WombatKombat

How many languages do you know at least basically?

Are you bilingual/multilingual?

What is your native language?

What languages would you like to learn?

I'll start: I know English, Irish, French, Spanish, did Czech/German for one year, Norweigen for another. I am only fluent in English ( Not quite there yet in French, Irish is a fucking piece of work, can't remember Spanish and only did German/Czech and Norweigen for a year each), Irish is my native tounge, used to be fun and intresting until this year, boring and strict teacher + shitload of grammar rules made to piss off students = really annoyed WombatKombat. I wouldn't mind learning Japanese or getting back into German.

m.collins

i can speak english and german

i'm 50% Australian 25% German 15% Scottish & 10% English

I speak fluent English

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Eglaya

How many languages do you know at least basically - 6

Are you bilingual/multilingual - I'm trilingual (Lithuanian, English, Russian). Took a year course in Spanish, so can I understand it as well. Though I consider myself fluent only in Lithuanian and English. Writing in Russian is still at the level of 6th grade.

What is your native language? - Lithuanian

What languages would you like to learn? - Japanese, Korean. I know basics, but I would like to know them at least better than I now know Spanish. Somewhere close to my Russian level would be awesome. And deepen my knowledge in Spanish.

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Kenshyuk

My native language is as fluent as my MD-holding parents (well, not on the stuff they majored, but you get the crux), my English is perfect as far as speakin' goes, and I speak a bit of Chinese but can't write for shit.

Since white text ain't all hot shit right now, I'll just say Eglaya seems the stereotype for J-Pop fangirls. >_>

But yeah, Korean is some of the easiest languages (well, writings, to be exact) to read (much better than English's spelling disaster), not so much on typin' though. Good luck!

Eglaya

lol, well, J-pop did play a role like a year ago in this xD But I've been into linguistics for ages. I'm studying it at university. And I'm going to Korea for six months next semester. So I'd like to call myself an "advanced fangirl" xD Oh and yeah, hangeul is definitely easy to read. I'm still trying to prove to my friend that it's easier than kana, but she thinks that kana is easier and hangul is too complicated.

Ah, English spelling disaster... blame it on the Great Vowel Shift >.>''

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Kenshyuk

Hangul is hardly complicated, being only 28 letters originally and four scrapped for bein' generic little triangles with obsolete sounds we nolonger needed.

Plus, it can convey every and any sound in the Korean language (unlike English which wastes like eight letters on the same crap and resorts to h-on-c-t-s) even though it's been 600 years since the dudes came up with it as 훈민정음.

All in all, awesome writing, but the ㅎs we don't bother to stress or the ㅆs going on which can be a bit confusing I understand. Been readin' and lovin' it for fourteen whole years now since I mastered it, and just can-NOT love it so much lol. Sure do wish the English did the same and scrapped that shit or at least bother to use those accentuations once in a while so we actually know "woond" from wound. Sons a' bitches.

^see? That little two minutes' worth of typing alone turned into a text pyramid. Never happens in hangul seriously, ever.

Eglaya

I know! I told her about it, but she still sticks to kana. Oh, what can one do... Hangeul somewhat reminds me of our alphabet (Lithuanian). We use Latin alphabet, plus some additional letters with diacritics, but our spelling is all strictly phonetic. I mean, there are some exceptions, because of various morphological reasons, but the same can be applied to hangeul too. Like in:

맛없어 and 맛있어

*shrugs*

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Kenshyuk

Well, about "맛있어," the reason the first syllable's like that is because when you say something like "맛이..." then it comes out as "마시" as "ㅇ" is the one consonant with "no sound" so we can have the vowels like "l" "ㅏ" go on and stuff.

Same goes for "맛있어," since it comes out as "마시써." About the only times you'll have much trouble is when you have things like "같이" being read as "가치" when the word already exists and such. All in all, even if when you put "맛" on its own it'll sound like the one on "맏아들" or "맏언니", you can make a lot more sense out of it as, well...

