Just a random thread.

What languages do we speak?

If you speak multiple in the above poll, just choose your favourite or most obscure option.

And post below - are your other languages your native language, if not then why did you learn it, how much have you learnt by travel, can you speak & write & read each language you know, etc?

For me, I learnt an extremely brief amount of Spanish for when I travelled to Peru. Basically just the Lonely Planet guidebook to help me out of awkward-traveller situations. But I've kept the interest, and plan to learn it more thoroughly from now on. My eventual plan is to completely learn Spanish, then learn German (a language that has interested me since high school) and then learn Croatian because my plan is to retire on the Croatian coastline.

What about you guys?

I want to learn a European language. Which one would be easiest to learn?

Edited by salmonfc: 9/3/2016 03:10:24 PM

English

(probably German)

Don't know about German but of the Romance languages, I'd go for Spanish for utility and simplicity.

Swedish/Norwegian/Danish fluently. Intermediate in German and Icelandic. Basic grasp of Spanish, French,Brazilian Portuguese and Mandarin.

Can barely communicate in English.

Racist Eurocentric thread. What about all the Arabic speakers on here?

Speak Italian fluently.

Have done a couple of years of Mandarin study and while I feel I'm a million years away from fluency I have enough of a grasp of it to travel through China on my own (e.g. read signs, order food, ask for directions etc). The course I was doing is a 4 year course but I had to put it on hold because it became too hard with young kids to do the requisite after hours classes and study. When they're a bit older I'll finish it but I know enough now that I'll still only be scratching the surface. tl;dr Chinese is hard

I'd agree - if you want to learn a European language, Spanish or Italian would be easiest.

Italian is generally quite phonetic. So, as opposed to French you don't have to worry about pronunciation being significantly different to the written version.

I've heard german can be difficult because of the strict sentence structures??? Is that right?

Tbf, Croatian is one particular expression of a broader language, that is, BCMS. Each are mutually intelligible.

German is fairly easy to pick up if you have a solid grounding in English.

Any particular reason you picked up Italian?

Currently learning German and Finnish at the moment.

Have heritage in Austria and Germany but know there are differences between German German and Austrian German.

Finnish I learning just for the fun of it.

Did German for 2 years in school. I'm sure if I refreshed my understanding and went over there I'd be able to hold basic conversations, ask for things etc

Macedonian.

A lot of my family speak Italian and my Italian was not too bad a few years ago but I don't really get very many opportunities to speak it so I have pretty much lost it. I want to try and learn it in the next few years for when I go back to Europe.

Good luck there m80 :lol:

Nothing dramatic, Swiss German is probably more of a unique challenge.

Dutch is the closest european language to english iirc. It's like a funny blend of English and German.

Awesome thread.

I actually spent 5 years learning Mandarin at school and eventually gave up because it felt pointless at the time because no one else I knew spoke it and didn't see myself wanting to live or work in mainland china. Plus having to learn word meaning as well as how to write it in Pinyin (Latin script) and Characters shat me to tears. It's seriously like having to learn 2 languages at once.

I've now mostly forgotten that which is a shame.

I decided later in life as I went travelling that I wanted to still learn a language. So after careful consideration of the merits of learning each language, I went with German because this girl I fancied had moved to Basel whilst i was living over in Europe. Now I'm currently in my 5th year of learning German and I've nearly finished my German major now. I'm hoping that by the time i'm finished, I will actually be capable enough to do my post-grad in German.

Last year I also started French in my spare time and I'm very much enjoying that.

Learnt German in Year 8 and 9 in Highschool, still remember most of it to have a simple conversation.

Wow, great stuff melbourne_terrace.

Flemish, but close enough. And yeah, it's like a weird mix of German and English.

in order of usefulness->

Spanish - reasonably easy
Portuguese - reasonably widespread language, its a bit harder than Spanish
German - because theres german travelers EVERYWHERE you go, except the germans all speak English anyway
French - difficult language, having a good vocab is still not good enough to understand every single word
Arabic - spoken throughout the middle east and the language of the largest religion of the world
Russian - when this language is the language of the world's biggest country its presumed that this is the only language spoken in the whole world


not so useful - Chinese - only people in 1 country speak it plus all the young speak a form of English, its the same rule with Hindi (the language of India), a third of the whole world's population 2.5 billion out of 7 billion speak those 2 languages

Edited by condemned666: 9/3/2016 08:15:35 PM

I've heard someone describe Dutch as "a less angry form of German".

I speak a little Br Portuguese. If I can get fluent enough in that (I've neglected it for a while) my next choice to learn would be Russian or Farsi.

Frisian is the closest alive language to English, mainly because many Frisians immigrated to Britain following the Roman withdrawal, as well as their closeness to angles, saxons and Jutes.

