Salute to those who learn English!

jensked said:
Ha! We Belgians beat "most" countries in learning languages. In school, I had
- 4 hours Dutch
- 5 hours French
- 3 hours English
- 2 hours German
a week, almost 6 years! that means 1/3 of our time to languages.
That is alot. We only had to do about 4 hours French or German a week for 5 years.
 
peter3hg2 said:
The best thing about English is you don't have to worry about genres like in German and French.

Oh, if you think genders are bad...

cases.

Shudder.

Russian has 6 of the buggers; and they depend on whereabouts words are in the sentence. And it can completely change the meaning of the sentence.

Each case, combined with each gender...means there's up to 18 different endings per noun.

Which comes together to give me a massive headache trying to learn the language.

Genders alone in French I can cope with. 4 cases in German I can just about get my head round. But 6!

*melts*
 
Seems like lots of people in here do speak a little german...

Well, my French used to be quite good, as long as I didn't have to write stuff down or be 100% with grammar, which explains why I only had a 3 (1 is the best, 6 the worst) until I didn't have to have it anymore... Same with Latin. God I hated that...

English was always quite easy and useful...
 
Many Swiss people I meet speak German, French, Italian, English, and Spanish. Sometimes they know Dutch, Portuguese, or another random language. That's very respectful thing for a citizen of the EU! I personally speak Japanese and English fluently. I can only speak Spanish and German only if I warm up to it (if you know what I mean).

People who speak two languages are bilingual.
People who speak three languages are trilingual.
People who speak four languages are multilingual.
So what do you call a person who speaks only one language?
AMERICAN!

The citizens of the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world refuse to learn any other language but English. It's quite pathetic that Americans will not even attempt to learn a bit of Spanish to communicate with our new Spanish speaking immigrants. It's not like our brains are full to the brim in different languages anyhow . . .
 
teeb said:
peter3hg2 said:
The best thing about English is you don't have to worry about genres like in German and French.

Oh, if you think genders are bad...

cases.

Shudder.

Russian has 6 of the buggers; and they depend on whereabouts words are in the sentence. And it can completely change the meaning of the sentence.

Each case, combined with each gender...means there's up to 18 different endings per noun.

Which comes together to give me a massive headache trying to learn the language.

Genders alone in French I can cope with. 4 cases in German I can just about get my head round. But 6!

*melts*

Welcome to the wonderful world of Slavic languages. :evil:

Over here:
6x case
3x gender
3x number (1,2 & many)
4x "sklanjatev" (have no idea how to translate it .. for example, the Slovene words for "duke" and "step" and are both male gender, both singular and yet have completly different case suffixes).

LOADS of unnecesary bullshit making primary school Slovene class a living hell ... :)

BTW, Serbian and Croatian have 7 cases ...
 
I heard finnish have 14 cases, can any fins confirm or correct me?
 
Learning English was pretty easy for me when I moved to Canada from the Philippines when I was 5-years old, but everyone back home already knew some English. I agree when they say that English is "Easy to learn, difficult to master." I've always wondered why universities offer bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees in English... does it really take 10 years of intensive studying to master the English language? Romance languages like Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese sound so much "nicer" and "expressive" than English. English sounds really corny compared to other languages.
 
DJ said:
English: easy to learn, difficult to master ;-)

If it wasn't for all the irregularities in it and a REALLY poor connection between spoken and written word (don't know the correct phrase, must be something related to phonetics), it would be a great "world language".

I think you mean context. English is best conveyed as a spoken language, as there is much more that can be inferred in how you say something rather than what you say. Sarcasm is one such context that is difficult to translate into writing. As is the English way...
 
Z Draci said:
Many Swiss people I meet speak German, French, Italian, English, and Spanish. Sometimes they know Dutch, Portuguese, or another random language. That's very respectful thing for a citizen of the EU! I personally speak Japanese and English fluently. I can only speak Spanish and German only if I warm up to it (if you know what I mean).

People who speak two languages are bilingual.
People who speak three languages are trilingual.
People who speak four languages are multilingual.
So what do you call a person who speaks only one language?
AMERICAN!

The citizens of the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world refuse to learn any other language but English. It's quite pathetic that Americans will not even attempt to learn a bit of Spanish to communicate with our new Spanish speaking immigrants. It's not like our brains are full to the brim in different languages anyhow . . .

I kind of agree with that, but then again, most of the people I know can understand / speak fluently multiple languages. I personally can understand and speak spanish (after 5 years of it in school), and English of course. My roommates can speak and understand German, Chinese and French in addition to English. It may have been that we went to schools that required learning a foreign language to graduate, but I don't think it's as much of a problem as it was in the past. I personally want to also learn German, and get better with my Spanish, as in some cases, especially around here, it makes getting things done easier.
 
i spoke only telugu until i was 4, i learned to read english better than i could speak it at that time. i guess that helped in the long run, thing is that i can't speak telugu anymore. i can only understand it
 
DJ said:
teeb said:
peter3hg2 said:
The best thing about English is you don't have to worry about genres like in German and French.

