Discussion about language

I met a lady from Vietnam, she can speak 4 languages, and read 2 other. admiring. Besides Chinese and English, I can read a very little Japanese.

The Chinese ~100 year old professor Ji listed 10 books he recommended, one of them is: Tocharische Grammatik. It's written by 3 German experts. They study this language from the scatter pieces of Medium Asian archaeological stuff about 20 years to read it through. like password translation. I guess less than 100 people understand this language:) To some, language is fun, to some, not.

Half month ago I started a discussion about languages, so here is some info from the discussion.

There's some relation between how many languages one own and where they live or what they like (travel, history, writing), finally, the language interests or capability can impact the career path. In India, around 40% will know at least 2 languages. (one their mother tongue and another the state they live in) and the third language would be English if they are educated in English, many IT global company like India engineer for the smooth communication. People in Malay can speak many languages,even in China, if a person can speak 5 Chinese dialect, he can be pround of that.

Computer language is mentioned, html is a worldwide language, can't imagine if the world don't have it now, how it will be. It makes the world small and close.

Babytalk is also mentioned, I remembered once my little nephew told me where was he been, it's a building name, but sounds very different from either the Madrin (Popular Chinese), or my hometown dialect. I cant udnerstand. later his mother interpret his language to me, I found he picked up some easy-to-pronouce letters to speak.

I haven't heard Some languages before, like ASL, xhosa, very interesting, opps, ASL is referring to another computer language?

Many language has it's own characters, Arabic may cause headache in global stuff. For an AD, in other languages, we only need change the text, but in Arabic, we need change the figure's order as well.

From the childhood, I heard french is the most beautiful language in the world, in the discussion thread, I found it also depends on the personal preferrence.

for the discussion , please go to BC



Following are all the discussion participators, and some of their words are referred here.

Caudo42
cooper
crispnet
decoratorinside
Fartmachine
ichaduma
MadameX
Serenacyh
xhacker
ghostytwofish


stoneman:
I live on the east coast of the United States, so Chinese is probably not in the cards.

Right now I speak, read, and write English and German, and I can read French with the help of a dictionary. In the United States this would seem pretty good, but by global standards its not, as your own impressive example shows.

I'd like to improve my French for Europe and sometime learn Spanish so that I can travel in this hemisphere.

bromoluz
I speak an read spanish, and I'm trying with english. Some of portuguese and french, but 30%. :P

sindoo20
I know Malayalam (my mother tongue spoken in Kerala), Tamil (I live in Tamil Nadu), English (I did my schoolings in English), Can understand Hindi (National language); Can understand Telugu( Language -Andra Pradesh)

In India, around 40% will know at least 2 languages. (one their mother tongue and another the state they live in) and the third language would be English if they are educated in English.

morinn
i live in mauritius. here we are taught to speak, read and write english, french and hindi at school. plus our mother tongue is creole.

so I can speak, read and write english, french, hindi and creole.

4 languages ;)

ThriftShopRomantic
I used to be pretty good at French... had about six years of it in school, though read it more confidently than I spoke it.

Regrettably over the years, my command of the language has really deteriorated with lack of use. So while I can still understand much simple French, it's not what it was. And I'm left with a smattering of random words, too-- like those for "fish," "sheep," and entirely too much of the text of Le Petit Prince! :-)

Tobsy
Only German and English. Hmm, and because it's related to German I can read Dutch a little bit *g*. Tried to learn French in school, but after two years French and me had an agreement: I try not to speak it, and in exchange I don't have to learn it.


RTCunningham
I was fairly fluent in Spanish until I got married at 24, even with the southwest U.S. Mexican slang (I learned the grammar aspects while in high school), because I had a lot of friends during my younger school years who spoke both English and Spanish.

After marriage, I started learning my wife's language of Tagalog (Pilipino). Much of the language incorporates Spanish, but pronounced differently. Needless to say, I have to think before I can speak the Spanish correctly around Spanish speakers.

confessing7girl
Portuguese and English... i totally understand Spanish and Italian and (French)..... French is def not my thing!!

bnsullivan
English is my native language.

I lived in Greece for a long time, so I learned to speak, read and write Modern Greek. It's my best language, after English.

I used to know quite a bit of French (also lived in Paris for a bit), but I have not had occasion to practice speaking it in a long time. I can still read, though.

Chiamano
I read and speak Dutch, English and German. I learned French but never liked the language. And because it's related to Dutch I can understand South-African.


Norski
I grew up in a place and time where the closest spot where English wasn't the only language in use was hundreds of miles away, and on the other side of a national border.

American English is the only language I'm fluent in. I used to speak and read a little Spanish, but have gotten drastically out of practice over the last three decades.

I can make out a few bits and pieces of most of the Germanic languages, because of English has retained so much of its character despite the 1066 incident, and because they incorporate bits of Latin, which I started learning in high school.

Don't let that fool you, though: I'm pretty useless outside the family of English languages.


In my youth, a family acquaintance who came to the States as an adult had the habit of starting a sentence in, say, English, switching to Norwegian when he hit a word that he felt was better in that language, and staying in Norwegian until a word worked better in English, when he'd switch back.

He was a little unusual. Many Norwegians dropped their language rapidly and stubbornly (of course), in an effort to acculturate. The big concern was that de kits vud be able to speak goot English.

helloitsme
I speak Dutch and also understand drug slang, which is a language in and of itself; I blogged about it. Let me clarify, I'm not a drug dealer, just a crime analyst. ;)

creative666
English
A little French
A little Italian
A very small amount of xhosa (South African language)

neoauteur
I speak three languages (two fluently). I like French the best though. It's such a beautiful language.

Anniepooh
Un, deux, trois! One fluent, several others in bits and pieces-enough to ask for the potty! lol

Aira
Italian (my first language), English and Spanish (I study them at the university). I also read French and - if spoken very slow :P - I can understand it.

podhead
eyez speked pritty gud inglished! an rite evan gudr! HA HA

English, German, Spanish, and Italian. I would love to learn Chinese (mandarin dialect).

esbjorn
Learning languages was my worst subjebts in school, in Sweden.
But I must have learned something, because apart from swedish, i write and speak some bad english, understand spanish, a tiny french and german. My teacher in german said that teaching me in german was like pouring water on a goose.

But she said it in german so I didn´t understand what she meant.


Mahesha
I am from Sri Lanka and my mother toung is Sinhala and we were taught English as our second language. I can understand and speak hindi. Not very fluent.

So I can speak three languages and read and write two languages.
johnoates
English, French from my school days, and Russian - decent vocabulary, terrible grammar but enough to communicate (I learnt it for/during a 6 month trip to ex-Soviet Central Asia).