I'm barely fluent in English, but I'm also fairly good at broken French and Spanish. I spent a week in Mexico, where I learned such useful phrases as "lo siento" (I'm sorry) and "ocho mas cervezas por favor." Towards the end of that week we were hanging out with some American girls we met, and one of the guys that was with us couldn't speak anything but the pidgin English we'd been using. No matter how many times they told him they were from Oregon, he kept gesturing wildly and saying complicated words loud and slow. It worked out that night because they thought it was cute, but ended up getting him patted down when we landed in "HOO-stun" Focus: Do you speak more than one language? Any funny stories involving the language barrier? Alt focus: Does anyone else get confused when they hear two obviously foreign people speak to each other in English instead of their native tongue?
FOCUS: Haha, perfect timing. I speak Spanish pretty well, studying it at uni. However i'm in Valencia, Spain for a couple of weeks at the moment, and socialising with the locals is pretty...interesting. Its amazing how much you learn from a couple of hours chatting with locals compared to a whole year of Spanish classes in the UK. University learned Spanish =/= Drunken slang Spanish I finally understand what people mean when they compare learning a language and driving a car. You learn to drive to pass the test, then you actually learn to drive afterwards in the real world. Its the same with languages. As for funny stories, a Spanish girl I know got really confused when she arrived in the UK, because everyone kept saying 'Cheese' instead of saying 'Thank you'. (She didn't speak very good English and was trying to learn) People were actually saying 'Cheers' but because she was too shy/embarrassed to ask anyone until she met me, she remained under the impression that saying 'Cheese' was British slang for quite a while. Alt-Focus: No, but whats even more confusing is when the English speaking Spaniards here in Spain speak to each other in a bizarre combination of English and Spanish.
My school is paying for me to take Spanish classes since I get a lot of students that have English for a second language. There are situations of awkwardness where knowing Spanish would be easier than the slow English and gestures we resort to. However, this isn't working out. I took 3 years of French in High School and another two in College. I know French pretty well, for all the good it does me at the moment. What happens now is confusion between the two languages when I want to say something. During mock conversations, I'll start in Spanish but if I have trouble remembering the words I want it is the French that comes out. Very frustrating. Focus: I have a student from South Africa that speaks with an accent that sounds somewhere between English and Australian and my ears refuse to hear the words. We often have conversations where I have no idea what he is saying. One class we were giving presentations and this kid is talking and it sounded like he was saying "Coud Fourg". Took me and the class 10 minutes to decipher "Code Forks" (programming term).
I became friends with a girl in high school because I spoke just enough Spanish to understand most of what she was saying and she knew just enough English to understand me. 8 years later and she speaks perfect English. I , on the other hand, learned I cannot retain anything past Intro to Spanish.
I've posted about this a couple times before, but when I was about 14 in high school I decided I wanted to one day become a polyglot. Anyway it's 6 years later at this point I'm fluent in English, French, and Arabic. I used to be fluent in Spanish but it's been 4 years since I've used it so I can't really claim that anymore, although I could probably have it back with a month or two of practice. I have some basic proficiency with Moroccan Arabic, Moroccan Berber, and Farsi/Persian. I can't speak but can read and understand Portuguese and Italian pretty well (enough to pick up a Newsweek and follow the main points of the article). I've tried teaching myself Latin, Esperanto, German, and Pashto, but never got into any of them enough to learn much. Honestly if you're fluent in a foreign language, even if it's not a native fluency, it's more of a headache to switch between two languages than to just stick to one. If you're foreign and you use English all day long, it quickly becomes the easiest way to think and formulate thoughts. Not to mention a lot of people that look like they're from the same place might not be at all, e.g. an Egyptian and a Jordanian, Korean and Chinese, etc. that would struggle to understand each others' language or dialect.
