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Thread ID: 87262 2008-02-14 19:59:00 Who can speak what? rob_on_guitar (4196) PC World Chat
Post ID Timestamp Content User
640342 2008-02-14 19:59:00 I'm thinking of learning a new language. Either Japanese or Spanish.

Anybody else got a second or third language?
rob_on_guitar (4196)
640343 2008-02-14 20:08:00 English is my second language :p

speak Norwegian (obviously) and Swedish, plus some German and Spanish as well.
Jan Birkeland (4741)
640344 2008-02-14 20:47:00 I studied Jap part-time for a year, but long since forgotten 99% of what I learned. Thinking of trying it again or possibly Russian. Greg (193)
640345 2008-02-14 20:51:00 I know English and Kiwi.

Bug dufference butween those two mate. :p
wratterus (105)
640346 2008-02-14 21:24:00 English, and enough German to get by in a casual conversation. Erayd (23)
640347 2008-02-14 21:38:00 Did Japanese until 5th form. It's a good language to start with, as grammar is fairly basic, no worrying about a million different tenses and declensions. Takes a while to get used to the new character sets, and there's no crossover to english. But that's almost a good thing, no room for confusion there. Did german for a bit too, and payed lip service to french. Spanish is cool, because it's so prolific I suppose. Also, it's not too hard to move into italian or french after that. Thebananamonkey (7741)
640348 2008-02-14 21:45:00 Cool, is german very hard to actually speak? i heard it has odd sounds... rob_on_guitar (4196)
640349 2008-02-14 21:54:00 Cool, is german very hard to actually speak? i heard it has odd sounds...I don't find it hard (and the sounds aren't that weird) but some people do have trouble with it. No more than with French though - some of the sounds are different, but the difficulty is similar from what I have heard. Erayd (23)
640350 2008-02-14 21:59:00 German is hard because there are a lot of rules to follow (they are german after all). Sounds are easy as, way more pure than kiwi english, so it just takes a little effort not to get the twang going through. I learned German because I'm a german classical music fanatic. I would learn something else for my second language, as most Germans speak english. French would be ok, because you can speak it in africa... But I'd go with spanish. It prepares you well for other european languages, and you can speak it in South America. The thing to keep in mind though is that different countries dialects don't set you up straight away for fluent conversation. But spanish all the way, I say. Or japanese. If you can read japanese, then you're set up to reading chinese too. Go bridge languages! Thebananamonkey (7741)
640351 2008-02-14 22:21:00 I had a discussion with a German guy who had a French wife. As they wanted to teach their kids both languages, it made things quite confusing. Since German and French both have "genders" for objects - e.g. a table is male, a chair is female etc., apparently quite a lot of the genders are reversed between the two languages, and hence makes it quite a challenge for the kids to remember. somebody (208)
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