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SuFu languages?


jeepster

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Intermediate level Japanese - reading & writing is ok, but my speaking skills are lacking. Spending next year on an exchange program, so that should improve things..

Trying to learn Italian, but finding it hard. My girlfriend is Italian, and although she speaks perfect English, her family don't... whenever I see them I always feel like a bit of an arse.

Once upon a time I was able to understand Spanish pretty well, but I've made peace with the fact that this ability is long gone...

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Guest jmatsu
i read and write fluently in vietnamese (native language), korean (took its in hs) and suck at spanish

i do not understand veitnamese or the culture (although i do like some of the females and food. my vietfriend speaks perfectly because he was born in the west). do you ever notice that fob vietnamese when speaking english sound like robots? totally lack of emotions-vocoder sounding. correct me if i'm mistaken, but their english sound like computer drones. crazy.

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i do not understand veitnamese or the culture (although i do like some of the females and food. my vietfriend speaks perfectly because he was born in the west). do you ever notice that fob vietnamese when speaking english sound like robots? totally lack of emotions-vocoder sounding. correct me if i'm mistaken, but their english sound like computer drones. crazy.

you said this before. but i am complete disagreement. i think the fact that they might sound like drones because vietnamese is such a tonal language and english is completely dumbed down for them. probably also a saving face kind of thing where the actual word is more important than the pronunciation.

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Guest jmatsu
you said this before. but i am complete disagreement. i think the fact that they might sound like drones because vietnamese is such a tonal language and english is completely dumbed down for them. probably also a saving face kind of thing where the actual word is more important than the pronunciation.

with all due respect i didnt' really ask for an explanation. i just asked if i was the only one that thought they sounded like drones/computers. first you say that you are in complete disagreement. then you say you think that fact may be due to that vietnamese is such a tonal language and gnlish is completely dumbed down for them.

so do you agree or don't you?

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with all due respect i didnt' really ask for an explanation. i just asked if i was the only one that thought they sounded like drones/computers. first you say that you are in complete disagreement. then you say you think that fact may be due to that vietnamese is such a tonal language and gnlish is completely dumbed down for them.

so do you agree or don't you?

no, i don't agree. at least a majority of the ones i encounter.

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you said this before. but i am complete disagreement. i think the fact that they might sound like drones because vietnamese is such a tonal language and english is completely dumbed down for them. probably also a saving face kind of thing where the actual word is more important than the pronunciation.

i agreee with you poly, its because of the tone like as for dialects i speak with a southern (saigon area) dialect, which many white people say sound like high pitched soundwaves, which made me more conscience so i talk more lower now when speaking in viet. we tend to pronounce our words differently using high band frequency (built in) which we used to win the war, naw, fuk the commies

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i do not understand veitnamese or the culture (although i do like some of the females and food. my vietfriend speaks perfectly because he was born in the west). do you ever notice that fob vietnamese when speaking english sound like robots? totally lack of emotions-vocoder sounding. correct me if i'm mistaken, but their english sound like computer drones. crazy.

I've found that pretty much all fobby asians sound a like when speaking engrish.

Be it japs, chins, viet, kors, thais, cambods, hell, even flips, you name it...the engrish sounds more or less the same in my experience.

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I've found that pretty much all fobby asians sound a like when speaking engrish.

Be it japs, chins, viet, kors, thais, cambods, hell, even flips, you name it...the engrish sounds more or less the same in my experience.

strange...i've always found it quite distinct when comparing the various forms of "engrish" and their associated accents, whether from HK, singapore, japan, indonesia...at least that's all i've had enough contact to figure out.

apart from english i speak mandarin...starting japanese classes in july.

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Speak a bit of Chinese and broken Italian, can understand Spanish, Italian and Chinese.

edit:

perl, python, c, objective-c, xhtml, xml, php, (object) pascal...

I'm a geek it seems. :(

Oh if we're playing that game... C,C++,Python,Ruby, Scheme, ML, MIPS assembly....

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For those learning asiatic languages (if you don't already speak them), how hard is it to pick up on the basics. obviously japanese is different than chinese, and the chinese have many different dialects, but i'm just wondering if its worth taking as a summer course, or just getting rosetta stone and teaching myself.

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Jeepster, Chinese is tough as shit, but no doubt well worth it. My native language is English, I'm fluent in French (well, quebecois), Spanish, and I'm decent in Ilocano (a Filipino dialect which has no similarity to Chinese), but when I started learning Chinese (Mandarin) a year ago, it blew my mind. I actually went to Shanghai for the summer to do a study abroad program there, so I was able to pick up quite a bit, but when I came back and wasn't surrounded by the language, it became that much harder to keep up with it.

I can't remember for sure if it was on here that I saw it, but there was a link to a U.S. government web page ranking all of the languages by difficulty. French and Spanish were level 1, which means they're relatively easy, and on the other side of the spectrum were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic, which are, incidentally, the languages they need most.

Of course i'm pro-learning languages so I would say go for it, but it's definitely going to be tough.

For Chinese, I used this software called Chinese Odyssey, which was great. Has anyone had any experience with Rosetta Stone? Is it worth it?

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