The Official Language Thread II

[Tessar]

Bonjour! Mon nom est Antoine. Mon français est atroce, et je est-ce que connaître grammaire.

I'm proud that I knew about five of those words without looking them up, and sad that the ones I know are probably being used incorrectly, somehow .

[Earniel]

I think the first part looks correct, you even have a ç in Français! But I'm not sure what you wanted to say in the last part of the sentence. The 'est-ce que' is to my knowledge used in a question. And you used the infinitif of 'to know' instead of conjugating it.

Bonjour Antoine, je m'appelle Sarah. Mon Français n'est pas atroce (j'espère) mais en même temps, je fais encore beaucoup des erreurs.

[Jonathan]

Et moi, je m'appelle Jonathan. Je crois que j'ai oublié la plupart de mon français, parce que je utilize la langue trop rarement...

[Mari]

*shrugs* Sounds (/reads) good enough to me

[Earniel]

Alors, nous sommes trois qui avons besoin des exercises.

[Jonathan]

As I was trying to fall asleep the other night, I came to think of a language oddity. In the English language, all nationalities on the British Isles have the suffix -man:
Englishman, Scotsman, Welshman, Irishman. Also just across the English Channel, we have Frenchman and Dutchman.

Apart from this small portion of the world, there are no nationalities which ends in -man. There are just Spaniards, Swedes, Turks and whatnot. Well, there is Chinaman but it's considered a bit pejorative and we say Chinese these days. Chinaman and East Indiaman were also names given to trading ships bound for Asia hundreds of years ago.

Just some observations!

[katya]

I am reviewing my German these days. It's fun. Can't say much yet but I can read ok . I'll probably have lots of questions later.

[Jonathan]

Hey, say something in Japanese

[katya]

Nihongo? Nande? Mou shikashite benkyou shiteru no kashira ne. Nara motto kantan na kotoba ni shitokeba yokatta. Soretomo nihonjin ga soba ni iru toka?

[Mari]

Eeeeee!? Katya, sono nihongo wa hajimeta bakari no seito ni totte wakarinikui desu yo! Kyoushitsu no nihongo wa itsumo ~desu ~masu to ka tsukau no deshou?

Aaaa, demo nihongo ga suki da yo naaa!

[Jonathan]

So, what does all of that mean? How would you write it using Japanese symbols?

[katya]

I said: Japanese? why? Could it be you're studying it? If so I should've used simpler language. Or maybe there's a Japanese person with [beside] you?

Mari scolded me for using language that was too difficult. Are you learning it though? Oh, and I haven't gotten the symbols working on my new laptop yet.

I signed up for Chinese today. Impulsively. I think I'll be able to handle it but... still... maybe I should've thought about it a little more...

[Jonathan]

Nope, not studying Japanese. I was just curious about what the language would look like.

I'm more interested in Chinese though, so yay for your impulse today! I'd like to learn Chinese but I've got other studies to concentrate on. But I hope you'll post some of the Chinese you're going to learn here in this thread

[Mari]

えええええ！？日本語より中国語？！？何それ？裏切り者！＞＿＜言っておくけど日本語は一番だ！わぁぁぁぁ ～い！

(Eeeeeeeh!? You'd chose Chinese over Japanese?!? What's that all about? Traitor! >_< I'll just say this: Japanese rules! Yaaaaaaaay! )

[Jonathan]

Heh, my browser's built-in Google translator works pretty decently on those Japanese symbols.

Even I who haven't studied either Chinese or Japanese can see that many of those symbols have been borrowed from China. Cool.

[katya]

It's true! Japanese stole many symbols from China. I wonder if my Chinese class will include them? I really hope so. It'll really give me the advantage in class since I already know so many, hehehe [evil laughter].

We watched a video in my education class today about education in China and India, and I was really impressed by the Chinese and thought (a) I want to go to China and (b) I better learn Chinese so I'll be ready when they take over the world.

[Mari]

I prefer to say they 'adopted' the Chinese character system
Besides, they do have a few of their own and not all the meanings are the same in Japanese and Chinese.
Katya, good luck! I hope you won't get bored those first few lessons then

[katya]

well, since I actually missed those first few lessons I don't think that will be an issue... I just hope they haven't learned too much already and left me behind. I still remember some of the Chinese I learned in japan though.

[Linaewen]

Originally Posted by Eärniel

Alors, nous sommes trois qui avons besoin des exercises.

Moi aussi, parce que la semaine prochaine j'ai un examen!

Ça va, Sarah?

[Mari]

Good luck with your exam then! ^_^