Enjoyable Foreign Languages

Discussion in 'Evolution of Language' started by Hal Pollner, Feb 4, 2020.

  1. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    I'm getting farely good at English.
     
    #16
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  2. Lois Winters

    Lois Winters Veteran Member
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    I do not like German or Scandinavian languages. Too gutteral. English has enough of that. French is a soft language if spoken properly.
     
    #17
  3. Steve North

    Steve North Supreme Member
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    English is probably the only language that doesn't have any gender.... The girl.... or … The boy...
    If there is another language, I don't know of it....

    In French we say..... La fille …. for female...…. and.... Le garcon …... for male..
    Everything in French has a gender... Every object in French has a gender...
    La (which is the) for female and female objects … and.... Le (which is the) for male and male objects..

    Most languages have a gender...
     
    #18
  4. Al Amoling

    Al Amoling Veteran Member
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    How do the French denote the other 57 varieties of gender?:):)
     
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  5. Nancy Hart

    Nancy Hart Veteran Member
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    I had a good friend from Brazil who spoke Portuguese. I thought the sound was beautiful. To me it sounds like a cross between Spanish and French. Her accent, when she spoke English, was nice also.

     
    #20
  6. Hal Pollner

    Hal Pollner Veteran Member
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    The warm, cuddly Romance languages are OK, but I prefer the hard, gutteral Germanic languages!

    Hal
     
    #21
  7. Hal Pollner

    Hal Pollner Veteran Member
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    I recall someone saying that English evolved from German.

    Hal
     
    #22
  8. Steve North

    Steve North Supreme Member
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    German and Yiddish are not the same, but similar...
    Many words are the same and some with a different accent..
     
    #23
  9. Trevalius Guyus

    Trevalius Guyus Veteran Member
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    In my band, I sung in Spanish, Portuguese, Yiddish, Hebrew and English. Native speakers would come up to me, during breaks, and start conversations in their mother tongues. I knew, then, that my deliveries were accurate, but I had to tell them that I was only conversationally fluent in English. I speak some French, but not enough to converse for any length of time. My Spanish is a bit better, as my tree crew speaks Spanish. I can read and speak Hebrew, badly. My Yiddish only contains phrases I learned from my grandparents and mom. I find that straight German triggers a certain antipathy in me. Kind of weird, but maybe it's in my genes.......
     
    #24
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  10. Steve North

    Steve North Supreme Member
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    I speak a fluent English and French.. I grew up in Quebec City where French is almost the only language spoken..
    My Grandparents (Bubbie and Zaida) spoke Yiddish but I never learned enough to hold a conversation..
    It has been many years since then as well..
    I read Hebrew but I can't speak it...
     
    #25
  11. Hal Pollner

    Hal Pollner Veteran Member
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    fairly
    Hal
     
    #26
  12. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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  13. Hal Pollner

    Hal Pollner Veteran Member
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    So did Jackie Kennedy!

    Hal
     
    #28
  14. Thomas Stearn

    Thomas Stearn Veteran Member
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    Did she? I didn't know that.
     
    #29
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  15. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    My Spanish was paramedic Spanish. I got pretty good at asking and understanding the questions and answers that I needed to know as a paramedic, so sometimes my patients would get the idea that they could carry on a conversation with me, and too often, I'd get lost. I can read Spanish better than I can understand the spoken language, but I have never been fluent.
     
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