Topcho

Wow, BWL after your post I don't dare to say anything! Well for me, languages like Finish, German, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic look difficult, but I must say I've never learnt any of them (watching anime doesn't count). I don't think Russian was that hard, but the 10 years of not using it ruined my grammar knowledge. I have to say I am pretty curious if my native language seems diffiucult for foreigners but there is no one to ask.

I think I will have to join the club of the trivial babies saying things like mama. But as the story goes, my sister's firs word was "Dai!" = Gimme!

I am not a fan. I guess there is still much work to be done at least in the Bulgarian version of Google Translate, because the results are often hideous :frozen: I use it only when I really have no other choice, like when I needed to check one Chinese cross stitch site.

I did try some years ago, but didn't go that far :cry: I was a member of several forums, one of them was Harry Potter related and we were having Hogwarts like classes ( I was a Ravenclaw!) and the other was Middle Earth related. We stuidied Tengwar, history of Middle Earth and etc :grin: It was fun, but then time came when I had to begin preparing my exams and I had to quit. I would love to give it a try one day but again, time is an issue. Some time later I became a fan of the star Trek universe too. Klingon is cool but to be honest I was more interested in Vulcan. But I don't seem to find as much info on this language as there is on Klingon, so in my studies I went as far as "dif-tor heh smusma" - Live long and prosper Btw, I love the Vulcan written language too, from the little I have seen! Some of the marks remind of the Time Lord signs XD

Well before I started school, my grandfather often spoke to me in Russian and read me Russian fairy tales so I picked many words - and very little grammar, lol! So in first grade my parents let me pick a class - drawing, Russian, English, or Math as a main subject and I chose Russian. So from 1st to 7th grade we were having 5 classes of Russian per week and 1 of English (but teachers kept coming in going, so not much was learnt of that English).

I have to say I don't miss the heavy dictionaries. I don't recall the experience as any fun to me, and I kept slicing my fingers in the pages - honeslty, that Bulgarian to French dictionary had something against me!The last time I actively used one was in my second year of high school, after that I used mostly electronic dictionaries, especially for Fench and English. I love how quickly I can check for the meaning of certain word. It is a real bless when I'm reading an e-book. One click and it's done!

In Bulgaria things are most similar to what Czarownica explained. Mother is "maika" in Bulgarian and father is "bashta". The equivalent of mommy is once again "mama" here and of daddy - "tatko" I guess it all kind of follows your rule

When it comes to my native language - and spoken by natives too! - I can get really pissed at mistakes. Actually I do corrections for friends almost everyday on their papers and I often get angy at all the stupid misspellings. I tolerate typos tho When I see a mistake I always look at my keybord to check if the letters are close to eachother! But when it comes to someone who learns it as a second language, most of times it just makes me happy to see and hear that the person is learning. I understand that our language can proove difficult to many people and most foreigners I meet avoid to learn it - as they knew they will always find someone who can understand English. So it just makes me happy to see them trying. It is the same when my language is not involved too - for example I got to know a very kind lady from South Africa on a blog where we all were sharing our crafts. Her choice of words was often unusual, and her sentences - akward, and yet it was always a great pleasure for me to communicate with her. She just knew how to brighten my day. But after all, the most important thing for me is to be able to communicate. This is why I chose to study something not so closely related to languages as some of my classmates - because for me the language is more of a means than a goal. As long as I see that speak/chat/read the thoughts of a good, inteligent and kind person, I can tolerate bad grammar to some extent. I can just hope people feel the same way about me too!

From what I remember from high school, Canadian and Belgian French were the hardest for me. First time I hear Canadian, I didn't get a word :speechless: I had to hear the text several times to understand what was going on. As for different regions of France, I don't know. We had teachers only from the North.

This sounds like a cool app! I just recently got myself a tablet with Android and I'ms till searching for good stuff to fill it - this one goes right in! I have a long trip coming in one week and this will help me spend the hours in the bus :grin:

Oh, I love this site! But shame on me, it feels like ages since I last used it :shy: I do my daily clicking at ClicktoGive and other similar donation sites but completely forgot for this one. I love the idea of studying and helping others at the same time.

I learned English because I wanted to communicate! While I use the other langiages I (kind of) know to read articles and sometimes books, English is the only foreign tongue I use to actually speak and get to know people better! In primary and high school we focused on other languages but I spent some time on private English classes (it was English or piano lessons, so I chose English! ) and this gave me the basics. But later I started blogging, I just wanted to share my hobbies and the things I loved with other people and the only communities I found were in English, so I started practicing. I met wonderful people who helped me on the way, like one very nice lady from England who kindly showed my mistakes and helped me.

I agree that anyone knowing English would bring benefits, but also disatvantages, especially to certain groups. Nowadays learning English is becoming a must,if you want to keep track of all the global news or even simply to communicate with others. I enjoy the opportunities it gives me and I made many great friends thanks to it. But it is true there's risk of losing your mother's language - not only if it is a less known ans used dialect. I know families that went abroad and now their children can't speak a word on the language their parents, grandparents and so on were raised on. And this is just so sad.

Thank you for the warm welcome, linguaholic! :grin: I feel great here already! I'll be very happy to help if any of the members has questions about my language or my alphabet (actually the two most common questions I get asked are "Is this written in Russian? " and "Can you show me how to write my name in Cyrillic?" Now I'm off to check the English subforums - and will probably lurk in the rest of them too

I think my favourite must be "avoir un chat dans le gorge" (to have a thick, hoarse voice) - literally "to have a cat in the throat. I still remember the picture this idiom came with in my old manual. It was quite hilarious XD

Hello everyone! Whenever I write such "first"posts I am more used to share my likes, dislikes and hobbies, but I guess this time it's better to talk about languages My name is Nina and I am a 22 years old med student from Bulgaria - so in case you need help with Bulgarian, I'm here, just saying! The foreign language I think I'm best at is... English, tho this is the one I studyied the less. I studied Russian for almost seven years when I was little and then 5 years of French in high school. Along with my university studies, I had to pick up a bit of Latin too. I had real English classes for only 3 years - and yet I think I'm rather good. And it was all thanks to places like this - forums, sites and blogs that let me practice what I knew and helped me learn new things. So now I hope to continue practing and learning here, and maybe refresh my French and Russian - they are so so dusty by now.