Cable Forum - View Single Post

BBKing · 28-02-2004, 10:32

English first, of course, but German to a fair standard (spent 18 months over there on and off but learnt most of it in a six-week affair with a German woman who refused to speak English. It's known as the horizontal dictionary principle). Java, perl, php and Visual Basic presumably don't count :P

I'd love to learn Czech having been there a lot - I love the sense of humour and beer over there, although not generally the following morning. I'm still at the 'two beers and an ice cream' stage.

In my family I'm actually a bit of a linguistic dunce as the rest of them all have about four languages each (my grandfather worked at Bletchley Park during the war translating German). There's definitely some kind of genetic predeliction going on there, as they're mostly a direct line on my mother's side, although my Dad is pretty good, he learnt German through my mother. My mother, her sister, her father and my sister all have multiple languages (usually a combination of German, French, Italian, Spanish and Welsh).

Actually, the hardest language to learn is the second, after that you've got two others to compare against and you start to understand why you construct sentences in certain ways and can pick out annoyances (I occasionally want to resort to using the German 'ihr' for addressing multiple groups of friends to make it clear I'm addressing a group not just an individual - in English there isn't an equivalent, apart from saying 'you lot').

28-02-2004, 10:32	#16
BBKing R.I.P. Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: London Services: 20Mb VM CM, Virgin TV Posts: 5,983	Re: Languages English first, of course, but German to a fair standard (spent 18 months over there on and off but learnt most of it in a six-week affair with a German woman who refused to speak English. It's known as the horizontal dictionary principle). Java, perl, php and Visual Basic presumably don't count :P I'd love to learn Czech having been there a lot - I love the sense of humour and beer over there, although not generally the following morning. I'm still at the 'two beers and an ice cream' stage. In my family I'm actually a bit of a linguistic dunce as the rest of them all have about four languages each (my grandfather worked at Bletchley Park during the war translating German). There's definitely some kind of genetic predeliction going on there, as they're mostly a direct line on my mother's side, although my Dad is pretty good, he learnt German through my mother. My mother, her sister, her father and my sister all have multiple languages (usually a combination of German, French, Italian, Spanish and Welsh). Actually, the hardest language to learn is the second, after that you've got two others to compare against and you start to understand why you construct sentences in certain ways and can pick out annoyances (I occasionally want to resort to using the German 'ihr' for addressing multiple groups of friends to make it clear I'm addressing a group not just an individual - in English there isn't an equivalent, apart from saying 'you lot').