watashi wa high school wa nihongo de benkyoushimas

Yes I know it's ungrammatical, lol.

I always wanted to learn Japanese or Chinese! Sadly my only choices were English, German and Spanish... My school didn't even offer French.

I am thinking about teaching myself some Irish if I do get the delegation host job for the Irish delegation at the Eurovision...

saturnR wrote:

This Is The Phantom Lady wrote:

I always wanted to learn Japanese or Chinese!

Asides from sharing some of the writing, the two languages are nothing alike. Japanese is easier to learn for speaking (due to pronunciation is closer to what Europeans are used to; Chinese has vowel structures that drive most people insane) & Chinese is easier to learn for writing (we only use 1 alphabet; they use 3).
 

There was a boy at my school who was trying to teach himself japaneese (he had been adopted from Japan and wanted to learn his own language) He taught me a few words but sadly I forgot about them now... 

Chinese I only know a little of from a kids show that teaches children simple words in chinese; I must admit it is some tongue twister trying to repeat! But I would think I wanted to learn how to talk japanese and write Chinese... I just find it interesting since it is so far from anything else...

Somehow, if you know English, German, Spanish and a bit of French you can actually make sense of a lot of European languages. 

 

I love languages! One of my dreams would be to learn (and master!) as many languages as possible. Utopia...

My mother tongue is French. Then I speak English, and have a few notions of German (studied it for 5 years at school but unfortunately forgot most of it), Arabic (taught myself, don't have arabic origins, just wanted to do arabic calligraphy lol. Can write it, read it, but hardly speak it and don't have much vocabulary), Serbian (took it one year at uni but again, forgot most of it. Oh, I envy Mycroft so much!  because it's got to be the most difficult language I tried to learn) and I know a couple of words (30 at most, lol) of Japanese because my late husband's grandma was Japanese and my husband was fluent in Japanese, he watched a lot of movies/anime in Japanese so I ended learning a couple of things.

I want to learn some French sometime... In the small grades here it's common to give kids the choice between German and French but my school didn't offer french because of a lack of teachers and money. I've always been so upset I didn't have the choice... although German is a cool language and I am still able to communicate in it. 

When I was in Berlin with my advanced German class years ago, a Turkish guy in a internet cafe told me I sounded like a native German. My skills have decreased since then, and I'm sure he was just being kind. 

I always meant to learn some Irish, I even found a free online course once... and now I really wish I did. It would be cool to show the Irish delegation people some skills there. But oh well. 

Last edited by This Is The Phantom Lady (April 29, 2014 6:27 am)

So lucky!! 

Oh, and right now I'm trying to get better at understanding Swedish. A lot of my co-workers are swedes... Well we have agreed that Danish and swedes talk English to each other to avoid confusion... 

But it is, the words are different, the 'melody' is very different as well and a bit of the grammar is too... 

It's not like a British accent and a thick scottish one... 

One of our first meetings some months ago one of the important lectures was delivered in Swedish and none of us Danes could really follow it, so the second time they had to repeat it in English. It's a little sad I suppose... a generation ago we were better at understanding our nordic neighbours I've been told.

I just found this here which explains some lovely German words that have no English equivalent:

http://www.fluentu.com/german/blog/weird-german-words-vocabulary/

Yes, Susi.
What you say in a word, we need a phrase or even a sentence!
We do have some equivalents though and for example, we do use ear worm!
On a different note, working in a primary school is a joy for even the English language...possibly made more interesting by working in Scotland.
One of the older kids burst through a door the other day and promptly asked me if I liked her "out entrance"!
I informed her that the word she was looking for was "exit"!