Another language i’ve learned a little of is Tagalog. I took a summer long intensive course (it was supposed to be for people who spoke it, but not enough to be fluent, so they broke it into advanced and beginners). It was great, I was able to take it for free since the Monterey Institute of International Studies gave me a scholarship ($1,300.00 USD). I spent 5 hours a day, five days a week in class learning the basics of grammar, and vocabulary. They really focused on speaking through role playing and things like that. By the end I was able to write a page long composition, with only a few mistakes. However, it was real basic stuff (my teachers stressed it was ok to speak in simple sentences). At the end each language course (Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and some others i forget) had to do a small presentation in the language. Everyone liked the presentation that my group did (we had to memorize it…no scripts).
Anyway, Tagalog is a much harder language than Spanish. The word order is so very different, and the verbs work a different way (it’s a trigger system). I didn’t retain much of anything after the course because I didn’t have access to native speakers for a while. I can understand a few things, but couldn’t put together a sentence on the fly to save my life.
If ya got it, **Doob{/b], flaunt it! I have an easy time learning languages and I’m always looking to pick up tidbits here and there for display purposes. You should see the looks on Albanians’ faces when I pull that stunt. I got free beer out of it once!
missbunnytaking off ring It seems we have quite a bit in common. laughs
I had the pleasure of learning Mandarin (Chinese) while living in China. I spent two years there, but the couple months I spent in total emersion (not one person who could speak English. Not even a phone to call home!) resulted in the largest gain in fluency. I then took it in HS, which was a breeze, and in College. Unfortunately, here in the west there’s this emphasis on learning the writing and not actually speaking! Stupid.
I’ve since lost a lot of the language because of disuse, although I assume a quick trip through China would bring a lot back. I can still pick up conversations, which is cool.
Well, I know most don’t consider this a language, but I am fluent in American Sign Language. I was partially deaf as a child and had ear surgury thus preventing my further education in sign language. Then in high school and college I became a translator in classes for mainstreamed students. Ilove it.
I am not truly bilingual, but I am proficient in Hebrew, and am literate in Spanish. As most of y’all know, I spent my third year of college studying in Israel, and when I got there, I had studied Hebrew formally for one year, and had pretty much sucked at it. My problems with the language continued throughout my time there, but after a while, I discovered that most of my difficulties were derived from the fact that I am still practically illiterate in Hebrew, and therefore had a hell of a lot of trouble with exams. I may be rationalizing, but I think this is because most of my classmates (read: 99%) had attended Hebrew school as kids and could already read and write Hebrew pretty well, even if they didn’t understand it. I hadn’t, and was kind of lost after we swept through the alefbet in less than a week. I can only recite the letters in order about nine letters in - I know them all, but the order eludes me. However, I did manage to learn to speak Hebrew pretty well, by simple daily exhanges, chats on the bus, buying my grocieries at the market, etc. Like Germans, Israelis are almost all proficient in English, and they all want to practice it on me! It took a lot of courage to say, “No, I don’t feel like speaking English, can I practice my Hebrew instead?” The weekend before I left Israel, I went to Tel Aviv to buy some tchotchkies for my family, and chatted with some artisans and was complimented on my Hebrew a couple times. And when I passed through the airport, I was able to speak with the security guards in Hebrew for the first time, and they let me go through after only a couple minutes (which is amazing, the airport security guards are INSANE, but that’s another thread).
My Hebrew is not great (I think my level is classified as upper intermediate, or something like that), and it’s getting worse, since I have no one to speak it with, but I can quite easily get around Israel without having to resort to English. And although I was taking Hebrew in school, a lot of the useful stuff I learned, as well as the chutzpah to actually USE the language with native speakers, came from being out on the street and not afraid to make a fool of myself.
I read, write and speak just enough Japanese to make a complete fool of myself. I know a little more than a beginner, and not as much as, say, a second year student, and so I do have some command of the varying levels of politeness and setting-appropriateness, and some of the different verb/adjective endings. I haven’t nearly mastered them, though, so it gets me into trouble.
