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En español!

My native language is English, what with me being in England an' all. However, I've done four years of French and ended up with a B in GCSE and after the same amount of Spanish, I'm due my exam soon (in fact, my speaking exam is next wednesday and of course, I haven't practiced -.- )

And as my theme shows, I'm extremely fond of French. Even though I don't do it any more and don't intend on doing it at A-level, I just love the entire structure and beauty of the language. It has that certain flow that Spanish lacks, which is what I keep telling my Spanish teacher when he asks me why I don't enjoy his lessons.

You see, I didn't choose to do Spanish. My school is a specialist Language College and language is a set subject within the timetable.I was placed on the Fast-Track system, so I started French in my first year and added Spanish in the second year, in order to do my French exam a year early and Spanish this year, resulting in two language qualifications where other students will only get one.

On the subject of speaking the language, I... have issues. In my speaking exam last year, I kinda got flustered and broke down completely because of the pressure and stress, and just because I was tired, meaning I got downmarked and came out with a lower mark than predicted. Even with Spanish now, I can't handle exam conditions. But I speak both languages fine when I'm with my friends. We chat in French or Spanish for the hell of it, and I can cope perfectly then. It's just the exams that get me.

So talking to someone who is a native speaker of that language... I've done it before and struggled, but I managed to warn her beforehand that I was English, and she got the gist of what I was trying to say. I think I did well. Perhaps. ^^;;
 
Me gusta Pokémon y Neopets. Me gusta Pokémon porque es muy divertido y tu no frio (frozen?). Me gusta Neopets porque es online :P

I'm learning Spanish in school, and taking it for GCSE, so have to focus more @_@
 
my first language was Spanish as my parents came here from Mexico so i grew up in a spanish household, i later learned English at school, I know a bit of Japanese like Shiro Kami means white god and Chichi means dad in japanese too it will sound funny to those of you how know spanish, well someone also told me mom in vietnamese is Meio or Meia sounds like another spanish word, actually japanese works a lot like Spanish in grammar but not writing, how i wish i could read kanji.

Bluerang1 said:
Me gusta Pokémon y Neopets. Me gusta Pokémon porque es muy divertido y tu no frio (frozen?). Me gusta Neopets porque es online :P

I'm learning Spanish in school, and taking it for GCSE, so have to focus more @_@
Click to expand...
Tu segunda frase me confundio, frio... que es GCSE (your second sentence confused me... freezing(that's what frio can mean, like esta muy frio, it's very freezing)... what is GCSE.)
 
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I'm fluent in both English and Spanish...well a tad bit rusty when it comes to Spanish since I don't really get the chance to speak it too often, but yeah, those are the two that I'm best at. I know a tad bit of a Mayan language because part of my dad's family come from them and I guess it's one of those things that was passed down, but at most I could really just as for a sandwich or probably offend someone's goat while trying to ask for a ride to the store.

Annnnd I suppose I'm decentish in Japanese, I understand more than I can speak it.
 
English is my mother tongue, but I don't always enjoy speaking it with native speakers. I learned a bit of French in HS. Never got to use it outside of class. It's mostly degraded to a beginner level.

Japanese is the only language I'd say I have a good hold on and it's intimidating using that with native speakers, at least at first. Japanese people are generally very patient with you and I imagine it's a lot nicer for me than any of them who come to America to try out their English skills. I don't really enjoy speaking it with other learners who already know English though. It often ends in confusion.

By the way, anyone who says the grammar is easy doesn't know what they're talking about. It's unlike almost any other language in the world and that's why it's one of the hardest languages to learn. Well, one of the reasons why.
 
With English as a native language, I'm kind of a Grammar Nazi about it.

I dabble in other languages, mostly German (I can speak coherent sentences just because of Rammstein). Others include French, Japanese, and Chinese.
 
Our second language in Canada is French and we have to learn it from grade 4 to grade 9 in school. I took it from grade 4 to grade 11 though. But what sucks is that I can't speak or understand a word of it (at least enough to actually converse with someone), even after all those years. :( I wish I could, or any other language, really. It'd be awesome to be able to speak more than just English.
 
Scarf said:
English is my mother tongue, but I don't always enjoy speaking it with native speakers. I learned a bit of French in HS. Never got to use it outside of class. It's mostly degraded to a beginner level.

Japanese is the only language I'd say I have a good hold on and it's intimidating using that with native speakers, at least at first. Japanese people are generally very patient with you and I imagine it's a lot nicer for me than any of them who come to America to try out their English skills. I don't really enjoy speaking it with other learners who already know English though. It often ends in confusion.

