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Aurura_b
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13 Jun 2023, 5:08 pm

I've learned Japanese for years, and am out of practice with it right now. I am trying to actively study it again.
I've learned Spanish for years, off and on, can read it better than speak it. I hope to pick it back up sooner than later.
I'm interested in learning Hebrew and Korean. I've learned both of their alphabets, but, that's it so far.
I've also studied American Sign Language years ago. I remember several key phrases and words, but not much else.


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Raziel
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05 Jul 2023, 3:16 am

German, English, Italian, Danish, a bit of French and a bit of some other language, but nit good enough to hold a conversation in them.
I’m fluent in German, English, Italian, Danish and used to be in French.


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AnonymousAnonymous
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06 Jul 2023, 4:49 pm

I'm trying to improve my Spanish using Duolingo, but there are some parts I want my mom to help me with,
but she is very hard to convince.

(Remember everyone, my mom is Hispanic and is native to Central America.)


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MatchboxVagabond
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06 Aug 2023, 10:35 am

I know English, German and Chinese. Although, the German and Chinese are a bit of a work in progress. I do know enough to be more or less self-sufficient in areas that speak them, but I tend not to speak at all when given the chance, which makes the whole thing slower going that it would otherwise be.



King_oni
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31 Aug 2023, 11:00 am

Been a while since I posted on WP (about 8 or 9 years I think, hah!); brushed up on a few more languages.

Duolingo tells me, I got 12 different courses running; which I from time to time delve in a for a few lessons; those being

German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Chinese (Mandarin), Hebrew, Esperanto, High Valyrian, Klingon. I did Icelandic for a while on Drops. And I'm a native dutch speaker; and English is decent enough to hold a convo. Oh, and local dialects.

I can understand most of them to some extent, speaking is a totally different thing though...

And there's a lot of overlap in some languages; Swedish/Norwegian/Danish I feel are a bit related to German, so it's not too much of a struggle to make something out of it. Just like Afrikaans and Flemish are so close to Dutch

Some of these languages I merely want to understand the basics for, so I can understand memes and references better online. Some just for the lulz... writing Klingon on a job application at the job center, and when they ask about it "yeah, in case y'all got a job opening at Starfleet academy" :lol:



Huckleberry Finn
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19 Sep 2023, 7:51 pm

DeepHour wrote:
I read quite a bit of French literature at school in the mid-1970s, and understood pretty much every word of it. Maupassant, Balzac, Sartre, Racine, Moliere, and the author of a charming story called 'L'Enfant Et La Riviere', whose name I cannot recall. I think I might struggle with those works now, even with the aid of a dictionary. :(

L'Enfant et la Rivière est un roman d'Henri Bosco...
Good !
You just got the stress position wrong on a word, it's not easy to write at all, easy to make mistakes.

I understand some languages.
But I'm not good at writing and talking to her. *Then it depends on how free I am mentally because if I'm not under stress, things change for the better.

I once read an article in Portuguese, thinking it was my language.

I only noticed it later...

I understand Spanish.

French enough if Parisian, what they speak in the south of France is difficult.

English I think a little.

I understand Romanian (As a child I saw their state channels, as well as Koper, and Antenne 2, and BBC I don't remember the number, Swedish TV.

In Italy we have 12 official languages.

And about twenty regional dialects.
I know a lot of words from other dialects.

The Neapolitan language
In the region where they are now many speak in their dialect thinking they don't understand them.

But for me it's simple instead.

Then the social fabric here is multicultural so it's easy to find yourself close to people who speak any language...

some I don't understand.

Others I would like to understand but they are as difficult as Arabic.

In reality I can't say for sure because I've never dedicated myself to it, and if you don't study something...
I'm surprised when I understand a language that isn't mine.

Arabic, Chinese and Russian would be interesting, but they are just thoughts in the wind, and he takes them away with him (I'm afraid)


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Missmagoo
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23 Sep 2023, 1:20 pm

My favorite topic :heart:
Mother tongue Italian, I speak fluent English, French, Polish, Romanian. They say my Russian is pretty good but I am not satisfied. I can cope with German and Serbo-Croatian (sorry, I am old school). I studied Latin for 5 years. I studied a bit of Bulgarian and Old Church Slavonic. I understand quite well Spanish. I am ok with grammar rules, but I prefer to learn from listening. I am quite good with accents. After almost 30 years, Slavic languages still “move” me. I am in love with Slavic languages, to me they’re the most beautiful symphony. I’ve been in love with words all my life - their sound and their aspect on the page. And I also love etymology



Huckleberry Finn
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23 Sep 2023, 5:04 pm

Good!
So you're from Florence.

Stunning city.
The word does not make that reality.

I wanted to go back, after all I'm not far away, a few hours away from me.

If you studied Latin, did you go to our classical high school?

Sorry because I'm interacting in poorly written English.

And you have some excellence.

Romanian is perhaps easy for us Italians.

