Who speaks a foreign language?

[kgarner]

Just thought I would start a poll of languages spoken here at MacRumors. Please tell us your native language and what others you speak. I'll get the ball rolling.

English (native)/Portuguese (other language spoken)

That's Brazillian Portuguese if anyone is interested. I'm a bit rusty, but it would be fun to speak with anyone who knows the language.

[bousozoku]

I dabble in English, Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, Hungarian, Mandarin and a few others. :rolleyes:

[jxyama]

japanese and english. (both native or native level)

very little french.

[AmigoMac]

Spanish (100%), English (98%), German(97%), French (75%), Italian (50%) Japanese (40%) (Studied the language 6 months and still can say some sentences) :)


100 % Perfect
75% OK
50% Could be better...
25% Terrible...

[PlaceofDis]

speak American natively, and i know a little bit of german but its been years, gonna have to brush up on it....

[Rower_CPU]

French, Spanish, HTML, PHP...and some Hawaiian Pidgin' ;)

[Nermal]

speak American natively

I speak English, and can read/write American if I absolutely have to :p

[question fear]

i speak a very small amt of brazilian portuguese, and used to speak french back when i was in high school/college....very rusty now.

[latergator116]

I can speak english and I am learning Latin. I know a little spanish, mostly by picking it up from other people.

[alxths]

I speak some french and some german... I'm much better with the latter as i havent' used french at all in years...

je n'ai pas parle la francais pui-que trois ans

blah, i used to hate it in high school, but now i wish i had payed more attention.

[Blackheart]

English natively and only up to Spanish IV in high school.

[amyhre]

"Listen lady, I only speak two languages: English and bad English."
Bruce Willis in the 5th element.

Yeah, that's me. I know a bit of Spanish and am trying to teach myself Japanese. ¡Que divertido! I'm half French and can't speak it, quarter German, can't speak that either and quarter Norwegian, and no I can't speak it either. It's not that I'm bad with languages, I just haven't tried learning them and my grandparents didn't teach my parents, which makes it somewhat hard. One of my uncles could speak, read and write about 20 languages! I guess I have a long way to go.

[Krizoitz]

a bit of Japanese and a decent amount of Spanish in addition to my native English (American version)

[Dr. Zauis]

English natively
picked up Spanish, Pig Latin, Ebonics, and Newspeak :D :D

[baby duck monge]

english is the native language, pero puedo hablar espanol tambien.

i guess that's really about it. but i do quite enjoy trying to talk in spanish (took a lot of it in HS and here at college, but it's been a while since my last class and i have gotten a bit rusty)

[macka]

Bloke talk (only Aussie blokes would understand)
Twin talk (only twins would understand ;) )
Baby talk (only me and babies understand)
English talk (everybody seems to understand)

How much more comprehensive can you get? :D
Oh and a bit of French talk I suppose (only my girlfriend understands, that's how bad I am) :)

[iAmAzN]

english, vietnamese, and some french (taking a class right now) :D

[miloblithe]

English natively. I speak Russian acceptablely, but nowhere near as well as I'd like.

[applemacdude]

I speak Spanish and English fluently. I know very limited german

[dontmakemehurtu]

:(

[pseudobrit]

English (Pennsylvania Dutch dialect)

and I know a bit of Deutsch, a touch of Francais (I realised how inept my knowledge was last week in Montréal), a slight bit of Russian and I dabbled in Gaeilge enough to get around.

[miloblithe]

Psuedobrit, I'm glad you know some Russian if you're gonna wave that flag around. :)

[jefhatfield]

I dabble in English, Japanese, Spanish, German, Italian, Hungarian, Mandarin and a few others. :rolleyes:

i can claim the first two and the fourth one on your list...as for the others, i am at a loss ;)

[Les Kern]

English natively. I speak Russian acceptablely, but nowhere near as well as I'd like.

Kak BbI Poshevayetye? Ya poneemayou pa rooski. (Kind of stupid looking without ciryllic, eh?

[Dippo]

I speak American, and I had lots of French in school even though I don't remember a lot of it. I am trying to learn Hindi and Gujarati, but it's going very slowly. And finding books on Gujarati is almost impossible.

[MoparShaha]

I speak Farsi fluently, and I can get by in Japanese. :cool:

[Awimoway]

I learned some Welsh. I wanted to know how to pronounce their vowel-less spellings. Turns out Y is always a vowel and W is a vowel. And a lot of the consonants and double-consonants have very different sounds or rules than other Indo-European languages, mainly because they adopted the roman alphabet late in the language's development and kind of made things up as they went.

I don't speak English. Sometimes I can understand it, but I usually have to turned closed captioning on. :D

[scem0]

Living in Texas you get to know a bit of Spanish :rolleyes:, so I could get my point across if I ever went to a Spanish speaking country, I'm not good with the grammar though.

I've taken ~ 5 years of Latin, but 3 of those years were in elementary school, so I wasn't learning at the fastest pace :cool:.

Oh, and english is my native language :).

scem0

[bousozoku]

i can claim the first two and the fourth one on your list...as for the others, i am at a loss ;)

If you know your basic sounds in Japanese, Mandarin is not so difficult.

