Hello from a Malaysian in Bordeaux

[BWL]

Hi Guys,

My name is Bryan and I am a Malaysian currently living in the beautiful city of Bordeaux. I am an engineer by training enjoy reading about linguistics and I absolutely love learning languages. I speak English, French, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Fujianhua (my native Chinese dialect), Tagalog, Hindi, Tamil, Burmese, Cambodian, Japanese and basic Italian and German. I am also keen on improving my Arabic especially MSA and Syrian-Lebanese dialect.

Pleased to meet you all!

[linguaholic]

hi BWL

Wow, you speak so many languages! It's so nice to have you here in the forums! I hope you can even learn more languages here on linguaholic.com or at least improve your skills in some of the languages that you mentioned. I would love to hear about some characteristics of Fujianhua. If you could spread some knowledge about it in the Chinese Forum that would be absolutely amazing.

[Manuel Fuchs]

hi BWL

wohooooo...how is it possible to speak so many languages? would you like to share your secret hehe :frozen:???

anyway, welcome to the forum! have fun

[BWL]

hi BWL

Wow, you speak so many languages! It's so nice to have you here in the forums! I hope you can even learn more languages here on linguaholic.com or at least improve your skills in some of the languages that you mentioned. I would love to hear about some characteristics of Fujianhua. If you could spread some knowledge about it in the Chinese Forum that would be absolutely amazing.

Absolutely! I would love to share some of my dialect! The thing is, there are 5 or 6 major dialects spoken in Fujian alone (there are apparently even more in Guangzhou and Guangxi - but that's typical in  Southern China). I speak what we call Minnan-hua  (闽南语). It is very different from Minbei (闽北) and Mindong (闽东). Furthermore (yes, take a deep breath...here we go) there are 4 variations of the Minnan dialect. Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou and Taiwan. All of them are mutually intelligible however.

I speak basically what is the Zhangzhou variant of Minnan as well as the Taiwanese variant (my maternal grandmother was from Taipei, Taiwan). My paternal great-grandparents came from villages around Zhangzhou, Southern Fujian.

I'll go into the specifics of the various dialects in the area as we go along.

[Forgetparis2003]

Wow! I am green with envy. Have always wanted to be so talented. In college I majored in journalism and Latin American studies and aspired to become an international correspondent. Alas, life did not turn out that way!

I speak Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, some French, and English obviously. Lol.

I still hope to one day be that talented, though. They say its never too late to learn  :grin:

[BWL]

Wow! I am green with envy. Have always wanted to be so talented. In college I majored in journalism and Latin American studies and aspired to become an international correspondent. Alas, life did not turn out that way!

I speak Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, some French, and English obviously. Lol.

I still hope to one day be that talented, though. They say its never too late to learn  :grin:

It is never too late to learn! If you have the interests and the need to (you're moving to a new country perhaps etc.) then it will become easier. Do not see learning a new language as something difficult, think of it as being like riding a bicycle ; the more you practice, the better you get at it, but your going to fall down the first few lessons. Just pick yourself up and go with the flow, you'll be speeding down linguistic highways in no time!