DUers speaking foreign languages ??

[Angela Shelley]

I just posted the question "which Democratic candidates speak a foreign language?"
The answer came promptly "Dodd and Richardson speak Spanish".

What about DUers and foreign languages? Is your fluency level high enough that you can read and understand newspaper articles written in that language?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2334541

[magellan]

1. Only if the article uses nothing but bad words

Where epithets are concerned, I'm multi-lingual. :)

[SharonAnn]

68. That's funny. No one will teach me the bad words in Spanish so my Spanish is very "clean".

Of course, that means I don't understand some things but I figure I didn't really need to understand them, anyway. My Spanish is usually with my in-laws, in business, or shopping. So, it's better if I don't know them.

[magellan]

75. My best friend taught me the bad words

She thought it'd be a fun way to start to learn Spanish and she was right. Unfortunately we never got much beyond that. :)

[Le Taz Hot]

96. Funny, those are the ONLY words

I know in Spanish. And I speak them quite fluently if I do say so myself. :evilgrin:

[Blue_In_AK]

2. Sad to say, I don't speak any foreign language

although since I took Latin in high school I do understand (vaguely) several of the Romance languages. My grandsons (kindergarten and third grade) are both in Russian immersion in their school, half days are taught entirely in Russian, which I think is a great idea.

If I were going to learn a language now, I think I'd go for Arabic.

[Igel]

3. Yes.

Newspaper-speak is fairly simple and straighforward, assuming you can handle trendy and country-specific words. (Ok, op-eds and the culture pages can get a bit hairy, but not too much so.)

[harun]

4. Does C++ count? (n/t)

[Angela Shelley]

7. Sure it counts,

as long as you can write a love letter in C++

[mudesi]

70. I see your C++ and raise you Prolog

Prolog: Worst language ever.

[kineneb]

5. German

degree minor + 20 years

I often listen to Deutsche Welle, and read the newspapers online. My speaking fluency is a bit rusty, but it kicked in after I was in Germany for a day (several year ago).

[Angela Shelley]

6. Das ist wunderbar, oder?

[Matariki]

8. oder was?

[Angela Shelley]

12. Wunderbar,

oder superaffengeil?

[DFW]

104. Superaffengeil abgebildet:

[Kingshakabobo]

19. I speak Benny Hill German.....

She's got the klein a hipsen and the gross a titsen.....

[Angela Shelley]

22. Is that a "recorded language"

which can be passed on to future generations?

[Kingshakabobo]

25. Sure. It's on DVD.

Das computin machine is nict for finger poken unt mitten grabin (a sign my dad had on his first computer).

[babylonsister]

32. LOL! nt

[Darth Lenore]

20. Me too!

I had some elective credits to play around with in grad school, so I took a year of German. For my final project in 104 I read 'Der Richter und Sein Henker' von Friedrich Dürrenmatt and gave a report on it (in German). I was very excited to have read a whole book in German.

Sadly, I graduated that quarter and haven't been able to take any more German just yet. I'm thinking about going back for a degree in it, since I loathe my own field now.

[Angela Shelley]

34. and what would you do

with a degree in German?

[Darth Lenore]

38. Move to Germany!

Or, more realistically, translate. I hear the UN has a pretty frickin' sweet deal for translators.

[Angela Shelley]

43. Can you work at home

and wear your pajamas?

[Darth Lenore]

49. Not for the UN, but...

...if you translate or edit books or instruction manuals and stuff, I'm sure you can! That's a pretty sweet deal, too.

[Matariki]

9. I've translated some old german books

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Grimoire-Pope-Honorius-III/dp/1879000091/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195850437&sr=1-2

Know a bit of Italian (I went to school in Rome for a year a LONG time ago) and I'm learning French & Haitian Kreyol right now.

[Bonobo]

10. Japanese translator here.

[Angela Shelley]

16. And what do Japanese journalists

write about the real estate lending in the US?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

59. Another Japanese-English translator here

and I also read German and French quite well and have studied Chinese, Spanish, Russian, and Norwegian, although I'm at a tourist level in all of them.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

11. I speak two languages

...English and bad English...

