Languages.

[surferdude_scarborough]

What is everyones first language and what other languages can people speak? (for certain individuals who remain nameless SMS talk doesnt count)

my first language is english (living in england and all) and i speak some french and very bad german.

[gulfsurfer]

english y un poquito espanol.

[TokyotheKid]

english and nothing else

[babyboarder89]

English and im passable at GCSE level (i hope) in spanish and french. ive dabbled in hawaiian in my spare time but thats all long forgotten!

[TokyotheKid]

hawaiian would be fun to learn

[Totterz]

English but italian is my native language

[drowningbitbybit]

English but italian is my native language

My mental image of Totterz has taken such a battering over the last few days

First of all, I think she is he, and now she's italian too!

[dondiemand]

guess how old she is, you'll kill yourself LOL

first languages are english/filipino

[dazed]

first language would be English.. eventually i learned how to speak the native language of my parents.. Filipino

[sinistapenguin]

I'm English so that's my native language.

I was brought up learning french from the age of 2 so I speak it pretty fluently, I learned German at school, then did it (with French) as my degree and lived in Germany for a year so that's pretty fluent too!.

I also speak BASIC Italian and Spanish (but I do mean basic! before anyone tried to post a reply in IT or ESP!)

[Totterz]

English but italian is my native language

My mental image of Totterz has taken such a battering over the last few days

First of all, I think she is he, and now she's italian too! [/quot im am not a bloke!! i am a girl!! 13 years old!!! lol

[deathfrog]

I can speak japanese

[gulfsurfer]

are u japanese?

[deathfrog]

no but it's my high school credit

[babyboarder89]

woh sinista you speak loads!

[sinistapenguin]

Yeah, my Dad's quite famous in Language Teaching circles, so I didn't have much of a choice!!

Still it comes in handy!

[saffasurfer7]

English as first, then good old Afrikaans & Xhosa (though haven't spoken either properly in about 8 years)

[WaveJunkie]

It's OK, I get to cheeze on myself here . . . *G*

If a person who speaks three or more languages is called a "poliglot" (poli="many" and glot= "throat"), and a person who speaks two languages is "bi-lingual" (bi="two" and lingual= "tongue") . . .

What do you call a person who speaks only one language?


American! *LMAO*

Besides English, I do passable French, wretched German. I can parse out Spanish, and Italian -- on a good day. Enough Japanese to make the school-girls giggle and order a beer, find a McDonald's. I can parse out some Chinese Kanji ideograms, but I can't "read" Chinese. A few words in Arabic.

But I taught ESL -- English as a Second Language -- and picked up a lot of this from students.

[WaveJunkie]

Gonna post some more here, because it's late, dark, and I'm bored.

Call me a cranky old fart, or a stuffed up English Prof. You'd be right on both counts.

I can't parse some of the dialects in here. Someone posted about "rents won't let me surf" and I took off on a tirade about landlord/tenant contracts . . .

Someone pointed out to me that "rents" means "parents."

OK, so that's one part of dialect and comprehension. But what about this trendy cybe-crap that passes for writing/spelling?

H.L. Menkin noted that "England and the US are two countries separated by a common language." When you get other "Englishes" involved it gets complicated. (Anyone ever hear a "Newfie" speak ??? From New Foundland, Canada ??? )

The jargon is fine, even interesting. But for cripes sake let's see if we can spell and punctuate in here!!! Eh?

[sinistapenguin]

Junkie, there are people on here who use pseudo-sms language.

Things like ne1 for anyone, or soz instead of sorry.

This is a personal hate of mine, I can understand that when you're sending an SMS text message it can be a pain to write out whole words and you're limited to how many characters you can have, but there's no excuse for using it on here.

Just learn to type dammit!

Also there is some horrific spelling to be found, I remember one post that I couldn't actually understand, no matter how many times I read it!!

Ah, well, we linguists will be critical - maybe we are just old!!?