Friday Five
Mar. 23rd, 2024 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. What is your native language?
English (and it took me at least six to seven years to figure that one out, actually maybe fifteen to twenty, give or take).
I think I learned how to draw and paint first?
2. Do you speak any other languages? Which ones?
No. I tried. For seven years I tried to learn how to speak French. Even went to France for immersion - for about two months, living with a French family. (Except they spoke a kind of Pastoral French, be like coming to the US to learn to speak English, but ending up in New Orleans? Or Texas? Or going to Britain to speak English, and ending up in either Scotland or Wales?)
What I learned was how to figure out what someone was saying through body language and convey what I was saying through body language, and not worry that much about the language. It's a really good skill to have by the way. Has served me well in so many situations. Also how to figure it out by context.
3. How difficult is it for you to learn or understand new languages?
Almost impossible. I've decided facility with language is in your DNA, this is NOT a learned skill - it's a gift. Being able to learn languages easily is kind of like being able to draw a person from memory, or sing beautifully without vocal lessons, or do a cartwheel.
I've proof. No one in my immediate family has a facility for language despite trying repeatedly. We all tried, and different languages, we all failed. Miserably. My father took five to six years of Russian, the only thing he got out of it - was reading a lot of Russian literature and a couple of phrases. My mother took German, she even had relatives who spoke German that she could talk to, she got nothing, not even any phrases. My brother took Spanish, and gave up quickly. My niece basically excelled at the ancient languages that she didn't have to speak, took Chinese, and couldn't get the oral intonations right and gave up. (She did the best out of all of us.)
We all got maybe a three-eight year old's grasp of the other language if that. And none of us reached the level of being able to speak it. We could figure out how to read and potentially write in it, but the oral part we struggled with. I think my niece came closest.
Weird thing about languages? People seem to assume if they can easily learn it everyone can? If everyone could easily learn languages - life would be a lot easier than it currently is and lot less miscommunication.
4. If you were going to study a new foreign language, which would you want to learn?
Spanish - it's the most widely spoken outside of English in the US. Sorry, folks, it is. And the easiest to learn.
5. How are you at reading subtitles in foreign films?
Pretty good. But it can be headache inducing in animation. It's actually best in live action, and usually something without too much dialogue.
ETA: figured out what causes double posting - if you hit the back button and fix a post, it will double post it, because the other post posts, and by hitting the back button you are essentially creating a copy and fixing that instead. So when you post it and want to edit - always hit "edit" don't push the back button.
English (and it took me at least six to seven years to figure that one out, actually maybe fifteen to twenty, give or take).
I think I learned how to draw and paint first?
2. Do you speak any other languages? Which ones?
No. I tried. For seven years I tried to learn how to speak French. Even went to France for immersion - for about two months, living with a French family. (Except they spoke a kind of Pastoral French, be like coming to the US to learn to speak English, but ending up in New Orleans? Or Texas? Or going to Britain to speak English, and ending up in either Scotland or Wales?)
What I learned was how to figure out what someone was saying through body language and convey what I was saying through body language, and not worry that much about the language. It's a really good skill to have by the way. Has served me well in so many situations. Also how to figure it out by context.
3. How difficult is it for you to learn or understand new languages?
Almost impossible. I've decided facility with language is in your DNA, this is NOT a learned skill - it's a gift. Being able to learn languages easily is kind of like being able to draw a person from memory, or sing beautifully without vocal lessons, or do a cartwheel.
I've proof. No one in my immediate family has a facility for language despite trying repeatedly. We all tried, and different languages, we all failed. Miserably. My father took five to six years of Russian, the only thing he got out of it - was reading a lot of Russian literature and a couple of phrases. My mother took German, she even had relatives who spoke German that she could talk to, she got nothing, not even any phrases. My brother took Spanish, and gave up quickly. My niece basically excelled at the ancient languages that she didn't have to speak, took Chinese, and couldn't get the oral intonations right and gave up. (She did the best out of all of us.)
We all got maybe a three-eight year old's grasp of the other language if that. And none of us reached the level of being able to speak it. We could figure out how to read and potentially write in it, but the oral part we struggled with. I think my niece came closest.
Weird thing about languages? People seem to assume if they can easily learn it everyone can? If everyone could easily learn languages - life would be a lot easier than it currently is and lot less miscommunication.
4. If you were going to study a new foreign language, which would you want to learn?
Spanish - it's the most widely spoken outside of English in the US. Sorry, folks, it is. And the easiest to learn.
5. How are you at reading subtitles in foreign films?
Pretty good. But it can be headache inducing in animation. It's actually best in live action, and usually something without too much dialogue.
ETA: figured out what causes double posting - if you hit the back button and fix a post, it will double post it, because the other post posts, and by hitting the back button you are essentially creating a copy and fixing that instead. So when you post it and want to edit - always hit "edit" don't push the back button.
no subject
Date: 2024-03-25 04:18 pm (UTC)There was a delay in the line in a coffee shop and I got chatting to this wonderful old lady while we were waiting.
She had the most unusual of accents and this is her story as best I can remember it.
She had been about fourteen in The Hunger Winter of 1944-45; had experienced starvation the likes of which I cannot imagine. When they were finally liberated in the spring the village she lived in came under the command of a British Captain; whom she ended up marrying some time tne the spring of either 1951 or 1952. I think he was about ten years older than her, and left the army a Colonel.
After a final tour in Korea they ended moving to France in 1954, where they lived until late eighties when they moved to somewhere close to Edinburgh. At the time I met her he had been dead something like a decade, but she had remained living in Scotland.
Her accent as I recall it came from the fact that; though she had spoken A bit of English before meeting him she had mostly learnt her English from a man who had a very upper class Scottish accent, and then learnt French in an area she described much in the words you used (does make me kind of hope it was the same area of France.
She did describe their accents (the French people she had lived amongst) as being regarded as very distinctive to their fellow French speakers. It certainly affected her English accent as well, because she had the most unique accent I have ever heard.
She would have been close to eighty at the time and though I never met her again she often comes into my thoughts because of her accent.
kerk