand is both hard and easy. A lot of the phrases I can pick up. "Shirii Du Arschloch" for instance is pretty easy and should be shouted regularly during football (we're talking the ones you actually kick with your foot) games.

"Ich habba hunger" just throws my grammar out the window.

RightOn: Small steps, mate, small steps. Don't wait until you have 4 hours a day to study a language. You can make progress by chipping at it, bit by bit. Even if you learn one word a day, that's 365 words in a year.

Kami: Just a note, that should be "ich habe Hunger", not habba. Granted, "habba" is how it's pronounced, but it's actually spelled "habe." :)

Ooops, I knew something was wrong there. Ahh well...like I said, I'm still learning. :)

1) What language(s) are you studying?

Sadly, none at the moment. (I already know, Spanish and a fair amount of French.) I'm improving my English skills, actually. All part and parcel of becoming a novelist. I would rather enjoy learning a number of languages, the top being Japanese, Mandarin, and Hindi. (Others include Portuguese, Italian, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic)

2) Why are you studying them?

Why WOULD I study them? Japanese and Hindi because they remind me a lot of Spanish in the way they sound. Also, because I enjoy a lot of the media that comes out of those countries. Chinese because I've simply always wanted to learn Chinese.

3) Anything you really love or hate about the language(s)?

Love: that they're easier than English. Hate: That I don't know them yet.

I'm learning English and Esperanto.

Though English is my first language, I would never claim to "know" English through and through. There's always something new to learn. Which is why I study Linguistics, and lump that under learning English.

As for Esperanto: For no reason other than a burning desire to multilingual (that's multilingual, not bilingual -- Russian is next!). I chose Esperanto after reading a chapter about it in How Language Works by David Crystal a few months ago. It just sounded fascinating.

There is nothing I hate about it yet. Seriously. It just makes sense. My bias as a native English speaker is probably a factor though as the grammar and word order are essentially the same as in English. But there are plenty other things I love about it.

The consistent rules. Stress is always on the last syllable, the verb endings are always consistent with tense, as are object/subject suffixes. There is no gender, which further eliminates confusion. Other consistent traits are the way in which adjectives are opposed with "mal-" (sana healthy, malsana ill/sick), "-in" makes a word explicitly female (patro father, patrino mother), and "ne" before a verb makes it negative (havas does have, ne havas doesn't have).

It just all makes so much sense to me.

I've also read that it makes learning other languages easier if you know Esperanto. I can't vouch for that, but if it's true, it will help me in the future.

There's also the obscure factor. Because so few people (estimates are around 2 million) speak it, it adds a little coolness.

Japanese easier than English? I guess I'd have to check that one out...

Japanese easier than English? I guess I'd have to check that one out...

Once you get the swing of it (Subject/Object/Verb instead of Subject/Verb/Object) it becomes fairly simple. (Ex: "Watashi wa Mark no sensei desu" translates to "I [referring to me being] Mark's teacher am." I haven't cracked open my Japanese book in a while so I'm sort of very pathetically rusty on it.)

The complexity comes in what words are supposed to be used by men (and should not be used by women) vs. what words are supposed to be used by women (and should not be used by men). After that you have the standard "honorifics" (like in Spanish where "Tu" and "Usted" translate to the same thing in English, but depend on who you're talking to and how you're addressing them) and what words are used when referring to which genders.

Also, so long as you know the word "genki" (health) you're fine.

"O genki desu ka?" (health is?) (How are you doing?)
"Hai, genki desu." (Yes, health is.) (Doing well.)

No prob, Kami. :)

Gnorb: I wasn't aware that Japanese sounded like Spanish. Now I'll have to check it out.

Rich: Wow. If you love Esperanto for its regularity, you're going to hate Russian for its irregularity. There are so many exceptions to rules, exceptions which just have to be memorized.

I've considered learning Esperanto, but was turned off by it being a constructed language. Dunno' why, really.

By the way, if you're wanting to go for obscure, learn Gaelic. I believe there's ~100K speakers of it currently. :)

Gnorb:

The complexity comes in what words are supposed to be used by men (and should not be used by women) vs. what words are supposed to be used by women (and should not be used by men).

