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?
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:
Well,I can read the true Arabic numerals on the coins of various Middle Eastern countries to work out the date,which is usually an AH date.There are a few British Commonwealth entities that have used the AH dating system - Zanzibar,Brunei,Malaysia,& quite a few of the Indian Princely States (especially Hyderabad & Mysore). I have a very limited command of foreign languages,but I can tell the differences between the coins of Serbia,Bulgaria,Macedonia & Montenegro,even though they use the Cyrillic alphabet,which is also used in Russia. German is a language that intrigues me,as does Dutch & Afrikaans.
Redneck is my language of choice. I can also understand Jive Talk. I can translate a little Preppie, but it's still foreign to me.
Well,as there was no foreign language tuition in my school days,I have taught myself about foreign languages,even though I cannot formally write,let alone speak them.I know enough to be able to identify coins.
I was born and raised in a housing project in Brooklyn, New York. So I guess English is a foreign language for me. However, My wife speaks two languages and her sister speaks three so when they are speaking to each other I'm glad I only know one. Don't have to pretend that I'm listening that way.
Like most British people, i speak English. That's it. I can kinda read a bit of French, but i usually need a dictionary, any German i leared 5 years ago is totally gone by now. I was never any good with languages, i just forget what the words mean. I get this with English though, some words, like juxtaposition i can never, ever remember the meaning of without looking them up.
I am a Flemish Belgian So Netherlandish or Flemish or Dutch all the same is my mother language As a Flemish you need to speak French to graduate ( the same was not true for the walloon belgians they only needed a few words of flemish ) Afrikaans is about 75% Dutch and is classified with Hollandish and Flemish as the same family of languages I had to learn South African songs at school like rij mar an ossewage rij mar an ( roll on oxwagon roll on ) English is my third language And since there is a German official language group in Belgium German is my fourth language I speak and read it but write horribly I took Spanish for 200 hours and get by ( basic read and speak ) I was working in Denmark for a week and amazed I understood about 50% of what people were saying , enough to know my appointed translator was not honestly translating I worked in Hungry for a week and the language is totally uncomprehensible to me but my Doctor is Hungarian My neighbour is fullblooded japanese so there I can get help and she seems to be able to read chinese language very well So the only real enigma is Russian and Arabic
Had to laugh at jody526 saying that he can speak redneck- I'm fluent in that too. You have to be, to work in my neighborhood! Anyways, my high school French and Spanish were several years ago, but I can still read both languages reasonably well. Might need a dictionary once in a while, but I can muddle through. Never was very good at speaking either of them though. Rachel
As an American, some would argue whether or not I actually speak English. Nevertheless, I claim that one. In addition, I had to take ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew to graduate from seminary (both are similar, but not identical, to their modern descendants). My Greek is passable and my Hebrew is OK, more or less. The Greek is similar enough to Russian (and other Slavic languages) so that I can at least begin to piece together words. Give me enough words and I can start to piece together sentences. I took 4 years of German in high school and college, and can understand it when I read it, although I wouldn't try to speak it. But I can, when I watch the WWII movies, sometimes tell you when the caption isn't quite what the actor said in German. If I start from a familiar sounding word, I can sometimes have an elementary understanding of written Romance languages (Latin, Spanish, French, etc.) Because my church also has Korean and Taiwanese worshippers, I can tell the difference between those two languages.
When it comes to foreign languages, I am god awful. Some people have a knack for them, and I believe I am the universal balance to those people. I speak, and read a little bit of chinese - so I can also read a little bit of janapese too. I speak a touch of spanish, and that's it. At one time I believe I spoke enough chinese to get by... but I think that has worn down to vastly less comprehension since then, because I never have to use it.
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
I was probably about your age or less the first time I heard Victor Borge do that routine on the radio. Thanx for the memory, as the late great Bob Hope would say.
satootoko I heard it from the same guy..Victor Borge is one of my favorites and also my grandparents favorites!!! Speedy
