How many languages do you speak?

[maomao]

lol.

what confused me in Guangdong was that 'shi' became 'si' and 'zhi' became 'zi'. Now, the latter I can cope with, and the former in some contexts, but when you're buying something from stall or whatever it can be quite confusing. 'Do they mean 14 or 40? I better just give them 14 to be safe.'

Not helped by the fact that South of the Yangtze the hand signal for 10 (1st two fingers crossed) is generally interpeted as 'you want jiggy jiggy?'

Some Chinese typing programmes check what sounds you distinguish before you start so that if you don't distinguish 's' and 'sh' typing in 'si' for example will bring up all characters pronounced 'si' and 'shi'.

 

[spacemonkey]

I can only speak English.

My girlfriend can speak fluent English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and has a working knowledge of French.

 

[sim667]

People always say English is hard, but I reckon they mainly mean the pronounciation and spelling of words that ought to sound alike but don't etc.

I think grammar wise it is a lot easier though - no genders and lots of complicated verb endings.

They said they all found words with different spellings but same sounds difficult to grasp

i.e: their, there and they're

 

[llion]

Welsh and English. Welsh first language, so although my English is fluent i occassionaly find it hard to find the right word in English!

 

[Roadkill]

English, Polari, Gibberish and Bullshit - in roughly that order as I get more drunk.



(That was longdog's line actually, but I like it, and tbh it's not too far from the truth. I can just about hold a conversation in Spanish, but only just. )

 

[LindaR]

School French and German. I can read the equivalent of the Sun in either language, but I can't hold a really good conversation. I took Russian O level, and got a U (B for the oral!), but I can still read it, I'm just crap at cases (which you can slide over in oral, but shows up in written). I've never studied Italian, but I speak more of that than any other language because I've holidayed there regularly since 1987 and try to use Italian wherever possible. Funny thing is, every time we've opened a conversation in Italian in Northern Italy, we've been answered in German... Something to do with us being tall, fair and fairly well-built, I suspect.

 

[LindaR]

Oh, the best thing anyone European can do is study Latin, even for a short while. It gives an entry to so many other languages...

 

[JHE]

English & Spanish

 

[mentalchik]

Just english...........can't say it bothers me !

 

[Fedayn]

I'm learning Spanish and it's difficult! I have a small amount of Swedish (enough to get by) but I have a mate who is not from England and when I first met him his English was poor - he now sounds English - you would never ever believe that he wasn't from the UK - he is accent-less and so good he is actually on the HBOS 'out of hours' message system!

He must have a knack for language which I don't have

What languages do you speak and was it school or something you've learnt after leaving school?

Speak no' bad English, French ranging from conversational to 'fluent' and rudumentary but near passable Italian.
Did french at school, left in 1984, learnt a bit of Italian the past 4 years,