:evilgrin:

[Angela Shelley]

13. Any chances of

speaking "better English" in the near future?

[ccpup]

14. interesting question

I speak French. And I obviously do much better when in Paris surrounded by it than when I'm in NYC surrounded by English.

Usually it takes me about an hour to get into my "French Head" and usually happens as I catch up on the latest Parisian-neighborhood gossip with my driver after landing at CDG. :evilgrin:

[Angela Shelley]

17. What do French journalists

write about the real estate lending practices in the US?

[SidDithers]

15. I can read French...

and understand and speak enough to get by, but I'm far from fluent.

My kids are in french immersion schools. My grade 4 daughter is already conversational. Kids are like sponges with languages.

Sid

[Angela Shelley]

18. Can you read a French newspaper

and enjoy the details?

[SidDithers]

26. Hmmm...I could read a newspaper...

and understand the news, but I admit that I'd probably lose out on some of the detail. I'd have to ask my kids for help :)

Sid

[Journeyman]

21. Three years of Latin. . .

helped tremendously with my English vocabulary, not so much with understanding other peoples.

[Angela Shelley]

23. You could use your language skills

when visiting graveyards and churches in Europe

[Journeyman]

33. Fits right in with knowing a "dead language". . .

n/t

[iamthebandfanman]

64. i think they should resurrect it

i took latin for 2 years....


does anybody know why there was a shift from latin to other languages in italy ?

[Yael]

53. Same here. I think it should be mandatory

I had a year of Latin in High School and it helped me tremendously. It is a core foundation that should be required of all students, IMO.

[Kajsa]

79. I agree.

I always encourage my HS students to get a Latin dictionary.
It really helps with vocabulary, especially learning root words.

It's far from dead, just morphed into other word forms.

[uppityperson]

119. 4 yrs of Latin let me read French and Spanish newspapers

not getting all the details but the gist of it.

[LynzM]

24. Speak and read German, read French.

And can muddle through a bit of Spanish, but not speak it.

I find it gives a very different perspective to read news articles in other languages, and would highly recommend it to anyone who can do that.

[Angela Shelley]

28. Elect LynzM

for Ambassador to Germany!

[LynzM]

83. Wa-hoo!

That'd be awesome :) Actually, I'm not sure my German skills are at "diplomacy" level... :rofl:

:hi:

[wake.up.america]

27. I'm still learning English.

[Angela Shelley]

30. DU is the perfect place

to be training your language skills.

Make sure you watch videos of the prez, he´s learning too.

[kestrel91316]

29. Ich spreche ein bischen Deutsch, und

je parl un peu le Francais.

[Angela Shelley]

31. Could you talk your way

out of a parking ticket while visiting Paris?

[kestrel91316]

97. Well, my experience was that , as am American making a sincere

attempt to speak the language, I could have most French people eating out of my hand in about thirty seconds. Even in Paris. So maybe I COULD, lol.

[wake.up.america]

41. Anscheinend kannst du mehr als ein bisschen Deutsch.

[Angela Shelley]

44. Jetzt ist es mir klar

why your name is wake.up.america

[stimbox]

Wachen sie auf Amerika! n/t

[UncleSepp]

91. Besser als "Amerika, erwache!"

jaja, ganz geschmacklos, ich weiss...

[wake.up.america]

94. You might want to explain that to those who do not know. A little history of the 3rd Reich.

[UncleSepp]

113. Uh oh. I could start, but where would I stop?

C'mon, it was a nudge and a pun to ya :-) Don't make me go posting the mp3.

[BelgianMadCow]

35. English, French, German, Dutch, some Spanish

first four are pretty standard in Belgium ;-)

[Angela Shelley]

39. Good for you!

[JP Belgium]

120. same for me!

groeten uit Antwerpen
(greetings from Antwerp)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

36. I'm excellent in profanity and consider it my second language.

And, find it indispensable when dealing with bubble-wrap, politicians, and computers.

