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Stupid Kids! Ninos Estupidos! Dumme Kinder!

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Beefy Phil, May 17, 2010.

  1. Pandaman

    Pandaman
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    Should still be lurking

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    I'm Danish but moved to the US when I was 3 and was thrown into an American pre-school. My mom said I didn't speak to other American kids for about a month, and then all of a sudden I was fluent. I wish I still had that ability.

    So I speak fluent Danish and Swedish. I can also read Norwegian, but some of the Norwegian dialects are impossible to understand when spoken.

    I also speak German fairly decently and could use it for business purposes if I needed to.

    I'm living in Geneva now so my French has gotten quite good, and I use it often in my studies (International Relations) as there are a lot of French academics in that field. Also some older diplomatic texts/treaties, etc. are only in French.

    What I hate about the French is that most of them will not even try to understand you if you speak English. Sometimes if I can't figure out how to say it in French I'll try in English and use gestures and everything, but their eyes are just so empty from that point on.
     
  2. NeonWraith

    NeonWraith
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    Village Idiot

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    It's a pride thing. French politicos/civil service are quite well known for speaking fluent English but insisting on having a translator present whenever they're in England (My mother's ex customs & excise, and used to deal with the French counterparts a fair bit, so I heard a lot of compaints about things taking forever as they had to wait for a translator to arrive)
     
  3. redbullgreygoose

    redbullgreygoose
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    My mom speaks fluent Italian. I wish she would have just spoke it to me when I was a child. I really do. They say that's the easiest way to learn it, aside from just diving head first into the culture. That makes sense. I mean, almost everyone can speak at least one language well enough to communicate with others by the time they're 3 or 4. If someone would of just said "This is that in english and that in Italian" it would of been so easy. I've picked up a moderate amount of Spanish living in Miami. But I'm very very far away from being able to speak it fluently. I can kinda sorta understand a conversation in Spanish if I'm just listening. But I can barely do that, and I can't speak it for shit.
     
  4. Durbanite

    Durbanite
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    Eeyore

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    I can speak English and some Afrikaans, which is a mix of mostly Dutch and German. Sadly, my understanding of Afrikaans has waned a bit since high school, but I can still pick up an Afrikaans newspaper and understand most of it. I definitely prefer English, though, and we don't speak anything but English at home (considering my dad is English and has zero command of Afrikaans).

    The thread title in Afrikaans would be Dom Kinders!.
     
  5. SwampDonkey

    SwampDonkey
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    I would have been able to speak Italian if it wasn't for mean American kids in the 1920's. My grandfather immigrated from Italy to New York and didn't speak any English when he got here. From what my dad told me, my grandfather was teased by the American kids so he learned English and never spoke Italian again. My dad and uncle said they only heard him speak Italian once or twice in their lives. Over the last couple of years Gramps' new wife has been researching my family history and he has become much more comfortable with his heritage. When I was visiting him last year, he was telling me about Italy and I asked if he could still speak Italian. He then went off for about ten minutes speaking Italian like it was music. It really made me wish he had taught my dad so he would have taught me.
     
  6. ghettoastronaut

    ghettoastronaut
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    I was in Munich two nights ago, coincidentally the same night as the Champions League final. I was in a bar next to a guy from Milan, and I was able to speak with him in Italian for a bit. Not very well, mind you, but enough to get a few free beers. So that went well. I learned the language in a first-year university course I took for fun.