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The Rosetta Stone

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DrFrylock, Sep 21, 2010.

  1. downndirty

    downndirty
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    I speak Spanish fluently, Portuguese a little less so and I'm learning Indonesian.

    Spanish is handy, but in a weird way...I'm a white guy who learned Spanish, as in, was educated and lived in enough Spanish-speaking countries to become fluent. When I speak Spanish, I get the strangest reactions, because they expect me to sound like I stopped taking it in high school, or not understand them at all. Some people find it awesome, and will only speak to me in Spanish and some people get kind of weirded out by it, and pretend I don't know what the hell they are saying. Also, I have had to, more than once, tell some Latinos that I know what they are saying and will gleefully remove their genitals with a rusty bandsaw for some of the catcalls (piropos) they were saying to or about my girlfriend.
     
  2. lust4life

    lust4life
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    Excuse me, stewardess, I speak Jive. And English.
     
  3. katokoch

    katokoch
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    This is my eighth year studying Spanish. Yeah, after this long I can speak it pretty well.

    I decided, since I learned it pretty quickly in high school, that it would be a natural choice as a minor in college to accompany business majors. Turns out it was a good call.

    If anything, the classes have been a nice (easy!) contrast between the stiff and antisocial business classes and actually speaking the language helps considerably at work when you're with Hispanic people that don't exactly habla el ingles.

    That and because all three of my siblings speak Spanish, we can have full conversations around our parents without them having a damn clue what we're talking about.
     
  4. Dirty30

    Dirty30
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    My paternal grandfather was from Spain, and my paternal grandma was from Germany. Consequently, from a young age they competed to see who could plant their mother tongue in my impressionable brain first. Still fluent in Spanish, useful considering I'm stationed in New Mexico now, although they use an archaic dialect here.

    I also picked up enough Arabic on yonder to communicate to those chuckleheads that if they didn't shoot at us, we wouldn't shoot at them.

    And on one notable occasion, I was able to learn enough Russian (in 10 minutes...and long gone from memory now) from some comrade while on leave to pick-up a barmaid. He, the barmaid, and myself were the only ones who spoke it that night. Fortunately, she was easily impressed and he was married. Advantage: Me.

    I can also swear quite impressively (but do nothing else) in:

    French
    Japanese
    Mandarin
    Jicarilla Apache (maternal great grandmother---yeah, I'm a mutt)
     
  5. Croftie

    Croftie
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    I've taken 4 years of Chinese classes in college, plus 6 months abroad in Hangzhou where I took classes exclusively in Chinese. My language level is pretty good, but I'm not fluent. It's waaay fucking difficult to be fluent in Chinese. I'd probably have to move there for a year to become fluent.

    I speak intermediary Spanish. I've taken 2 years in college plus some in high school. Traveled to South America a few times, and my language level is decent enough to talk to cab drivers and understand what they're saying.
     
  6. Beer Me

    Beer Me
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    I come from a French family, in the middle of eff all, but my french stinks. I actually managed to get a BA in French and if I were to go to Quebec today, I'd be able to have an alright conversation but I wouldn't know what the hell the person is even saying. I really have no clue how I managed to pull a BA off.

    A few years back I tried to start learning Spanish, it was a disaster. My vocab was horrible, I sounded like I was trying to speak French whenever I was actually trying to speak Spanish, but it was actually pretty cool to learn Spanish, even if I forgot it all and unable to help when a guy from Spain who spoke close to no English came to my parents farm because his bike's tire was flat
     
  7. Bundy Bear

    Bundy Bear
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    Being from New Zealand I speak a small amount of Maori, the general phrases and a few more. I used to know a lot more of it as a child and if I had stayed there would have actively pursued learning alot more.