I wish that Vietnamese and Korean were still written in Chinese characters. It would be so much easier to understand them.

As far as German goes, you should probably be able to make your way in Dutch and Afrikaans too. A little more and Swedish, Norweigen (sp? Norsk!), and Icelandic seem accessible. :D

[Juventuz]

English (Native)
Italian (fluently)
Latin (took 4 years of it)

I learned Italian when I was young, my parents are from Italy. Learning Latin has actually helped me in understanding French and Spanish (well the Italian helped more with that one).

Looking to learn some arabic.

[Giaguara]

spanish (was the most fluent of them) .. italian (still fluent) .. english (getting better.. i wish i learned a scottish accent even though im in states) .. sicilian .. :rolleyes: .. i used to speak brazilian portuguese, and i do understand neapolitan and some finnish (at least in theory ... lived there some time) and written french (i can't speak it and understand like 5-50 % of spoken french) ..

i will start to learn japanese later this year. :eek: :D

[caveman_uk]

English, American :p , a little French, a little Spanish and I know enough Czech and Slovene to order food, buy stuff, etc.

I'm learning Italian at the moment (about 6 months) and it's a lot more fun now than it ever was at school when I learnt French or Spanish

[The_Dood]

English fluently and 70% Japanese. When I was younger, I knew a bit of Hebrew and a bit of Bulgarian. I think once I can reach fluency in Japanese, I'd like to try studying Chinese. :)

[takao]

*austrian dialect (native, similiar to southern germany/swiss dialects..somebody from vienna are going crazy if i talk to them in my dialect)
*german (nativle, 12 years in school)
*english (fluent,10 years in school but my grammar isn't as good as it used to be)
*french (4 (painfull) years...reading _was_ no problem but always had problems with longer sentences/grammar..in the last 2,5 years i forgot a lot vocabulary but i can still read a little bit)

i'm not very language-talented well except algebra ;)

[KC9AIC]

Having lived in Japan for about 14 or 15 years, I know some Japanese. I'm quite fluent in English/American, but my first language was sign language, Signing Exact English variety. It's kind of funny, as that caused me to say that my native language wasn't English when taking my PSAT a while ago. Then I went on to get a perfect 80 (would be an 800 on SAT) on the Verbal section. That was odd! Of course when I took my SAT later, I didn't do nearly as well… :rolleyes:

[MongoTheGeek]

English and a bit of German. I know how to say the two most important phrases in a couple of other languages as well.

"beer please?" and "Where's the toilet?"

I wish I spoke Russian. Then maybe I could understand the SPAM I keep getting. Babelfish seems to think its heavy industrial components, large vacation homes, luxury automobiles, and oddly enough a bridge.

[wordmunger]

English, highschool French, college Italian. The French and Italian are enough to get me into trouble, almost enough to get me out of it. It's been five years since I've been to Europe, though. We'll see how much I remember when I go back this summer.

[x86isslow]

I should know Telugu, I was born in Hyderabad, India. In reality, its 75% at best. English, I am basically native, having lived in the US since 1990.

Je parle franc,ais aussi, apre`s cinq ans de classe en lyce'e.

[blaster_boy]

Dutch / Flemish (native)
English (almost as good as a native)
French (almost as good as a native)
Italian (can still read stuff, but no longer understand at the speed that Italians talk)

I would like to learn spanish or pick up Italian again, but for now, I'm learning python and bash scripting.

[miloblithe]

Kak BbI Poshevayetye? Ya poneemayou pa rooski. (Kind of stupid looking without ciryllic, eh?

Not to mention confusing without cyrillic. It's always hard to decide whether to go for sound or stick to letters that stand for other letters. I had some Russian friends who IM this way, but unfortuntunately I've lost touch.

Otkuda vui znaete russkii yazuik? Ya tam zhil poltera goda. Prepodaval angliiskii.

[jtkellertx]

If you know your basic sounds in Japanese, Mandarin is not so difficult.

I wish that Vietnamese and Korean were still written in Chinese characters. It would be so much easier to understand them.

As far as German goes, you should probably be able to make your way in Dutch and Afrikaans too. A little more and Swedish, Norweigen (sp? Norsk!), and Icelandic seem accessible. :D
I'm pretty sure Vietnamese is easier now...because it has an alphabet w/ modifiers. If you had to remember a different symbol for every word, I'm pretty sure that would be harder to remember.

[krimson]

english, mandarin, engrish
i can speak/understand some cantonese, japanese, spanish

[bousozoku]

I'm pretty sure Vietnamese is easier now...because it has an alphabet w/ modifiers. If you had to remember a different symbol for every word, I'm pretty sure that would be harder to remember.

Easier for the French, at least. If each of those Chinese characters has real meaning, and they're not just there for spelling sounds, it is easier for someone who knows their meanings. The word Viet nam for instance, is just two Chinese characters.

[iShater]

I speak Arabic and English fluently.

I know a little bit of Hebrew, I keep learning and forgetting it. Once MS Word can support UNICODE, I think I will be able to get my Hebrew to a better level.

