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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| AlexMoby Diglot Newbie FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4098 days ago 13 posts - 15 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch | Message 177 of 204 09 February 2013 at 5:11pm | IP Logged |
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Age: 21 years old
French: Native speaker. English: Advanced Level. My accent is neutral. I have studied it since my childhood but it is essentially thanks to Internet I reach my actual level. However, my English remains very "international". German: I have studied it during 6 years. However, I'm planning to reinforce it because I am almost unable to have a conversation in this language and I have some gapps when it comes to vocabulary and some grammar rules. Italian: Low intermediate. I have studied it during 3 years. I have some vocabulary and I can understand the essential of a conversation. Nevertheless, I must improve some very important rules. Spanish and Dutch: Beginner 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4230 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes  Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 178 of 204 09 February 2013 at 7:57pm | IP Logged |
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I'm in the early 40s.
Mother-tongue: Cantonese English: started around 6 Mandarin: started around 9 French: around 11 Coming from Asia I would have lessons in school in Cantonese with 1 lesson in English in between. After emigrating to N. America the school curriculum was entirely in English. My mother subscribed the Chinese edition of of "Reader's Digest" hoping me and my siblings would be able to keep up with our Chinese. I kept up but my siblings did not. They were more interesting in watching TV than reading. Besides my parents, I'm the only one who can still write fluently in Chinese. I studied Mandarin on and off before. A friend who is fluent is European languages (including French, Spanish, Italian, Latin & German) asked about learning Chinese. In half a year I got into Mandarin by compiling a table of Pinyin pronunciations on computer for him as well as a list of Chinese words & phrases. Any new word of phrase I come across would be in the tables (in Pinyin alphabetic order) to be forwarded to him by E-mail. I can understand most of what is said on a radio and TV broadcast although I don't have a very large Chinese vocabulary. In school we were taught traditional Chinese should be written from the right side of the page and in vertical columns down. Nowadays everybody is on computer so we all write the same way (L to R and up to down). Being online I'm contributing my ideas to blogs a lot more than I would writing letters. There is a friend in the US I still exchange letters in Chinese a few times a year. At this point my English is about the same fluency as my Cantonese with Mandarin second and French being last. There are quite a few Chinese restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses in my area but not very many that are French-speaking. You don't have a chance to interact with speakers of a language you don't pick it up as easily. Edited by shk00design on 09 February 2013 at 8:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Zireael Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 4437 days ago 518 posts - 636 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, Spanish Studies: German, Sign Language, Tok Pisin, Arabic (Yemeni), Old English | Message 179 of 204 09 February 2013 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
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I'm in the early 20s.
Native language - Polish, albeit with pronunciation problems due to being HoH (I rarely pronounce ź correctly, I've got problems with cz, which usually comes out closer to ć or sz) English - started at 7, continued throughout school, now studying it as my major at university, I'd say it's near native (pronunciation notwithstanding); I've passed FCE and thinking of taking CAE or TOEFL German - started around 13, then 3 years of solid school learning until 18; I'd say it's around A2 level Spanish - started at 18, just before starting university. 3 years under my belt and solid B1 level, with Venezuelan pronunciation of ll which I picked from my first teacher; the problem is I need to pass a B2 exam Arabic - started at 21, a few months under my belt and a complete beginner Tok Pisin - a semester at university, I'd say A1 level Old English - three semesters total at university Polish Sign Language - a few scattered words I picked up here and there and I can finger-spell my name... Edited by Zireael on 09 February 2013 at 9:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zerrubabbel Senior Member United States Joined 4386 days ago 232 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 180 of 204 09 February 2013 at 10:00pm | IP Logged |
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Im 19, soon to be 20, and here are my languages statuses
Japanese- my best foreign language, but still only somewhere in the intermediate range, started at 18 almost a year ago Mandarin- havent seriously started it, but I sometimes study it to switch things up... I know a few basics Spanish- Im putting a little more effort into Spanish than mandarin but its still basics 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6942 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 181 of 204 09 February 2013 at 10:48pm | IP Logged |
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I'm of voting age, can drive a car, AND of age of consent. haha
