Mine is English. How about you?
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Mine is English. How about you?
American.
English is my first language. I then learned french, and picked up some spanish on moving to Texas. I've recently been practicing my Chinese, but haven't had as much opportunity to do so these last few weeks since my asia assignment ended.
Sensus stricto, it is creole. I learned it when I was a very young kid. But I 'forgot' most and it came back when I was around 16-19 and I went to Caribbean.
Sensus largo, it's english. I learned it in school from the age of 11. I then learned german. Then I learned 4
other languages by myself.
English
I speak Afrikaans as first language and then some Sotho, Swazi and Zulu as well.
That was great!Originally Posted by inow
I was planning to learn French also but i don't have enough time.
Ditto for me, and add some German, Latin, Arabic, ASL, etc, but none of it is meaningful now except for the French which is even woefully inadequate. What's true is, if you don't use it, you lose it.Originally Posted by inow
What's true is, if you don't use it, you lose it.
I thought so as well but few years ago, I went to Hamburg for a tourist trip. It started very bad, I was barely speaking 2-3 sentences in german. After 4 days, I was almost back to 1/2 of my former level. I guess 1-2 weeks more and I will have been to a proper level.
The memory of language does not die, it is just buried deep deep inside.
Deutsch..and working on Italian.
my first langage is turkish , second english
My first language is Swedish, my second language is English
My second language is English, my first Language Dutch.
Same hereOriginally Posted by Spaceman
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What is your Second Language?
My second language goes like this: tick tock tick tock tick tock. Variations of it sounds like counting up from a thousand as in 1001, 1002, 1003 and so on.
Yes. As is quite obvious... your first language is spam.
English.
My written english is pretty horrible when it comes to grammar and such I believe. But verbally/orally I got an A on my english exam. Before I went to the exam I told my roomie who was from the UK that: "Man! Im so nervous". He responded with "Mate... you're fucking better than me in english and Im fucking british". He joked about me using words he had never heard of before, like "hubris" for example and told me not to worry.
My sensor told me that she gave me huge pluses for using uncommon words like "frienemy" during my presentation and for being good at using sarcasm and irony. She told me that using sarcasm and irony in a foreign language is a great way to show mastery of a language. But the latter I wasnt aware of. Why would using sarcasm and irony be any harder than regular speech? :P
Not at all. I am rarely aware that English is not your first language.
I think that understanding the "subtext" (the meaning behind the words) can be difficult in a second language. This includes various forms of humour. The stage of "getting" a joke (immediately, rather than having to work it out) has always been a significant milestone for me.She told me that using sarcasm and irony in a foreign language is a great way to show mastery of a language. But the latter I wasnt aware of. Why would using sarcasm and irony be any harder than regular speech?
Last edited by Cogito Ergo Sum; April 15th, 2014 at 08:04 AM.
My second language is C#.
As a baby I babbled, then I learned English, so English is my 2nd language.
First Language: Cantonese (although many consider it a dialect instead of a language in its own right)
Second Language: Mandarin (what most people refer to as the "Chinese" language)
Third Language: English
Forth Language: Bahasa Melayu (spoken only)
Currently self-studying conversational Japanese and a little Sign Language.![]()
Tongues.
Klingon! qaqIHneS
English is my first language.
My second 'language' is equus, or the ability to communicate rather well with equines. It is a 'body language' of subtle facial expressions and stance.
I can read and understand a small amount of French.
Well, I have to say that I'm have not studied into the history of the language itself in-depth,but althoughhowever both uses a somewhat shared set of written charactersin writing, there are phonological differences and meanings assigned to each individual character and/or words appear to have some differences; in that phrases or sentences that may be written textually while making sense in Cantonese, may not make as much sense in Mandarin. At least that is what I am aware of.
But to answer your question to the best of my knowledge, I have to say Yes.
Last edited by scoobydoo1; April 16th, 2014 at 10:02 AM.
My understanding is that there is no standardised way of writing Cantonese (*). It uses the same basic set of characters as standard written Chinese (which is basically Mandarin) but adds some for words/morphemes that don't exist in Mandarin. Both the meaning and pronunciation of the characters may be different. It also uses a different word order, represents marks verbs differently (e.g. for tense), etc.
A bit more info here:
Language Log » Identifying written Cantonese
Differences between Mandarin and Cantonese; Written and Spoken | Canton 168 -
(*) And there won't be, if the Chinese government have their way:
Language Log » Spoken Hong Kong Cantonese and written Cantonese
I reckon my 2nd language would have to be be German, which I learned during an Erasmus course back in 96/97.
If it's at all possible to quantify such a thing, I'd say I used to be 100% proficient in English and about 80% in Spanish. Then they flipped around when I moved back to Spain in 86.
Also Galician, which I never speak.
I studied Latin in high school and Spanish in college, and remember very little of either. I feel quite gratified (if a little embarassed) that so many people on the Internet read and write English when it isn't their first language.
My first language is English, and my second, albeit the first I acquired, is Afrikaans.I know a small amount of Japanese, and French, but I wouldn't say I could speak these languages - yet!
Sumimasen, Nihongo wakarimaska?
Hai! Sukoshi - Nihongo wakarimas. Eigo wakarimaska?
Iy, Eigo wakarimasen.
Hebrew
LOL...
Caramel (my main mare) says to pin my ears at John Galt and give him 'The Look', for making fun of her communication skills. She also advises him that when the water tank gets low or fouled by the birds, she taps it rhythmically with her hoof while staring at the kitchen window, knowing that humans are fairly alert to patterns, although not as astute as horses, in her opinion.![]()
@Strange, cogito: Thanks alot, that actually means alot to me to hear
@Scooby: Can you give some insight as to how it is learning japanese from your viewpoint, knowing chinese? Does speaking cantonese vs mandarin give you any advantages/disadvantages? (I dont know cantonese or mandarin, and this is purely my subjective opinion - but verbally I find cantonese more beautiful to listen to compared to mandarin)
To my knowledge and from study, there are two aspects of learning the Japanese language; the written form and the spoken form. The latter being easier to pick up with regular exposure, but the former requires more effort from my experience.
I had a 40 minute class once a week for about two months in my youth which exposed me to Hiragana and Katakana (alphabets?), and that had instilled in me the interest for the language. Reading and understanding the Kanji text was easier since it uses words from the written Mandarin language. Pronunciation of Kanji words however is a different story, since my introduction to that aspect of the Japanese language was shallow at best.
You can say that I am picking up from where I left off many many years ago.
To answer your question to the best of my ability, I would have to say that having a Mandarin background definitely helps.
Last edited by scoobydoo1; April 22nd, 2014 at 12:14 PM. Reason: Minor edits
I began this week a serious effort to learn Spanish. If this fails - as earlier attempts have done1 - then I shall be stuck with a single language and all of the limitations that creates and restrictions it imposes.
I have largely failed at attempts to learn Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Mandarin, Indonesian, Malay, Finnish and Latin.
But it's not the same thing, he has tried many different languages![]()
My first language is Patwa, second, German, third English, slight french, and some Ewe.
I was able to establish a relative difficulty index for each language, based upon how much alcohol one had to consume in order to imagine one was speaking the language fluently. I had to abandon this research on account of the severe medical impact of speaking Mandarin.
P.S. I have never denied my insanity. To do so would be crazy.
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