Used to know how to speak some Bosnian, that got lost.
Picking up words and phrases in Urdu/Hindi and Kiswahili.

[macphisto]

English, naturally. Russian, fluently.

(I guess that comes from living there for a few years.) :)

[Wash!!]

Spanish, English, a little Japanese

[B@SS_SHOCK]

English, Tagalog, Pampanga and a bit 'o Spanish.

[Zaty]

My native language is (Swiss) German and I speak English fluently. I also know some French and Italian.

[wrc fan]

I'm trying to learn Italian, but learning a foreign language is so hard. I don't get why I have trouble with it, when learning computer programing lanuages is so easy for me. I can understand what people say about 40% in Italian (when they talk slowly), but I can not respond at all, except when they ask my name or something else really easy.

I also understand all the English accents really well for some reason (like when other Americans can't understand a English person with a strong accent), I have no problem. Or maybe it's just all the people I know have problems understanding English accents and I'm just normal

[macka]

I also understand all the English accents really well for some reason (like when other Americans can't understand a English person with a strong accent), I have no problem. Or maybe it's just all the people I know have problems understanding English accents and I'm just normal

I've come across this as well, more than once or twice. My American friend cannot distinguish the difference between English and Australian accents. I think that's kinda odd because the English accent and the Aussie accent are so different... :)

[crenz]

Swabian (native) :), German (native), English, Spanish, some French, a little Mandarin. I know how to say "I don't speak Cantonese" in Cantonese. I know how to say "I speak Hainanese" in Hainanese. Very useful, right? :p

[jefhatfield]

If you know your basic sounds in Japanese, Mandarin is not so difficult.

I wish that Vietnamese and Korean were still written in Chinese characters. It would be so much easier to understand them.

As far as German goes, you should probably be able to make your way in Dutch and Afrikaans too. A little more and Swedish, Norweigen (sp? Norsk!), and Icelandic seem accessible. :D


in the neighboring town, there are sicilian fishermen with mexican crews on the fishing boats and their two languages are close enough for appropriate communication

of course the mexican community understands english far better than the native english speaking populace understands spanish but i don't know why that is

[janey]

english, korean, took spanish 1 last semester, taking french 1 this semester, learned a teeny tiny bit of japanese from japanese/anime club at school, know how to write a few things in chinese, a little vietnamese because my dad's trying to teach me...not to mention a little C and some Java ;) :D :p :rolleyes: :o :cool:

[slowtreme]

Maybe I'm missing something, almost 1/3 the posts here claim to speak Japanese! Are you all part Japanese? That's a huge percentage. Just because you like anime or have a Nihon decal or Type-R on your ricer doesn't mean you speak a language. Sorry just seems odd to see so many people in a 50 comment thread that know Japanese.

My parents adopted a buddhist religion, and I basically grew up around japanese culture. I took two years of Japanese in School, spent 30 days as an exchange student, and lived there after high-school for 2+ years. But my Skills are maybe 20% compared to my english skills. I can live and function there, I speak ok, and can read shop signs, but I couldn't read a Japanese newspaper or anything. I probably have an 8-10y/o level of comprehension maybe better. (I havent been stumped by children when talking to them :) ) It's been 10 years since my last time in Japan and I'm more than rusty, just not enough opportunity to use it in the US, until recently when I can d/l some movies and stuff, heh.

[bousozoku]

Maybe I'm missing something, almost 1/3 the posts here claim to speak Japanese! Are you all part Japanese? That's a huge percentage. Just because you like anime or have a Nihon decal or Type-R on your ricer doesn't mean you speak a language. Sorry just seems odd to see so many people in a 50 comment thread that know Japanese.
...


I was wondering the same thing. I was born in Japan, so it was natural for me, but so many here...wow!

I'm surprised that more than one have specified any Portguese too.

[Les Kern]

Sorry just seems odd to see so many people in a 50 comment thread that know Japanese.

One of two things: Mac users tend to be a heck of a lot smarter than the average Joe, or it's simply the fact it's anonymous and you can say anything you want. (Maybe an inferiority complex?)
"I speak Urdu, Russian, Afrikaans, Mandarin, Esperanto, I write Sanskrit, and I "dabble" in the African clicking language." True? No. But you'd never know it. And it depends on what you mean by "speaking". My criteria is 100% understanding of conversational. Sentences like " I like to go on rides in the country" is fine, but not "The reciprocal transitive event was not observed in the original event, so the theory is juxtaposed with the authors mitigating thesis" would be an example of 100% fluency. My gut-feeling is we have a lot of folks that know a dozen sentences. No offense if I'm wrong... but I'd bet I'm not.

[Les Kern]

I'm trying to learn Italian, but learning a foreign language is so hard.

You got that right. I studied for YEARS and still have issues. I had a dear friend who's father worked as an Aribic interpreter at the National Security Agency (And I went there to train as a Russian Liguist) There are "freaks of nature" there that speak 10-15 languages. One day his father told us of a guy who took a one week vacation and learned a new language FLUENTLY in that week. My point is that some have the gift, who have a brain made for that sort of thing. Alas, I do not. Although I had a HUGE desire to be a linguist, I lacked the gift. But man, can I play the guitar!

