Entschuldigung, qu'est-ce que vous saying?

What, you don't speak 'murican?

Sent from my D6708 using Tapatalk

 

I used to speak pretty good Spanish but as I learned Korean it ‘over wrote’ the Spanish, looks like I need a memory upgrade. My Korean is prett good and I still take a lesson twice a week. Living in Korea gives me allot of opportunities to practice.

I’m like a talking dog to my friends, as we get drink they will call their friends, ‘come and join us, my American friends speaks good Korean, it’s very funny.’ Once they have rounded up their frimeds they will ask me to say funny things because I know lots of slang. As the drinking goes one the next comment is ‘watch this Keith can read.’ They then give me different things to read with brings great drunken applause. Once we get the point where walking is difficult, ‘I thought all these white guys were dumb, watch this.’ They then give me some dictation so they can see I can write too.

I’m working on accents now, each region has its own accent. There is a female Noth Korean news broadcaster, you may have seen her clips on the news. When I do my impression of her it is good for some laughs.

 

I must have mentioned this a million times already. I'm Israeli, and my parents are multilingual. They moved to Israel from Russia after WW2 and as I was growing up I learned these following languages:

With native fluency:

Hebrew (my native language)
French (I went to French private schools)
Russian (100% natural for me because my parents spoke it in the house all the time)
Arabic (Israel's second language. I speak six dialects of it with native fluency)
German (As natural for me as Hebrew and Russian)
Polish (I learned it from my parents)
Yiddish (I learned it from my parents)
Ukrainian (I learned it from my parents)
Greek (we lived in Greece for fifteen years. Every Greek I speak to freaks out when I tell them I'm not Greek)
Swahili (I learned that language from Tanzanian and Rwandan friends of mine)
Lingala (I have friends from Congo-Kinshasa so I learned it from them)
Turkish (I used to travel to Turkey on business a lot, so I learned the language)


I can speak, read, write and understand these languages fairly well:

Bulgarian
Macedonian
Serbian
Croatian
Czech
Slovak
Romanian
Hungarian (actually quite fluently)

I can read these languages:

Amharic (spoken in Ethiopia. I can also speak it a little)
Farsi (same alphabet as Arabic)
Armenian

My English has improved a lot over time.

I'm still considered an amateur compared to other linguists - one gentleman speaks 32 languages perfectly!

 

And then there's Jeff.

 

Unser lieber, süßer, mehrsprachiger Jeff... Un bon ami, e un buon figlio!

 

Vielen Dank mon cheri - Mungu akubariki! (Swahili for God bless you!)

 

It still took me some time, because you cannot shortcut the second half of the tree (why not?)



And it seems like you can never reach 100% when you take shortcuts. Which is funny because you can only pass those when you master the subject.

--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

Gefeliciteerd! Goed gedaan! / Herzliche Glückwünsche! Gut gemacht! / Congratulations, well done!

Now, you have to do the reverse tree (ie: sign up to study English as if you were a German-speaker).

 

Naja, ich wusste schon dass ich Deutsch spreche; die Eule ist nur eine Bestätigung

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Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

A good measure of fluency is speaking a language on the phone; that is a lot harder than in person.

--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

my wife is of Spanish decent. I took spanish in college, I find eavesdropping on her telenovelas the easiest way to become more fluent. The more you use it, the easier it gets.

 

* cough cough * ... wusste.

(I can't take credit for that; google trans. caught it)

 

Cool, but how do you develop any vocabulary that doesn't involve serious injury, the occult, or a cheating boyfriend/husband?

 

If you look above, I already corrected that; autocorrect of the German SwiftKey keyboard ... lame excuse, I know

--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

Sure, sure, blame the poor computer!

 

Was ist los?

 

Die Autovervollständigung auf meinem Telefon (SwiftKey Tastatur) hatte 'wüsste' statt 'wusste' vorgeschlagen. Darauf sagte @richgem ich sollte den Rechner (eigentlich Handy) nicht blamieren

--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

I restarted the French course (I can do with the repetition anyway), and set my profile to German. As we say in Dutch: "twee vliegen in één klap."

French being a Latin language is definitely more challenging for me than English or German.

--
Pitralon forever - Real pens have a nib - If it doesn't tick, it's not a watch.

 

Lollllll ah ok, es freut mich sehr dass kein Problem gab!