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  • (Score: 2) by Arik on Friday May 19 2017, @02:47AM

    by Arik (4543) on Friday May 19 2017, @02:47AM (#511965) Journal
    The AC is right about 'know of' versus 'know.'

    BUT the question doesn't give any idea of how well the questioner has in mind.

    My answer would be ridiculously high if I parsed it as only requiring marginally better than "know their names and have an idea of how they sound."

    On the other hand I would only claim to be truly fluent in English.

    But English is a mix of Germanic and Latin elements, and if you know English well there are thus a lot of languages that are related to English that can be learned more easily as a result.

    I'm ok at Swedish, not as polished as I wish by any means but I can carry on a conversation in it. Danish and Norwegian are closely related so between my English and my Swedish they're usually comprehensible too, though I'm sure I sound even funnier when I try to match it to respond, it can certainly work for the basics. German and Dutch are further off, and I have more difficulty with them, I wouldn't claim to speak them even poorly, but sometimes I can understand them perfectly - for a phrase or maybe a sentence worth, at least. Then there's the latin side. I studied Spanish, I spent a few weeks speaking it every day once, I can remember some basics but I can't really carry on a conversation in it anymore. Still, signs, menus, simple politeness I can handle at least. And both French and Italian are close enough that I can understand them at times as well, though for some reason Romanian is harder for me. Anyway it's not hard to remember a few sets like Gracias/Grazi/MercĂ­ and work on the pronunciation enough you can be understood, and you can actually get surprisingly far with a little bit of basic vocabulary plus an understanding of which English words you already know are likely to have cousins in this language, and what they are likely to look like, obviously assuming it's a Romance or Germanic language so you have that common ground.

    On the other hand, I studied Chinese for a year and can barely remember how to say hello and read or write a handful of characters. And my knowledge of English can't be used the same way on that one.

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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