[LeftishBrit]

37. I can read French very fluently, and Russian with reasonable fluency.

[porphyrian]

40. I can tell someone to go to hell in Greek.

There were some rough Monopoly games in my house when we kids were supposed to be in bed.

[Angela Shelley]

45. Do you understand the reply?

[porphyrian]

47. Not really. A Greek yelling at you can be greeting you as likely as they are about to kill you.

Good food, though.

[ourbluenation]

98. and I can tell somone to kiss my ass in gaelic.

that's about it.

[judaspriestess]

42. I speak, read and write Spanish

I grew up speaking Spanglish in San Antonio. I am now about 75% fluent in Spanish as my second language.

On to my next language, which will be French. I really should learn Italian since it is so similar to Spanish.

[hlthe2b]

46. Re: your previous question, former candidate Wesley Clark

speaks fluent Russian... I cam across that today and couldn't resist pointing it out, even if he isn't a current candidate.

I speak enough of a couple of languages to be dangerous, but will refrain from listing as someone might put me to the test!

[EFerrari]

48. Spanish came to this continent before English did.

Which one is the more "foreign"? :)

[Didereaux]

61. ... scandinavian preceded the Spanish several centuries! your point is?

[EFerrari]

89. Scandinavian is not a language. n/t

[Kajsa]

95. I believe he's referring to the Old Norse language,

from which other Scandinavian languages developed.

[Didereaux]

109. Exactly! sad isn't it how often lately we have to explain the obvious to some people?

[mmonk]

50. Espanol

Taught by someone who was CIA.

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. Ok here is my list

Spanish (primary)
Hebrew (I am rusty as hell but yes, if I start readying it comes back)
English
American
(yes there is a difference)
some German and some Ydish

[Yael]

52. Ani medaberet v'qoret b'ivrit

Hebrew. :)

I also have about 5 years of Spanish training which is rusty as all get out, but I can get by once I am in a Spanish-speaking environment for a day or two and can ramp back up. (My Spanish is Latin American spanish, not Spain-spanish).

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

54. Fluent in French and Spanish

I went to high school for one year in France and had to sink or swim and after that I kept studying it through college. Also, I learned Spanish in the French high school I attended. Their language courses involved full immersion at a very high level and I later took some Spanish literature classes when I went to the University of California. I also went back to France for my first year of college, at the American College In Paris. When I went for one year to the Lycee back in the mid 1960s, there were three tracks in French high schools, "philo" (emphasis on humanities track), "math-elem" (emphasis on math and science), and "moderne" (a mixture of a little of both). I remember some kids in their mid teens in the high school's "philo" track having already had several years of study in four languages: in classical Greek and Latin and two modern languages.

[philosophie_en_rose]

55. English, French, German, and Spanish.

My German is a little rusty, but I'm literate in English, French, German, and Spanish.

I can also swear in Tagalog and Japanese.

[LiberalEsto]

56. Estonian

Spent 10 days there visiting relatives a few years ago and spoke Estonian the entire time.
I was born here to immigrant parents and learned English in kindergarten. My parents both spoke English, Estonian, Russian and German fluently but wanted me to thoroughly learn Estonian first. Estonian Saturday school, summer camp, scouts, etc. I wasn't allowed to speak any English at home until college.

[DFW]

103. After speaking Estonian (or Finnish)

Almost ANYthing else has to look less complicated!

[LiberalEsto]

112. Not necessarily!

I learned Estonian from infancy, but three years of high school German and some lifelong exposure to my parents' use of it failed to make me spreche Deutsch.

Likewise, French was taught by volunteer moms at my elementary school, and I had several years of it, but never got the hang of it.

The gender of nouns is what threw me off in both languages. Estonian and English don't have that. Estonian also doesn't have the pronouns "he" or "she", but a unisex "ta".