[Ugg]

Amglish, German 90%, French 25%, and a handful of Finnish phrases. I read German almost daily, Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, Die Ostsee Zeitung, but don't get to speak it much. When I do I end up with a sore mouth!

[Giaguara]

If you know your basic sounds in Japanese, Mandarin is not so difficult.

I have a Chinese friend who speaks .. I don't remember which it was - either Mandarin or Cantonese ... and SHE can't understand when people talk that other (Cantonese or Mandarin). And she's a Chinese who's lived like 26 of her 27 or 28 years in China. :D

[Giaguara]

in the neighboring town, there are sicilian fishermen with mexican crews on the fishing boats and their two languages are close enough for appropriate communication

of course the mexican community understands english far better than the native english speaking populace understands spanish but i don't know why that is

I used to joke halfly in Sicilian (or Italian) and halfly in Brazilian portuguese with a friend who was Sicilian, raised in Germany, and was living in Brazil .. ;)

What is interesting - Portuguese and Sicilian are far closer to each other than e.g. Italian and Spanish .. (or any other combination). They have stayed so much closer to latin, and have some common stuff in pronounce... ok - it takes practise, so the assumption that everyone who understands Sicilian (and there are many dialects over there.. Palermitan and Catanese etc ... and thousands of small villages) would understand automatically Portuguese or Spanish etc is WRONG. I was watching a talk show in Spanish at the home of my ex in the prov. of Messina (Sicily) and his parents came to the room - "Is this in spanish or portuguese?" they did not understand one word. Nor did my friend understand any portuguese as he had lived only in Italy (UK) and Spain.

[bousozoku]

I have a Chinese friend who speaks .. I don't remember which it was - either Mandarin or Cantonese ... and SHE can't understand when people talk that other (Cantonese or Mandarin). And she's a Chinese who's lived like 26 of her 27 or 28 years in China. :D

Yes, there are few words which are the same. China is huge. Recently, they've been simplifying the writing, but of course, they're not simplifying it in the same way that was already done in Japan after World War II. That sort of thing would make far too much sense. Then, Taiwan is not simplifying. :D If it weren't so chaotic sometimes, and funny other times, I would be sad about what my ancestors would think.

[zami]

English and Italian. Plus understand and get by with some French and Spanish. Can understand a bit of Portuguese and Romanian in written form. Plus a little bit of religious Arabic.

[wrc fan]

You got that right. I studied for YEARS and still have issues.

I've taken one year of college Italian, and it didn't help much. I'm thinking of going back and retaking those classes, hoping the second time around I can absorb it better.

I had a dear friend who's father worked as an Aribic interpreter at the National Security Agency (And I went there to train as a Russian Liguist) There are "freaks of nature" there that speak 10-15 languages. One day his father told us of a guy who took a one week vacation and learned a new language FLUENTLY in that week. My point is that some have the gift, who have a brain made for that sort of thing. Alas, I do not. Although I had a HUGE desire to be a linguist, I lacked the gift. But man, can I play the guitar!

Man that must be nice. I wish I were that gifted. I have heard that if you learn multiple languages at a young age it makes it easier for you to learn new languages for the rest of your life. And I don't play the guitar very well at all. :)

[Giaguara]

bouso, I meant she does not understand the other spoken Chinese. She told she was waiting for a bus in Birmingham and saw a group of Asian young people .. she was wondering if they were speaking chinese. .. she heard them talk, did not understand anything - untill one more young person joined them, and the group welcomed the new person with a word that she knew meant "hi" .. :D

[SilvorX]

some francais, not the greatest tho, but i'm hoping to major in french, if not, boo urns lol

[isus]

native: english
french and spanish
i am better with french than spanish... i have taken french 4 (4 semesters) but only spanish 1 (1 semester). i prefer french, but its good to have a spanish background nowadays i guess.

[Doctor Q]

I maintain a web page in English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Nederlands, and Polski. I had each version translated from the English version by someone fluent in the language, and I learned just enough about each language so I can do very minor tweaks. But if a translator put in a joke behind my back, I wouldn't know it!

[blackfox]

You know, I feel cheated as I grew up in 3 countries (UK, Canada and USA) but they all spoke bloody english...it is nice to have your language be the international standard, but I wish it had been more of a necessity to learn more languages when I was young...it crystalized for me many years ago in a hash-bar in Amsterdam, when a local friend effortlessly conversed in no less than six languages, while I struggled with one...the experience humbles...
so I speak:
English (many flavo(u)rs)
Spanish (about 70% proficiency)
Italian (about 30%)
French (about 5%)
...and it has been a struggle...old(er) brains don't work as well...

[Blackstealth]

English: native, Spanish: fluent, French: a little rusty but otherwise okay, Portuguese: working on it, German: enough to get a beer.

[crenz]

When I do [speak German] I end up with a sore mouth!

