howmany/what langueges do you speak?

Discussion in 'Miscellaneous' started by Guest, Jan 21, 2006.

  1. ancienttomb

    ancienttomb CSI Level Three

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    Lol, I speak Chinese and I found English isn't hard to learn.... :lol:, I'm going to learn French next....then Japanese
     
  2. VManso

    VManso CSI Level Two

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    Dutch, Afrikaans and Flemish are in the Low German family of languages while German is not.
     
  3. Ducky

    Ducky Master of the Moos Moderator

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    English? Difficult? ...my ass. It's so easy compared to German, Finnish (or any other Finno-Urgic languages, such as Estonia, Hungarian...) I guess French and that stuff.

    So how come I had only two grammar mistakes in my English essays but several in Finnish essay? And my English was advanced level? English grammar is damn easy, even it has its hard parts like every language. Swedish is very easy language too (esp if you've learnt English). Of course pronouncing is harder if you are native speaker of English.

    What comes to T.a.T.u. singers... I'm not sure how well English is taught in Russia or how much e.g. tv programme in English they have. It has big affection believe me.

    When we started Upper Secondary School, our class had few of these "laestandians" (It's a religious group that works inside the Lutheran church) and they don't have television because it's a sin. Want to know what their problem was at school and why the quit? English. They basicly didn't know more ENglish that 4th grade kids (we start to study English on 3rd grade)

    ^I know the feeling :lol: And sometimes when you see the word, you know what it means but cannot translate it.

    Articles and prepositions... my nightmare in English language.
     
  4. JayneEmilysRealm

    JayneEmilysRealm Judge

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    English could be easy to learn because there are grammar-rules that make sense. While for instance in Dutch there are hardly any grammar rules and you can use the past simple with the past continuous and the past perfect within one sentence.. and most of the time it doesn't really matter where you put in place or time :D

    It also depends on the learner's native tongue whether English is easy to learn, that's because during the development of learning his own native language the glottal starts to develop towards that tongue (language) and then certain sounds of other languages are harder to pronounce. At least that's what I've been taught at TESL-college.
     
  5. AlexxWoods

    AlexxWoods CSI Level Three

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    1german
    2english
    3french
     
  6. robospanker_fan

    robospanker_fan CSI Level Two

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    My teacher was once doing stuff on words that have two different meanings but sound the same or whatever, and she asked for examples of words that are like that, and I offered her the word 'sex'. She told me to explain its two meanings. So first I said 'gender' and after that I was like, waving my hands around, going, "er, um, you know...."
     
  7. JayneEmilysRealm

    JayneEmilysRealm Judge

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    Well, prepositions are actually most difficult to learn in the English language.. because it's the only thing that does not make sense.. the rest of the language has rules and stuff, except for the prepositions I think.. there are no rules, just exceptions.. blegh.. and then you have to learn all those exceptions by heart.
     
  8. Ducky

    Ducky Master of the Moos Moderator

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    And our language doesn't have prepositions :D

    But even with those, German is so much more difficult.. lots of rules and even more exceptions... it's been driving my nuts for several years.
     
  9. Guest

    Guest Guest

    English is my first language.
    I speak German almost as well.
    I can read and understand Dutch, but I'm not so hot at forming my own sentences, etc.
    I'm starting classes in Russian this summer.
     
  10. JayneEmilysRealm

    JayneEmilysRealm Judge

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    Ohhh I know.. the grammar.. like when to use die/das/der/den/dem etc etc etc.. I'm so happy Dutch doesn't have that!! :D
     
  11. saraXsullivan

    saraXsullivan CSI Level Two

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    I speak english and some french YAH GO ME
     
  12. kazzy

    kazzy Head of the Swing Shift

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    Aww, is German REALLY that hard? I was going to take German as extra lessons but I couldn't find out if they had courses like that at my college. Which was a shame. Though, I wonder which language is harder to learn : German or French?
     
  13. JayneEmilysRealm

    JayneEmilysRealm Judge

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    I think German grammar is harder because of the feminine and masculine rules etc.. but I think French has its difficulties too... but I suppose once to get the hang of both languages they're alright to keep up with.. at least that's my opinion, but then again.. we're taught both languages at secondary school and many times confronted with (since lots of German people come to have holidays in the NL).
     
  14. RBC

    RBC Coroner

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    I think Dutch is harder than German (for people who want to learn it of course). The Dutch language has so many exceptions that I sometimes think whether you can even speak about rules :rolleyes:

    EDIT: I have higher marks for English than Dutch :lol:
     
  15. Guest

    Guest Guest

    I didn't think German was very hard to learn at all. Some of the grammar rules are a bit confusing, but they're really not as complicated as everyone makes them out to be.
    As for whether German is easier or harder than French, I can't really say. I only took like two semesters of French in High school, so I didn't get to any of the advanced stuff. Just guessing, I'd say one really isn't much harder or easier than the other.
     

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