InfiniteGeko

I'm not sure. It does work in most countries but there are certain cultures in which pointing at someone or something is an insult. Some small neighborhoods in my hometown think that when you're pointing at someone you're either accusing or mocking someone. We'd just have to find the equivalent gesture of addressing something without using a finger. Perhaps an open hand presenting the object, place, or person?

I do that sometimes. Since I'm studying Game Art & Design my main goal is to cater to every language possible. I'd like to work with games that have deep stories, but what's the point if the game can't convey the message clearly in another language? What AExAVF mentioned is extremely relevant to translation. Having a Caribbean Spanish as my native language I find it stressful to hear these strange accents from South America and/or Central America with slang words I've never heard in my entire life. I end up losing track of half of the story because the one important turning point in the story contained a very vague slang word that the majority of Spanish speakers don't understand. This isn't the case in every story but Battlefield 4 had this problem when I changed the game's language to Spanish and see how well they worked on the translation. I regretted doing that.

I sometimes change the language for fun because I realize that the voice acting for other languages that I recognize is really bad. Sometimes Spanish voice overs make rugged characters sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I also find that some Japanese voice overs tend to change the personality of the characters because of the different pitch range in tonality. They're amusing at times but there also times where I'm amazed because characters have not lost the essence of what makes them through translation.

A good majority of my dreams are lucid and after a minute or two I find myself mentally muting everyone in the dream. Three fourths of my day is noisy and I really can't stand loudness unless I'm willingly at a concert. At night I find myself seeking solace to the point that I sense the perfect silence in my dreams. I wouldn't appreciate my dreams if they were noisy as well.

I love strong accents. I have romanced a girl who once only knew the Spanish dialect. I won't lie, it was very frustrating because I couldn't take her to many places because she didn't what to learn English. Spanish is my native language but there are some jokes and news that I would have loved to show her, but what can we do if not sigh in frustration?

Two or three languages is safe. I wouldn't mind knowing more languages. Once you get used to a single language you'll start notice that the next language isn't as difficult because it has the same roots. You can see this happening in Spanish, Portuguese, and French, or even Italian. I would still exhort a person to top out at three languages if it's not work related because you'd need a lot of time in each culture to get used to how fast they speak and learn the most recent slang. Don't stop there, though! I'm sure each language has a sub-dialect in each small town of its origin.

What Kaffi says makes a lot of sense. Not do you find yourself among people who will skip words but you'll also hear slang terms and regular speech mixed and spoken very fast because it is natural to them. In Puerto Rico, you'll find that the native have a habit of "eating" consonants and vowel in words to make them flow together faster. Why was this done? Puerto Rico is a very musical island and in the history of the slaves that were there was a lot of mix ups between the African language (which is somewhat rhythmic and smooth) and the Spanish language. These two, along with the indigenous Taino language, created a very musical vocabulary in which words were purposely shortened to make them fit into 4 over 4 measures of music. Culture in small towns is a huge factor when learning a language.

What if you were chosen and paid to make a trip from point A to point B in a town you've never been to before? Your only advantage is that the signs you make with your hands are relatively inoffensive (except the ones that are intentionally offensive). While you're getting to this town your eyes are blindfolded so you can't use land marks that you saw on the way to figure out in what general area you are. You were brought to town via automobile so you're unable to hear outside of the vehicle. How would you get from one side of town to the other on foot? What would be your strategy to know where you have to go, apart from asking the person who challenged you, "what is point B called?

You bet it is! But there are exceptions, holding the Caribbean as an example. Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Cuba all speak Spanish but many other countries in the vicinity of these islands speak an entirely different language. This is due to the historical process of each zone. There was a lot of warring over the territories of the Caribbean which included the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the English. There also linguistic injections of African slave communities and even the language of those indigenous to the islands. Haiti and the Dominic Republic has strong French roots as does Martinique and Saint Martin. Half the island of Saint Martin is actually dutch and is called Sint Maarten. Make sure you say hi to your neighbors today! :grin:

If you happen to be a native speaker or someone just trying to learn then talk to me on this very thread. I'm an intermediate speaker and would like to continue practicing the language. I'd gladly speak using the Cyrillic alphabet or just translate to a pronounceable English alternative. Just drop a reply and to this thread and I'll glad strike up a conversation in Russian.

I have used Rosetta Stone for Russian. It's basically flashcards for the first part of the entire course. Then it tells you a few minute phrases. It's mostly up to the student to immerse themselves in an environment of cooperative people that allow you to exercise your language. Truthfully, they give a large array of words and accompaniments so, though conversation, you figure out your own sentences. Much like a child listens to adults speak and applies words to images and sentences to actions. I think it's a very useful bit of software but you have to be serious about the language and follow up every day.

Rosetta Stone was fun for the time I had it. I was trying to learn Russian but I noticed something that Rosetta Stone does that my friends have already been doing successfully: Immersion. When you surround yourself in the language you have no choice but to learn like a child. You find yourself learning the word and then applying it to an image. This felt a lot like kindergarten and although I was a very helpful source of learning it wasn't as fast as learning directly through cooperative people. I would like to add that you will find Rosetta Stone absolute useless if you don't have someone with the native tongue to practice with.

Amigo mio, veo que te interesa el Español y el Ruso. Tienes suerte! A mi tambien me interesa ambos lenguajes. Pude entender un poco de lo que escribistes. Con gusto te ayudaría mejorar para que puedas comunicarte con nosotros claramente. Me gustaría saber que tanta experiencia tienes con el languaje Español. Seguramente podría enseñarte un par de cosas para que te puedas defender en conversaciones.

Of course! Check this out in Russian: "Доброе утро." Which is pronounced, "Dobroye ootro" is "Good morning". "Как дела?" Which is pronounced, "Kak dyela" is "How are you"? "Как тебя зовут?" Which is pronounced, "Kak tyebya zovoot" is "What is your name"? That's informal for friends and such. But if you want to be polite you can use: "Как вас зовут?" Which is pronounced, "Kak vas zovoot" "Меня зовут Алексис." Which is pronounced, "Menya zovut Alexis" is "My name is Alexis".

Google is only as effective as the users are. Google accepts corrections from users and adds it to its vast dictionary. Later on in the week, the employees that work directly with Google Translate spell check it and see if it makes sense in a sentence. What makes it difficult are a these two factors: whether or not the people who speak the language contribute and whether the sentences or words sent are slang or proper language. So far, it's been pretty off translating things to Spanish because I do not share that same Spanish as Spain or Argentine. Spain in itself has three divisions in its language called Valenciano, Gallego, and Española. The Argentine have two which I do not recognize. One of them maybe be an adaptation of Castellano. In Puerto Rico we speak Castellano which is a language mainly spoken by sailors that were in direction of the island. These sailors just so happened to have lived on the West coast of Spain, where the tongue "Española" was spoken the most.