does anybody here take or understand any foreign languages (Japanese or otherwise)? if so, list 'em off.

i'm actually studying Japanese on my own with the help of internet references and books like 'the langenscheidt japanese-english/english-japanese pocket dictionary' (2001, though i'm going to buy the 2005 edition soon), 'teach yourself Japanese' (2001; ballhatchet/kaiser) and 'a guide to remembering Japanese characters' (1998/henshall). the latter will probably be helpful should i ever embark on the quest to learn chinese. :p

i've also taken a couple of entry-level courses in Japanese, too. unfortunately, the school i attend (washburn university in topeka, kansas) has only those two Japanese courses, so i'm SOL on professional education until i pack up and head to kansas university next year.

despite no education or real self-training in german and italian, i have a pretty fair grasp of their vocabularies and sentence structures since they're so similar to english, and i'm interested in learning them. also, i'm a singer, so i dabble in those languages quite a bit; my school choir is doing the fourth movement of beethoven's ninth symphony in the original german (that's 'ode to joy', by the way).

I know how to say "give me a flame-thrower" in french. That's pretty much the extent my 1337 lAngu@9E 5KIlL$ .

I know a phrase or two in:

Latin
German
Japanese
Spanish

I think that's it.

I speak

A little German
A little Latin
Japanese
Spanish
English

I have get-by-in spoken French (enough to communicate with hotel and bar staff, and get complimented on my command of the language, but not enough for arbitrary conversation); and can read the sense of technical writing (be it astrophysics papers or RPG rulebooks) and newspapers in the language.

German I have a smattering of, not exercised much for over 30 years, ditto Latin (I got good exam grades in them summer '72).

I have a passing acquaintance with Occidental, Esperanto and Ceqli, and a most basic fanboy Nihongo.

I know a word or 2 in french
I speak a little German
I'm getting into portuguese
And I'm picking up some spanish....

I know a little Japanese, about a couple hundred words and phrases or so. I also plan on learning Mandarin and Italian pretty soon. I can pretty much just say three or four things in Mandarin, sadly.

Space Penis wrote:I know how to say "give me a flame-thrower" in french. That's pretty much the extent my 1337 lAngu@9E 5KIlL$ .

Please tell me. If I walk away with something in French, I want it to be that.

Spanish
German (although mostly forgotten... t'seems 10 years of german school can't do that much to fix a language you're not in contact with)
Japanese (still in learning mode)
English

I know a barely qualifying amount of Japanese, but it's nice to know how to read and write the elementary shit. I can read all the product labels at Mitsuwa, but I'll be damned if I know what half of them mean.

Oh, and I can count all the way to ten in German. Impressive, no?

Strangely enough, I'm terrible with Spanish. The only word I can use without error is "cochinada".

Kiujin bol Ceqli? Ĉu iu parolas Esperanto? Parla on Interlingue (o Occidental)?

Or am I the only sad bunny here to have any acquaintance with conlangs?

MongolSquad wrote:

Space Penis wrote:I know how to say "give me a flame-thrower" in french. That's pretty much the extent my 1337 lAngu@9E 5KIlL$ .

Please tell me. If I walk away with something in French, I want it to be that.

Donnez-moi un jettuer du flamme!

There's probably some accents or something I've missed, but I know how to pronounce it.

Hexon.Arq wrote:
Strangely enough, I'm terrible with Spanish. The only word I can use without error is "cochinada".

Creo que tu tienes un gato en tu pantalones. :(

I know...ENGLISH. WOW

I also took 2-3 years of Latin, and learned nothing except "My Goodies" "Hot Carl" and "I have just owned you". Oh, and "Shit Happens". We had a dirty class.

I know yiddish, not as fluent as my mother, but I know some words, like face (punum) and legs(polka) and you know, normal whiney jewish people phrases. My mom's grandparents used to speak it fluently, and my mom picked up on it.

I'm trying to learn Japanese, but it makes no sense. And the only German I know is shit, which I scream out a lot. >_>

Oh~. I can read hebrew, though. Not like thats of any use. I can only read it with the vowels, so dont ask me to read anything off of a symbol.

Shnooks wrote:I also took 2-3 years of Latin, and learned nothing except "My Goodies" "Hot Carl" and "I have just owned you". Oh, and "Shit Happens". We had a dirty class.

Makes a change from the usual "Balbus and Cotta adore the sweet voices of the young girls." and "The Gauls attack the ramparts with spears and arrows." fare I had to suffer.

Shnooks wrote:I'm trying to learn Japanese, but it makes no sense.

As a language it's as near completely unrelated to English as is possible on this planet - it doesn't split up into parts of speech in the same way Indo-European languages do.

Ego puto in ourto meo... that makes a lot of fun to say in class when you speak spanish. "Gay ego in my ass" or something.

I speak conversational German. If everything goes well this year at college(I'm a german major), I will be studying abroad next year in Germany. 8)

Go you!

Does anybody know where I can download a klignon language pack for my office?

Cuz damn, if I can type it, I can speak it!

Titus wrote:Does anybody know where I can download a klignon language pack for my office?

Cuz damn, if I can type it, I can speak it!

Googling for "Klingon font" comes up with a page with a downloadable Truetype Klingon font, so you could type it. As I don't know what software you'd be running, I haven't tried the similar search for language packs that would give spell-checking - alas! the link I found for a Klingon word-processor was dead.

I...I want to learn esperanto.

'Cause thats what they speak in Hell.