foreign languages

[BobBQ]

I speak English natively and despise it intensely. I also know some Latin, Java and K&R C. Currently learning Japanese for make benefit ignorant nation America.

[Faußtin]

- Hungarian (haha, native language, haha :P)
- English (grown up on Cartoon Network and computer games like Dune 1-2 and the UFO series (especially the one with the Etherals and the Mutons, that was fun, though I don't know which one it was); though I was 11 or 12 when I learned that "go" in past tense is not "goed" but "went" :P)
- Familiar with: Russian (learned for three years, and forgot it in three months :P), French (*burf* I've learned for one looong year to discover how ugly French is (those who feel insulted deserve it)), German (Gott weis ich wil kein Engel zein (I don't know for sure how to write it, but I know how to pronounce it, since I've heared it quite often )), Latin (I know Latin the most from those listed in the "Familiar with:" section) and Japanese (I'm quite a pre-beginner, however surprising that may sound). And I'm learning Italian... errr... or maybe "I'm going in the classroom frequently where Italian is tought" would be closer to the truth. :P

[AchtungAffen]

WTF? German and spanish easy? Oh noes. German was probably the most complicated language I ever tried to learn. Man, I spent 10 years going to a Deutsche Schule, got out and couldn't even understand Deutsche Welle newscast. Fukkin adjektiv endungen, that was my end. And spanish, I know it because it's my native one. But once you try to understand it's technical issues, it's a hell of a mess. Acutes, diptongos, accents (grammatical or prosodical), rules of letter combinations and finally but not least, the redaction rules which I never quite understood nor learnt. No commas before "y"'s? It's a mess to translate to spanish sometimes. And the pronunciation, with sounds that only also exist in arab languages, for example "naranja", where the "j" sounds like when you strangle someone. The hard "R"'s, the makijita double "R". Diéresis (ü as in cigüeña). Ahh, and of course the "ñ", spanish by default -ño (nyo). And then, the different ways of speaking spanish, not dialects, from each and every spanish speaking country, specially Argentina, using a different second person ("vos" not "tu" - archaic form) and different conjugations for it too.

[ZaDiZTiK]

:twisted:
Most people tend to write off Spanish or German as simple languages, but it's nice to see that someone finds them to be a bit difficult to learn. What I don't like about people who find them to be incredibly simple languages is that they aren't capable of speaking the language themselves. I've posted before about having respect for those who can speak more than one language and having respect for the language itself and still I stand by it.

[Mundane]

Describing objects in German is a pain in the ass, and Spanish sentence structure is insane.

I'm having a lot of fun with Japanese so far. It's mostly memory.

[MaggotMaster]

Spanish sentence structure is insane.

Lies.

Okay maybe it is.

For all intended purposes, I'm a natural spanish speaker and english is my second language, I can also speak in memes, but that's no achievement.

[The Bastard King]

I speak fluent Engrish, I can understand written Spanish and French, and in preperation for the upcoming invasion of America by the Vatican City, I've prepped myself with four years of Latin.

It was also useful for the SAT, but that won't matter when the Pope declares ownership of our nation...

[Reichu]

For all intended purposes, I'm a natural spanish speaker and english is my second language, I can also speak in memes, but that's no achievement.

Is that sort of like speaking in tongues?

I forget if I've replied to this thread or not.

English is my first and only real language. I write it better than I speak it, but I'm pretty 1337 overall. Well, so it's been said.

I dabble in Japanese. I have a decent overall knowledge of how the language works, albeit rather little formal learning/training and, in the grand scheme, very little committed to memory; I constantly need to look stuff up. With enough time and effort (and access to the proper resources), I can translate a decent amount of the written material I encounter into English. My experience going from E-->J lags behind a bit; my ability to speak (not pronounce, SPEAK) the language and follow it by ear is extremely limited.

I have some extremely basic familiarity with German -- took a class once, and I still remember the gist of the basics, how to pronounce stuff, and random words and phrases. Deutsch still affects my thought processes; bits of it turn up on a regular basis.

Took two years of Latin in high school, but I recall extremely little of it. Extremely little. I have a general familiarity with Greek and Latin roots due to my biology-nerd tendencies. I messed around with Hebrew a little bit, but I can't claim to know extremely much at all.

I think that's about it.

[Toji]

Italian - After 5 years of doing at highschool I forgot most of it, but for the two semesters that I did at uni, I now know enough to get by .