'Good/Bad at languages'

Dave147 · 25-10-2009 05:31AM

Je parle francais temps de temps, il n'est pas facile pour moi parceque j'ai finis l'ecole 7 annee, mais mon francais etait super!

Aussi, J'ADORE LA LOUVRETTE!

I had a French gf too, my French was unreal when I was about 17, 18. Now it's rubbish

Snowie · 25-10-2009 05:36AM

SV wrote: »

Honestly, that is quite clearly put through a free translation thing online.
That's the reason it says would'nt and did'nt in english because the grammar wasn't correct and it didn't know what you were trying to say.

Go disscuss it in the conspiricy theroy forums thats sounds like fun.
maybe jim corr will say something to and before long youle be wearing tin foil hats and geeking it about the cia mean while il still be speaking french as well as i do and you'le probably have gottin your own armodillo hat.

SV · 25-10-2009 06:38AM

Snow-Monkey wrote: »

Go disscuss it in the conspiricy theroy forums thats sounds like fun.
maybe jim corr will say something to and before long youle be wearing tin foil hats and geeking it about the cia mean while il still be speaking french as well as i do and you'le probably have gottin your own armodillo hat.

That's a very odd way of saying "you caught me" ...

tallaght01 · 25-10-2009 07:42AM

Very few kids are "bad" at anything if they're taught it properly from a young age. People telling them they're bad at it, makes them believe they're bad at it though.

There's not many kids who don't have the capacity to pick up a second language under the right circumstances.

Agricola · 25-10-2009 09:32AM

Did French throughout secondary school. Still have bits and pieces of it. Problem is you have the vocabulary for a 14 year old, ie bus timetables, train stations, what to say to the French family your staying with!

But yeah some people are good at languages and some bad. Take for example Gary Lineker, he went to play football at the end of his career in Japan and hes fluent in Japanese. Beckham on the other hand spent 4 years in Spain and AFAIK he only has a rudimentary grasp of it.

blubloblu · 25-10-2009 09:37AM

liah wrote: »

This is kind of a really not-PC question but does your dyslexia affect other languages? Because unless you copy-pasted that french it's perfect.

No it's not. There's numerous mistakes in that sentence.

SV · 25-10-2009 09:39AM

blubloblu wrote: »

No it's not. There's numerous mistakes in that sentence.

Free translation sites never get it quite right.

mental07 · 25-10-2009 09:59AM

drzhivago wrote: »

Why is it any more a waste of time than people learning french Italian or Spanish in secondary school
How many people will ever actually need those languages for work ever again

There's one right here....

3hn2givr7mx1sc · 25-10-2009 10:51AM

Podge2k7 wrote: »

Yes you can. If the only French words you know are bonjour and au revoir then you are obviously bad at the language.

Sigh.. that's why I got an E in the Junior Cert.:(

wudangclan · 25-10-2009 11:03AM

i think it´s a matter of application.
if you try hard enough you´ll get it.
when i´ve learned a new language (i speak french ,dutch and spanish to varying degrees and i was terrible with languages at school but it helps if you´re living in the country),it was by going there always carrying a little pocket dictionary with me to translate words i came across,streets signs etc and by not being afraid to try the couple of words you have learned and then building on this everyday.
after a while,then i would use a book to learn verbs,like hugo,to start putting the strucutre of the language together.
listening to as much of the language as you can to be able to differentiate between the different sounds,news channels are good for this.
and then engaging as many people as possible in order to progress.

paddymorrison · 25-10-2009 11:04AM

Snow-Monkey wrote: »

Mon ancienne petite amie était le français.

Mais "mon" est masculine! Je pense que en français correct, on dit "ma ancienne petite amie est française".

Captain Havoc · 25-10-2009 11:09AM

I failed my leaving cert French and I now speak it fluently

While I was at college I was sent to French speaking part of Switzerland for a year and after I finished college I moved to Paris for a year followed by four years working for a French company. I also speak basic German after living in Zürich for a year. My thesis for college was also on language barriers.
Having worked with plenty of foreigners and dealt with plenty as customers, yes you can be good or bad with languages. It's depends on your intelligence and personality. Just because you can't learn French in school doesn't mean you can't do it. I learned all my French down the pub through interaction. If you are affraid to speak to your foreign overlords colleagues then you will never pick up the language unless you are extremly intelligent. I've seen the dumbest of people that can speak multiple languages because of their upbringing.
I don't believe the languages you learn in school really represents a language. Imagine if you learned English only from a book and someone said "story bud" you wouldn't have a scooby what they were at. I don't speak French all prim and proper (but I can for work) more like a scanger with a natural feel.

