#66

Busted out some amazing A level French at points in a meeting I led today which was conducted mainly in English with an interpreter for those who only spoke French. Was surprised at how much French I could understand from listening but there’s not a chance in hell I could conduct a meeting in anything other than English.

#67

Better than them going on a rant about how Austrians are weirdos who can barely speak German, and I should learn “proper” German.

#68

Enjoy Falco, the most 80s man and the most Viennese man around. @Kallgeese @Severed799 @sarahispi

1 Like
#69

true, that extends to Bavarians too right

#70

Everyone South of the Weisswürstäquator.

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#71

In the SW suburbs of Vienna (Meidling, Mödling, etc), they talk like this:

#72

Oh yeah when I was teaching in Baden a couple of weeks ago, the kids kept mixing up he, him and his all the time in English, so we stopped the activity to have a refresher of pronouns. I asked them to give me the German words for each one as a checkup that they had got it clear now. They came up with this:

er, ehm, ehm, seins

Good work kids.

(For non-German speakers, it’s supposed to be er, ihn, ihm, sein)

#73

haha ah yes, that’ll do it

#74

I speak Norwegian and English fluently/native level but have learned bits and pieces of other languages through the years as well. Did a year of beginner’s Welsh when I was in uni in Cardiff – can’t string a sentence together but it’s fun trying to make sense of random words I see on signs and so on. Did a full 6 years of French in school/college but was utterly unmotivated. I can manage very simple sentences and stuff and I understand more than I can speak. It’s also helped me to understand quite a lot of Spanish, so when I was recently in Chile I was basically FLUENT!!!

#75

Native English speaker. Speak decent conversational German but would find it very difficult to work in it and can get by in French. Studied Russian in first year at Uni and remember almost none of the language so I can tell you what something written in Cyrillic says but have no idea what it means.

#77

My French is better than I think but it’s still pretty basic. My accent is good enough that they speak back to me in French, which is nice (until I stop being able to understand).

#78
3 Likes
#79

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Y’all can probably guess what this Berlin Transport ad is saying about the UK

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#80

I lived in Tokyo for two years so my Japanese…isn’t terrible. Could fend for myself happily in shops, restaurants, taxis etc, but needed an interpreter for business meetings. Hiragana and katakana are pretty easy but kanji really aren’t. I would like to have kept it up back in the UK, but the only courses I’ve found in Bristol are really inconvenient in terms of time and location. I’m also learning Welsh via Duolingo on my phone, so I would like to add ‘smwddio’ to the list of great Welsh words. It’s pronounced “smooth-io” and means “doing the ironing”.

I also have a degree in Latin and Ancient Greek. This is why I have spent most of my adult life working in record shops.

3 Likes
#81

Sick burn about the Dutch and their love of caravans.

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#82

But verbs of killing and millions of participles that bear no relation whatsoever to the main verb are really useful, right?

#83

yes and no

#84

Something about voting not to pay for services British people don’t use at all?

#85

pretty much, yeah

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#86

“We first of all need to have a vote as to whether us Brits need public transport anyway”

2 Likes