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Hi all,

ORIGINAL: pauk
IMO, the toughest european language to learn is hungarian....

And what about Finnish? [;)]


Leo "Apollo11"


P.S.
I have two good friends - one is Finnish and one is Hungarian. Although their laguages are similar to outside observer (and those two are the only ones in so called Hungaro-Finnish language group) - they were unable to understand eachother ehen speaking in their native langages (they both had one Croatian parent and one from Finland / Hungary).

ooh, tomo we actually have a native japanese speaker here?[X(] Actually you are correct japanese is a bitch when the old damn people use Keigo, or speak in their own dialects (osaka dialect being the largest one). I was talking about the standard "Tokyoite" japanese... I'll stick with finishing my learning of that for now.

ORIGINAL: Apollo11

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: pauk
IMO, the toughest european language to learn is hungarian....

And what about Finnish? [;)]


Leo "Apollo11"


P.S.
I have two good friends - one is Finnish and one is Hungarian. Although their laguages are similar to outside observer (and those two are the only ones in so called Hungaro-Finnish language group) - they were unable to understand eachother ehen speaking in their native langages (they both had one Croatian parent and one from Finland / Hungary).

also Estonian. The language group composed of those 3 is known as the Finno-Ugric.

Chinese is a language for poetry and literature. No strict grammar, no tense, no word gender, you have plenty of freedom to weave it in your own style.

You want a hard language to learn? Try the Southern Drawl from my home state of Lousiana. I think any translating program would self destruct trying to translate it into a normal language. When I left Lousiana for Marine boot camp training in San Diego back in 85' no one and I mean no one could understand a word I was saying, and these were people that had English as their primary language [:D]

ORIGINAL: 11Bravo
also Estonian. The language group composed of those 3 is known as the Finno-Ugric.

Well, group is composed with more small languages... many of them are used by native tribes of Urals: Voguls, Ostiaks, Mordvians, Tscheremises, Votiaks, Zyrians... also Lapanian is listed as different from Finnish.

I studied Japanese in college for three semesters. I was able to get by in Japan with only a few problems. Once you get out of the big cities and the tourist hotels you won't find anyone who speaks English. They all study it in school but they only concentrate on the reading and writing because that is the only part on the college entrance tests.

These days I study Chinese (Mandarin). I started about a year and a half ago because all of my co-workers are Chinese. This past June I married a girl that I had met in China in 2003. She is Gongdongren (›ö?B?l) which means she speaks Cantonese as well as Mandarin. The funny thing is that now I've forgotten all of my Japanese. It's like my brain has a switch inside with only two settings: English and Other. Other used to be Japanese but now it is Mandarin.

By the way, Kanji in Mandarin are called Hanzi. Literally, characters of the Han.

Some of the readings of the name 'Japan' by Chinese people are quite funny.

To them, Japanese translates as '**** me'.
日-本人

Japanese defence force translates as 'self-pleasuring team'

自慰队

(No offence to anyone intended - just noting some funny language quirks. Like the English calling me (a Welshman) 'Slave'!)

ORIGINAL: Zebedee
Some of the readings of the name 'Japan' by Chinese people are quite funny.
To them, Japanese translates as '**** me'.
“ú-–{?l

Oh my. I had this thing on my car for some time (guess it caused a comment or two from Chinese passers-by):

To me that looks like "wood moon". [:)]

Like the alloys btw.

I took 3rd year Spanish and 1st year German at the same time in high school. Major mistake... "Jawohl, senor! no, no that's not it.... Si, mein Herr!, no, that's not it either.... eins, zwei, tres, cuatro, funf... Is that it?"

[:D] I hear ya. Had 4 years of German and 1 of Spanish, plus a decent amount of practicing Spanish at work with Mexican co-workers. Si, ich kann espanol!

This is a question to all of you players that have English as a 2nd language. How the heck did you learn to write it so fluently? I mean, seriously, the grammer is flawless with you guys. I am impressed. [&o][&o][&o]

Hi ilovestrategy

ORIGINAL: ilovestrategy

This is a question to all of you players that have English as a 2nd language. How the heck did you learn to write it so fluently? I mean, seriously, the grammer is flawless with you guys. I am impressed. [&o][&o][&o]

Singapore inherited the British system of govt and the best part of is besides its disdain for corruption but also the British English education system where exams in English for conducted for almost all subjects. If you don't do well in exams (in English) .. you are almost condemned to a life of blue collar worker and that is the bottom of the social classes! [:(]The rat race[:@]

I speak English!

Reasonable at French, but I learned in Belgium and West Africa, so my strange accent causes metropolitan French speakers to look at me with an expression that I can only interpret as overwhelming awe and respect.

Also some Urdu, which is basically Hindi written in Persian Arabic. Learning Urdu was the result of a naive career move by a person much younger and stupider than I am (now). I used to be able to read a newspaper and converse with reasonable fluency, but have thankfully lost much of it.

put it this way: we non-native english speakers don't understand why native english speakers can't seem to learn another language as well as we can learn english! I learned english when I was 10 by the way, don't quite remember how it happened, I just remember after about a year of english classes I tried to read an english book and couldn't understand it, took 2 more years of classes, took up the same english book and read it no problem. Seriously its just a matter of concentrating long enough. Don't know whats so amazing about it[:D]...

zeebee, you learned your japanese where did you say? (and yes that would be wood moon, hehe!) And if the "hanzi" have the same meaning (which I think they do) in both chinese and japanese, how come "day book person" means "fuck me" in chinese? Can you explain this one?

I taught English in Japan for several months. Keep it 'fresh' by playing online games with Japanese gamers, but nowhere near fluent. (I'm first language Welsh, second language English, have French at degree level and German at A-level and cannot say a single sensible sentence in any of them [:D]).

I'm not Chinese so I cannot explain why the translation works out like that, sorry. It just translates how it translates. When I first learnt the meaning in Chinese, I thought it was some lingering anti-Japanese thing from this century but I was assured that is not the case and it is a lot older than that (hence why I mentioned Welsh coming from 'Wealh' meaning 'slave').

When my gf gets in will ask her and see if she knows the answer.

It could be how you say it... Ni and Hon aren't very rare in Japanese. I still can't figure out how anyone understands spoken Japanese at all, the shear number of homonyms boggles the mind.

Hi all,

I just remember having met a lot of non-native English speakers and they say that the verbs and vocbulary differences were hard to fathom and remember/understand.

Over recent years I have begun to think that us Englanders are a bit lazy when it comes to Language learning. Apparently in schools the % of pupils studying a foreign language is declining more and more!

I used to be able to get by in French and if I was over there I would understand a word or 2 in most sentences. I've forgotten most of it now unfortunately. I do like languages but I think the key is to keep practising/using them.

Steven

English is a piece of cake compared to Slavic languages. After 31 yrs speaking Croatian, sometimes I think I speak English even better than my own language.

Hi Lord_Calidor,

Sigh, that is true for my family. My 12 year old daughter don't even speak my Chinese dialect (Hainanese - of Hainan Island)[:(]. [;)]

Cheers
Patrick