I can read in English and Portuguese. When I have to, I can read Spanish.
I can read in English and Portuguese. When I have to, I can read Spanish.
Actually I'm bilingual by nature (Catalan and Spanish) and tri-lingual by adopting English. Thus, I always try to combine reading two books at a time (one in English and the other in Catalan or Spanish) I even tried to adopt Italian and German but I eventually neglected their study....
Last edited by Melmoth; 09-16-2008 at 03:02 AM.
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Kiki 1982; I live in Gent in Belgium. I watch that Martin y monita sometimes. don't always understand it all,but I love the sound and the Acting style. I read Dutch OK but I can't get lost in a book as I can in English;if you know what I mean.
I can read in English, Spanish, Serbo-croatian and of course Albanian
It can be difficult to really get lost in a book in a foreign language, but the longer you read, the better it goes. In the beginning when I used to start reading Dumas in French, I used to get a lot less lost in it, but now, I even can laugh straight away at the jokes in it. It is as if the barrier that was there before (to process the meaning of the words in my brain) is gone... Practice makes perfect.
About Martin y Monita:
I loved it as well. I used to watch it religiously. I found it a lot better than normal soaps because it went a lot faster. What's more, I found it very poetical and very cleverly consructed. It could have been a great book...
They tried to make a kind of 'telenovela' on a Flemish chanel... Soooooooooo slow and boring. If you didn't watch Martin y Monita the next day they would have moved on...
Anyway, the end of it gets really funny... I don't know where they are at now, but certainly keep watching it... It's worth to see Quique's sister and the last episode.
It is indeed difficult to understand them sometimes, but not because the language is too difficult but because they tend to speak too fast... If there would be subtitles in Spanish, it would probably not be a problem to understand them. After a while I was able to follow simple reports on TVE. I was so pleased with myself... Shame there was nothing really easy on a lot. The news was too fast.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)
I can read in English, Turkish, Macedonian, Serbian and Albanian
I read Japanese veeeeeery sloooooowly and with a dictionary that I still have to reference every forty-five seconds. Also, mostly kids' books or something in the vein of "Japanese for beginners." It turns out that learning a new language takes a lot of work and persistence. Who knew?
Last edited by JuniperWoolf; 01-11-2012 at 01:20 AM.
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"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.”
Helen Keller
I love languages and can read fluently in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic and also decently in Spanish, French and German. A few days ago I started teaching myself Portuguese (partly so i can read Pessoa).
The way I like to learn languages is to:
1) memorize the most common words, 100 key words
2) read a dual-language book so i don't have look up the words in a dictionary. I read the same book over and over again till I've pretty much mastered it.
3) watch movies in the language. Also when I watch DVDs in English I put on the subtitles of the language I wanna learn if possible.
4) rehearse some conversation in my mind when bored and waiting (for the bus or something)
5) try to write in my diary in the language
No grammar or rules or verbs or anything like that which only puts the brain to switch off.
No, I am truly American,
First language Welsh - second language English. Fortunately I attended a Welsh-medium school where bilingualism was essential. I can also get by in French.
H
I hope everyone knows what I posted above about being an American is a joke. It is the "joke" among other countries that few Americans born in America country speak a different language other than English- at least it was, I hope I did not offend. I wish I did learn Spanish, it seems to be a beautiful language and I have many students who are spanish speaking, maybe I can learn from them. Both my parents are from other countries and were bilingual.
Last edited by KCurtis; 01-16-2012 at 09:05 PM.
English, French, and Spanish. Each one has their own rhythm, their own music and sound. Translations make books lose the very spirit the writer was embodied with when coming up with words.
Yes, Japanese.
I have yet to improve though, It's takes me a while to read an entire book.
~If you go one step ahead of me, i'll make you cry.~
It's still a joke I think, at least my hubby says that and he is British.
Say i' 'gain?!
(If you do not know what I mean, look here and go to minute 2:55.
But pray, why didn't your parents theach you their languages? They issed a huge chance there (although I expect that here in Europe we are more aware of languages in general as countries and language areas are much smaller).
I believe, or that is my impression anyway, that it depends in what language something has been translated. Dutch and French for example... they just don't work.
To me, English weirdly works, although they may be because I've seen many more translations into English than I've seen into Dutch or French.
I just think Dutch is inadequate and French changes tone too much. As does German. I once tried 'Stolz und Vorurteil' (P&P) in German and the title was already much too dramatic. But it just... wasn't natural.
One has to laugh before being happy, because otherwise one risks to die before having laughed.
"Je crains [...] que l'âme ne se vide à ces passe-temps vains, et que le fin du fin ne soit la fin des fins." (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Acte III, Scène VII)