Waahhhhh? Would you elaborate on that some, please? I've never heard of such a thing in my language learning.

japanese doesnt sound at all like spanish, get your ears checked :D
I can tell you this because spanish is my native tongue, and i'm currently learning japanese. Other than the vowels being pronounced exactly the same, the two languages have completely different sounds

I'm learning japanese just because. The only thing i cant get used to yet is adding the ka at the end of a question. But other than that i think its really fun

@Josh: I don't remember very well (it was a while ago), but IIRC, stuff like adding "-yo" to when you're referring to yourself wasn't supposed to be used by guys. This had me pretty confused through my short history of learning the language, and I may have just TOTALLY misunderstood this.

@Vidar: the phonetics are very similar. For example, say (using a Spanish pronunciation) "Jallimemashite" (English pronunciation is "Hajimemashite"). Someone with a Spanish accent will likely speak Japanese fairly well. (Likewise, I've noticed that Japanese people tend to have fairly good Spanish accents.) You don't have to alter how your tongue and lips work, for example, unlike what you have to do when learning (as a Spanish speaker) English. The way the language flows is different, yes, but the way the language sound (at least to me) is very similar, in contrast to, say French, Italian, German, English, or Vietnamese, languages I've been exposed to fairly extensively (even if I haven't learned them.)

@Josh:

By the way, if you're wanting to go for obscure, learn Gaelic. I believe there's ~100K speakers of it currently. :)

Which Gaelic? Irish? Welsh? There's like 6 of them.

Well, yeah most are, thats true. However, I've been taught that the japanese Ha isnt as strong as the spanish Ja. The former is pronounced kinda like breathing in, while the latter (at its strongest) sounds a bit like if you were going to hock a loogie.

I am not studying anything currently.
I am fluent in Spanish and French, would like to become fluent in modern standard Arabic although Farsi may be a better bet.

And then there is Mandarin on the list somewhere. I hear it's pretty easy to learn.

I learned Spanish young as a lot of my relatives by marriage are Cuban and we lived in Venezuela for some time as well. Spanish was a language my parents felt I needed to learn. I took French as a language all through school and the others I want to learn for career reasons.

Both Simon and me are planning on starting to study more once we move the end of the year. We plan to start with Dutch and follow up with Spanish and French. In the past I've learnt French (now midly conversational if I hesitate and um a bit but better reading it), Japanese (want to pick that back up) and oddly a little korean. Simon wants to learn vietnamese. All in all we've got our work cut out but we plan from about 40 years of age to travel about the world and move if we can to a new country every few years - hence the collecting of languages. I know the best way is going to be living in these places so we plan on backing up our studying with real life.

Like Tam, I'm now mildly conversational in French and I've always been able to read it much better than I can speak it. The legacy of French lessons from the age of nine and German lessons from the age of ten is that a hefty amount of the grammar and vocab has sunk into my own speech. Without being truly conscious I'm doing it, I'll frequently drop a sentence in one or other of the languages.

As for learning a language now? Part of me wants to brush up on my French and German so I'm functionally fluent in them rather than a stammering fool who is forced to write things down in either one to be understood. But the biggest part of me knows that I don't really have an aptitude for learning languages. I don't have that kink in my brain: Science, History, English, Archaeology, hell, even Maths! - all them I found easy. Languages just didn't stick with me.

Mandarin would be useful though. I have a whole hoard of Taiwanese cousins, plus a little niece/nephew on the way. It would be nice to know what the frack they're saying!

I have family who live in Japan, and therefore, I am trying to learn Japanese, but it is a very slow process. I am studying Italian, because it is the language of my maternal ancestors. I can understand some Italian, but don't really speak it, so I am studying it to learn.

1) What language(s) are you studying?
French

2) Why are you studying them?
I began learning it 5 years ago when I first entered secondary school, it was compulsory, however, I took it as an option in my GCSE years and ultimately ended up taking it for my A-Levels which is what I am going onto now. So, the main reason for me learning it is because initially I was forced to, then I found myself to enjoy it. I am also looking forward to learning more about the French culture, politics, history etc at A-Level.

