Languages

[Eddie Teach]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcIiwmclfvw

I don't know what that is, but it's not Winnie the Pooh.

[Duque de Bragança]

Besides Spanish and Galician, my mother tongues, and English, I'm fluent in Italian, can understand Portuguese pretty well, and remember a little bit of French from High School.

Since Galician is a dialect of (Northern) Portuguese or vice versa according to Galician nationalists, that's quite an understatement. Al-Gharb al-Andalus may see or hear things differently though.

As for me

Portuguese & French at native level.
Fluent English & Castillan
Some basic German (living in Frankfurt right now).

Good enough Latin for Nuntii Latini  

[Berkut]

Fluent in English.

Useless in anything else. Probably worse than useless.

[The Larch]

Besides Spanish and Galician, my mother tongues, and English, I'm fluent in Italian, can understand Portuguese pretty well, and remember a little bit of French from High School.

Since Galician is a dialect of (Northern) Portuguese or vice versa according to Galician nationalists, that's quite an understatement.

Only the nutters say that, and I think that bleak reality proves them very very wrong. 

[Duque de Bragança]

Only the nutters say that, and I think that bleak reality proves them very very wrong. 

Should I have said some Galician Nationalists instead ? 

[The Larch]

Only the nutters say that, and I think that bleak reality proves them very very wrong. 

Should I have said some Galician Nationalists instead ? 

"A few" would have been even better. 

[Duque de Bragança]

Only the nutters say that, and I think that bleak reality proves them very very wrong. 

Should I have said some Galician Nationalists instead ? 

"A few" would have been even better. 

Como queiras Galego 

[Ideologue]

I wonder, would it be possible to learn to read Chinese without speaking a word of it?  I.e., just translating "random squiggly bullshit ideogram #82" as "house"?

Of course you can.  But learning Chinese is much more difficult than that    Primarily because you cannot translate "random ideogram #82" as "house".  It is more like when #28 is combined with #74, they  mean "house", but when #28 is used together with #17, they mean "river".

This explains why China lost the Korean War.

[Ideologue]

Although I was able to understand the countdown in Russian when I watched 2010 last night, and knew what they were saying a few times.

Why would you want to understand a language less graceful and more evil than the Black Speech of Mordor?

When I was still considering a grad program in history, passable Russian seemed like a good idea, since I wanted to deal with Soviet history.  As it stands now, I don't have the time to learn a language, if I ever really possessed the inclination, but I might come back to it one day, since it could be conceivably useful as a lawyer.  Russian would be a neat language to know if I dealt with international disputes--which are no doubt frequent, since, as I'm sure I don't have to tell you, the Russian has no concept of law.

In seriousness, I find Russian to be actually be a rather a pretty language.  All the sh's and ya's and whatnot.  Cyrillic looks cool, too.