How many languages are you basically fluent in?

[seasoned]

Originally Posted by Erebos

I find the annoying thing with German, French, etc. is the genders associated with all nouns. Every single noun has a gender. In French, it's either masculine or feminine. In German it's masculine, feminine, or neuter. And the genders don't even remain consistent between the languages. ARGH!

Have you REALLY taken a look at German? A female can go from neuter to masculine, to feminine! When I heard, like when I was 7yo, that German had 3 genders, I thought it would be EASY! But the OBJECT doesn't have gender, it is the WORD! So the SAME exact idea can have all three genders(depending on the word used to express it)!

Also, a lot of languages have genders. One has to wonder why though. Sometimes the same word means totally different things if you use a different gender. BTW Some languages, such as Hindi and Arabic, even change for the first person depending on the speaker's sex!

BTW in reference to my using DET for they, sorry, I slipped up. 8-(

Steve

[Erebos]

Originally Posted by seasoned

Have you REALLY taken a look at German? A female can go from neuter to masculine, to feminine! When I heard, like when I was 7yo, that German had 3 genders, I thought it would be EASY! But the OBJECT doesn't have gender, it is the WORD! So the SAME exact idea can have all three genders(depending on the word used to express it)!

Also, a lot of languages have genders. One has to wonder why though. Sometimes the same word means totally different things if you use a different gender. BTW Some languages, such as Hindi and Arabic, even change for the first person depending on the speaker's sex!

BTW in reference to my using DET for they, sorry, I slipped up. 8-(

Steve

heh, that's why English is easier in this sense. No genders. Another thing about German is its cases. Genative/Nominative/etc. They're incredibly confusing...I wish I could learn them subconsciously as I did in English. Seriously who the hell thinks in English "I need to pick out the indirect object in the sentence and know to use the dative form." *claws eyes out*

[clementc82]

Finally I have something that I am really proud of!

I could speak 5 languages - English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay and Hakka (Chinese Dialect).

See the poll of 5 languages? The '1' is me!!

[ragtag]

And I though three was good.

I speak Icelandic (native), Norwegian and English fluently. I know a little German, enough to stumble through a conversation and watch German films without subtitles. I did have French, Latin and Chinese (Mandarin) in high school, but can't say I'm any good at any of them.

[jwz]

Greenlandic and Danish fluently. A little German. English (I write better than I speak)

[teacher]

I love learning languages. I'm not quite fluent in French, but can communicate easily with those who are fluent. I agree with you on the point that learning a language can facilitate other things.

[supertom]

Learning isnt that hard, its speaking thats a problem like with the accent and that esp. if your voice isnt that good or strong

[Bitsy]

Originally Posted by Erebos

heh, that's why English is easier in this sense. No genders. Another thing about German is its cases. Genative/Nominative/etc. They're incredibly confusing...I wish I could learn them subconsciously as I did in English. Seriously who the hell thinks in English "I need to pick out the indirect object in the sentence and know to use the dative form." *claws eyes out*

Eh, German's ok imo. Finnish has 15 cases. By comparison, 4 is pretty simple, or even 6, like Russian and Latin have.