I do think that if I was in Japan without an interpreter, I’d get along, and I think I would get much better, much quicker.
I slept through 2 years of Latin in high school, but that’s about it. I can swear in 5 languages, though. Comes in handy when the person you’re cursing is bigger than you
Well I live in Southern California so I automatically know spanish. I tried taking French for 3 years in high school but I forgot all but, “Je suis Jason!” or “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi, ce-soir?”
Don’t worry, Kiva. If you are gaijin and LOOK it, you get away with far more than a slant-eye like me ever would. I have about 90% aural comprehension, having spent a third of my life there. Spoken is considerably worse, and reading even moreso. Let’s not even get into writing Japanese – I gave that up 10 years ago when I dropped out of my MA degree program in Japanese lit (imagine Murasaki Shikibu’s “Tale of Genji” in its ORIGINAL 10th Century Japanese! Ayeeeeeee!! My head hurts just thinking about it!!! [library school was so much more the breeze]). Japanese was my mother tongue but it’s been replaced by English (which I learned in a refined British school… and which slips out when I watch episodes of Monty Python and such, much to Obfusciatrist’s chagrin)
You’ll be fine! If you think about it, there’s really only about a few dozen phrases you need to learn by rote memory. Things like “How are you?” “I’m fine.” are more than adequate to get you through most of your stay. If you look at all gaijin, people will want to practice their “ei kaiwa” (conversational English) anyhoo.
BTW I don’t speak Hawaiian, but I do speak pidgin English from Hawaii (a form of creole).
Hehehehehe! So do I, Baglady. I’m in Waipahu. I’d type some pidgin here, but written pidgin just isn’t the same. Where in Hawaii are you? Or are you a mainland transplant?
WOW. I can’t even imagine it. You’re so brave to even try it; whoa. I can barely read textbooks written only in hiragana/katakana. ::sigh:: Kanji looks just plain frightening.
Thanks for the encouragement! I look very gaijin, so hopefully most Nihonjin will take pity on me. This is one of the reasons I picked Nihongo over French–Japanese people generally seem much less likely to sneer at my accent or grammar than the French (nasty generalization, I know).
Danke, gut, und Ihnen? Ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch, aber nicht Grammatick richtig. Wir wohnen in Heidelberg. Es ist wunderbar! Kommen Sie bitte, uns zu besuchen. Tchuss!
As ya’ll can see from the above, my German is horrid. Ich bin ein Dumkopf.
Kyla, that is exactly what I need to do. Like I said, I’m just fine with the day to day stuff like shopping, it’s just that I can’t carry on a decent conversation to save my life. It just seems so much more efficient to use English.
I have some good news to report, my husband met a German lady who is willing to give me lessons! We’re going to get together and let our children play while we speak German. Woo Hoo!
Saxface, I am so jealous of you! My mother is Korean but she only spoke English to us. She thought we’d get confused and wanted us to be fully assimilated into American culture. It’s kind of embarrassing now because I routinely meet Americans who have been to Korea and speak it much better than I do. You know what’s funny? My mom (who lives here, too) has a lot of Korean friends and when I’m over at the same time they are, as often as not they only speak German (not too well, either), so you can imagine me trying to communicate with them!
Thanks for all the great advice, guys. Please keep it coming.
Well, I’ve lived in Germany for 9 years now, and do speak German like a German. But this comes from deciding to speak only German to Germans (not to other English-speakers which has always seemed unnatural, and which I can’t stomach unless for Germans’ benefit.) Being in close relationships with people whose language you wish to learn helps, the closer the better.
It is, btw, a myth that all Germans speak English! I would roughly estimate that in West Germany (where I lived for a few years) about 10% speak English well, 30% can hold a conversation, 40% can make themselves understood at a basic level and 20% speak no real English. In East Germany (where I am now based), you’re lucky (or for your purposes unlucky) if people over 25 speak any English at all.