Now that's interesting... never heard about that before :p

[slowtreme]

When I do [speak German] I end up with a sore mouth!Now that's interesting... never heard about that before :p
I think it was just a euphimisim for 'giving oral sex'

[matthew24]

Ik spreek engels and I speak dutch. :eek:

[bousozoku]

bouso, I meant she does not understand the other spoken Chinese. She told she was waiting for a bus in Birmingham and saw a group of Asian young people .. she was wondering if they were speaking chinese. .. she heard them talk, did not understand anything - untill one more young person joined them, and the group welcomed the new person with a word that she knew meant "hi" .. :D

ni hao! :)

Yes, few words sound the same. The problem is exarcerbated in Japanese where one Chinese character can have up to maybe nine different sounds. :eek: Often, people new to Japanese with just two of the sound choices tend to pick the other choice. Still, I find American English to have more pitfalls, even though I use it every day. Portuguese is an interesting confabulation--as if the French, Italian, and Spanish all contributed to the language repository. :)

[alxths]

"The reciprocal transitive event was not observed in the original event, so the theory is juxtaposed with the authors mitigating thesis"

How can that alone be fluency? It's just a bunch of words that no one would use in regular conversation; i'm sure that there are plenty of foreign scientists in english speaking countries that could construct sentances like that while not knowing words like "hammer."

[Squire]

If you know your basic sounds in Japanese, Mandarin is not so difficult.

I wish that Vietnamese and Korean were still written in Chinese characters. It would be so much easier to understand them.

Not for me.

English is my native language. I was conversational in French before I came over here and mediocre at Italian and Spanish. Also studied Latin and German. Now, though, the only language I can claim a half-decent understanding of is Korean. I still remember walking into a French-Canadian pizza restaurant and staring to order a pizza in Korean.

Squire

[Squire]

... I have heard that if you learn multiple languages at a young age it makes it easier for you to learn new languages for the rest of your life. And I don't play the guitar very well at all. :)

That's true. My son (2) is a prime example. He'll ask me a question (i.e. Can I have some milk, please?) in English and, if I don't respond, turn around and ask my wife the same question in Korean. Both languages go in the "native language" part of the brain. One of my friends put it this way: He only speaks one language but everyone else only speaks half of that language.

Squire

[Frozone]

Southernized English
Some French (I'm currently taking French classes in High School -- Hate em')

[bousozoku]

Not for me.

English is my native language. I was conversational in French before I came over here and mediocre at Italian and Spanish. Also studied Latin and German. Now, though, the only language I can claim a half-decent understanding of is Korean. I still remember walking into a French-Canadian pizza restaurant and staring to order a pizza in Korean.

Squire

Since the reformation, written Korean is based on putting sounds together to form a word. I was once told that there are something like 15 different names spelt "Park", so how can you tell them apart? In Chinese characters, it's going to be a noticeable difference and you can tell the meaning.

橋 is not 箸 but they sound the same in Japanese.

[macka]

I was once told that there are something like 15 different names spelt "Park", so how can you tell them apart?

I have a friend who's Korean and his surname is Park. It can also be spelt Pak, but in Korean the actual characters are the same and they sound the same. Only when it's changed to english, does the spelling have variations.
Another example, Lee, Yi, Rhee, all have different spellings in the english language, but have the same sound/characters in Korean.

[miloblithe]

? is not ? but they sound the same in Japanese.

Just a question. When you (and others) are using computers to read Chinese characters (these are Chinese right?) Do you enlarge the fonts a good deal? It seems to me that those characters would be hard to read the size they currently appear on my screen. Of course, I'm utterly unfamiliar with Chinese. Still, the differences are sometimes as little as one little stroke right?

edit: why didn't those appear as I copied theem from bousozoku's post?

[macka]

Just a question. When you (and others) are using computers to read Chinese characters (these are Chinese right?) Do you enlarge the fonts a good deal? It seems to me that those characters would be hard to read the size they currently appear on my screen. Of course, I'm utterly unfamiliar with Chinese. Still, the differences are sometimes as little as one little stroke right?

edit: why didn't those appear as I copied theem from bousozoku's post?

Yeah, that is rather hard to read, but obviously those familiar with the language probably don't have any issues.

Just a guess, but the characters probably didn't come up because your computer or somewhere in between didn't recognise the characters, it happens if you don't have the font encoding system for that particular language...

[bousozoku]

Just a question. When you (and others) are using computers to read Chinese characters (these are Chinese right?) Do you enlarge the fonts a good deal? It seems to me that those characters would be hard to read the size they currently appear on my screen. Of course, I'm utterly unfamiliar with Chinese. Still, the differences are sometimes as little as one little stroke right?

edit: why didn't those appear as I copied theem from bousozoku's post?

It's always nice to have the characters a bit larger, especially with some characters being very similar although I wouldn't say one stroke. I'm sure there is someone who has encountered a more difficult situation than I have. Thank goodness for high resolution printing. When dot matrix impact printers used a 7x9 matrix, it was not a pretty picture, literally. When I'm reading handwritten Japanese, it's usually much more difficult because people have their own style, as is the case with most languages.

I'm not sure what encoding you have in your browser and in Mac OS X, but I suspect it's not Japanese, so that's probably why the characters weren't copied properly. Since Panther, even my Roman alphabet input has defaulted to a Japanese/Unicode version.