:)

[burrowowl]

57. Spanish (one of my Grandmothers was from Mexico),

French, some German, some Portuguese and Latin is really rusty.
Richardson and I (just for a semester, one of my sisters for a year) went to the Pan American Workshop in Mexico City.
Read newspapers in French and Spanish, can read the German ones with a bit of help from dictionary.
So as to keep unbored in German classes, the German teacher taught me fracture, one student tried to cheat off my test, but couldn't read it. The fracture came in handy when a German friend of mine in France asked me to teach it to her so that she could read her Grandmother's letters.

[Common Sense Party]

58. I'm fluent in Spanish. I'm pathetic in Portuguese.

I'd love to polish up the Portuguese and maybe learn Italian.

[Didereaux]

60. Yo sprechen sie Espanol un pequito!

[flvegan]

62. I'm a treasonous bastard what with my grasp of the French language.

'Tis fun to say that I speak and read fairly fluent Freedom, though.

[kedrys]

63. Yeah, English

I'm French-Canadian. :P

[AlertLurker]

65. French, German, Hebrew.

I can get along in Spanish and Italian, if pressed, too.

I forgot. Also Lucian Patois (Creole).

[Speck Tater]

66. 44 years ago I was a German interpreter in the Air Force.

I haven't used German in the 44 years since, and I don't remember a word of it, beyond getting the general gist of what's going in a German movie or a German opera. I wouldn't be able to speak or write it to save my soul.

[stevedeshazer]

67. I can read and play music

Does that count? Most of the terms are Italian.

:)

[applegrove]

69. I'm from Canada so I speak - read a little french. Immersion is a great

thing in public schools. They have done studies and very young kids who are taught two languages get concepts faster because they know a glass is also a "verre"..and that vocab just describes an item..it isn't a part of the object. What I heard anyways.

[jpgray]

71. Italian

[treestar]

72. I can read and write in Spanish

And may be able to hold a basic conversation.

[Zorra]

73. Does Spanish count? n/t

[dmallind]

74. Newspapers? French sure Italian maybe

Most newspapers - and not just US ones - are written at a very basic level. There are few French newspaper articles I can't at least get 90% of and guess the rest, even though my actual fluncy in French requires great patience on the part of those speaking to me. Other than pre schoolers, I wouldn't even attempt in all seriousness to converse in Italian with Italians, but I can understand the majority of the majority of newspaper articles in that language. Reading and understanding of course is much easier than speaking even in a classroom setting, let alone in real life with native speakers.

If there were Latin newspapers I'd probably do well - 7 years of that. Spanish? Only by wild ass guessing based on about 50 words that I know and then Romance language cross-pollination.

[LeftyMom]

76. I know enough German to get myself into trouble, but likely not enough to get out of it.

Not that it matters, since native German speakers almost inevitably speak English that's much better than my German. Still, it was very useful in understanding the mechanics of English, and likely did wonders for my SAT and ACT scores, even if it never does anything else for me.

[nealmhughes]

77. Spanish fluent in written and spoken. French reading OK, by extension Italian.

Portuguese and Catalan not so much, they have weird pronouns.

But I can order a beer anywhere in Europe or the Americas! Pivo! Beer! Biere! Cerveza! Bier!

[Doctor Cynic]

78. I can speak quite a few...

Chinese (the Mandarin, and could understand Cantonese), French, and Spanish. And English, obviously. Knowing Chinese also means I could read some Hanja characters in Japanese.

[Didereaux]

87. HA! I can speak all those as well...but damned fools I talk to don't seem to understand?

[L. Coyote]

80. Cuando publice las palabras de Hugo Chavez in Espanol, DU lo borraba.

I'm fluent in Spanish after years in Latin America.
However, I don't have the tilde and emphasis down when keyboarding!

[Kajsa]

81. Swedish, some German and a little Spanish.

In the order fluent, semi-fluent and beginning, respectively.

[DFW]

106. Swedish?

Jag visste inte att det fanns någon annan här, som pratade svenska.

Hälsningar!