I don't speak any other languages besides English, but I know a tiny bit of Italian and Farsi(Persian), but its always fun to attempt other langauges.

Im more interested in the spread and history of languages, and their relations to eachother.

Particularly interested in the language history of the British isles.


Edited by iridium1010: 9/3/2016 08:25:59 PM

Whoops I forgot to mention Farsi. Have an ex who is Persian who taught me quite a bit. Nice language.

Should add;

Studying French (intermediate). formal fluency in German, fluent in BCMS. Gramatically, found English quite difficult at first. Been told that it is quite a slog to pick up especially for the uninitiated.

My experience living abroad has been that French is by far the most useful of the non-English options. Huge portion of Africa/ME is fairly conversant in French. Much more practical than German.

Less angry. More harsh. If that makes sense.

Loving the responses. Keep em coming. Super interesting to read all these stories!

pretty much everything from the ex yugo mob

I used to be able to speak Assyrian. But I stopped using it and forgot how to.

Edit: I know how to curse in Assyrian however. The other day me and my cousin were at Crown telling the dealer to put a dick in his pussy.

Edited by "9GABmeme420": 9/3/2016 08:39:01 PM

People that learned languages after their school years, approximately how long did it take you to learn them? How intense did you have to study it?

Anyone able to help me..

For those who have the know-how, what's a simple and free way to learn a language online?

Google Translate.

it depends on the person really... im able to pick up languages really easily whereas my sister has to sit and study them properly. I think the best way to do it is conversing with someone who actually speaks the language.

The DuoLingo app. Not exactly "online" in the sense of sitting at a computer, but it's a really great app that has daily challenges and XP in the sense of a video game, where you can level up by completing units of the courses. It tracks your "fluency level" as well.

English (fluent) and French (B2)

10mins in and I already really like it. I've set my daily goal so will try and keep that up for a few weeks and report back.

Love it!

Stockholmska

I'm Italian so I was exposed to it from a young age. That was dialect though so I learnt proper Italian at school and at uni.

It's a nice language (biased) but not really useful outside of Italy whereas spanish or french are useful in lots of places. After I'm done with Mandarin, I'll be doing spanish myself. My sister only needed to do a couple of years of study to be fluent enough to live there.

You've obviously never been to mainland china.

or Germany

Really? Wouldn't have thought you were Italian when I met you.

I'm from the north, the stereotypical italian you see are usually southerners.

[youtube]S3yon2GyoiM?start=380[/youtube]

I do French at uni. I've finished the language units and now I'm just doing cultural units. I'd say I'm very good at formal French. I'm strong at reading and writing in French, as well as at expressing myself verbally. I can understand most of what French people say but when they talk too fast or with slang, then I battle a bit.

I did Year 12 Latin. That was one of the best things I've ever learnt. Obviously nobody in the world speaks Latin, but it's great to learn. It teaches you incredibly difficult grammar (and still not as hard as Ancient Greek) so that it's incredibly easy to learn the grammar for every other language. It also teaches you analytical skills (because Latin sentence structure is almost wholly dependent on word endings). Then when you get good enough, you study some of the world's greatest literature and history in Latin. It's like doing three subjects in one. We did all the grammar in high school, then we touched on Livy and Virgil.

In the old days, most privileged people in England would go to Oxford or Cambridge and do Classics (Latin and Greek). Otherwise perhaps Chemistry. Then after that they'd do law, medicine, join the clergy, cram for the Foreign Office, join the armed forces or something like that. But the thing was because they were taught Classics so thoroughly, they could learn modern languages incredibly easily. It was an absolute piece of piss.

This is why so many educated English people spoke flawless French and German. There were even people who, after having learnt Greek and Latin, mastered things like Chinese, Hindi (bearing in mind Britain's colonial interests) and Russian.

I'm also trying to learn Swedish.

I've a lot of Swedish friends, I'd quite like to live there and it's a fun language to speak.

It's tough going learning it from Australia. Feasible but not easy.

[youtube]ExtpaPso7-g[/youtube]

Was about to ask if you were Calo like me, although I also have family in Milan, Rome, Turin and Florence so I can't really give you shit for being from the north :lol:

Edited by milan_7: 9/3/2016 10:50:02 PM

Tack! Det är jätte rolig

I am starting to speak Assyrian and Kurdish but I keep getting confused and lapsing into Arabic.

I have a niece who speaks English, Arabic, French, German and Afrikaans (her parents only speak three each, no Afrikaans) and from when she was 5-7 years old she struggled to differentiate between the languages, so her speech was all five mixed together with her own form of grammar. Her teachers told her parents not to worry and that it would sort itself out, which it did.

