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Your earliest foreign language memory

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post Reply
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mick33
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5924 days ago

1335 posts - 1632 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Finnish
Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish

 
 Message 81 of 98
23 March 2010 at 4:06am | IP Logged 
My earliest experience with foreign languages happened after I learned how to count the numbers 1-10 in kindergarten. I came home very proud of myself and told my mother I knew how to count and she decided it was a good time to teach me to how to count in Spanish. She had taken Spanish in college and the numbers were among the few Spanish words she actually remembered. Not too long after this, my grandfather (on my dad's side, who spoke some French) thought I might be interested learning to count from 1-10 in French and so he taught me. After that I was somewhat curious about other countries and what languages they spoke and would ask my parents questions like, "What language do they speak in Japan?" and when I was told "Japanese" I started to think, using the "logic" of a 5-year-old boy, that the name of a country and the name of the language spoken there were very similar, which meant I was a little confused when I asked questions like, "Why do we speak English and not American?".

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Johntm
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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616 posts - 725 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 82 of 98
23 March 2010 at 5:36am | IP Logged 
datsunking1 wrote:
I actually found one!! :P It's in the city but it's definitely worth the drive. I also found a Spanish radio station! (REALLY RARE for this far up north) :D I'm so pumped.
Awesome :D We have so many Spanish radio stations here, 5 or so years back one of the better rap stations here changed to a Hispanic station, and I was pissed >:(. The other week I went to it and it's now something else (English, but I forget what it plays). I know a few other Spanish radio stations, though. And the Spanish TV channel. Me and my dad were watching it after the earthquake in Chile (all the English stations were talking about Haiwaii and the incoming "tsunami") and I was surprised by how much Spanish (written and spoken) I understood.
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ManicGenius
Senior Member
United States
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288 posts - 420 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Esperanto, French, Japanese

 
 Message 83 of 98
23 March 2010 at 10:24pm | IP Logged 
There are a lot of Russian Orthodox churches around here that do the entire mass in
Russian, along with a Serbian and a Bosnian translator. It's a pretty interesting event.
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ellasevia
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Germany
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Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian

 
 Message 84 of 98
23 March 2010 at 10:27pm | IP Logged 
Our Greek Orthodox church here does most things in Greek and English, but since Greeks are not the only ethnic group here, we have the Lord's Prayer recited in Arabic, Serbian, and Romanian, in addition to English and Greek.
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SamD
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian

 
 Message 85 of 98
24 March 2010 at 4:47pm | IP Logged 
When I was about four years old, my parents were watching an old movie about World War II on television and some of the actors briefly spoke German. I thought it was the most fascinating thing I had ever heard.


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JS-1
Diglot
Senior Member
Ireland
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144 posts - 166 votes 
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), German, Japanese, Ancient Egyptian, Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 86 of 98
25 March 2010 at 1:23am | IP Logged 
Mine was probably watching the Eurovision Song Contest as a child. I used to think that
hearing the names of the countries and results read out in both English and French
sounded so exotic :)
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cordelia0507
Senior Member
United Kingdom
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 Message 87 of 98
25 March 2010 at 10:20pm | IP Logged 
JS-1 wrote:
Mine was probably watching the Eurovision Song Contest as a child. I used to think that
hearing the names of the countries and results read out in both English and French
sounded so exotic :)


You mean "L'Irlande DOUZE POINTES!" etc...
Class... yeah, I remember this too... :-)

It's rubbish that most of the countries seem to be singing in English now.
I mean, for Ireland and the UK it's right, of course... But it's a shame that the others are doing it. It's much more interesting with the folksy tunes in the original languages.




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Impiegato
Triglot
Senior Member
Sweden
bsntranslation.
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Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian
Studies: Spanish, French, Russian

 
 Message 88 of 98
25 March 2010 at 11:22pm | IP Logged 
cordelia0507 wrote:
JS-1 wrote:
Mine was probably watching the Eurovision Song Contest as a child. I used to think that
hearing the names of the countries and results read out in both English and French
sounded so exotic :)


You mean "L'Irlande DOUZE POINTES!" etc...
Class... yeah, I remember this too... :-)

It's rubbish that most of the countries seem to be singing in English now.
I mean, for Ireland and the UK it's right, of course... But it's a shame that the others are doing it. It's much more interesting with the folksy tunes in the original languages.





Yes, it is probably more interesting to most people (including me), but we have to accept that this contest is more about money than culture and national pride. It is easier to create a hit in English than in a small language. If we think about it: how many have won with a song in a language other than English in the past ten years?

Edited by Impiegato on 26 March 2010 at 4:16pm



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