But you write fluently that it is a very high level that I do not possess.
French grammar, but I haven't tried my hand at other languages either because things have to be done with 100% effort.

Polish...well, it would be difficult for me, like German, even if once for work I had to deal with some Germans (also) and I uttered a sentence in German and they were silent, and looked at me with interest.

You mention several languages, Russian I have a cousin who lives in Russia.

He has a mental gift, he learned it very quickly.

In a forum I was discussing it thinking it was very simple.

But people told me it wasn't.

In reality, I think that if a person is able to learn languages very well, he can learn more or less all the main ones.
Of the Italian ones I can understand several, my father had to deal with many people, and from many regions, he understood the strict Calabrian language.

We jokingly call it extreme Calabrese, because it is quite fast, and full of lexical difficulties.

*He was good at understanding any language, even the strangest.

Even the Korean which I honestly tried to translate and it doesn't seem linear to me, as if it were made up of paradigms and stories, so each sentence has a story in itself.

Slavic languages are interesting.

You have uncommon abilities.

An Italian contact of mine who speaks Swedish is a professional translator.
He was told that he spoke it quite well.

From Asperger his key to understanding the answer was:-"you have to work hard to be at their level"

So he started studying it again perfectly.

The Arabic language fascinates me.
But as I wrote before: you need to commit and study in the right way, and writing that I like doesn't matter that much.

An Iranian girl was passionate about Italy, she knows our poets and writers.

I remember that she asked me a lot of questions about Pier Paolo Pasolini.
<>
In addition to the optimal study of languages, perhaps you possess a quality that I described as absolute musical ear.

And perhaps you have an uncommon memory for everything.

<>

You know, every 14 days a language disappears in the world.

We will lose about another 4,000 by 2100.

Some don't even know each other officially.

<>
I think the human brain is naturally wired to learn any language.

<>
Etymology, nice to read about people who deal with this.

<>
You are the second person to write from Italy.

Scusami per il mio inglese ,che è pessimo, spero tu riesca a capire almeno qualcosa della mia risposta.

Un cruccio : il non riuscire a esprimere che una minima parte di quello che vorrei descrivere.


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Lost_dragon
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23 Sep 2023, 10:31 pm

My native language is English. I know some German but I'm not fluent. Lately I've been practicing. I've played video games in German and I like to listen to German songs to see how much I understand. Occasionally German is spoken in my dreams.

I went on a date recently with someone who used to live in France. She was telling me a bit about French and what it was like learning English. It was interesting. Turned out we were both avid fans of the same book series and she read the books in French first and then later in English. So we talked a bit about that. I would like to know how the French translation handles the reveal that one of the characters can speak French while the others cannot. Perhaps I should ask about that in future.


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Huckleberry Finn
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27 Sep 2023, 7:26 pm

The French are very proud of their language.

Decades ago, both French and German were spoken in Italy.

Not just in the border regions.

The funny thing is that many Italians speak English with the phonetics wrong.

A poorly said sentence is ridiculous.

They don't notice.

However, the phonetics change in English-speaking nations, and the words and abbreviations are also included.

On Monday I greeted a tourist thinking he was British, but he was French (not by birth).

I used English phonetics.

With lots of abbreviations.

The funny thing is that he answered me in Italian, in reality he was Italian and had lived in France for decades...
He was dressed simply.

Here it seems like we go to a party or a fashion show to get out of the house.

I like the French, because they do simple things.

Here everything is so technological: if they can, they don't use technology like we do.

They use ancient names which, when pronounced in French, are wonderful.

They don't care about how you should look: you're fine just the way you are.

They go on holiday and use maps and not smartphones, or ask people for tourist directions.

And we only use technology.

<>

Perhaps a nice narration.

In Italy actors are dubbed.

Sometimes with very beautiful voices.

I read months ago about the difficulties of dubbing a film that was relaunched towards success in Italy.

It was Mel Brooks' Frankenstein Jr..

The voice actors couldn't find the effective words for the lines.

And then they invented the lyrics, and changed them.

They asked permission first.

The Italian dubbing was special.

If I link a scene you will never find the correspondence in the original language.

In our country that film is considered a masterpiece.

It is always broadcast during important holidays such as Christmas or New Year.

People still watch it...
And he knows the lines by heart.

Except that almost nothing matches the original ones.

Instead, generally in Italian films there is a mix of all languages ​​and dialects because they are incisive.

So I honestly couldn't even say how many languages ​​I understand.

The answer would be many.

Speak few fluently.

Yesterday I was listening to a news program in an original language: I understood everything.

If you had to translate an Italian film you would find yourself in serious difficulty.

However, I don't understand how literary geniuses can be translated if the genius is in the words used, there will never be the same assonance and value in a translation, whatever it is and whichever cultured translator or poet you turn to.

I should ask a poet friend of mine who has had her first publications in recent years what she thinks...

The codes:

The Nowell.


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Forests precede civilizations, deserts follow.
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