Languages

[Tarvos]

En passant, désolé si je fais plein d'erreurs en ecrivant :( je lis beaucoup de BD en français mais je ne parviens à écrire que moyenement. Veux-tu que je corrige ton post?

D'accord, merci :)

Do you understand alright when people speak French? My stepdad (who is also Dutch) is learning Portuguese and while he can pretty much understand any slow Portuguese convo and read newspapers and so on, he's lacking in the answering dept.

If it's spoken particularly slowly, yes. I can indeed understand most written French. I can also speak it if you give me time to formulate answers (if it's easy enough I come up with something after a few minutes and then once I get going it's a bit easier for me to do it). I need to take a while to formulate things properly (or semi properly) in French. My problem is most French is spoken so fast that I miss out on half the words, especially because a lot of them sound similar due to assimilation and dropping letters.

 

[Shiny Grimer]

Judging by context, I'd say we're looking for a synonym for "fracaso".
...Actually, Google Translate says that's exactly what it is. Dunno the etymology, though; have to ask Phantom who he picked the word up from and where they're from (since my Mexican classmate in high school was from southern Mexico and only used fracaso). Fallar apparently means "to fail" in Spanish and Catalan, but...

It sounded like he was trying to say "I am a failure at grammar and orthography." In the context he was using it it sounded really strange, though.

Comme tout le monde parle français dans se topic, je parlerai français aussi ! Je n'ai pas étudié le français en beaucoup de temps, mais je peux le lire très bien. Puis, je peux pas l'écouter bien. Je le parle avec un accent acceptable.

J'ai étudié le français pour cinq ans. Cet année, c'est le premier an que je n'ai pas étudié la français dans l'école. Je devrais lire plus en français, mais je devrais faire beaucoup des chose. Je n'ai pas fini de lire "Harry Potter" en russe. J'ai lu ce livre pour un an. Je peux lire "Candide" mais je n'aime pas ces livre. Vraiment, j'ai beaucoup des livres en français mais je n'ai pas des temps pour lire.

 

[Clover]

Correcting people's Spanish because this is my life, yo.

So my language learning wish list is something like:
1. Russian (I am slowly getting there)
2. Swedish (this language is suspiciously like English, have not started serious study)
3. Hindi (I have a friend who speaks Hindi and he teaches me things like "mai khel hargayi" and "Billi maize pe hai" and I can say "mai daktar nahi hu" so yeah)
4. Finnish (because it's the prettiest language and it has 14 cases and I like a challenge)
5. Icelandic (because of its similarity to Old English and because it sounds nice and after studying Russian, 4 cases is easy)
6. Yoruba (yeah getting into my weird languages here, this is because my dialect of Spanish has some Yoruba influence and there were lots of Yoruba who were brought to Cuba and Nigeria is pretty cool and also TONAL LANGUAGES)
7. Navajo (wtf is wrong with me, but yeah I want to learn a Native language and Navajo is the one with most speakers)
8. Arabic (I once had a dream that I could learn Arabic and then I saw the grammar and I was like D:)
9. Japanese (I will never get to this but I would LOVE to learn Japanese :[ Japan is so fascinating and I would get to read awesome postmodern Japanese literature and play video games and sing Japanese music and yeah)

I like learning languages that are very different from another. This is why I don't intend to learn any more Romance languages: it would be too easy. Ideally I would have a really wide base of languages as opposed to going deep into one branch, but that would be super difficult and require a lot of time. So yeah.

Hooraaay language lovers! :D I want to learn ~all the languages~... except for a bunch you listed, cause those are weird. :(

My list would probably go...

Portuguese (totally conversational in this, I think, but I want to figure out why little kids are like "<... I have no idea what you just said>" when I try to talk with them D: I think I might just have a thick American accent, which is a rather alien concept when my brain defaults to 'American = unaccented'.)

