weapon69

The English are the most lazy nation for learning other languages IMO!!

So i'm going to evening class to perfect my lovely French

How many languages can ppl speak here.........

JohnMcC

A bit of french, but very rusty. Also a bit of russian - even more rusty than my french.

MattOz

I speak almost fluent French as I lived out there whilst studying it at Uni. I can get by in Germany and Spain too.

Matt

weapon69

B2Z you don't need stella dear

Poor Guy

I can speak French and Italian.

RB5320

almost-fluent French and Spanish, basic conversational German and some very rude phrases in Italian (courtesy of a previous Italian girlfriend!)

Steve

super_si

French and German, GCSE C

XT

Italian
English
German
Greek

[Edited by XT - 1/28/2004 4:16:40 PM]

Dracoro

I speak about a dozen languages.....badly In fact all I know in some of them is hello and beer

I don't necessarily think it's laziness that the brits don't speak foreign languages. It's because most the world speaks english therefore there is no NEED to learn other languages. If most business and other countries spoke French then I'd bet a lot of people here would too.

weapon69

Its laziness! They go to France/Germany/Spain and expect everything to be written/spoken in English too!

Markus

I only speak two languages. English and Bad English

Quote kinda sums be up, but I can also American

Fatman

I can get by in French, but wouldn't claim to be fluent.

Dracoro

And it is! that's how the French/German/Spanish tourist boards attract so many brits. If there was no spoken or written english at all in, say Spain, I'll bet the tourist numbers go down.

Personally for me, the more things in english, the easier it is however I don't EXPECT anything to be in english, hope for yes but expect no. But I do understand that many 'tourists' from here do expect it, however since most people speak english, it's never really an issue.

To a certain extent I'm being lazy not learning more but there's only so many hours in a day and I have more important things to do. If I was living in a foreign country I'd definitely learn the language.

The key to it all is to teach children foreign languages from primary school up. Up to 16 a human can learn many languages quickly, after that the ability to learn diminishes.

Apart from anything else, I was always crap at learning languages

[Edited by Dracoro - 1/28/2004 4:43:34 PM]

Brendan Hughes

French
Russian
Portuguese
Forgotten my German.

None are anything like fluent, unfortunately, unlike many (lucky or hardworking) people I've met. I really wish I was better at them, but official working language has always been English. I really enjoy knowing and speaking other languages, it's just the learning phase that's the problem

Few words of Mongolian

scoobypreza

French and German GCSE but I doubt I could say anything useful now.
Anyone remeber the Eddie Izzard "The monkey is up the tree"??
lol

Does Welsh count?

BlackScoobyWRX

Ek kan ook Afrikaans praat!
Je parlais un peu francais
Ich sprechens bission deutsch
*^^%^% **&% *&^% %^ *^$^^^&*()
Have been know to talk a load of bullocks !!!!

weapon69

I did start learning Japanese but as i'm not going to Japan any time soon i stopped LOL

Sprinterjk

Fluent Spanish, quite a bit of Portuguese, small amount of French and Arabic... I was lucky enough to live overseas when I was growing up so learnt languages quite easily.

V45DSM

How hard is it to learn Russian or even Chinese. Do you have to learn their alphabet? I wouldn't mind having a go at either, so if anyone could point me in the direction of a good book/audio tape/DVD I would be most indebted.

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Fluent French, enough German to get by, and a little Spanish...although I understand more of that than I speak.

Alcazar

Jerome

I speak English and Canadian.

weapon69

I don't think Russian is too difficult-they teach it in some schools instead of French/German.

I read 'Japanese for Busy People' as part of my class (just the 3 alphabets in Japan btw)

Mark Kwiatkowski

Fluent Polish and some German

s6pra

I'm impressed! There is quite a good mix of languages on this forum!



These are the ones I know with examples...

English - fluent
"Is your daughter eighteen?"

French - basic (wasted a chance of using it today though)
"Ma voiture est plus rapide que le votre"

Portuguese - fluent
"Tenho um motor rotativo debaixo do capot"

Spanish - basic
"Dos cervejas por favor"

Italian - understand it quite well, very basic speaking
"Sto andando uccidere un altro scooby"



...and then there's sign language where you greet someone by showing him/her the universal sign of human friendship by sticking your middle finger up.

ajm

open (SN,"Scoobynet") or die ($!);
print SN "Does Perl count? \n";
close (SN);

Dracoro

Now we're talking I can do C++, Java, VB, Perl, C, prolog, the list goes on

weapon69

Geek

hades

English. Ok at French, although some of my creative ways round not knowing certain words tend to amuse the locals (e.g. couldn't remember the word for sand, so explained to pharmacist that "I have a very small piece of the beach in my eye".)

Tend to pick up basics of whichever language is local to where I am on holiday, as I feel you should always make the effort. Therefore, have a faint smattering of German, Spanish, Portugese, and even know a couple of words of Geordie!

jason4656

can speak thai pretty fluent, although cant read or write, lived out there working for 5 years, i wont tell you what the first words i learned were lol