lovelanguages

Moi, j'ai mangé un croissant et du jambon pour le petit-déjeuner, du pasta et du fruit pour le déjeuner, et pour le dîner, j'ai mangé une tranche du patate douce, du porc, et du chou. J'ai aussi grignoté des biscuits et chips entre les repas.

At my school, every year 9(generally 13/14 year old) who learns French watches the same movie at the end of the year. I forgot what it was about because I forgot my glasses and couldn't read the subtitles that day, but it was something about kids in an boarding school or orphanage at Christmas. I didn't really understand it at all because at that point, we had only learned very basic conversation and vocabulary.

Moi, j'aime cuisiner beaucoup. Je cuisine souvent les choses comme les biscuits, gâteaux et petit gâteaux. Je préfère utiliser le four que le cousinière.

Bonjour tout le monde, Je m'appelle Cathy et je suis Néo-Zélandaise. Je pense que le Français est beaucoup plus beau à parler que l'anglais. À ce moment, je regarde le film "Inkheart" dans la télé.

I got introduced to wordreference.com in French class at school, and it's honestly the best tool I've found for translations and writing in a foreign language. It's ideal for translating words and phrases between languages, as it gives additional information on how a word should be used, and what linking words need be added to it. It has dictionaries in Español, Français, Italiano, Português, Català, Deutsch, Svenska, Русский, Polski, Română, Čeština, Ελληνικά, Türkçe, 英汉词典, 英和辞書, 영-한 사전, قاموس إنجليزي - عربي, but there is only a limited number that can be translated between (see the drop down bar on the home page). It also has forums for if you can't find a particular phrase in the dictionary, where there are native speakers who can help you and where you can help others.

I really don't know much about this, I'm just really curious. The way I see it, there is a lot of potential for confusion when you learn similar languages, such as French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Linguaholics, do you think that there is a point where you cannot learn any more languages?

It's obviously difficult to achieve total fluency in any language. However, many of us aren't aiming for total fluency in our studied languages. As long as you can speak all of them well enough so native speakers can understand you and not think, "what an idiot", then you have achieved the goal of communication, which is ultimately the point of learning a new language. Fluency would be great, but we only have a limited amount of time and effort, and sometimes it's better to spread yourself thinner.

I think it's basically easier to learn any language when you're as young as possible, even just through exposure. I mean, look at young children, most of them can speak fluently in their native languages by the age of 3. I grew up in a bilingual Chinese and English household, so I was able to speak both languages well when I was young. English was far easier to read due to the limited alphabet, but I learned to read quite a lot of basic Chinese words then as well. I didn't do much reading of Chinese after age 10 or so, but I'd estimate that most of the words I know were learned before age 5 when I was more willing to learn, before going to an entirely English speaking school. I think that the major challenge for language learning with children is to continue teaching them; even though there's a hard stage where they don't want to because they feel that it is useless.

Usually, you can never translate one language to another word for word, but how much are you generally allowed to change? Poetry in particular is especially hard to translate because you have to try to keep as much of the rhythm, tone and rhyme of the original piece as you can. For example, I'm studying French poetry at the moment. In the poem Barbara, by Jacques Prévert there are the lines: Des chiens qui disparaissent Au fil de l'eau sur Brest Et vont pourrir au loin A translation that I've read says something like: (sorry this is mostly from memory) The dogs that disappear In the downpour drowning Brest, float far away to rot In your opinion, do you think that trying to keep the general tone of the poem the same, or translating the words so that they have their original meanings as much as possible is more important?

Hi, my name is Cathy, I live in New Zealand and I have Chinese parents. I grew up speaking both Mandarin Chinese, the Shanghai dialect, and English, but after I started primary school, I basically focused on English. I can still speak basic Chinese fluently, but I don't have much vocabulary. I've learned French for the past 7 years at school, and I've really enjoyed learning both the language and the culture. I've learned a bit of German and Spanish before on Duolingo, but I didn't find much of the vocabulary to be useful in daily conversation. I also intend to learn to speak better Chinese. 你好, bonjour!

Yes, China is now one of the biggest economies in the world. It makes sense that many governments and companies have relationships or want to have relationships with the Chinese, and Chinese speakers would definitely be in high demand. New Zealand schools used to mainly teach French, Japanese and Spanish. However, since we export a lot of dairy and meat products to China, schools have begun offering Chinese. That is basically an admission that knowing how to speak Chinese is an extremely important skill at the moment. I really wish that I had listened to my parents when I was younger and thought learning Chinese was too difficult. It's a complex language, but the reward is being able to communicate with a billion more people.