Japanese (I am so rusty, sobsob. I can read it still! [hooray ace attorney investigations two :D] but trying to form anything but the most basic of sentences makes my brain yell "lol, no, you're in Portuguese-mode rn, get back to the states and then we'll talk" so I come up with things like "você wa muito genki hoje desu ne." that hurts in my soul.)

Esperanto (I've been interested in this for a few years, but haven't done more than the most basic scanning of lernu... Portuguese is kind of like a natlang Esperanto, I've found! Given how similar it is to Spanish and Italian and French and such.)

... spanish, italian, and french and such! I can see why you might want to aim for less similar languages for the challenge, but these are so popular... and I mainly want to learn other languages to speak with other people, you know! so. After that I guess the UN languages, you know, chinese and arabic with probably korean mixed in there somewhere.

Languages rule!! >w<

 

[Phantom]

Judging by context, I'd say we're looking for a synonym for "fracaso".
...Actually, Google Translate says that's exactly what it is. Dunno the etymology, though; have to ask Phantom who he picked the word up from and where they're from (since my Mexican classmate in high school was from southern Mexico and only used fracaso). Fallar apparently means "to fail" in Spanish and Catalan, but...

It's more of a slang term. Like saying "Por fa" instead of "por favor". I don't know about southern Mexico, but in the school I was staying at used that. Might have even been a school meme. But I learned a lot of slang and phrases that they don't teach in a classroom... and phrases that I dare not repeat. (lol)

One phrase I came back and taught my classmates here was "por fa" and "aguas", which is a quick way of saying "look out" or "duck"


I am a she by the way.

 

[Shiny Grimer]

Ah, that makes sense. I speak the Cuban variety of Spanish and have no contact whatsoever with Mexican Spanish, which is why it hit me as a "wtf."

 

[Lord of the Fireflies]

Salut! Quelles langues est-ce que vous vous parlez et/ou écrivez?

Je suis fluide en anglais évidemment, mais je confond parfois les definitions des mots particuliers. Je sais comment parler et écrire en français aussi, mais ce n'est pas assez. En fait, j'ai encore de la difficulté à communiquer en français oralement, alors que mes capacités en écriture et lecture sont assez décentes (mais ils ont encore besoin de beaucoup d'amélioration).

...Ugh, that translation definitely needs a lot of work...)

Not bad, as French is a REALLY hard language to learn when its not native (like me). Féminin/Masculin fucks over any english-speaking guy, and i see youre not too bad at that either. The formulation of sentences needs work though.

 

[Zeph]

As a project that will count towards my UCAS form (To non-UKians, pretty much a form that you submit to universities here to apply to them) as the equivalent of a whole extra AS-level (I think?), we've been given the opportunity to write a 5000-word essay or article relevant to our university subject. Since I want to do French at uni, I'm considering doing a translation of a piece of literature or a screenplay or something. Problem is, I've no idea what; pretty much anything considerable as a 'classic' will already have one, if not several, professional translations published, so it wouldn't be as, erm, original. Anybody have any ideas of anything relatively well-known that's originally written in English that doesn't have a (published) French translation? Also, when I get round to it, should I post progress here, would anybody be particularly interested in seeing it?

 

[I liek Squirtles]

My native language is Spanish and my second language is English. I'm eleven. Can't blame me.>.<

Translate this. Pretty basic Spanish, if you ask me.

En una arboleda, vivía un mono. Le enseñaba el dedo malo a todo el que pasaba.

 

[Shiny Grimer]

Another native Spanish speaker? o: De donde vienes?

 

[H-land]

Not bad, as French is a REALLY hard language to learn when its not native (like me). Féminin/Masculin fucks over any english-speaking guy, and i see youre not too bad at that either. The formulation of sentences needs work though.

It's not that hard to deal with gendered nouns.
You've got that in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, and just about any other Indo-European language you could think of, too.
What's harder, anyway, is Tu/Vouz.
It's one thing to learn every new noun with an article, but honestly, what's so hard about remembering "une fenêtre" instead of just "fenêtre"? What's hard is remembering to use different pronouns and conjugations to address your sister and your mother, or your classmate and your teacher.
Notwithstanding the issues of teachers who let (or encourage) you to call them by their first names.

