I took Latin in high school.. about three years of that. I took a year of Japanese. I want to learn Spanish, since it's such a useful language for the workforce.
Back in high school I took 2 years of german but I barely passed both years. I could never get the der die das thing. Plus, a few girls from the field hockey team had most of my attention through class....apparently they had the teacher's attention too! I'm Dominican so I do speak Spanish but it's very ghetto and improper. It gets me through work and social situations but I feel like an ass in a professional environment.
I just wanted to explain "der, die, das", when I realized that it's kinda unlogical in our language to refer to things as being male or female and I guess it can't be explained.
Masculine and feminine nouns were one of the hardest things in German for me. It got even worse when the "der/ein," "die/eine," and "das/ein" changed for nouns that were objective instead of subjective (I think "der" became "den" or "dem," but that one was the only one I could ever remember at all).
Now that you say it... I guess english is really easier than german. Sometimes when I want to say something, I know only how to say it in english, which is funny cos german is my mother tongue.
My first language is English & 2nd language is Malay (a dominant tongue in South East Asia Malay peninsula). Also it's compulsory for me to have some basic knowledge of Arabic (due to religious reasons), other than that I know a smattering of Mandarin Chinese words here & there. So yeah that's abt it then.
When I lived in Germany the lady who was helping me told me that if German wasn't her mother tongue she wouldn't be able to speak it and would much rather teach English, as to her it was easier. Imagine how much that encouraged me to learn German. I did manage to speak survival German, but never quite got the accent correct. I could understand a speaker most of the time tho, which made me happy. Had about the same experience when living in Mexico, survival Spanish, but I had fun
things i remember taking spanish. donde esta mi commida? chupa mi la pinga por favor. the essentials are at least covered. a fourth language would have been awesome but i only took it as an easy elective and lost interest. speaking three languages in montreal is the standard. i see a lot of peeps who are fluent in 4 or 5 here.
Since i just found out youre abt the same age as me i think i can tell u this story now. This was in the 90s when glen ong (or chris ho, i confuse the two) was still on the air (my 98 point seveeeeeeeen) n he was trying to use a malay word. He was telling how his buddy says his head looks like a butt because he was bald (maybe its chris ho after all since this was before the bald look was in vogue). Thing is...i think hes buddy may have been indo malay (mustve been a kaki from peninsula) because instead of bontot (thats where u come in) he used the word....pantat. He was going MY HEAD LOOKS LIKE PANTAT! IM A PANTAT HEAD! Tho with his rep he might have done it on purpose
I was three when I started learning my second language, which was french. My first being english. It was pretty easy, and I was fluent in a few months, I guess. Spanish is a bit tougher, but has many similarities with french, so it's not terrible. Japanese is completely new territory, but the novelty of it and my incredible teacher makes the learning experience very enjoyable. I'm not studying abroad, but many of the girls from my school certainly are, and they bring their cultures and share them with us. When I'm done with Japanese and Spanish, I might consider taking Chinese. Yeah, I'm a language nerd.
BWA HAHAHAH that DJ in question was Glenn Ong. Yeah man I have vague recollection of hearing this on air wayback in the 90's.
Duuuudes, I just rocked the shit out of my Chinese mid-term! 96% on the listening section 92% on the reading part only 88% on the writing but 100% on the vocabulary. average in the 98% for the presentation, and I scored a 94.8% I work my ass off, partly to fight the stereotype that the white western foreigners always have the worst Chinese. I kept my score from my classmates after hearing them complaining about their scores, because just like nobody will play chess (Chinese way) with me as it would be "too humiliating for a 'laowai' to win at our game", I didn't feel like embarrassing the genetically Chinese people in my class. However, afterwards I was reflecting on this and reminded myself that I'm not responsible for their thoughts, and that it is never right to be racist toward myself. If they ask, I'll tell them my score, because I'm proud of it (it's been a hard go of it here), and if I have to follow up by informing someone of his/her ignorance, then so be it. But learning Chinese requires a total life change. So there is no break. After the test, and the next day after getting my results, I had lunch and then immediately hit the books again. As a buddy of mine once said to me, "Learning a language is hard -- it's like they have a word for everything!"
congratulations dude. that's also how i felt when my french teacher started complaining how low quebecers grades were in class in comparison to ethnic students' high grades. what's a passing grade there? i remember being shocked to find out that the passing grade here was 60%. i grew up in manila where the passing grade was 80% anything below that you flunk.
I'm getting ready to start learning a second language (I took French in HS but can't remember much). But I'm torn about which language I want to learn. Russian and Italian are my favorites, because I love the sound of the language and the culture of those countries. The problem is that I will probably NEVER have a reason to actually speak either of those languages. I'm in the southern US, so Spanish is the obvious thing to learn. That's something I could use almost every day. But I don't like Spanish as much as Russian or Italian. I haven't been able to decide if I should go with what I like or what is more useful. I don't think anyone answered this, so I'll re-ask: is Rosetta Stone any good? Is it really worth the huge price tag?
Pretty much the same here, but I'm a senior and finished my second just year last year and I barely remember anything. lol
I studied Latin in high school, stopped for a while, picked it back up, stopped, picked it back up, etc. While my Latin vocabulary is weak, my Latin grammar is excellent. Partially because knowing Latin grammar lets me own Russian like a BOSS. For real, Latin and many Slavic languages have almost the exact same grammar. This is mostly because Slavic languages didn't lose noun declension, unlike the romance languages. And, hell, knowing Latin grammar also improves my understanding of English and makes it very easy to pick up a solid understanding of most new languages, since all I need to learn are the words and how they mark the different grammatical cases. I already understand the nitty gritty details. Currently I'm only fluent in English, but I can typically translate to and from Latin, Russian, and the Romance languages. I've also studied a little bit of Japanese. That language is clever in some ways, though for the most part it just pisses me off.