I think it does tend to sort itself out. I base that on anecdote, though. How did she come to speak such different languages at such a young age?

I'm no Lega Nord supporter or anything :lol:

Also that video is far from accurate, I just like Christopher Walken :)

Can read Ancient Greek and Ancient Hebrew - but they aren't really spoken languages (despite their modern equivalents).

Basic Spanish as my step-mother and her family (who lived with us for a while) are Peruvian.

When I was about 7 I would go to 'Finnish School' each Saturday, then the place closed and my parents split so I stopped learning it after that unfortunately. Only know a few words now. :(

Hyvää
[youtube]1AR_sZZiNOk[/youtube]

Fluent bullshit and sarcasm.

My really brief understanding of Swiss German is it's basically German mixed with Italian, yeah?

[youtube]AkHRNrMmkvg[/youtube]

I'm Intermediate at Dutch and looking for a course at the moment for Mandarin considering our Chinese overlords coming down on us.

Also surprised no-one has said Auslan yet. I'm self-taught so my technique probably isn't fantastic but I can hold my own

Have been casually keen on learning this too.

I think my Mrs is also, could be something fun to bring the little one up with.

Good to hear mate! It's a great app. Which language are you doing?

Downloaded it last night, starting off with German.

Keep us updated too!

A good mate is from Swabia (near Stuttgart) in Germany, She came over here and couldn't understand my mates mum who is Austrian.

Funnily enough, she also couldn't stop laughing at a couple of northern Germans when I was at school. The northern German accent is how gay people in Swabia talk.

Business communication. It allows you to shop around without a middleman which can mean life or death for a business that sells tangible goods. Besides that, it's always good to know the language of the future overlords.

You can't migrate there but there are plenty of foreigners working there. Sure you can get by with a high paying job, not knowing any chinese but visiting/living a country where you can communicate with the locals is a much more fulfilling experience.

Also learning a language does start to expose you the culture of the people too. Learning about confucian values and the protocols that people live and work under there that a based on it make it a lot easier to do business.

Exactly. Asia is the future and China is leading the way. 1/5 of the worlds population is Chinese so it pays to learn it and i, for one, welcome our new asian overlords.

Great thread btw. I speak moderate German and Mandarin although my Mandarin is slipping somewhat due to me finishing the course and not knowing anyone to speak it with

I know french well, can understand alot of spanish and italian, can understand about half any slavic language having lived most my life around various eastern euros. Can fluently navigate any shopping or mcdonalds situation in chinese:lol:


FWIW, learning a language on your own from scratch I'd say first thing to do is learn about 50 of the most common words, like "who, what, why, where, there, also, if, but...etc. Then learn all the forms 1st, 2nd, 3rd person, plural and all pasts presents conditionals of the two most common verbs "to be' and "to have". Learn these 50 and all the verb forms by heart before you start anything else. Someone said you can make yourself understood in any language if you know just 50 words. Once you know these it's make easy to get the ball rolling and fit pieces together. Also then after that find out any points where the grammar form is significantly different.

Edited by spfc: 10/3/2016 01:12:32 PM

Btw guys, if you're learning languages and get stuck on something feel free to post in here for help. I sure intend to!!

I know a lot of people learning Hindi. Not surprised given the common interests on this forum that European languages dominate here. I know a lot of people learning Manderin and Hindi and travelling between the relevant locations.

Lebanese family living in South Africa. English and Arabic were the languages used at home, Mum would speak French to her (an official language in Lebanon) and Dad would speak German (works for a German company) and she learned Afrikaans at school and spoke it with her friends.

They live in Australia now, unlike most South Africans they could escape that shithole thanks to not being too black or too white for most countries to accept.

If you're learning it for work than it's definitely worth it, I can't explain how much meaning is lost between two parties in Asian business arrangements when a translator is needed. It was pointless for me living in Europe, I just wanted to be able to have fun with it really.

The other thing that can help when trying to maintain and enhance your language skills, (once you have learnt things at a basic level) is to try and read some foreign language websites or newspapers. Depending on the language, there are a lot of foreign language newspapers available in Australia.

The other thing which can help is to watch football matches with commentary of the language you want to learn. It is generally a limited vocabulary, and you can guess what they are talking about from watching what is happening. So it can help you develop your "ear" for hearing the language spoken by native-speakers.

I do it all the time for maintaining my Italian. Plus, living in Melbourne there is "Il Globo" newspaper as well!

Yep read italian websites all the time. Can't be bothered getting Il Globo anymore :)

Though there are heaps of free chinese newspapers, it's a pretty disheartening experience trying to read one when you're not ready. They say you can get by with knowing 2-3000 characters but even then you may be able to "read" the newspaper but I don't think you'll actually 100% get the meaning of what has been written.