The story for most of my languages is here. To that original story, I add Northern Saami, Latvian and Turkish. Those would be my 15th, 16th and 17th "new" languages respectively (I still don't include Inari Saami or Meadow Mari since I was dabbling in those only). As I've noted here, studying Northern Saami is something that I just can't resist. It's a joy for me to hear it and its grammar is complex to the point of both frustrating and fascinating me as a learner with an informal background in Uralic languages and linguistics. If people think that they have consonant gradation or vowel alternations figured out because of Finnish or Estonian they will have their minds stretched again by Northern Saami. I'm still a beginner in this language but my hope is that by the time I finish Davvin 4 (I've only started Davvin 3 last month), I'd have at least a vaguely low-intermediate passive ability in the language. I'd be more than happy to have just a high-beginner's active ability in the language since I'm far from Sápmi. Latvian on the other hand does not cast the same spell on me (sorry Evita, arturs, Viedums et al.) and I admit that even though I was studying it regularly at some time last year, much of my effort was sustained by a then-upcoming trip to Latvia (which did happen and I enjoyed). After the trip, I eased out of Latvian to focus on other languages in my rotation. My impression of the language though is positive as it seems a bit like Lithuanian with more predictable sets of grammatical rules (i.e. I could see patterns more readily in it than in Lithuanian) and a fair number of loanwords from Slavonic and Germanic. My ability in Latvian though has regressed to something like just a step above a raw beginner. Turkish is the newest addition to my list of languages even though I've thought about studying it for several years. However I got pushed over the edge somewhat unexpectedly because of my Finnish connection. I befriended a Finn who was dating a Turk while travelling last year, and as I've been learning more about verbal nouns and particples in Finnish (many of which substitute relative pronouns or more analytic constructions in Romance, Germanic or Slavonic languages), I was reminded by a linguist acquaintance that Turkish has a vaguely similar tendency to use these devices. After some reading about Turkish grammar, I found the typological similarities with Finnish interesting enough that I resolved to get going in Turkish this year. For the time being, I'm not as keen on it as I am with Finnish, Hungarian, Polish or Slovak, but I'm prepared to take it at least as far as I plan to do with Ukrainian - that is to something approaching competency at B1 in all spheres. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4493 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 182 of 204 09 February 2013 at 11:39pm | IP Logged |
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Age 23 - in order of when I started learning them.
Dutch - Native. English - Started at age 2 when my parents moved to Canada. Spent 3,5 years as a baby speaking English and came back with the ability to read - have gone on to achieve native-level fluency in this language. I don't consider this a foreign language for my purposes - I have always spoken it and have always been able to understand everything that is said to me in this language. French - Picked up a few phrases during childhood. Started learning it in secondary school, one of the first classes I ever took actually. Four years were enough to give me a basic A2 French but not much more than that (I could conjugate verbs in everything but the subjunctive, and had basic vocabulary). Spent some years not doing much with my French but returned to it when I spent two years hopping between the Netherlands and Belgium in the sense that I was forced to speak it every now and then. I then spent two months cooped up in the tiniest room with French-speaking flatmates and finally made some progress. I came home with the ability to speak decent French. I've since taken classes at the AF, nowadays I would say that I speak French quite well but not fluently. Because it's one of the first languages I learned, it's also one that I value quite highly. This is a "personal language" for me. I used to prefer it to German at school as well. Latin - Took this for five years in high school and sat the state exam in it (which I nearly flunked because my high school work ethic was nothing short of atrocious - the irony being that my pass grade was based solely on my TRANSLATIONS, not on me getting the history questions right. I think that's a first for people). I have dropped my studies of Latin since but I still recognise grammar and some words. It is high time I did something with my Latin because five years was definitely enough to build a grammatical base - but it's not spoken, so what can you do? One day I will revive my Latin. Describing my level of Latin is pointless. German - Four years in high school and a background as a Dutch speaker mean I have a good handle on German in general, although I skimped on learning the grammar so my German is riddled with syntax and grammatical mistakes. Nevertheless, I can use it well colloquially and nobody misunderstands my German. I would say that, like French, I speak German, but not fluently (in fact that goes for pretty much all of my languages that are not English). Romanian - I never seriously studied Romanian until a few days ago, but one of my ex- girlfriend's family spoke Romanian (and also Hebrew; see below). I did not study it formally but picked up some colloquial phrases. I have decided to learn it because I want to deal with that part of my past and let this language take on a new meaning for me; I want to stop associating it with what was left behind when I returned home from Belgium. I cannot really speak Romanian, though. Hebrew - See Romanian, except I have less experience speaking it. I started my study of it earlier, though, so my Hebrew is a tiny bit better than my Romanian in speech (but not in comprehension). Russian - This kickstarted my return to language learning in a structured fashion. I decided I wanted to learn a language, and made a decision to pick between this one and Portuguese. I picked Russian, and I fell in love with the language. Now it's a language I speak every day (or write at least). This is one