[Kajsa]

110. Hejsan DFW!

Det är kul att träffa någon annan som talar
Svenska här.;-)

Har du varit i Sverige?

:D :hi:

[DFW]

114. Hejsan!

Jag har varit i Sverige flera gånger, men jag har aldrig bot där, var bara på besök.
Jag har lärt mig svenska på universitätet i USA.

Och du?

[Kajsa]

117. Du skriver väldigt bra Svenska.

Jag föddes här, men hela familjen kommer ifrån Sverige.

Jag har bot där tre gången när jag var ungre.

Det är mycket svårare att skriva en tala på Svenska,

Det var kul att träffas.

Vi hörs av , OK?

:hi:

[Bluebear]

82. Ich habe zuerst Deutsch gesprochen, zu hause...

[and-justice-for-all]

84. Guten Tag!

Wie gehts es Ihnen heute? Ich spreicht Duetche.

[Basileus Basileon]

85. Chinese, and yes.

[sakabatou]

86. Japanese

I can speak it, but I can't really read it.

[karlrschneider]

88. I'm fairly fluent in Spanish...as in functionally literate. I can read several

others...Italian, French and some German but I don't process those spoken tongues very well. Oddly enough, I can grasp a fairly decent chunk of spoken Japanese but I don't read Kanji or Katakana for shit.

[Heidi]

90. A few.

I speak English, a bit of Spanish, German, Swiss-German, survival Italian and traveling French. My German and Italian literacy levels are high enough to comprehend newspaper articles in those languages. :hi:

[SalmonChantedEvening]

92. Spanish, and some french

Does WWII Movie German count?

[ThePowerofWill]

93. I speak Spanish.

I can't read in Spanish, just speak. My fluency in regard to conversational use is very high. I can't read Spanish because i did not learn in school, but from the many hispanics around me. I basically studied 8 hrs a day, 5 days a week for a couple yrs.

[pampango]

99. Tagalog (the Philippines)

though it does little good once you get 50 miles from Manila. :)

[DFW]

100. As long as I don't have to list them alphabetically

French, German, Spanish, Italian, Catalan, Swedish, German, Dutch, Russian

Some rustier than others, but I can hold conversations in all of them, and
handle literature and newspapers in most of them, close to native fluency
in some.

In case one seems a bit obscure: I lived in Barcelona for a while with a local
family, hence the Catalan. My accent isn't perfect, apparently. I get told by
Barcelona natives that while I have lost some of my accent, they can still tell
that I am from Mallorca (last time I looked, Dallas was not in the Balaeric
Islands, but maybe a seismic shift has occurred in my absence).

[proud2BlibKansan]

101. Mas cerveza por favor

My friend told me that's all the Spanish I need to know :)

[shadowknows69]

102. I can ask for another beer and where is the bathroom in Spanish

related questions anyway.

[PCIntern]

105. Who bin Kaputen der robin?

Remember that book from the 50's??


To answer your question:
French and Yiddish in Hebrew...

[InkAddict]

107. Spanish

I studied it for four years in high school and received A's. I can read a newspaper with about 80% comprehension. I recently took on on-line Spanish grammar quiz from a link posted by a DU member just to test what I do remember. After all this time (>30 years) I scored a remarkable 53 per cent. Last year, I convinced the Hispanic gardener to blow the autumn leaves over my roses. I think fluency in reading, writing, and speaking Spanish would return with a short immersion "en otro pais", but that scenario, I think, is unlikely--though a HUGE fantasy.

[Evoman]

108. I speak English and Spanish fluently, and I can read in French.

Although I am hopeless at speaking French or listening to it (they talk too fast and I can't make out words).

[Ellen Forradalom]

111. Fluent French. A bit shy of decent literacy in Hungarian.

[krabigirl]

115. Some French, only a little Spanish, even though I studied the latter for 6 years.

[MountainLaurel]

116. In our household

(Mr. Laurel is also a DUer):

German
Spanish

A little: Czech, Russian, ASL

[Left_Winger]

118. I can speak two languages: German and Polish