[Awimoway]

Yeah, that is rather hard to read, but obviously those familiar with the language probably don't have any issues.

Just as in letter-based languages, we grow to stop spelling out the words and read so rapidly that we almost guess words by the mere split-second glancing over of them. I'm sure bigger helps, but many can be recognized at that size just based on many intuitions--frequency of character, context, etc.


Just a guess, but the characters probably didn't come up because your computer or somewhere in between didn't recognise the characters, it happens if you don't have the font encoding system for that particular language...

Maybe I'm misreading your post (and if so, my apologies) but that's not the problem. We can see the characters in the first post, but they only show up as question marks in miloblithe's reply. So obviously our computers recognized the characters the first time. There shouldn't be a difference between recognition and composition, should there?

[macka]

Maybe I'm misreading your post (and if so, my apologies) but that's not the problem. We can see the characters in the first post, but they only show up as question marks in miloblithe's reply. So obviously our computers recognized the characters the first time. There shouldn't be a difference between recognition and composition, should there?

Yeah, you're right. It was just a guess, that's why I said 'somewhere in between' cause I'm not really sure. That's what happened in my experience though....it depends on the format of the writing as well I think.
If you check out a foreign website, often the heading or the HTML bits come out fine, but then the more detailed typed stuff comes out weird...doesn't really explain it though I suppose. Maybe bouso can.
Dunno if anybody else has that problem.

[Doctor Q]

Interesting. Safari displays the characters properly in a text box, such as they one you see when you reply to a message, but they come out as question marks in the reply post:
? is not ?
They will come out correctly if they are entered using the form & # nnn ; (without the spaces), where nnn is the decimal Unicode value, which you can look up in a chart like this (http://geekstreet.com/unicode/6/a/).

If I type & # 27211 ; (without the spaces) I get 橋

if I type & # 31672 ; (without the spaces) I get 箸

[Rower_CPU]

Interesting. Safari displays the characters properly in a text box, such as they one you see when you reply to a message, but they come out as question marks in the reply post:

They will come out correctly if they are entered using the form & # nnn ; (without the spaces), where nnn is the decimal Unicode value, which you can look up in a chart like this (http://geekstreet.com/unicode/6/a/).

I've noticed the same thing with character entities like the radioactive symbols. Entering the symbol codes is fine, but any editing afterwards renders them as question marks, since the entities are being displayed as the character rather than the code in the edit box.

I've only noticed this on the new forum software, so I don't think it's Safari specific.

[carbonmotion]

english, german, mandarin, cantonese, tiawanese

[tigerkachel]

Dutch (native)
Swiss German fluently (lived there for 15 years)
German fluently
English fluently
French ok (lived in Paris for 2 years)
Spanish ok (lived in Panama for 1 year)
Papiamento (live in Aruba now since 2 years)
Portugese so so and improving (am working in Brazil since three months)

[tigerkachel]

RPG
C
Objective C
Java
Cobol
Pascal
VB

[macka]

RPG
C
Objective C
Java
Cobol
Pascal
VB

Lol. I hardly think they are 'foreign' nor 'spoken'. ;) :D

[actripxl]

Speak English, Spanish, and Italian, but I would definitely like to learn that new language some are posting. Now what was it again? Oh yeah that's right American! Never heard of that being a language until now guess I'll have to go back to school and learn it, I just my knowledge of English will help me get by. :D

[Awimoway]

Thanks for the unicode tips. Therefore the following punctuation that I've dearly missed should work:

&#8212 em dash

&#8211 en dash

&#8230 ellipsis "..."

&#8216 for an opening single quote

&#8217 for a closing single quote

&#8220 for an opening double quote

&#8221 for a closing double quote

Yet none of them are working. :(

[Awimoway]

Further investiagtion yields the following differences in the code of Doc Q's post:

If I type & # 27211 ; (without the spaces) I get [&#27211] without the brackets
<br />
if I type &amp; # 31672 ; (without the spaces) I get [&#31672] without the brackets

How do you get the pure ampersand in the second version but "&amp" in the first? Because apparently it's the "&amp" that's messing up my punctuation.

But I can get the following with key combos, however I stopped using them a long time ago because they didn't used to work at MacRumors. Not sure what's changed. The updated vBulletin, Safari, or something else?

— em dash (created by option + shift + -)
– en dash (created by option + shift)
- hyphen
… ellipsis (created by option + ; )
‘ opening single quote (created by option + ])
’ closing single quote (created by shift + option + ])
“ opening double quote (created by option + [)
” closing double quote (created by option + shift + ])

Edit: These show up in Firefox, Mac IE, and Windows IE. I guess I can safely use them again. Cool.

[Carla]

Well, I speak Bulgarian, English and Spanish...

[Doctor Q]

To use the ampersand form, you type a real ampersand, a pound sign, the number, and a semicolon. The form & a m p ; is the HTML method for specifying the ampersand character, which is needed in web page source so that the ampersand doesn't appear to be the "leadin" to one of these ampersand sequences (which, for the record, are called "entities"). But don't use the "amp" keyword for the Unicode characters we're talking about here. & # 27211 ; is an 8-keypress sequence.