of the hardest languages for me to make progress in (second only to French) and although nowadays I would say that I speak it, the difference in "mentality" when speaking Russian is a bit different from French and German which are clearly childhood languages (I learned them consciously but not of my own volition, although I wanted to take French for my finals; I could not fit it into my schedule because I am actually a scientist and studied sciences in high school). However, nowadays, I would say that I speak it, AND, one of my friends said to me lately about my Russian: в последнее время я понимаю тебя всегда (Lately I always understand you). This means that my Russian is finally seeming to be getting somewhere. A good thing, because I am going to travel Russia over the summer and this is the language I'll be needing. One of my favourite languages, this. Swedish - Decided to pick it up as an experiment to see what I could do with FSI Swedish. It turns out you can get to a pretty good level if you know some other Germanic languages. Currently speak and write this quite well, on par with my German and Russian if not a tad better. Also a free maintenance language because it is so similar to some of my stalwart languages (Dutch, German and English). Breton - I needed a diversion, went into Celtic culture. I have NO idea how I do with the spoken language, but I have some idea of the grammar and I can construct a (occasionally faulty) sentence. This was also an experiment in using French as a base language, the first time I have ever used materials from a language that I did not know from day 1. I'm not a complete beginner in this, but I've never spoken it so I don't yet want to call myself intermediate (also need to do more listening to Radio Breizh really). These are all the languages I've studied! There are plenty of languages I have not studied, but have some idea of: these are Danish, Portuguese, Icelandic, Greek, and to a lesser extent Spanish and Italian. I have never studied any of these but I know some things in them due to similarities with one of the languages mentioned above. The exception is Greek but I have had Greek friends over the years (some of them close to me). Edited by tarvos on 09 February 2013 at 11:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Surtalnar Tetraglot Groupie Germany Joined 4182 days ago 52 posts - 67 votes Speaks: German*, Latin, English, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical) | Message 183 of 204 10 February 2013 at 1:43am | IP Logged |
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I'm 20.
German: Native. Since I was born here and live here my whole life I'm very good at it, but since I came from Saxony I have an accent and it's hard to get rid off it, especially in everyday speak. English: Learned it since the 3rd school grade (pupils now even begin with it in the kindergarten and the first school grade, like my little half-brother). I think I'm B1-B2, my accent sounds very native, but I struggle a little bit with grammar and vocabulary (English's vocabulary is to large!) Spanish: Beginned with it in Summer 2012 (I'm learning it in the school) and experimented a little bit before that date, but I feel still as beginner (But I'm getting better week by week.) French: The same as Spanish, with the difference I learn it only at home, but I play all my computer games in French to improve this language (In Diablo 3 everything is dubbed, and you can activate sub-titles for everything - that's very helpful) My goal is to get C2 certificates in English, Spanish and French. I have a long way. With those languages I experimented: --------- Arabic: I experimented with it in 2012, learned most parts of the alphabet and writing and some vocabulary, but I lost interest, so I stopped it...and forgot it mostly. But I plan to start again when I'm advanced at Spanish and French, because it's a very beautiful language, it's mystical and it's script can look beautiful. I want to learn Arabic, because I'm a left-hander and I want to have feeling to see the world beginning from the right corner. (It would be interesting, if it is really possible to think that the world starts from right and how it would influence my thinking) Latin: 4 years in school, but forgot it partly. Don't like it too much. Romanian: A beautiful language...experimented with it, but time... Esperanto: I have a learning book and looked sometimes in it...but I have no use, but it's a very nice language. Slavic languages: I'm genetically mostly slavic (like mostly everyone originating in the Eastern Parts of modern Germany and Austria, because 1000 years ago some Germanic people went to the east and mixed with a majority of Slavic people and replaced the languages of those Slavs with German dialects), and I love their mythologie...I feel more connected to it as to the Germanic mythology...but their is limited use of Slavic languages in modern days and there beauty of those languages is really depending. Urdu/Sanskrit: Very very interesting languages...but my time is (sadly) to limited to learn those. Edited by Surtalnar on 10 February 2013 at 1:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Woodstock Newbie United States Joined 4091 days ago 14 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 184 of 204 10 February 2013 at 4:00am | IP Logged |
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I'm 53, but I feel younger. :)
Native English. French A2--3 years high school, two years college. Returned to self-study 3 mo ago. Other languages that I might choose to study: Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German. I wish there were more materials available for Brazilian Portuguese. I do not consider myself to be a serious student of language. I just study to keep my mind young and for recreational purposes really. I enjoy reading also, and I would like to be able to read well in one or two foreign languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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