Captain Havoc · 25-10-2009 11:10AM

paddymorrison wrote: »

Mais "mon" est masculine! Je pense que en français correct, on dit "ma ancienne petite amie est française".

or you could just say "mon ex"

genericguy · 25-10-2009 11:13AM

i speak fluent french and irish, and have done since i was in school, having had no exposure to native speakers up until about the last two years - i always grasped languages quickly, and whenever i'm going away anywhere i can always learn enough to get by before i go. genericgal on the other hand isn't so great at languages. but she's good with people so she ends up doing all the talking anyway!

edit: what jerseyeire says is very true - when you get to another country it's colloquial language tha does you more favours than the stuff from the books.

Neamhshuntasach · 25-10-2009 12:54PM

That french from earlier was obviously done thorugh a translation tool. Haha. Why would someone pretend to speak a language.

And of course you can be good or bad at languages. I pick them up a lot easier than most people but i always suck at grammar when it comes to writing. I've spoke spanish since a kid but i failed a written essay for a profiency test to prove i could speak it when i went to college. I speak it how most latinos would speak it, lazily and full of slang. I suppose it's the same way i know feck all of the grammar for English.

25-10-2009 01:04PM

cHaTbOx wrote: »

You said elle wouldn't? Isn't it meant to be elle ne serait pas or elle ne serait and si je didn't goes to si je ne ? Sorry just spotted it and didn't know if you don't it by accident or it was a joke

Live with three french people and one Italian , getting better at French , just starting Italian.

I don't think it's the conditional mood at all. The 'wouldn't' in English basically means 'she refused to' in this case, as far as I can tell. I suppose you could put it as 'she wouldn't have talked to me if I hadn't spoken French' but 'She refused to talk to me if I didn't speak French' is really what he meant. And it wouldn't be the verb 'serait' in any case, as 1) that's the verb to be' in the conditional, or 2) it is used as an auxiliary in the conditional perfect for être verbs like 'venir', which 'parler' is not. Also, the 'ne' in French negation is often omitted in casual speech, so missing it out isn't really a mistake.

I find people tend to totally overestimate how well they speak a language. 9 times out of 10, when someone says a language is easy, it's because all the subtleties and difficulties have gone right over their head. People who speak a language well rarely say it's easy (unless they grew up speaking it, obviously). For general conversation, it doesn't really matter, but as someone studying to be a translator (Spanish - English), it pisses me off when I tell people what I'm doing in college, and they say 'oh I speak Spanish' and act like they could do translation as well, when they wouldn't have a hope in hell. It's like me calling myself an artist because I can draw a stick man or a mathematician because I can do my times tables. There's a lot more to languages and translation than being able to hold a conversation in another language.

25-10-2009 01:11PM

paddymorrison wrote: »

Mais "mon" est masculine! Je pense que en français correct, on dit "ma ancienne petite amie est française".

Wrong. Ancienne begins with a vowel, so you use "mon". You'd also use "mon" with just "amie" for the same reason. In this case, it doesn't mean the noun is masculine - you can see it's feminine by the endings of 'ancien' and 'ami'

pickarooney · 25-10-2009 01:17PM

paddymorrison wrote: »

Mais "mon" est masculine! Je pense que en français correct, on dit "ma ancienne petite amie est française".

The vowel at the start of 'ancienne' requires 'mon'. That's one of the few things right in the post.

Mackleton · 25-10-2009 01:27PM

cHaTbOx wrote: »

You said elle wouldn't? Isn't it meant to be elle ne serait pas or elle ne serait and si je didn't goes to si je ne ? Sorry just spotted it and didn't know if you don't it by accident or it was a joke

Live with three french people and one Italian , getting better at French , just starting Italian.

Okee dokee in French what he meant to say was:

Moi, je parle très bien en français. Mon ancienne petite amie était française et elle ne me parlait pas, si je ne parlais pas en français avec elle.

Sorry just couldn't leave it as it was. But personally I can say that I am way better at languages than say maths or science. I speak French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, but I can just about do basic mental arithmetic. My brain can retain the rules of grammar easily but struggles constantly with balancing an equation or the likes, it's just how I'm designed.

pickarooney · 25-10-2009 01:31PM

Mackleton wrote: »

Okee dokee in French what he meant to say was:

Moi, je parle très bien en français. Mon ancienne petite amie était française et elle ne me parlait pas, si je ne parlais pas en français avec elle.

