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How many natural languages do you know?
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(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Thursday May 04 2017, @07:36PM (15 children)
In some sense I know Spanish, enough to sometimes fool native speakers, but I don't feel like I really know it, and when they talk to me in Spanish I don't typically get full understanding.
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(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday May 05 2017, @09:00PM
Q: How is a Mexican like a cue ball?
A: The harder you hit 'em, the more English you get out of 'em.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 06 2017, @07:37AM (11 children)
Then you're not fooling any native speakers, stupid. If you're not getting full understanding, you can't be imparting full understanding. Get a grip, alright? You get by most of the time, but you stick out as a foreigner.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday May 06 2017, @03:53PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday May 08 2017, @02:32PM (6 children)
Then you're not fooling any native speakers
Well, perhaps, perhaps not.
Because I am a norteamericano gringo, Latin American speakers can obviously tell that I am not a native speaker...
But Spanish people have asked me what part of Latin America I'm from, because I learned and therefore speak a Latin American flavor of Spanish.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Sunday May 14 2017, @06:55PM (5 children)
AHA, therein lies the key. They don't teach Spanish here in the US, but they do teach Mexican. Just as a Catalonian will bristle at being referred to as a Spaniard, a Guatemalan will react to being called Nicaraguan, and they all hate being called Mexican, and god forbid you call a Cuban a Puerto Rican. Asians all have equally differing national identities we generic 'white' folks just can tell them apart. Calling a black man an African American, somehow implies that all Africans have some continental identity vs being from dozens of countries with unique and distinct national identities. Just as being a white person differs from being Canadian, or Irish, or Italian.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Sunday May 14 2017, @07:08PM
They don't teach Spanish here in the US, but they do teach Mexican.
I have heard this, and, truly, it makes sense as the US and Mexico share a lot of border space.
But somehow I ended up learning a Spanish more informed by Hondureños, Columbianos, and Guatemalans than by any Mexican influence. Except that most of us say "¿Mande?" in place of "¿Qúe?"/"¿Cómo?" (for "huh?" or "what?") owing to that Mexican influence.
I actually have some trouble understanding many Mexican people because of the highly refined nature of their dialects of Spanish that fall just outside what my ears are trained to hear. *Especially* if they give me credit for more decoding ability than I actually have, and they stop deliberately slowing down and stop deliberately enunciating their words... Often I just get lost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:12PM (2 children)
Please don't assume I'm from this planet.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Monday May 15 2017, @05:52AM
You got me there. I will refrain from assuming that you are human, and terrestrial in origin in any future communications. If only you weren't posting as AC buddy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuQK6t2Esng [youtube.com]
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(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @02:54AM
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Sunday May 21 2017, @08:01PM
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday May 16 2017, @06:15PM
I have a friend, an older lady from El Salvador, who was tricked into enlisting in the US Army back in the 50s, despite not being able to speak English. She had been taught to speak one phrase by rote: "I am sorry, but I do not speak a word of English," but, because her accent was perfect, no one believed she wasn't fluent.
Eventually, she picked up enough English to be able to resolve her situation, and to meet her future husband, to whom she is still married. She also eventually, due to her excellent ear and natural talent, became a respected interpreter, both at the state and federal level. She recently retired, and, in her late 80s, began studying French through immersion.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday May 17 2017, @10:39AM
Unless you were very young when you learned. My mother was English and my father French. I have no accent in either. Spanish I picked up with 25+ years of living in latin america and I've been told I sound just like a Costa Rican by people from outside and inside Costa Rica. Some people are language chameleons and can pick up nuances and dialects quite easily. But then again I know some "gringos" who have been down here as long or longer than me and stick out like sore thumbs linguistically speaking.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 22 2017, @06:11PM
An interesting analogy for the discussion is polymorphism and C++.
I can't wrap my head around the syntax of C++ polymorphism. Luckily I haven't used it since school shortly after the turn of the century.
If I'm driving the conversation unless the topic is hopelessly C++ polymorphism, I can fake it well enough.
But if someone else is driving the conversation and insists on jumping on the C++ polymorphism train I get lost pretty quick.
For non-C++ programmers, polymorphism is how C++ programmers invoke Lovecraftian elder gods like Cthulhu. Mostly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 07 2017, @12:51PM
Have you ever done a few months of complete immersion in Spanish? Well, I suppose complete is a bit of a stretch these days since you won't get away from English media, but I've found that immersion is the best way to build a deeper understanding of communication in another language.
When you start dreaming in the other language, you're on the right track.
That worked for me before with German, but I haven't gone that far with Japanese yet. Still, it's amazing what my subconscious has picked up on when the English patches on Japanese games I play go wonky. (Subtitles of course are cheating. Anybody who thinks they know Japanese because they watch a lot of subtitled anime is joking and would choke the moment the subtitles are taken away.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @09:06AM
I answered 3, as I'm fully fluent in 3. But I can follow along quite ok in 2 or 3 related languages and have a smattering of some others. How do you sum the fractions?