Reply With QuoteWas born to American parents. Moved to Poland and learned Polish
Mandarin.
Malay when I was younger.
Thats it. :S
Was born to American parents. Moved to Poland and learned Polish
Can you tell me more about it?Originally Posted by therifleman
This seems like a strange way to choose a language. Maybe the question is... why do you want to learn a second language?
Well, Finnish because it's my mother tongue and English since it's pretty damned important for example in my work. I don't really speak any other languages, I know and have studied some German, Spanish and Swedish but they have been sort of useless and I've never needed them so I've pretty much forgotten everything.
I used to speak spanish at a decent level from years of absorbing what I heard from those around me. Being lazy the past few years I have lost just about all of it. Now it doesn't really interest me enough to learn it again.
AZZenny, I have always wanted to learn several different languages, but never really put forth the effort, besides the minimum required to get through school courses.
I also want to travel more and enjoy it as much as possible. The whole idea of enjoying the culture of places I visit come down to mainly two things for me. 1. Food and 2. Language. So, learning a few phrases here and there to get by on the basics annoys me more than helps. When I want to know or learn something, I want to know everything possible there is to know. So maybe part of my question should be, which language should I learn first? and Where? Why? How? etc. But I've thought about it so much I think I'm confusing myself. Maybe I can make a decision based on other people's experiences.
My dad can speak a few languages, and I have family abroad, so it is obvoius why I had to learn languages. We also have a saying: 'you are worth as many persons as many languages you can speak'. Maybe the translatetion isn't the best, but I hope you can understand what it means. Do you need any more reasons?
I know enough Pashto to keep people the hell away from me. Thats about it. I can pick up some Quebecois if spoken slowly, in small words, and contextually correct.
Learned Arabic as part of my duties in the military. And I don't mean "oh, I know some words," but for all intents and purposes fluent in Modern Standard Arabic. I'm decent at Mexican Spanish, my wife is originally from Mexico and immigrated to the US when she was a small child, plus the area that I live is 30% Mexican (I won't be PC and say Hispanic because aside from one Puerto Rican guy and a family from El Salvador, the rest are Mexican). I tried to pick up Portuguese because it is my family history but am about a step behind when compared with Spanish. I would love to get better at German, which I took in high school. I passed two years of study with straight A's, but couldn't even form a coherent sentence.
Serbian as it is my mother’s tongue and English since I live in Australia. Studied a fair bit of Spanish, but never learnt it to speak it fluently as I was always distracted by my hot teacher.
English and Afrikaans. My dad's family speaks English while my mum's family speaks Afrikaans, although my generation rarely does. What I did notice is that when my cousins become parents, they speak Afrikaans to each other so the kids don't understand.
Also some Xhosa. But the clicks are difficult so to a native speaker I sound like I'm either mentally challenged or speaking underwater...
I did German as a filler course at varsity so I kind of know what people are saying and but can't speak German without sounding like a total moron.
Romanian because is my native language and English because is needed and is a international language...and i know a little bit of French(i don't like it but i learned a little bit in school)
I speak Spanish (Born and raised in Mexico), and I learnt English trough classes and now I'm an international student in the US.
Not many Americans speak German, so...
Finnish as my mother tongue.
English as the first foreign languge since 9yo but in Finland we don't dub the tv programmes or films, we have subtitles. So that's good for language learning, I think. Studied English philogogy in University as a minor subject, hated that stuff really. I like learning languages but philology stuff should be left for true academics.
Swedish since it's mandatory here. Also need it in my work and for the most jobs that interest me ( places from government and/or bigger companies) one should have certain skills in it.
Spanish, studied two basic courses in Uni, went to exchange into Spain, spent 13 months there. Can read it ok and understand ok when people speak, but would need to improve my writing skills a lot.
German, a bit. Studied few years but since I haven't been using it the skills are gone.
Also very basics in Mandarin Chinese.
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