Each case, combined with each gender...means there's up to 18 different endings per noun.

Which comes together to give me a massive headache trying to learn the language.

Genders alone in French I can cope with. 4 cases in German I can just about get my head round. But 6!

*melts*

Welcome to the wonderful world of Slavic languages. :evil:

Over here:
6x case
3x gender
3x number (1,2 & many)

BTW, Serbian and Croatian have 7 cases ...

Same in Bulgarian. :)

jensked said:
Ha! We Belgians beat "most" countries in learning languages. In school, I had
- 4 hours Dutch
- 5 hours French
- 3 hours English
- 2 hours German
a week, almost 6 years! that means 1/3 of our time to languages.

Those are all VERY similar languages. You know one, won't take long to learn the others. :p (Except French)
*goes and hides*

Back in Hungary at school I had:
- Hungarian classes - compulsory since I'm a foreigner, but I got exempted since I took the highest level of Hungarian language profiency exam
- Had to do a Bulgarian literature final exam - mother tongue
- Had German
- Took as 2nd optional language French but dropped it later, didn't really like it
- All other classes in English - since I went to English school
 
I personally know 2 languages fluently, English and Chinese (Chinese I mean by Mandarin, Cantonese and Hainanese), I can speak basic spanish. And I agree with you guys, all the European languages with the gender is very very hard :lol:... I remember I used to get it wrong so much
 
Well thank you very much for the creator of this thread.

I learned English and Farsi (Iranian language) at the same time, fluent at both

It is quite special to swear at your friends in another language :p
 
I can see what Andy Hui is saying.
Having Portuguese (regarded as one of the most difficult languages) as a native language, and learning English for almost 20 years, I found Chinese grammar VERY easy because I am used to all those genders, cases and useless crap in Portuguese. I pitty my Mandarin teacher, that still struggles to speak Portuguese even tough she is been living here for 10 years.

Oh, and just for the record: the tones in Mandarin just kill me... :cry:
 
YF19pilot said:
DJ said:
English: easy to learn, difficult to master ;-)

If it wasn't for all the irregularities in it and a REALLY poor connection between spoken and written word (don't know the correct phrase, must be something related to phonetics), it would be a great "world language".

I think you mean context. English is best conveyed as a spoken language, as there is much more that can be inferred in how you say something rather than what you say. Sarcasm is one such context that is difficult to translate into writing. As is the English way...

That's not really what I had in mind ... What I was trying to say, when you see a word that you have never heard before ... You have no idea how to pronounce it (ok, there are some general rules, but there are so many exceptions that you can never be quite sure). In German for example, no matter how long/weird the word is, you always (?) know how to pronounce it. Even if you have no idea what it means ;-)

Another great example is Serbian ... It's probably the only language in the world, that is 100% "phonetic", meaning that each letter represents one sound, no matter what is next to it. Contests like the spelling bee have no meaning in Serbian - what you hear is what you write down and vice versa - what you read is what you say (which can be really funny sometimes, for example when reading the names of celebrities: Sean Connery = Šon Koneri, Whitney Houston = Vitni Hjuston, Nicholas Cage = Nikolas Kejdž ...) :roll:
 
Serbian is not the only language, I know in Filipino (or Tagalog) the words are pronounced simply by its spelling. There's no worries of pronouncing a difficult world incorrectly as all letters as you say have their own sound.
 
The problem isn't so much mastering the language. It really helps to immerse yourself in it to learn all cultural nuances and slang. I've heard Germans that speak better than us Aussies. We had a German guy visit us and it was fun teaching him slang that no one else used. :lol:

I was in Germany, and although I'd learnt German for 5 years in school, I couldn't figure out what any people my age were saying for about a week. Older people, on the other hand, I had no problems with. Same as in Poland, I hadn't heard half the words people were using before.
 
Z Draci said:
Many Swiss people I meet speak German, French, Italian, English, and Spanish. Sometimes they know Dutch, Portuguese, or another random language. That's very respectful thing for a citizen of the EU! I personally speak Japanese and English fluently. I can only speak Spanish and German only if I warm up to it (if you know what I mean).
The Swiss aren't in the EU.
 
YF19pilot said:
Taking into consideration there are twice as many words in the English language as the next largest language (Chinese, I believe), I can see how it's very difficult to learn...

Yes, but the active vocalbulary of a native English speaker is only approx 10000words where as the active vocab of a native Finn is over 20000words 8)

But thank you for your appreciation! :D
 
jensked said:
In school, I had
- 4 hours Dutch
- 5 hours French
- 3 hours English
- 2 hours German
Only 2 hours German, why's that? It's being spoken in Belgium and is one of the harder ones of those four. 2 hours a week can't be sufficient.

Regards
the Interceptor
 
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