Alfonso

I really enjoyed it, interesting stuff, thanks for sharing it. BBC has some of the best documentaries. I'm watching the second episode now, Youtube seems to have episodes 1 - 8.

Well, its the 3rd most spoken language on the planet, so that alone should be motivation enough for a lot of people. Personally, I'm a Peninsular Spaniard living in the Philippines and about 60% of my family speak Spanish regularly or at least have the ability to do so. Sadly, my generation was not taught how to speak Spanish. Aside from that, jobs that require fluent Spanish pay really well in the Philippines. Lastly, fluency in both English and Spanish is a big advantage anywhere in the world.

Kamusta tol? Ever wonder where the word tol (bro) came from? Most people would say it comes from the word utol (brother or sister), which is correct but not exactly the complete origin of the word. This word went through many modifications and actually originates from the term "kaputol ng pusod" which translates in English, "cut from the same navel". So the next time your drinking with friends and someone says, "shot ka na tol!" tell the the origin term and how it went from "kaputol ng pusod" to "kaputol" to "utol" to "tol" for a good drinking story.

I think Taglish is somehow becoming an official way Filipinos speak.

Like for example, when you call a Telecom's hotline, it will prompt you for the following:

Press 1 for English

Press 2 for Taglish

And there is no prompt for Tagalog / Filipino.

Just like in Japanese, they often use loan words and write them in Katakana. This is one way to make things in life easier. Haha Convenience.

It would be really sad if taglish becomes our official language, or even recognized officially. Its gonna be a lethal blow to our national identity. Sadly, I noticed a lot of Filipinos see the language as a language for the lower class, which is pure non-sense. Filipino is a beautiful language and mixing it with any other, in my opinion, is just senseless and shows a lack of national pride.

This reminds me of what Rizal said, "Ang hindi magmahal sa sariling wika, daig pa ang hayop at malansang isda".

Welcome to linguaholic kabayan! As previously stated by BWL, the Spanish section here will help loads! Where in the Philippines are you from?

Welcome to Linguaholic! It's a great forum with lots of friendly people. Just curious, do a lot of people speak Greek in Canada?

I agree, some word learning games would be awesome. I think a simple multiple choice kind of game, where you can chose the proper word or phrase to complete a given sentence, would be a good resource for learning or refining a language. You can also have different difficulty levels, beginner, novice, intermediate, expert, etc.

According to Merriam-Webster, both "jeez" and "geez" are correct, but in my opinion, Jeez is more correct since the term is a euphemism derived from the expression "Jesus" which some people use as an expression of shock or surprise.

If you've been the the Philippines before, you may be familiar with the hybrid "taglish" that a lot of locals speak. It's basically code-switching between Tagalog and English, for example, "Pwede ba tayo mag dinner sa McDonald's later?" I personally find it inelegant and irritating to the point that I pretend not to understand a person speaking that speaks to me in taglish, even though I do. I see it as a "language abomination" or two beautiful languages, what do you think about taglish?

yeah, and this goes for learning any new language.

Maligayang Pagbati kabayan! Welcome to Linguaholic!

If I may ask, why are you moving to Japan? 

With English being the universal language and the national language of several countries, its no surprise that you'll find a long list of different English accents. From the list below (which only includes some of the more popular English accents) which is your favorite accent, I personally like the English accents of people from Jamaica and Spain.

English Speakers from..

-America (New York)

-America (South)

-America (California)

-Australia

-Canada

-China

-England (Cockney)

-England (Standard)

-England (South)

-England (Welsh)

-England (Midlands)

-France

-India

-Italy

-Jamaica

-Malaysia

-Mexico

-New Zealand

-The Philippines

-Russia

-Scotland

-Scandinavia

-Spain

(I'm sure there are a lot of others so please don't limit your answers to this list)

I'll give you my top 3! First would be American, but more specifically, New Jersey or New York accents. I don't know why, but I think maybe its from my love for the Sopranos series. After that its Spanish then Japanese.

I know French is the common answer but I just don't found it romantic and I never understood why people do. I guess it just preference.

I've never heard about it before but Duolinguo sounds interesting. I'm always happy to learn of resources for learning new languages so, thanks for sharing! I'd like to know before I sign up, is it free to use?