Sorry just couldn't leave it as it was. But personally I can say that I am way better at languages than say maths or science. I speak French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese, but I can just about do basic mental arithmetic.

[quote=[Deleted User];62689958]
I find people tend to totally overestimate how well they speak a language. 9 times out of 10, when someone says a language is easy, it's because all the subtleties and difficulties have gone right over their head.[/QUOTE]

Build it and they will come.

25-10-2009 01:38PM

I've always been alright at languages.
I moved to France when I was 3 and went to school there, so I had no choice but to speak French. I was fluent within in a few months. My French speaking has gotten worse every year since I moved to Ireland! I did pick up Irish pretty quickly in primary school here though.

25-10-2009 03:38PM

pickarooney wrote: »

Build it and they will come.

And how many people posted bad French first?

liah · 25-10-2009 04:11PM

blubloblu wrote: »

No it's not. There's numerous mistakes in that sentence.

I was commenting on his spelling, not the grammatical structure. He's dyslexic so I was surprised that the words were spelled right.

Wasn't making a comment on the grammatical structure at all; I speak French, I know it's wrong.

peasant · 25-10-2009 05:50PM

liah wrote: »

I was commenting on his spelling, not the grammatical structure. He's dyslexic so I was surprised that the words were spelled right.

Wasn't making a comment on the grammatical structure at all; I speak French, I know it's wrong.

...and there I was, thanking your post for its subtle irony :rolleyes:

4zn76tysfajdxp · 25-10-2009 05:57PM

cHaTbOx wrote: »

You said elle wouldn't? Isn't it meant to be elle ne serait pas or elle ne serait and si je didn't goes to si je ne ? Sorry just spotted it and didn't know if you don't it by accident or it was a joke

blubloblu wrote: »

No it's not. There's numerous mistakes in that sentence.

SV wrote: »

Free translation sites never get it quite right.

paddymorrison wrote: »

Mais "mon" est masculine! Je pense que en français correct, on dit "ma ancienne petite amie est française".

Neamhshuntasach wrote: »

That french from earlier was obviously done thorugh a translation tool. Haha. Why would someone pretend to speak a language.

[quote=[Deleted User];62690043]Wrong. Ancienne begins with a vowel, so you use "mon". You'd also use "mon" with just "amie" for the same reason. In this case, it doesn't mean the noun is masculine - you can see it's feminine by the endings of 'ancien' and 'ami'

[/QUOTE]

Mackleton wrote: »

Okee dokee in French what he meant to say was:

Moi, je parle très bien en français. Mon ancienne petite amie était française et elle ne me parlait pas, si je ne parlais pas en français avec elle.

Sorry just couldn't leave it as it was.

[quote=[Deleted User];62691924]And how many people posted bad French first?

[/QUOTE]

peasant wrote: »

...and there I was, thanking your post for its subtle irony :rolleyes:

Vichy grammar nazis?

pickarooney · 25-10-2009 07:53PM

Kaiya Small Side wrote: »

Vichy grammar nazis?

Standing in a circle and shooting.

mental07 · 29-10-2009 01:20PM

I would say "mon ex copine" or just "mon ex" for ex-girlfriend...

29-10-2009 01:30PM

Tá mé ag baint úsáide as google aistriú a scríobh seo nach bhfuil mar mo Gaeilge maith go leor.
Am maith liom ag an teanga, go maith ar scoil d'fhoghlaim mé Fraincis agus Gearmáinis ach tá beagnach dofheicthe ar fad é!
Tar éis na scoile d'fhoghlaim mé Ollainnis, nach bhfuil mé úsáideadh é le thart ar 25 bliain tar éis dearmad sin is más é.

Tá mé ag foghlaim Gaeilge anois, ar an drochuair tá mé go raibh an-teorainn taithí a labhraíonn sé i ndáiríre.

I am using google translate to write this as my Irish is not good enough.
Am I good at languages, well at school I learned french and German but have forgotten almost all of it!
After school I learned Dutch, I haven't used it for about 25 years so have forgotten most if it.

I am now learning Irish, unfortunately I have had very limit experience is actually speaking it.

Alessandra · 29-10-2009 01:40PM

I speak four languages. Languages are my thing.

toiletduck · 29-10-2009 01:48PM

I know C, C++, Java... oh wait

'Good/Bad at languages'

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