Where do we start. V_V English is so chock-full of countless words having the same sound and the present tense lookin' like the past tense but "read differently" without even getting started on all these dialects with plural forms and slang and crap, I.. just don't know how the hell I managed to even get this far. Then with the capitals (the hell, we have to learn the same thing twice and in fucking cursive and twenty other fonts!?) and how the addresses are arranged and how something like "Mr." goes in front of the name when in Korean it's like "에베레스트산" instead of Mount Everest..

GOD.. I must have hurt my head saying all that. Still though, how it has a very minimum of just about nine consonants that'll sound the same or are used for sounds that already exist while double goes for vowels and crap... V_V

So I guess what I'm getting across is that English JUST sucks. Most overrated atrocity of a writing ever conceived and used worldwide to get the underappreciated genius of 세종대왕 put out in its favor.

Eglaya

lol. In Lithuanian it's just Everestas xD

I'm actually majoring in English, but I don't think much about such stuff. Language is the way it is and that's that. What I HATE though, is articles x.x We don't have articles in Lithuanian and it really sucks when we have grammar and we have to learn all the rules with what and when what kind of articles are used. Countable, uncountable, abstract, pluralia tantum and crap like that. Ugh.

Oh, I forgot. I comprehend in Latin!! Haha, had that for a year at uni too. All linguists in my faculty have to go through one year of Latin drill x.x''

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Kenshyuk

Ugh, gotta go. Six o'clock curfew, see ya in 'bout an hour. Sorry about the rambling rant posts an' all, but eh..

Eglaya

Yeaaaah, but you see, 세종대왕 made a script entirely for Korean language. It corresponds fantastically with language's phonetic system, but, it would be really hard to apply it to other languages, because Korean doesn't have sounds which are elemental for European languages, say v, or z or f (which is uber important for Germanic languages).

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Kenshyuk

I remember mentioning him a while back.. (not to mention I'm part of the 전주 이씨 family [조선's ruling dynasty], and since we're the only ones who know Korean here I may as well mention my freakin' given name, 이태영)

But anyway, yeah, tell me about it. When I first got to the States (see my location) and was tryin' to learn English an' all that, I'd keep pronouncing "V" as "브이" or like "B (한글: 비, like the pop singer guy whom you'd be familiar with, or obviously Korean for "rain" lol)," and couldn't really differenciate between "G" and "Z," (being that we don't even have the latter's sound, as you've said) pronouncing them both like "지" an' such. That and English's flaws as I've detailed out, and the fact that I was the biggest reading freak and grew up with my grandparents, totally made it batshit-insane hard as fuck to try to get English through my skull.

The fact that Korean originates from a mix of Northerneast Asian nomad people of similar origin to the Mongols, and used 한자 until 세종대왕 came up with our alphabet (for which he has my undying respect <3), made it soo hard for English, a German-based language that freaking absorbs from everything these days -_-

Okay, just so this doesn't turn into some immense wall of text ranting.. I'll just say that it came pretty fucking close to makin' me feel like gutting myself at points too. No Joke.

Eglaya

Well, it's not English's fault that it's been absorbing lots of languages since ages. I mean, the Old English is NOTHING like English today. Reasons for that? Well, Christianity and the excuse that there was not enough suitable words in English (result, adopting Latin words), and Norman conquest (French influence). And this is just the first big batch.

On the other hand, this ability to absorb makes English what it is today. It's no longer a language which corresponds to national identity (like Korean or Lithuanian for example). It's a tool of communication. And, I don't know how about you, but I'd rather learn English than Chinese, because aside from it's simple structure, I find Chinese script way too excruciating. =.=

Heh heh, reminds me of the times I began learning English at school. I guess I was 9 at the time. I always used to read "people" as "peh-oh-pleh" XD (cuz, as I've mentioned, in Lithuanian Latin script is purely phonetic).

And so your native language is clarified to me, 태영씨. Or should I say 태영아? ^^

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Kurushimi

Let's see. I speak English fluently, know a bit of French, I know C++ pretty well and know some Java...

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TobiGoodBoy

Just english.

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