I speak English (fluently), French, Spanish, and Chinese. I tried learning Icelandic, Japanese, Russian, and Italian, but they were all unsuccessful.
English is my first language. When I was little, apparently I could speak Russian, but I have no memory of that. I went to a private elementary school where I had French and Spanish classes every day. I loved those classes more than anything. I still remember a bit of French. In 5th grade, I moved to a public school, so that was the end of language classes until 8th grade. I took Spanish and didn’t learn anything new, but kept with it through high school. Here I am a senior taking AP Spanish 5 (Spanish Literature) and last year, I got a 4 (out of 5) on my AP Spanish 4 test. Which by the way, was the hardest test I have ever taken in my entire LIFE.
Next year, I plan to double major in Spanish and Marine Biology. I live in Southern California. Spanish is very important. Plus, I like Mexican food =P
Like many here, English is obviously my - and Singapore’s - main language. I am not very adept in the usage of grammar and vocabulary, but I consider my skill in the language well enough to type out some fan fictions for entertainment.
Then, there is Chinese, which is built in me due to my race under the same name. However, I don’t speak it very fluently; don’t get me started on writing it. Thus, I kinda have an irritation against the language built in recently as well…
Also spoken by my parents and passed down to me is the language of Hokkien - an Asian language and a dialect of Min Nan Chinese spoken in southern Fujian, Taiwan, and by many overseas Chinese throughout South-east Asia; my parents, too, of course. I am slightly knowledgeable in this language, but half of the time I used it for profanities as, well, Hokkien vulgarities are kinda common around here… moving on.
Sou (That’s right), nicchuukan (Japanese) is one of the foreign languages I’m attempting to learn. Though I’m not very inept at it, I’m trying to be. One of my favorite Japanese phrases would be the famous tag-line from my favorite Japanese anime series - Detective Conan:
Shinjitsu wa itsumo hitotsu! (There is only one truth!)
Welp, English is also my first language, but Chinese(Cantonese) is my mother tongue(though I’m horrible speaking, writing and reading it despite years and years of Saturday language school…)
I can name several languages that I’ve learnt throughout my schooling years(i.e. Vietnamese, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean) but I can barely remember a thing!
Well, my first language is English, having been brought up on saturday cartoons and kids shows and my dad’s enthusiastic reading of bedtime stories on cassette tapes (ever the economist, if there was an easier way to do something, he would think of it). Hence, I’m more well-versed in it slang and intricacies than my fellow contemporaries.
Second is Malay. Being your average Malaysian, I attended government schools, where the medium of instruction is Bahasa Malaysia. Although I’m not Malay and never understood a word the teacher said on my first day at school, I grasped the language fairly quickly (with a little external tuition aid) and aced at it. I even took it as my Mother Tongue subject in secondary school (high school) in Singapore (WBoon should be familiar with this) and beat the Malays at their own game. It was confidence-building and awkward to be receiving the “Best Achievement in Malay Language” award almost every year both in primary (elementary) and secondary school, when I was clearly not Melayu. I appreciated the language though, there’s some beautiful descriptions and flowery expressions in there, and some of the idioms are even literal translations of English proverbs! Most words are also like English, just the spelling is changed a bit. By that extension, I also know Bahasa Indonesia, which is quite similar except they use different words (Ex. the word bisa in B.M. means ‘poison’, while in B.I. means ‘can do’!) sometimes and it sounds ‘harsher’. Like French and German.
Third best is French, which I picked up as a Foreign Language in International School before entering Singapore’s public education system. I picked it up fairly easily too, as many words are similar to English, and they reverse their sentences and phrases like Malay. When you don’t know a French word, you can get away most of the time by pronouncing the English equivalent with a French accent.
And lastly is Chinese. I never really got much exposure to it when I was young, as I hung out with mostly English-speaking friends in school, and I rarely see Chinese movies or TV shows. Parents tried to introduce my siblings and I to it, but I always had a slight aversion to it and thought it ‘uncool’. But now I’m a little open-minded seeing that more people are speaking it nowadays. Heck, even the Oz PM is fluent in it! I aim to master the speaking part of it, as I can never see how I can get my head around the writing characters.
Probably the next language I would want to learn is Spanish. No idea how difficult it is, but seeing most people in L.A. (which is like Film Central of the movie world) speak it and that I’m considering working there if I get sick of Oz, Malaysia or Singapore, I would really like to take it up.
Oh yeah, does Singlish count? I guess not really, since it’s Pidgin English and almagation of all the different languages in Singapore (Malaysia has their own version called Manglish, which is a worse name than Singlish, IMO).
It’s so interesting to read everyone else’s language experiences, and ponder how all of us from around the world are united by a common language and fan forum.
Beaucoup de languages!
What does that mean WALL-E?
It means lots of languages!
I’m fluent in the first three, but my Chinese is about the level of a First Grader, not to mention I’ve got a horrible accent too!
But my Chinese-speaking friends can understand me when I fumble my way through their conversations…
English is my first language. I studied German for 5 years, so I was fairly fluent. Haven’t used it in a couple years now though.
Some of these laguages sound really special (seriously, Colette Linguini can speak Farsi…that’s awesome in itself). No offense, but it’s so common to hear that someone speaks French or Spanish that it not interesting anymore. German kind of counts, but a lot of students at my school take German, so it’s an everyday thing for me.
I guess the most interesting language I speak is Polish (I’m half-Polish), and I grew up speaking a mix of Polish and English when I was little…but I mostly learned Polish from my babysitter, so when she left, my dad’s aunt took care of us and only spoke Spanish, so I basically have to re-learn Polish. D:
So my languages are: English (fluent), Spanish (nearly fluent), Plish ( I can understand what people are basically saying, but I have difficulty with the grammer), and I’m taking my second year of Japanese.
I’m learning spanish in school. Its my first year, but I’m getting an A-, so I must be doing good. Here’s an example of what I know.
Hola, me llamo mo. Me gusto mucho pixar planet.
I can speak English fluently, and I know a very small amount of Japanese from year 7. They seemed to just teach us how to ask someone all of their personal details (What is your name? Where are you from? Where do you live? How old are you? What family members live at your house? How many pets do you have? What pets do you have? Do you have any pets? What’s your phone number?), and some basic commands (stand, sit, take your hat off, shut up [Shizu ka ni shite kudasai = Could you please be quiet?]).
Let’s not forget my favorites, ‘baka,’ ‘barou,’ and ‘bakarou,’ all having the definition of stupidity and idiocy.
But I’m glad that a number of other people here takes up Japanese, too. I’m glad to hear that so that when I’m discussing something pertaining to that language, you guys could relate.
Why was my pronounciation cut off? Was it the [spoil]shite[/spoil] thing? Because that’s the romanisation of the pronounciation.
What are you talking about, Pewpewpew5522? If you were talking about the I quote I made towards your post, I’m sorry if I cut off any part of it.
No, it’s not that. In my actual post the pronounciation seems to have been cut off. [spoil][/spoil] is what I originally posted. I come back to the topic and it’s just cut down to
EDIT: Nevermind, I figured it out. Putting <> around things seems to cut them down to the first word written.
LOL is japanese is kekekeke
I believe that is the Korean one. LOL = KEKEKEKE in Korean. I believe it was made because Starcraft didn’t support Korean characters, so some Korean users used the romanised version, kekeke.
they’re near each other.
Maybe, but personally, I’d hate to affiliate the official anime country with one that’s in a war-torn state; no offense intended to the Koreans out here, though.