Top thread.

I'm of Italian heritage, and I did some Italian at school, but it never really stuck unfortunately. Most of my family (certainly the older generations) only speak Sicilian anyway - they came to Melbourne in the 60s before Italian had become the common language in Sicily.

If I do make the effort and try to learn another language I think I'd try Spanish, it covers a lot of countries and I'd like to spend a few years in Latin America in the future.

Another great way to learn general vocab is to listen to songs in other languages while you read the lyrics and have a translation in English side by side.

I developed quite an ear for German by listening to pop-rap type music. Similar to what 360 is in Australia. Also, you cant go past the German Beastie Boys themselves, Fettes Brot

Need all the luck I can get with Suomi.

German I am finding easier now that I have downloaded the Babbel application to my iPhone.

The cases in Finnish are hard as shit. Good on you if you can master them all. Get Duolingo too. I don't think it has Finnish (not sure tbh) but definitely has German.

According to Duo Lingo I am now 2% fluent in German, so hit me up if you need to translate - man, woman, child, boy, girl, bread and water.

:lol: I legit came here to announce my 2% fluidity in Spanish

Good stuff lads. It gets way more difficult though, haha. Oh, I forgot to mention, another cool feature is that you can add Facey friends and whatnot to actually compete with each other on who can earn the most XP, and race to get to certain levels.

This thread has motivated me to get back into German :lol:

DuoLingo dat shit up. Compete with biscuitman!

English, German, Maco

Would love to learn French as its probably the most widespread language in the world (Spanish/Portuguese wouldn't be far behind)

DuoLingo m80. We should all get a group going.

I'm confident you have the stalking abilities to find us all on it.

Make the group happen!

Easiest way is to link facey profiles to DuoLingo profiles. Can't do a group in the actual app so I reckon this thread can be it.

neuer Mann.

Klingon should be on the poll.

Added you biscuitman. pv4, sent you a pm on facey with my username. Add me on there. Anyone else into learning some shit and competing, get the app and send me your username

You've inspired me. No Chinese on the app so I'm doing Spanish. Username is mcjules520.

Yo soy un hombre :cool:

Edited by mcjules: 10/3/2016 08:09:51 PM

What a thread

Added you. My username starts with S,

Okay lads, I created a DuoLingo "classroom". It helps us all track our scores and lets us see each others so we can compare.

Here's the link.

It'll be in Spanish because most people seem interested/familiar with that.

Edited by Draupnir: 10/3/2016 09:18:15 PM

I've already got the app but just got really slack and stopped :lol:

I can't speak highly enough for Asian languages, especially if you've got some kind of passion. For practical reasons, Chinese has to be one of the best languages to learn. My father tried to make me learn it.

When he was at uni, he did Japanese. He would also spend his holidays in Japan, working. He got basically "fluent". We actually lived there for about 4 years when I was small. He's so good at it that he once called a Japanese restaurant before we ate there to ask about the menu (he wanted to establish that it was owned by Japanese people). When we went there for dinner the woman who owned it was staggered that he was Australian. She had assumed he was a Japanese man from the nicest parts of Tokyo.

But the thing is he got a job in a mining company as the dude who negotiates deals. You see, in the late 80s and early 90s, Japan was such a huge economic superpower (it's still significant enough). Our mining companies were trading a lot with Japanese companies.

But back then you needed to speak Japanese fluently not just for communicative purposes. As somebody above has said, only if you understand the language can you understand general trends in the psychology of the people. Only if you understand Japanese language can you understand the way Japanese people think. And this ability is critical to successful trade with Japanese companies.

So speaking Japanese is what got him into his job. He does commerce kind of stuff. But he doesn't have a commerce degree. Most of his colleagues are geologists, engineers or have commerce degrees. His pathway was rather different and it was down to Japanese.

Now they deal every bit as much with Chinese companies (probably more). But speaking Japanese opened that door at the time.

Chinese would be the most useful now, apparently.

Cbf checking, and haven't had the chance to yet..

Does duolingo work offline?

You can do your courses offline, but learning a new language or other fun things need to be online.

I'll probably just do my courses then wifi any updates I want to do

When i was using Duolingo years ago i found that it was really light on the grammar side of things. It was great for learning vocab, but when it came to constructing your own sentences it seemed to let me down and i would have to go out of my way to read comments on cases and sentence structure. Might give it a crack again now



Strange how they have literally made up languages in Esperanto, plus Irish for some reason yet they dont have the largest language on the planet

EDIT: Anyone who is doing German add me on Duolingo if you're not chicken. I'm level 6 already, just sayin:-"
ScotchandCoke.

Edited by scotch&coke: 11/3/2016 10:46:07 AM