You guys are really lucky. You don't need to learn other languages if you don't want to. But in countries like India, you have to learn your own native language, your national language and thereafter the English language to be successful in any area.

So it's obvious that you people will be a little bit arrogant and want everyone to speak your language as it's the language which connects everyone from all across the globe.

English is not from America, rather, it's origins are from Germanic tribes that settled in England during the 5th century AD. How English became the universal language was a process that took hundreds of years, and was established long before America was discovered by Columbus.

I don't look at it as arrogance but just a result of past British world dominance and current American world dominance.

here are some others terms for "high" I've heard through out the years, this only pertains to using cannabis.

Stoned

Choked-out

Smashed

Baked

Blazed

Wasted

Smoked

Sedated

Good

Happy-eyes

Tripping

F*cked

Hola! Beinvenidos a Liguaholic. I'm also trying to learn Spanish, good luck to you and I hope this forum helps you as much as its been helping me.

Hello and welcome to linguaholic. Goodluck with your quest to impress your boyfriend's parents! 

I'm surprised that both lit and lighted are acceptable! I always though it was incorrect to use the word lighted so thanks for enlightening me. I still think lit is a smoother word to use both as a verb and adjective. "A lit candle" sounds better than "a lighted candle" to me.

Bring and take are two verbs that are not interchangeable.  There is often some confusion as to which one to use as they seem to mean the same thing.

This is a pretty cool topic, I remember thinking about this when I was in high school. I'm just wondering about the two words being non-interchangeable. What about these two examples;

"Take the dog with you" and "Bring the dog with you."

"Bring grandma to the hospital." and "Take grandma to the hospital."

They both seem grammatically correct and have practically the same meaning in my perception, what do you think?

Mine would be Lollygag, which means to be extremely slow at something, lazy or slacking.

This is so true, its one of the most common kinds of tattoo's people get. I want share a story of my good friend, lets call him Paul, got a Chinese character tattoo a few years ago. It was his first tattoo, when he showed it to me be said it meant "Strong Will". A few day's later we were drinking with a Chinese-Filipino friend who had a very strong Chinese culture at home. When he saw the tattoo, he first laughed for about 30 seconds and told us it actual said "Strong Odor". Paul couldn't stand it so a week or two later, he he had another tattoo artist cover the whole thing up with a tribal design.

I don't know about you, but I get annoyed when people use short-cuts when chatting and texting. I don't really say anything but I really gets me. They change what to wat, you to u, great to gr8, wait to w8, good morning to G-AM. Knw wat i myn? What do you think about this 21 century trend?

There are an estimated 6,9000 languages spoken in the world today. They range in size from very large, with hundreds of millions of native speakers, to very small with as few as one or two speakers!!!

The languages of the world are unevenly distributed, both geographically and also in terms of speaker populations. The largest eight languages have over 150 million speakers and 40 percent of the worlds population speaks one of those 8 languages (one of those eight languages is their native language).

What is also very interesting is the fact, that more than half of all languages today have fewer than 10'000 speakers and more than 1/4 have LESS than 1'000 speakers. In some cases , mainly in Australia or the Americas, there are some highly endangered languages, which just have one or two elderly people who speak them!

The largest number of languages are spoken in Africa and also in Asia. Papa New Guinea stands out amongst other places as on this island alone there are 820 different languages (!) Moreover, Vanuatu, with 120 languages amongst it's 100'000 people has the highest language density of any country in the world.

That's some interesting trivia there, thanks for sharing it. It's also interesting to note that about 1/3 of the world's population speak Chinese, English or Spanish.

I also want to mention, the number of languages is est. is 6,900, not to confuse the 6,9000 you wrote which was probably a typo. Of course this number could be bigger if you would include different regional dialects,tribal languages and modern slang.

As I understand it, Desculpeand Desculpa are exactly the same and only differ in world gender for sentence usage, both words are derived from the world Disculpeme, which translates to "Excuse me". Desculpe is generally used as a more casual way of excusing yourself while, for example, going through a crowed, bumping into someone or interrupting someone who is speaking.

Permiso is somewhat similar, it translates to permission in English and is used simply for asking permission. For example, as a guest in a house, if you want pick up a book, or look at an award from the host or reaching across someone to get something, permiso would be the right word to use.