I have written before about my Rosetta Stone journey (which I have been neglecting. Lo siento, español!), but my Spanish is passable enough to allow me to communicate marginally with the Spanish-speaking tourists who come to my job daily. I still retain a marginal level of French-speaking ability, even though I used to be fluent, and I can converse with our amis Francophones as long as they remind me of words I have forgotten. But if I had to choose one language to be fluent in it would absolutely be Spanish.
And that’s today’s LTP: What language do you wish you could speak? Why? For me, Spanish is just a lot more useful. I haven’t used my French in a decade except for a trip to France… and… kind of being obnoxious when I say “croissant.” But Spanish is useful in social work, so it would be helpful career-wise. So what about you? Also, is it a language you already know a little, or one you’ve never even tried but really wish you could speak?
6 replies on “LTP – 8/17/11”
I speak Spanish and love it, but I’m still not convinced that I’m fluent, even though native speakers have told me they think I am. I’d love to be able to pick up on all of the intricacies and be as comfortable in it as English, though.
I’ve also been working on Portuguese on livemocha.com on and off over the last couple years. It’s nice because it’s similar to Spanish so it’s not completely new, but the pronunciations are challenging.
I took Latin, which isn’t really a conversational language. It helps me figure out what many words in Romance languages mean, but I sound like a yokel when I try to speak any of them.
I speak a little French, but understand it better if written. I can exchange e-mail in French fairly well, but have problems conversing in it. I’d love to be able to improve my French to have more work opportunities here in Canada.
The language I’m working on right now is Mandarin, which is a pain in the butt. One half of my boyfriend’s family speak Mandarin and I’d like to be able communicate with them better. It’s complicated though. I often learn a language better if I can read and write it. I am not a “verbal” learner. Trying to read Mandarin is so hard! I can recognize a few characters now. I can write numbers 1-10 and “Nihao” but it’s tough.
I do not have a talent for languages in the slightest, but I feel like I almost need to learn Spanish, just to be a polite person in every day life. I would like to learn it, and I think I’d be better at as an adult than I was as a high school student. Hmmmmm….
I’m going to start trying to learn Gujarati soon so I can communicate better with my boyfriend’s mom. It’s going to be rough because it’s a totally different grammatical structure and I have a terrible accent in whatever language I try to learn.
The other language I’d really like to learn is Russian, so I could read all of the awesome Russian poets and novelists in the original.
Either Russian or Italian. Or possibly Mandarin. Or Polish.
I like languages. I don’t have a huge talent for them, but I like the way they sound and wouldn’t mind learning to speak one or two besides mine.