 

[Zeph]

It's not that hard to deal with gendered nouns.
You've got that in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Polish, Russian, and just about any other Indo-European language you could think of, too.
What's harder, anyway, is Tu/Vouz.
It's one thing to learn every new noun with an article, but honestly, what's so hard about remembering "une fenêtre" instead of just "fenêtre"? What's hard is remembering to use different pronouns and conjugations to address your sister and your mother, or your classmate and your teacher.
Notwithstanding the issues of teachers who let (or encourage) you to call them by their first names.

Tu/Vous (with an S, not a Z!) Isn't really that difficult either... If it's someone you are obliged to respect or is significantly older than you, you use vous. If it's someone your age, or a family member, you use tu. Of course there are some exceptions, but that depends on the person and their preference for how they'd like to be addressed, really.

Although I agree with you in that genders aren't that difficult... There are actually some rather easy ways of remembering! Of course, there's always exceptions to the rules, but once you know them, it's difficult to forget them.

 

[surskitty]

I think a lot of people would have easier times with t/v forms if they remember that English has politeness levels, too. :|b Just go with the v form unless you'd be casual with that person for some reason.

 

[H-land]

Tu/Vous (with an S, not a Z!) Isn't really that difficult either... If it's someone you are obliged to respect or is significantly older than you, you use vous. If it's someone your age, or a family member, you use tu. Of course there are some exceptions, but that depends on the person and their preference for how they'd like to be addressed, really.

I didn't meant that it was hard to understand. I'm quite familiar with the concept.
It's the implementation and integration that's the hard part!
(Doesn't help that we're usually taught the tu form first and more encourage to exercise it.)

 

[Zeph]

I guess that's a good point - occasionally (in fact, more often than not!), people from my French class use tu with the teachers and don't even realise that they've done so unless the teacher says "Non, vouvoie-moi s'il t'plait" or something.

Also surskitty (You ARE surskitty right, enekoiru? I can't check past usernames on my phone) has a good point - I suppose it could be said that if you'd watch your language any significant amount in English while talking to someone, you'd use vous for them in French (or indeed the polite second person in any language).

 

[surskitty]

Also surskitty (You ARE surskitty right, enekoiru? I can't check past usernames on my phone) has a good point - I suppose it could be said that if you'd watch your language any significant amount in English while talking to someone, you'd use vous for them in French (or indeed the polite second person in any language).

Yeah.

The real trick, though, is actually noting what politeness level you're using in a language you're fluent in. So maybe that's easier said than done. But it's still ... English isn't significantly easier because it's lost its t form. It's just slightly less obvious because you can't really point out one thing as "this! this is how to see I am being (in)formal!"

 

[Tarvos]

Not bad, as French is a REALLY hard language to learn when its not native (like me). Féminin/Masculin fucks over any english-speaking guy, and i see youre not too bad at that either. The formulation of sentences needs work though.

Feminine/masculine is easy to learn if you, like most people, don't have English as your first language. Most languages have preserved grammatical gender. It's just English that doesn't.

 

[surskitty]

Eh, I think it's easy even if you do have english as your first language. It's if you're used to languages without articles or much in the way of count nouns that it gets tricky.

 

[Tarvos]

Yeah but gender can affect the words without them having articles (cf. Latin)

 

[shy ♡]

Personally gendered nouns aren't hard to learn, it's just a pain in the ass to use because it's completely unnecessary. It makes it impossible to form sentences without addressing someone/thing in terms of gender, which drives me up the wall. And you can't refer to someone as an 'it', and there's no differentiation between gender and sex - at least not in Hebrew. :|

 

[I liek Squirtles]

Another native Spanish speaker? o: De donde vienes?

Puerto Rico.