Job Discussion Forums

dearbarbie · Joined: 05 Sep 2004 Posts: 317 Location: Tianjin, China

i am a native english speaker and fluent in french. used to be good at Ukrainian and can speak a bit of Spanish - want to get back into these languages! used to also speak German

marblez · Joined: 24 Oct 2004 Posts: 248 Location: Canada

I do not speak anything other than English, and I feel I may be the only one here! I am not good at speaking and listening to other languages. I am in Mandarin, and am finding it VERY difficult. My Hungarian is awful. I can read most French and did alright in basic Japanese. Overall, I am terrible at it. I really admire the advanced students I tutored - I couldn't have done that well in a foreign language!

foster · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 485 Location: Honkers, SARS

Fluent in English and French, having been a French teacher for 7 years and studying in a very intensive Immersion course throughout Uni.

Have studied Japanese and some Cantonese but can barely introduce myself in either language! Very Happy

gabes65 · Joined: 13 Aug 2004 Posts: 15

Native English speaker. Intermediate-level Armenian learned while in the peace corps. Very rusty Czech learned 10 years ago while in the army at DLI.

Boy Wonder · Joined: 29 Mar 2004 Posts: 453 Location: Clacton on sea

Semi-lingual.....between grunts I utter a couple of syllables every now and then!

yaramaz · Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:24 pm Post subject:

Quoth Iman:

ImanH · Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 214 Location: Istanbul

maszia · Joined: 10 Jan 2005 Posts: 12 Location: Vallclara, Spain

Fluent Spanish and German, and pretty good French and Catalan. Fairly solid Dutch and Greek. I used to speak reasonable Japanese but it's slipped and now I can barely scrape a sentence together.

marblez · Joined: 24 Oct 2004 Posts: 248 Location: Canada

I hate the fact that my parents never passed on their languages to me. My father is from Quebec and my mother is from Hungary. I wish I was fluent!

Tamara · Joined: 24 Jul 2004 Posts: 108

I speak English as my first language. I can hold my own in a conversation in Spanish. I'm trying to raise the little one to speak both. Seems like she goes in spurts: sometimes mostly English, other times, mostly Spanish. Right now, she's on an English kick, so I'm really trying to push Spanish. I'm sure English will always be her "best" language because my husband doesn't speak Spanish, so our home is really an English-speaking home.

iraqikiwi · Joined: 11 Jan 2005 Posts: 16

If I can count 1 to 10 in the New Zealand native language, Maori, and say 'kia ora', does that count as an official language? ....lool..

Ahhh, well, I speak both Arabic and English. The problem is I still don't know what one should be my first and second language Confused

I wonder if people can have two first languages rather than a first or second....heh.

Sara.

The G-stringed Avenger · Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2005 3:36 pm Post subject:

English and Japanese. I spent 4 years studying Japanese, 2 of those in Japan, and can comfortably have a conversation and handle most any situations. My writing and reading is slowly declining through lack of practice since I left, but my speaking is still carrying on great.

Now onto Chinese!

guangho · Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 476 Location: in transit

I'm fluent in English and Hungarian. Can struggle along in Hebrew if you put a gun to my head. Maybe.

Sweetsee · Joined: 11 Jun 2004 Posts: 2302 Location: ) is everything

English fluent,

Japanse, French conversational,

Spanish functional,

German a little.

zaneth · Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2005 1:19 pm Post subject:

Speak Hebrew with a gun to your head? What an unfortunate turn of phrase.

I am and may always be monolingual. My Russian will be functional someday. I sometimes spontaneously talk to myself in Russian. I can spend an evening with Russian speaking friends if they are especially understanding and patient.

My dreams of a bilingual daughter are slipping. My wife speaks English with me but I am hardly ever there. There's still hope, but it's dimmer than before. There's something painful about my daughter speaking to me in Russian. And something so glorious when she uses her few words of English. No sweeter sound. I guess I'll have to adjust, but not easy.

I am American but I know plenty of monolingual Russians, or ones who know about as much English or German as the average American knows French or German or Spanish from when they were in high school. It's a big country and foreigners are usually a long way away.