What Foreign Languages Do You Know?

I was lucky enough to be raised in a bilingual home and I took a lot of German from the 7th grade through college. (In fact, I started at a college in the 7th grade...) Anyway, along the way, I took college classes in Japanese and community ed classes in Italian and Arabic. I taught myself to read enough Tibetan to decipher Tangkas for an article. I learned enough classical Greek to translate the Treaty of Mytilene for publication.

It always floors me when people find a coin that says "Republique Francaise" and they say they do not know where it is from. To me, it seems pretty easy that Suomi is Finland and Magyar means Hungarian. I can tell Korean from Chinese from Japanese, even though my Japanese is weak and Korean is way beyond me.

How about you? If you scoop a foreign coin from the CoinStar machine, can you tell where it is from?

Did you enjoy foreign language classes in school?

Do you use languages other than English now?

If you picked up an numismatic auction catalog in German or French, could you hack the descriptions while looking at the picture of the coin?

 

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Greek is native, English is second and German I simply never used but still in place (I think). French though I hate it is easy to catch a few words and Russian I learned how to read, write and speak but not enough to travel there. I can tell Jap. from Corean or Chinese but that's as far as I will go. Italian & Spanish I can tell and I certainly understand those European laguages on coins even a couple centuries old and from various countries those 2 colonised. Portugese is harder and same goes for Flemmish or Finish or Swedish & Norwegian or Danish although I can relatively easily tell where a tourist comes from simply listening on a conversation and almost surely I will pick a few words to "get" into the basics of a conversation. Now, Polish, Czech or Yugoslavian are all recognisable and so do many of the ex-USSR & East Block countries languages...... I think and I was told I can easily get "close" to a language as I learned very fast and complete (I might now 5 words in Swedish ie but know how to pronounce, put in a sentence, write and read correctly - ok ok I make some mistakes but everybody understands). I even can get in touch to ancient Greek or Roman/Latin but that's another story.

Dealing with world coins since I was 16, helped a lot to at least be able to tell which is what country!

 

I had two years of Spanish in high school long ago and 2 college quarters of Russian almost as long ago but both have combined with the hobby to equal more than their sum. Arabic and Japanese numbers are as plain as English now too. I guess if I can eventually read those Hebrew dates I'll be an expert! :wink:

 

welsh and english first language.i am learning polish...slowly!!

 

English.


But i can catch the odd word of French (yes i too am amazed when people can't understand Republique Francaise etc.), and i recognise the very odd word of Latin.

 

English is my main language. I know a little spanish. I am slowly learning "Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch Eck" - Pennsylvania Dutch Speak.

 

BASIC, Pascal, C, and C++.

 

LOL!

Native language is English and was once fluent in German. I can still get by. But in the same vein as Bacchus post I am or have also been proficient in COBOL, C, C++, VB, Java and C#.

 

English, some Japanese, and I can count to 100 in half a dozen languages.

 

I hardly speek inglush gud.

 

Fluently:
Dutch
Frysian (local dutch language)
English

almost fluently:
German

quite well, but not fluently:
French

enough to get the basic meaning of the text:
Spanish

recognizing characters and simple words:
Russian


also fluently:
(Delphi) Pascal
C
Basic
HTML

 

even with chinese, you actually have traditional and contemporary charactors. Traditional characters are much more detailed, and difficult to learn.

as for Japanese, Kanji was adapted from the chinese written language - Hanzi - so at one time they were the same, although time has created differences in characters used for sentence structure. Even still, many of the characters remain the same, but are pronounced differently, which is why a lot of chinese refer to japan as Riban - because the characters that Japan chose for 'Nipon', are pronounced differently in the chinese spoken language.

 

Besides my native English, I know a little Spanish and a tiny bit of German. I've been exposed to world coins long enough to recognize the native national names in the legends for most European countries, and can usually recognize the denomination.

I certainly have a much harder time with Asian and Arabic coins, though I'm slowly getting better.

 

To add to this thread, I would also recommend that people glance through and get familiar with some of the commonly identifiable attributes to foreign coins in the Krause Catalog. I find the information in the index to be pretty helpful for making quick spots or thorough enough to spend time with the tougher to identify pieces.

 

Nobody knows Klingon ? I read that the Star Trek movies, to get some consistency, hired someone to actually create a Klingon language.

Some trekkies have gone to the trouble of learning it and conversing in it. I read that there is no word for “hello”; the nearest translation is, “what do you want ?”.

I’m not a trekkie and I haven’t learned Klingon, but I think it would be a lot of fun to be traveling on a bus or plane and be conversing with a friend in Klingon.

Getting back on topic: it would be an invaluable skill in case I ever bought Klingon coins and wanted to decipher the denominations.

 

the only coins ive had trouble with because of a different language was Hungarian (i've never seen hungarian before) and the swedish currency, because theres only "Confœderatio Helvetica" (latin) on it, no swedish words (although some have "filler" on them, so that kinda gives it away)

 

(Hope I didn't get anything wrong with Cojaro's post)
Confoederatio Helvetica = Switzerland
"Filler" ain't got notten to do with "swedish words". It's Hungarian (Filler = Heller)

Back to this thread:
- perfect in German
- can read Dutch/French/some Italian
- and a little English

 

Helvetica is swiss for Switzerland.....

On Swedish coins you'll find the name "Sverige"

 

I had posted this before so I just copied it over here....

Well I'm from Kentucky so ya'll know how I talk
For fun I talk Inflationary language.....like this...

I ate a tenderloin with my fork

would be--

I nined an elevenloin with my fifth

When a word has a number in it you hike it up one number...so try it out and see how you like it...

"Nutty" Speedy