By the way, anyone who says the grammar is easy doesn't know what they're talking about. It's unlike almost any other language in the world and that's why it's one of the hardest languages to learn. Well, one of the reasons why.
Click to expand...
no it's grammar not writing but it's internal grammar works is a lot like Spanish actually and the hardest language to learn in the world is actually English because it has a jumbled rule book that has way to many exceptions to rules and weird pronunciation, well not for us in the Us and other english speaking countries but it's even harder to learn that Chinese for the non english countries, actually most English speaking people don't master their language unlike other people from different languages.
 
I speak English as my native language, and my only fluent language, but as a child I had French around me (some cousins and my aunty, as well as my mum being fluent) so I got pretty good at understanding that. I also did three years of French in school, and am in my third year of Spanish, though I'm going to have to take it for another three years after this. As a result of my English, French, Spanish and me loving the history of language (learning roots of words, connections, parent languages etc), I know a lot of Latin too - though I couldn't write or speak it, I can understand most of my friends' homeworks. Through knowing Latin, I can understand most Latin languages to a certain level as well.

I learned Japanese for a little while by teaching myself, but it just didn't seem to sit right in my mind, so I gave it up (though I can still read a little bit and stuff). At my school now, I have several Chinese friends, and by Chinese, I don't mean second or third generation English-speaking Asians. I mean these girls fly from Shanghai/Beijing at the end of every holiday to come to school here, and then fly home at the start of the holidays. Most of them don't speak very good English, so I volunteered to help teach them because I enjoy helping people, and I wanted to see if I could learn Mandarin. Personally, I adore Mandarin - I'm not learning it intensively, because I think I might forget Spanish if I do and I have to remember Spanish for my exams, but Mandarin is such a logical language, especially the writing.

I agree that English is the hardest language to master. It's pretty easy to speak to a usual foreigners' level, but to actually sound fluent? It's hell for my Chinese friends. In Chinese they don't have masculine and feminine differences in spoken (they do in written though), so even the people who hardly sound Chinese anymore still say 'He' instead of 'she' at times. Also, when they are reading things out, they don't know what way to read them, because some words have Germanic roots (shorter, harsher words usually) and some have Latin roots (the ones that relate to French and Spanish more). So words that can look the same, could end up being pronounced completely differently. I'm trying to think of an example of this, but my brain isn't really in full-thinking mode yet. But yeah, the mix of roots of words can make it very difficult for foreigners to read aloud especially :3
 
Magmaruby and Aquasapphire said:
my first language was Spanish as my parents came here from Mexico so i grew up in a spanish household, i later learned English at school, I know a bit of Japanese like Shiro Kami means white god and Chichi means dad in japanese too it will sound funny to those of you how know spanish, well someone also told me mom in vietnamese is Meio or Meia sounds like another spanish word, actually japanese works a lot like Spanish in grammar but not writing, how i wish i could read kanji.

Tu segunda frase me confundio, frio... que es GCSE (your second sentence confused me... freezing(that's what frio can mean, like esta muy frio, it's very freezing)... what is GCSE.)
Click to expand...

I only got "you" from that, but after reading your english version, it made more sense xD I got what is GCSE though, "que es" is easy to remember :D

GSCE is a certificate of secondary school accomplishment. We do all subjects for 3 years, then on the last 2, we choose which ones to get an achievement in.
 
My native language is german, which is also the real language which I'm fluent in, even though I'm horrible in the school subject german.
English is second, and I don't have much problems writing and reading it, but when it comes to speaking... well, that's a different thing.
Then there is french, where I have huge issues with the grammar (2 sentences without mistakes in the last test, and 80% of my mistakes were gramattical ones) and contrary to english no real practice.
I also had spanish last year, but when we started having tenses, I found them even harder than in french, so I quit.

As you can probably already guess, I don't really enjoy speaking foreign languages because I'm horrible at them. Unless it's with friends who are just as bad at them.
 
My class are learning French and German, so my friends and I tend to speak in strange combinations of French, German and English. Beyond that, I don't really like talking or writing in languages other than English, because I'm really bad at them. xD
 
I've been taking two years of spanish. so far I've only texted in spanglish with friends to annoy them.
But this summer I'm going to be an exchange student in spain for a few weeks.
 
I only speak English fluently. I know a few odds and ends of most major languages.. not enough to live there, tho.

I want to learn French and Japanese.
 
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