#46

The French are pretty bad for this too

1 Like
#47

I speak Spanish nearly fluently and some German. Want to do more German lessons and I’ve started looking at learning Czech or Hebrew or Catalan.

#48

They have similarities, and can all roughly understand each other but some of the accents and pronounciations (especially Danish) can throw up some problems

#49

Learnt French at school but largely forgotten it, struggling my way through German currently

#50

I got an A at GCSE German but have only used it to drunkenly chat up Northern/ Eastern European girls on holiday.

I would love to be fluent in another language - my sister speaks about four languages and has been able to work abroad loads as a result; I’d be happy to be able to order some boeuf bourginon (sp?) contemptuously in Paris like a local.

#51

Actual answer to this is probably Yiddish though.

#52

I put all my skill points into computing.

2 Likes
#54

I feel this joke only barely works as it is. I’m not really into that form of comedy where you grind a laugh out of the audience through sheer will.

#55

The other (more ‘proper’ word) is MEICRODON which is also brilliant. Other good words include:

Sglodion (Chips)
Draenog y Mor (Sea Bass, lit. Hedgehog of the sea)

3 Likes
#57

Hmm yeah kinda

Though in my experience Danes seem to understand Swedes a lot better than Swedes understand Danes

Norwegian is quite annoying - it’s like exactly the same as Swedish but with one or two totally random nonsensical words per sentence

#58

I have a basic understanding of both written and spoken Irish. I think I’m going to learn more of it in the next few years, I’m getting more interested in it as I get older. It’s a wonderful language and I think Irish people get traumatised in school by the terrible teaching of it and they turn away from it.

With German my skills are slipping away. I used to have good spoken and great written German but I’ve lost a lot of it in my twenties. I think I still have a grasp of the fundamentals and could learn it again but I’m not interested in it.

1 Like
#59

You should have a crack at Australian

#60

Would love to learn a new language but it’s just something I find pretty impossible. Like I just don’t have that bit of brain of something.

Absolutely tanked in French at school and even sucked at trying a bit of coding.

#61

Australian is easy?

1 Like
#62

‘Eas-o’

#63

English (native speaker)
French, German, Japanese (sub-GCSE)
Arabic (really basic: written numbers and road signs pretty much - most young people in Bahrain spoke very good English)

Because of the way our GCSE options worked, I dropped all languages at 14.

Up until then I’d done German for a year, and French for three. I wasn’t that great at either of them - I think part of it is that we started too late (like musical instruments, I think it makes a huge difference if you start before 5/6 years of age), and part of it is that I am terrible at parrot-fashion learning.

I started learning Japanese after I finished university and did that for a couple of years, until I got to a level where there weren’t enough people to sustain the classes. I really enjoyed Japanese as it seemed to be much more about understanding basic rules and then building up and improvising from there. Apart from counting objects. And the kanji.

I’d like to start it up again, as London is able to sustain classes to a higher level than Newcastle, so there are loads of options, but I’m more worried about whether my lack of language ability will restrict any post-Brexit plans to relocate and whether a different language would be a better choice.

#64

I have just enough A level French left that I could do a rough live translation of Chris Froome’s Tour de France victory speech for my brother earlier in the year. Can get a decent sense of the written language but was never all that great at listening/speaking.

#65

I started those Spanish classes last night, the tutor is a wee old lady, seems well cool.

#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.