Matthew10 Newbie Pakistan ghostpapers.com Joined 4902 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes
| Message 1 of 10 25 June 2011 at 9:47am | IP Logged |
i wanted to know according to you which language is the most important that should be
known by every one and what language are you comfortable with to interact with others
apart from mother tongue?
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Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German
| Message 2 of 10 25 June 2011 at 9:52am | IP Logged |
The only sensible answer to question 1 would be English.
As to which foreign languages I'm comfortable with to interact with natives, that'd be English, Mandarin and Cantonese. I'd need some practice with French before feeling comfortable with it, as I've hardly ever spoken it with natives.
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KCor Groupie United States Joined 5009 days ago 50 posts - 72 votes
| Message 3 of 10 25 June 2011 at 4:39pm | IP Logged |
"i wanted to know according to you which language is the most important that should be
known by every one"
Since you're asking the question in English your presumption is that most (if not all)
board members speak the language. This means they are either natives or obviously saw the
importance of learning it. Hence, you've answered your own question. Eh?
Just being a jackass.
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 4 of 10 25 June 2011 at 9:08pm | IP Logged |
My strongest non-native tongue is probably Spanish, although I can still sometimes get a bit jammed up.
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Jinx Triglot Senior Member Germany reverbnation.co Joined 5694 days ago 1085 posts - 1879 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Catalan, Dutch, Esperanto, Croatian, Serbian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Yiddish
| Message 5 of 10 25 June 2011 at 9:52pm | IP Logged |
I think one could approach your first question in two ways: normatively and positively. (In economics, "normative" means "what ought to be," while "positive" means "what is," to put it in the most basic terms.)
Normatively speaking, I think no language is more "important" than any other.
Positively speaking, Ari's right – English is clearly the only reasonable answer.
Personally, I'd feel comfortable speaking German with almost anyone in any situation. I could probably get by similarly in French, but with a lot less comfort and more pauses.
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Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 6 of 10 25 June 2011 at 10:13pm | IP Logged |
English and Spanish are the languages I can interact in while concentrating on something else.
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Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese
| Message 7 of 10 29 June 2011 at 10:43pm | IP Logged |
I'm most comfortable in German, English and Esperanto. I'm almost as comfortable in
French. I believe that you can achieve this level of comfort fastest in Esperanto,
because basically every sentence you try out will be correct - no sentence is
grammatically correct but "we just don't say it this way".
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microsnout TAC 2010 Winner Senior Member Canada microsnout.wordpress Joined 5472 days ago 277 posts - 553 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French
| Message 8 of 10 30 June 2011 at 2:02am | IP Logged |
Sprachprofi wrote:
because basically every sentence you try out will be correct - no sentence is
grammatically correct but "we just don't say it this way". |
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Wow, thats a remarkable property of a language. I run into this problem often with French, usually an anglicism
which is, as you say grammatically ok but never said that way by francophones. I avoid speaking French with other
anglophones for this reason.
Edited by microsnout on 30 June 2011 at 2:10am
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