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The last language you would want to learn | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6619 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes  1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 49 of 346 14 July 2007 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One thing that surprises me about this thread is that nobody mentioned German. Long before we had this cultural sensitivity and political correctness, Mark Twain wrote an interesting essay talking about the frustrations that he had trying to learn German.
Of course, nobody has the time to learn every language on this Earth. But if I had to learn another language after Korean, I think I would be least likely to pick German. I looked at the profiles for the languages and according to this bulletin board, German is a complicated language and most Germans choose to speak English with the foreigners. Its the same kind of problem that Korean has. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeremy Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6414 days ago 4 posts - 4 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian | Message 50 of 346 15 July 2007 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've never liked French. I know it's an unpopular view, but it sounds quite ugly and wrong to my ears, I don't find it the least bit interesting in a linguistic sense, and I don't feel a pressing need to visit any of the countries where it enjoys official status {with the possible exception of the North African countries, in which case I would much rather learn Arabic or the appropriate Berber language anyway).
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 51 of 346 15 July 2007 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
There are some very interesting island nations using French. Are you not a water-world person? Personally, the French speaking Carribean nations are especially intriguing to me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Karakorum Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6570 days ago 201 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French, German | Message 52 of 346 16 July 2007 at 12:28am | IP Logged | |||||
I only know about Haiti (if you can call Haitian creole French as opposed to an independent language). What other Carribean nations are French speaking? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6666 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 53 of 346 16 July 2007 at 4:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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From Wikipedia:
The term French West Indies (Antilles françaises) refers to the four territories presently under French sovereignty in the Caribbean: the two overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique, plus the two overseas collectivities of Saint Martin and Saint-Barthélemy. The Guadeloupe department includes both the island of Guadeloupe proper and the adjacent islands of Les Saintes, Marie-Galante and La Désirade. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cymro Triglot Groupie Wales Joined 6455 days ago 76 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 54 of 346 16 July 2007 at 4:51am | IP Logged | |||||
Don't worry I'm not taking offence :-) I suppose the sound of a language is a matter of individual preference as a fluent speaker I think it is lovely. It is known to its speakers by the nickname "iaith y nefoedd" ( the language of heaven)/ It has a form of poetry that is uniquely complex and just gorgeous. A lot of Dylan Thomas' success was based on transfering the basic idea into English. THe spelling is different I grant you. But once you realise that W and Y are vowels a large amount of the difficulty disappears. There is the Ll sound it is a voiceless lateral fricative but most people master it OK. It is also very phonetically pronounced and is not actually very difficult for English speakers to learn. There are no case endings. There are only 5 reallyirregular verbs ( to be, have(well sort of), go, come, and make/do). Most of the tenses can be produced with an auxiliary verb and the infinitive( actually a verb/noun but let's not complicate things.) The other odd thing is that Rhian is a Welsh name! :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| cymro Triglot Groupie Wales Joined 6455 days ago 76 posts - 98 votes Speaks: English*, Welsh, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 55 of 346 18 July 2007 at 10:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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It isn't that common a name. My cousin who shares it says that she has the sane kinds of problems. Getting mistaken for a man called Ryan amongst them.
Cymro is the welsh word for a Welshnan. Often in older times a Welsh speaking man. It is related to Cymru (KUM-ree) The Welsh word for Wales and Cymraeg ( KUMraheeg) the word for the language. These days it is possible to be a Cymro cymraeg or a Cymro di-gymraeg. A welsh speaking man or a non-welsh speaking Welshman. Sadly the latter outnumber the former 3 to 1. Although over much of thinly populated Wales the language still predominates. There is a corner with a lot of people who don't speak it which affects the statistics. English is called Saisneg (saheesnehg) i.e. Saxonish Like the scottish Sasanach. Learning Welsh has been a life-changing experience. It has enriched my life immesurably. The nice thing about a minority language is that because of the lack of education for some native speakers it is actually possible to learn to speak it better than some people who are technically natives. I have had to give english words as a translation a few times. I have a good accent quite naturally and I have actually been known to fool people. They don't always know that I have learned. That feels BRILLIANT!!! The great feeling is that I havve suddenly learned that I have an aptitude for language acquisition. I was fluent in just a few months. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 56 of 346 18 July 2007 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
This thread is amazing. I've got even more interested in Welsh since I love the way it looks written, actually as soon as I'm free from my exams I think I'll learn some really basical things just to satisfy my interest for the time being. and after this post
There are many languages I'll probably never learn, but on the other hand, I'd learn almost any language happily if I had to move to a place where it's spoken (I wouldn't really want to move to Africa or Asia but that's a different issue). Except French. I thought I was the only one before I read all the entries here, but luckily it doesn't seem so. It's not that I dislike the culture, in fact I was in Paris in May and I quite liked it, although I'm not in love with the city unlike almost everyone else :) But the language itself doesn't really appeal to me, maybe because so many people adore it and I can't understand why... My aunt is almost natively fluent in French and when she tried to teach me some back when I was a child, I felt practically the same way as Ardaschir described his attempts to learn Mandarin, my throat just hated these French R's. I know that if I ever have to learn French for any other reason than moving to France or having a Francophone spouse, I for sure won't learn how to speak French. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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