Are you bilingual? In what languages?

You may be from the USA where we were not encouraged to really learn to speak another language as anything more than a subject in school.

• Report

by tapatio on September 11th, 2009

New Zealand here. Sounds like the USA system tho. Subjects trialled at school before making options at High School level, and I chose other subjects 'cos I found languages difficult.

• Report

by SilentPurr on September 11th, 2009

Living in Southern California I've learned a little bit of Spanish because so many from Latin America immigrate here. I try to figure out what the billboards' advertisements are saying and I can usually figure it out. I've lost whatever German I learned in high school and college.

• Report

by tapatio on September 11th, 2009

My family is German and it was still frequently spoken around the house when I was growing up.
We spoke english outside the home but German was common at home or a mixture of both.
It used to drive my friends crazy when they visited because my family started a sentence in English and finished in German or just mixed the words, They could never figure out what we were talking about.

• Report

by albert nonymous "A" nonymous for short. on September 11th, 2009

Oh! My GF is Hungarian and she and her mother chatter back and forth in Hungarian and Russian and I am as lost as my friends used to be when My family spoke german :)

• Report

by albert nonymous "A" nonymous for short. on September 11th, 2009

What's the story behind that, briefly?

• Report

by tapatio on September 11th, 2009

I live in Malta - hence Maltese. English is just a useful language to learn. When I was a kid, we had only one Maltese TV channel and half a dozen Italian ones, so most kids learned Italian from TV in order to be able to see more TV.

• Report

by RC loves ice cream on September 11th, 2009

Very interesting; thanks.

• Report

by tapatio on September 11th, 2009

I just read wikipedia because I didn't know where Malta was. Wow. Almost half a million people on an island in the Mediterranean. I live near Los Angeles, and they say we have a Mediterranean climate, but we don't have a place where St.Paul was shipwrecked. What a fascinating place.

• Report

by tapatio on September 11th, 2009

It is rather interesting - partly because it's so small that all the interesting places are within say a half an hour drive, but also because due to its position, it was influenced by all the major powers around the Mediterranean, and all left their mark.

• Report

by RC loves ice cream on September 11th, 2009

How do I say "Thank you" in Japanese?

• Report

by tapatio on September 11th, 2009

Domo, or Domo arigato if you want to be formal.

• Report

by Good old Gogo on September 11th, 2009

Oh, yes. My son learned that in Karate lessons about ten years ago.

• Report

by tapatio on September 11th, 2009

Yeah, it's sort of cliche in north american culture, from what I've see at least.

• Report

by Good old Gogo on September 11th, 2009

Where is "Mine" indigenously spoken?

• Report

by tapatio on September 11th, 2009

In the mines. :)

• Report

by Anonymous T on September 11th, 2009