I'll try your others:

— em dash
– en dash
… ellipsis
‘ opening single quote
’ closing single quote
“ opening double quote
” closing double quote

One more tip: If you use the Preview Post button, your codes will turn into the actual characters, and you must change them back to the codes before you use the Submit Reply button!

[5300cs]

...If I type & # 27211 ; (without the spaces) I get ?

if I type & # 31672 ; (without the spaces) I get ?...

At least they have the same reading, "hashi". The top one is bridge, the bottom one is chopsticks, there is another "hashi" which means "edge", but I cannot for the life of me distinguish the difference between them they sound so similar :confused:

[janey]

korean as a language rocks, but not when i'm telling people how to write my name.
whenever i say it people always misspell it. What a pain in the ***.
Below is how its written properly.

[macka]

korean as a language rocks, but not when i'm telling people how to write my name.
whenever i say it people always misspell it. What a pain in the ***.
Below is how its written properly.

Does your english name sound like your korean name at all?

[bousozoku]

korean as a language rocks, but not when i'm telling people how to write my name.
whenever i say it people always misspell it. What a pain in the ***.
Below is how its written properly.

It starts off with a null sound, doesn't it? I sort of remember how to read Korean, but just.

[darkblue]

I would say that I'm about as fluent in Korean for a person who has no Korean background of any sort.
I majored it in uni...

And übergeek you have a nice name. :)

[janey]

Does your english name sound like your korean name at all?
it does indeed.
the first part sounds like my last name, Lee
the second and third parts sound like my first name, Jane
Problem is there are around 4-5 different ways to spell it by just hearing it pronounced.

[FBP22]

Spanish and English (natively), Portugese (brazilian version), Italian, and Norwegian (not as well as I'd like to yet but I'm surrounded by my fiance's family who speaks it more than half the time).

[Westside guy]

I speak American English natively. I used to speak Spanish well enough (took it in high school, then had some Latin American friends in college) but now I've forgotten ~ 90% of the vocabulary unfortunately.

I took technical Russian in college, but the aim there was to translate written Russian rather than speak it.

Also I know four words of Japanese... if I'm allowed to count "Mr. Roboto" as two of them. :D

(you young'uns won't get that at all)

[Doctor Q]

A friend once showed me how to (supposedly) write the sound of my name in Japanese. I use the marks when I sign notes to coworkers.

[annk]

English and Norwegian (fluently), Mandarin Chinese (studying now, 2 semesters at U of Oslo). Reading knowledge of French. Understand Swedish and Danish w/o problems (hører til når man kan norsk...)

[laukev7]

Native French and English
Highschool Spanish
5 years of German classes

I hope to take Italian classes soon.

And I'm dabbling a bit with Japanese on the side.

[NusuniAdmin]

Is binary a foreign language??

01100001 01110000 01110000 01101100 01100101 01110010 01110101 01101101 01101111 01110010 01110011 00100000 01110010 01110101 01101100 01100101 01110011 00100001

^that says "applerumors rules!"

[laukev7]

No, it's a numerical system.

[NusuniAdmin]

No, it's a numerical system.

Well technically the alphabet is part of a numerical system, alphanumeric, base 36.

[laukev7]

Well technically the alphabet is part of a numerical system, alphanumeric, base 36.

An alphabet may be part of a language, but it is not a language in itself.

[Diatribe]

Geeeez, what kinda threads do people come up with? :D
Anyway, English, German, Spanish, French all pretty much on a native level I'm trying to decide on which language to learn next but it is likely going to be Mandarin. After that I'm done. There is other stuff out there besides languages... :D

[Neserk]

Sadly, I am only fluent in English. I've studied Koine Greek, Hebrew (ancient and modern) Spanish, German.

Interesting tidbit: The reason most of us in the US are so bad with other languages is because we are taught incorrectly. Only a very small portion of the population can learn a second language the way we teach it. (through grammar, etc.) When a second language is taught similarly to the way we learn our first language we have a much easier time becoming fluent in it.

[coldspot]

Just thought I would start a poll of languages spoken here at MacRumors. Please tell us your native language and what others you speak. I'll get the ball rolling.

English (native)/Portuguese (other language spoken)

That's Brazillian Portuguese if anyone is interested. I'm a bit rusty, but it would be fun to speak with anyone who knows the language.

Eu falo português também (lógico, sou brasileiro) :p

[kgarner]

Eu falo português também (lógico, sou brasileiro) :p
Muito bém! Nunca fui para Florianópolis, é bom?

[krimson]

i was bored, so i fired up paint and wrote out my name :)

http://home.earthlink.net/~rc-5/images/name.JPG

(yes, it's horrible. I know :rolleyes: )

[ToastCabbit]

I've got the English skills, maybe a Midwest accent (people swear one exists; I can't pick it up. lol), and am working on the Japanese. Too bad I only took one year of it in college and now I'm going to be living over there for four months! The price of signing up to be a foreign exchange student. :p

[virividox]

filipino, english, spanish, a bit of chinese

[laserbeahm]

My native language is English. I took 5 years of Spanish, but I'm pretty rusty.