3) Anything you really love or hate about the language(s)?
I hate irregular verbs, conjugating verbs. I also don't like the perfect tense (I think it is haha) i.e. visiter<b>ais</b>. I always get confused with the endings.
I wouldn't say that I love anything about the language, however, I do like a certain word in French and that is Pneu, I just think that it sounds cool, call me sad ;-).

Japanese isn't easier than English at least as far as I know. I think if you already have a hang at eastern languages like Chinese dialects or Korean, Japanese should be a snap because intonation and vowels matter in the meaning of the word.

I don't know about Spanish accents being close to Japanese though because I know little of Spanish, but wouldn't the vowel intonation be similar to English instead? That wouldn't go well with Japanese.

For instance my nick, "Kamigoroshi" (pronounced caa-mi-go-ro-shi not cae-mi-go-ro-shi). If I'm not mistaken, it's the placement of the words that determines the intonation. By itself Kami meaning God is pronounced with a "K". If you were to use the the last part of the name as an adjective it's actually a "K" as well meaning you'd say "korosh" rather than "goroshi" (nouns always end with vowels)

But if say you want to use the word God at the end of a word, the "K" becomes a "G". God of Death with be referred to as "Shinigami". With "shin" being an adjective for dead with an "i" since it's a noun and kami switched "k" for "g" since it's part of a word.

I dont know about the accents either, but i know the vowels are always pronounced the same way
A is a, I is i, and so on. Both in spanish and japanese.
So "Ka" is always pronounced ka, not kae or kai or whatever

That's reassuring. One thing I think I get annoyed with is when people pronounce "Kami" in the same lines as "Cammy".

No wonder people think I'm a girl. :P

it has happened to me a couple of times, but only in spanish speaking chatrooms.
Vida means life and its also a rather uncommon girl name, I suppose they figure the r at the end must be a last name or something

In Japanese Kami would be pronounced Kah-mee. Most words beginning with the letter K, sound like the English letter K does, such as in the word for the city of Kamakura, or the word kanishiwa.

Kami: Woops, I've always pronounced it as "Kammy". Sorry! :D

Gnorb: Ah, sorry, I should have clarified. Scots Gaelic has around ~100 thousand speakers, whereas Irish has around 300 thousand fluent speakers.

Ahh thanks Lorri, I'm not good with phonetics so I was having trouble writing down how it actually sounded.

You're welcome, "Kah-mee".

And, you do know that the letter "i" takes on the English long "e" sound, right? Such as in kanishiwa "kah-nee-shee-wah".

LOL I better quite while I'm ahead.

Sorry but what's the difference between:
Kami
Cammy (SF2:TNC == WIN!)
Kah-mee
Kammy

I would pronounce all of those (almost) identically. >_<

In japanese, double consonants are pronounced
So Kammi is longer than Kami

Kam-mi
Ka-mi

Oli: Damn western people and their pronunciation. :P

Lorri: Yup, I'm well aware of that. Most Eastern languages (if not all) pronounce "i" as "ee"

I'm in India right now, in Chennai, learning my native language of Tamil. I've always been able to speak it fluently, but my vocabulary is limited. I know enough to stumble around the meaning, but I end up reverting to English, or asking my aunt to translate.

It's hellishly difficult to pronounce some of the Tamil characters, lots of tongue work. But as a result, Spanish was a piece of cake when I took it in high school.

Ah, and Spanish, I started learning when I was in high school, it's a wonderful language and I like the culture.

Early on in the year I tried a bit of German but lost interest, I should have another go at it. Maybe you could teach me.

I'm learning Yoruba, my native language (from Nigeria). I stopped speaking it when I came to America since having an accent is no fun when you're a kid :| But! I love learning languages I already know French and more Spanish than I did yesterday.