While in Costa Rica a few years ago, we went out to dinner, and a girl had lipstick on so she wanted a straw to drink her water with. Little did we know that the spanish word for straw was slang for penis. Imagine the waiter's suprise when this 15 year old girl plainly stated "I need a penis, please"
I am great with accents, and can imitate people's accents damn near perfectly after speaking with them for an hour. This is a lot of fun to do with Australians, as for some reason they don't catch on that I am speaking just like someone from their town. In Germany most people didn't realize I was an American until they asked my name. I just can't bring myself to say "PahhTreek" to fit in. The reason I am so good with accents is because I used to have the worst Boston accent you can imagine, even though I lived on Cape Cod. To make things worse, My mother was friends with a lot of Portuguese immigrants, so I picked up their accent too, so I sounded like a retarded fisherman. My accent was so bad that when we moved to Connecticut, I had to go through accent therapy because no one could understand me. When you learn at a young age to imitate the way people speak, it really sticks. I have had a lot of language instruction. I started Spanish in 7th grade, and continued along through 12th grade, including outside the classroom "real world" tutoring with a language teacher at my mother's school. Basically this involved going to his neighborhood, and interacting with all the people in his family, at markets, and other gatherings. As such, I speak Spanish like a Los Angeles Mexican. I lived in a really Mexican town for a couple of years, and I really got back into the swing of Spanish which was nice. But occasionally I have one of our departments coming in to ask if I can speak to a Mexican dealer. I tell them to fuck off. I minored in German at college, and lived there for a year, so I can speak that fluently, and with a Berlin accent. While living in Germany I started instruction in Swedish, as I was dating, and then would end up marrying a Swede. I have issues with some pronunciation, as slight tonal sounds can change the meaning of a word completely, but I speak it at home, and with my nieces and nephews and in-laws. Funny language story involving a friend. I have a friend who was in my German classes who loved unusual words, and bought a 1940s book of German slang that was published in America. His favorite word in the book? Tussi, which according to the book meant "dame". As in, a "couple of dames walked into my office, they were looking to hire a PI" So he waited until the perfect time to use it, and called a bartender "Tussi" Well, Tussi doesn't mean "dame". It means slut.
I witnessed this exchange in a convenience store (spelling is phonetic): Hispanic guy: "MEErit." Paki cashier: "Cartoon?" HG: "MEErit!" PC: "Cartoon??" This exchanges goes on 4-5 times, and gets louder each time until they finally reached an understanding: the hispanic was asking for Merit cigarettes, and the cashier was asking if he wanted a carton. Press 1 for English.
I am American, so I speak English. I also can speak southern and redneck if the occasion pops up. I took 2 years of Spanish in high school and 2 semesters of it in college. One of the guys who rents one of my parents' rental houses is from Honduras. He has an accent but is completely fluent in English. He told me, "I can speak your language. Why can't you speak mine?" He's fast becoming a family friend and he talks to me in Spanish constantly. I have to get him to slow down a lot to understand him, but it is slowly coming back. He'll probably be a housemate with me starting this summer so I may become fluent in the end. I am a language partner to several Saudi Arabians, and I'm picking up a few Arabic words here and there. The OTHER housemate this summer is a Saudi, and I'm becoming pretty good friends with one of my conversation partners. I doubt I'll become fluent in it, but I may be able to understand hunks of Arabic after awhile.
Me llamo es Antonio, del fuego, mi bonita. Hay un fiesta en mi pantalones, y los mujers estados invitados. Bebemos cervezas en la cantina! Vamos al mustrar burro! Basically, I know enough Spanish to get stabbed or find a hooker. Then get stabbed by the hooker.
I speak both English and French and should be completely bilingual however French was always my goof-off class. I can have a conversation but I feel slower than I should be or my conjugation can be wrong. I keep meaning to go over some basics or start reading more in French to practice. All I can remember is one misunderstanding that happened to me at my old work, on a day when I was particularly bored out of my mind. There was a new girl who'd come by every once and awhile to use our cups, and we had started talking a bit. As she's kneeling by a counter where the cups are kept I'm talking to a client who had decided what to order. So I turn to the new girl and point to where she is and (all in French as usual) say "I need a cup." Now because I was bored out of my mind, for some reason I decided to say this in a friendly sing song voice and accent all the words in a weird manner. What she heard instead of "Cup" was "Cul", so she thought I was telling her I needed an ass, and was pointing towards her to indicate specifically her ass. Her eyes went a little wide and I could tell something was wrong so I repeated myself normally. "...Cup? I need a cup?" She started laughing and explained what she heard. I assume that this is what I looked like: EDIT: She couldn't see I was serving someone.
I'm South African. We don't sound AT ALL like Australians, We have actual pronunciation of words, and weren't a penal colony. Other than that, ek kan n' bietjie Afrikaans praat. Ha. My school didn't teach Spanish or French, just English, Afrikaans and isiZulu. If you think Afrikaans is bad, try isiZulu - it is beyond awful. It is crap to listen to, since it's culturally correct to shout from one hilltop to the next because it's apparently rude if anyone within a square kilometer of you can't hear your conversation and three times as bad to write or speak, since there is fuckall written material to try to learn from, as it was a purely spoken language until about 1980. Fuck.that.
That's what you think. Other females would beg to differ. And don't be a Bitter Betty just because I like it more than I do you. I see your nemesis is back. Hasn't your head exploded yet?