[ToastCabbit]

I'll throw another interesting tidbit out here since folks were talking about Korean a while back. Years ago, I used to look into "conlangs" (constructed languages, the most famous of which is arguably Esperanto) because I thought they were so interesting. Little known fact (that I copied from www.omniglot.com since they were able to phrase this much more eloquently):

"The Korean alphabet was invented in 1444 and promulgated it in 1446 during the reign of King Sejong (r.1418-1450), the fourth king of the Joseon Dynasty. The alphabet was originally called Hunmin jeongeum, or "The correct sounds for the instruction of the people", but has also been known as Eonmeun (vulgar script) and Gukmeun (national writing). The modern name for the alphabet, Hangeul (I've seen 'Hangul', too), was coined by a Korean linguist called Ju Si-gyeong (1876-1914)."

From what I've found, King Sejong wanted his people to be educated since a majority of them were not, so he gathered a group of the wisest scholars together to create an alphabet with characters that, when written together, appeared similar to Chinese kanji that were so often in use (and still are today). Hangeul, therefore, is the only language that is considered invented b/c it has a documented progression in history. I.e., it didn't only evolve through oral tradition and mutation.

Disclaimer: This is what I found from a few years ago. 100% may not be correct. Also, I hope I haven't offended anybody with this post! I didn't put this up b/c I think it's a "lesser" language; I think it's fascinating and thought others might find it so, too! :)

[bousozoku]

While Hangul is a written expression of Korean, it is not a language on its own.

[ToastCabbit]

While Hangul is a written expression of Korean, it is not a language on its own.

True. You are right. I didn't think long enough to put "alphabet" instead of "language". Thanks for catching that!

[Squire]

ToastCabbit,
That was a very interesting post. The Korean alphabet is, quite simply, a work of genius. (And Koreans acknowledge that great contribution by King Sejong; there's a massive cultural center and national holiday named after him.)

One additional point is the relative ease of learning the Korean alphabet. In fact, it's so easy, I think a person could learn it in just a few hours! (Conversation in Korean is a totally different story.) And there are far fewer exceptions to rules. It's really quite straightforward.

I noticed, also, that you wrote that you had seen it spelled both Hangeul and Hangul. That, of course, is due to the romanization of the language. A few years ago (in 2000, I believe), the rules of romanization changed. Hence, it is now "-geul" where it was "-gul" before.

Here's an interesting link on romanization. Actually, if you spend a few hours on that page, you might be able to learn to read Korean.

http://www.korea.net/learnaboutkorea/hangeul/revised4.html

Squire

[ToastCabbit]

Thanks for the link and information, Squire. Very interesting! :) I'll check that out soon!

[BaDBoY]

i speak english, i know a little bit of spanish, but i am currently learning japanese OWN MY OWN. Its a bit difficult, but its fun.

[jalagl]

Spanish and English (Native level on both)
A little bit of French - I can actually understand it pretty good if I read it :)

[grneyedjay]

I speak gibberish fluently :)

Rethegead Methegee!

[Doctor Q]

A 13-square-mile area in Lakewood, California, a freeway hop south of where I am in Los Angeles, boasts the largest variety of home languages in the country. This refers to the language that people said they speak everyday at home, as filled out on their census form.

There are 39 language choices on the U.S. census form, and there are people living in this little section of town who speak every one of the 39!

They include, in decreasing order of census count: English, Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Italian, Korean, Russian, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese, Japanese, French Creole, "African languages" (they don't say which), Greek, Hindi, Persian, Urdu, Gujarathi, Serbo-Croatian, "other Native North American languages" (they don't say which), Armenian, Hebrew, Mon-Khmer/Cambodian, Yiddish, Navajo, Miao/Hmong, "Scandinavian languages" (they don't say which - would that be Norwegian, Finnish, and Swedish?), Laotian, Thai, and Hungarian.

What a great place to go and ask for directions!

Edit: I forgot to give credit: information and graphic from the Modern Language Assocation (http://www.mla.org/).

[dubbz]

"Scandinavian languages" (they don't say which - would that be Norwegian, Finnish, and Swedish?)

It's probably Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. If you know one, you will most likely understand the other two, as they are very closely related (unlike Finnish, which is completely different).

Personally, I speak Norwegian (native). I can make myself understood in english too, but I haven't spoken it in like 5 to 10 years. I do, however, write and read almost as much in english as norwegian :)

[bousozoku]

It's probably Norwegian, Danish and Swedish. If you know one, you will most likely understand the other two, as they are very closely related (unlike Finnish, which is completely different).

Personally, I speak Norwegian (native). I can make myself understood in english too, but I haven't spoken it in like 5 to 10 years. I do, however, write and read almost as much in english as norwegian :)

Yes, Finnish has more in common with Hungarian than Norwegian and Swedish.

[irmongoose]

I'm Indian but I speak Hindi only at an intermediate level (living in Japan your whole life does that to you).

Of course, I speak English and Japanese at native level.



irmongoose