Languages are cool because when you're speaking them, you have a whole new sense of self. For example, English is the only language (that I know of) where the first person pronoun is always capitalized. As such, English becomes much more the subject's language than the objects. I hope that makes sense. And the Yoruba language has no gendered pronouns, so translating my mind into English always ended up with me mixing he/she his/her up. Also no fun when you're a kid :|

But yeah! Go languages!

Moskau: I don't know if I'm qualified to teach it, truth be told. I could certainly give some pointers, recommend some materials, etc.

simplyann: Yoruba has no gender for the pronouns? Interesting!

Having an accent that isn't english-based is cool. Sure you might be made fun off, but then again...people always love people from other countries.

At least I'd like to think they do.

I've always loved other languages. I try to decipher what labels and signs mean when I see them. The only problem is, I never liked studying. So I know a little spanish, and can sometimes pick out cognates in other romance languages. My goal is to one day be able to understand all the romance languages plus German.

What i like about foreign languages is their history i suppose. how did they come to be the way they are now?

Kamigoroshi: Heh, yeah accents are cool now, but kids were cruel.

Vidar: yes, the history behind the foreign languages are quite interesting, I agree.

1) What language(s) are you studying?
Spanish
And like the others said, English (Journalism major)

2) Why are you studying them?
School is the main factor here. I would have preferred to learn German, but when I started taking language classes at a community college, Spanish was the only language offered.

3) Anything you really love or hate about the language(s)?
Spanish is very easy to learn. I mean, no language is easy, but I think that Spanish is much easier than Japanese to learn.

I live near the US/Mexican border, and the Spanish that is spoken on this side of the border is mostly slang. It sounds ugly. Spanish is pretty if you speak it how it's supposed to be spoken. The words within a sentence are supposed to rhyme.

@a few above: Yeah, the history of languages is fascinating. I love etymology. :)

@alisa: Sorry to hear about the limiting language selection available at your college. Don't feel alone, however; I'd love to take German or Russian courses, but the university I'm at only offers Spanish and French. I might take some French though, as I'm studying it as well now. Glutton for punishment, I am.

@Kamigoroshi: You might have seen the Note I posted about accents, but in short: I love 'em, Irish in particular.

Like others have said, I'm a forever student of English (writer). I'm fluent in Spanish, and have an intermediate level of Portuguese and French. I studied a bit of German and Greek (not a fan of the German, really enjoyed the Greek) and I'm now thinking about dipping my toes into the Italian waters.

Why do I study languages? I've always been fascinated with the connection between language and culture (as in, we don't just speak a language, but rather a culture) and I love becoming familiar enough with a language to understand its subtle intricacies. Furthermore, I love cultures (was a cultural & linguistic anthro major), and to further the language-culture connection, I feel that language is the window to a culture. It's just fascinating.

The thing I "hate" about languages (it's really more of a frustration) is that the grammar varies so much between them. Every time I feel proud about mastering a new grammar concept, a new one comes to bite me in the butt. Sticking to Romance languages eliminates some of this, but if I plan to branch out and learn more German, Greek, or whatever, then I'm going to have to deal with them.

@Erin: Nicely said about languages being windows into culture. As an aside to that, I've always found it interesting to see how, when someone knows multiple languages very well, when they switch languages, they're doing more than switching from one language to another; often, their personalities change.

Regarding how grammar varies - agreed! I don't hate it, it's more of a frustration like you said. Last night while reading some of my Russian text, I came across something that really threw me off: typically, after a verb in the negative (e.g. "I don't like [X]"), the direct object is in the genitive case instead of the accusative. What the hell is that about? :)

The grammar of German isn't too bad; however, I've been at it for quite a few years now, so perhaps I've just gotten used to some of the things that, perhaps, drove me crazy when I first started learning the language. For me, the worst thing about German are all of the particle words. Particles not being a huge thing in English, I've had a really hard time getting a good grip on the slippery things, and slippery they are; natives sprinkle them throughout everything they say, all the time. And of course, sometimes the particle means X; sometimes it means Y; sometimes it means Z; and sometimes, especially in the case of the word "mal", it means nothing! And yet they still throw it in all the time. Grr!