Don’t forget that when Germans force themselves to speak English to you they are doing you a favor. Imagine or pretend you spoke Portuguese or something else nobody usually learned in school and not English. Then you would be forced to learn German!
I also know/learn other languages to different extents. The best and only way to really get proficient is to be there and spend time with the local people. I studied Czech for 3 semesters, have hardly spent any time there (and not usually with Czechs), and have forgotten nearly everything. By comparison, I was in Lithuania for only a month a few years ago and get by rather well (also thanks to Lithuanian friends I met later in Germany!) But, if you can’t always be there, you can of course prepare and practice in all sorts of ways which give you a head start when you actually are in the environment of your new language.
In any case, good luck to everyone learning foreign languages! Even if it’s only a smattering, it’s well worth it and reminds you that your way of speaking and thinking is not the only way.
I just got off the phone with the principal of the German Kindergarten that we want to enroll our son in. It sounds like not only will they have a place for him, but they also want me to volunteer there! This is fabulous! It’s going to be so cool learning German together, and I really think that Nicholas will benefit enormously from the experience.
BTW, I forgot who asked, but we have no idea really of how long we will be staying here. Officially we will leave Spring 2002, but my husband is looking for a job that will allow us to stay here for a few years more. This is going to sound very strange coming from me (since I never bothered to become fluent) but I feel most at home here.
:::Doing the Happy Dance:::So, not only is my kid taking the first steps to being independent of his Mommy, I am getting the opportunity to meet lots of new people and learn more about this country. YAY!!!
How wonderful, tatertot! I’m sure both you and the Spudlet will benefit greatly from hanging around Germans for most of the day. And it’ll be something he’ll remember (partly, anyway) fondly when he gets older. Viel Glück an Sie beide!
I think you’re headed in the right direction, tatertot. Being around Germans a whole lot more will help. And you don’t want taterkind to be better than tatermom do you? How about hubby? Does he speak German? When I was living in France, my then-boyfriend and I decided to spend one hour everyday speaking French. We felt like idiots at first, but it really did help a lot. We didn’t have to feel stupid in front of eachother and we had a lot of laughs too.
I consider myself fluent in English. I write, read and understand spoken English without any effort whatsoever. But what I like best about my fluency is that I sound just right. It just seems as if I have an ability to pick up the right melody and intonation. I never learned enough French to be mistaken for a Frenchwoman, but that was only because my vocabulary was limited and my grammar a bit shaky. What I did know sounded right. It’s been a while since I actively spoke French so I guess most of it is gone by now , but if I wanted to I could probably pick it up again. Having said that, I want to stress that you must work on the accent. I mean this in a good way. I have an English friend who has lived in Sweden for almost 20 years and he still sounds “wrong” and I think it’s sad. So get yourself a tutor or a good (but picky) friend who will help you find the sounds, and in no time you will amaze the Germans with your perfect accent. Good luck!
Oh! Omedetoh!!! I don’t know how old your son is, but the younger he is, the more he will absorb multiple languages. Throw him in as many language immersion classes as he can. Back in my British-based grade school, all my classmates were at minimum bilingual (English, then some Japanese), while half of them were European and thus knew three, four, even FIVE languages! All this and they were all under 10 years old. In early elementary levels, our language acquisition skills are on HIGH so it’s a great time to learn. Yippee!!
Wot, you nevah wen’ try fo’ write pidgin on top one pepah, li’dat? Is good fun, but! Yeah, I steh on da mainlan’ now, around da California Bay Area. Get planny kine Hawaii folks ovah hea, but I gotta go down San Mateo sai for buy laulau. At least can buy sticky rice easy at da Safeway down da scheet.
Get couple places insai da City (San Fancisco) get plate lunch – ohhhh, so ono! One time, I wen’ had one cravin’ for chicken katsu so bad at night, we wen’ drive all da way from Oakland to da city for buy one plate. Was worth it, but.
Wen’ to da Alameda County Fea las’ mont and ate “hawaii shave ice” – no more azuki insai, but had ice cream, so bettah dan da kine malihini snow cone, li’dat. heh heh