(Dble pst)

[This message has been edited by mr9000 (edited 08-14-2009).]

TAIKE... Your posts here are intriguing!
That you are fluent in more than 1-3 languages is impressive. I also really admire the way you think. I heard all three of the videos you posted, they break my heart!

As there is no email listing for you, this seems the only way to ask you to contact you. Please contact me via my email which is available in my profile here. There is much I would love to share with you if you are open to communicating privately?

Elizabeth Evelyn

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Thank you, Elizabeth. A message via email has been sent.

Taike

When I was a young man serving aboard the U.S.S. Newport News in the United States Navy, and later while working for NASA, I traveled the world and was able to learn a smattering of many languages. At one point, I was able to converse in Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese and even a bit of Japanese, but that was many years ago. Unfortunately, when I left NASA my use of those other languages was soon lost because of non-use. I still retained a fair degree of Spanish until my sister-in-law, who is of Puerto Rican decent, moved to Florida. She has been gone for more than 15 years, and now I struggle to understand a conversation in Spanish. I think this is true with many of the skills we acquire, including music. If you don't use it, you'll likely loose it.

Great topic,

Gary

What would please me the most is to have DonM explaing about his extensive knowledge of the English language, because of the fact that 80% of the music he performs is country! It seems to me that country lyrics would really screw him up, especially when you consider that he's been performing now for maybe 58 years give or take a couple!

Cavanaugh, are you there? You've jammed with DonM before. Do you think that this is something you'd be interesting in hearing Don elaborate about?

[This message has been edited by brickboo (edited 08-19-2009).]

Greek is spoken by about 10-13 million people only (and take my word for it, many Greeks can't actually speak it but you can't tell, after all it is all Greek to you, right?)

Most Greeks learn a second language, (mostly English) because they NEED to, for obvious and well discussed reasons.

Since the public school infrastructure for foreign language teaching ranges from "practical joke" to "shitty", most pupils learn other languages through private schools. Takes about six years.

I learned English through this process, and tried to further my understanding by reading books. As a result, I am FAR better in reading/writing English than speaking it, although I can speak with a passable fluency. Fran has spoken to me on Skype, ask him about my terrible accent.

A problem I found is that many times i know what a written word means, even understand enough colloquialisms but can't pronounce it right, or soetimes don't know the correct pronunciation, or never actually heard the word spoken.

And the fun part...
It was easy enough for me to hold a conversation with a Scottish guy, (who of course made an effort to speak clearly for me) and with a five year old from Birmingham, so I thought I was the cat's pajamas.

But one day me and a friend (who has a knack for languages) heard a Greek girl speaking to a guy, three feet away from us. They were talking to each other for maybe 3 minutes, and we couldn't understand a word, nor we could "place" the language. It wasn't Francophone, not Cyrillic, nor Balkan, nor Spanish/Portuguese, no eastern, no Arabic... no Nordic language. We asked her in English where did the guy and she lived... and her answer was "New Zealand"


[This message has been edited by trident (edited 08-19-2009).]

Rikki, didn't see any response to your post, so here is mine. I believe you think in the current language you are using the most.
I worked in Switzerland for 2 years in the 1960's. Spoke German as no English was spoken in the little Engineering firm. When I returned to Australia I relised I was thinking in German and it took me about 6 weeks to drop back to thinking in English.
Regards
Keith

Vielleicht hast Du meine Antwort �bersehen , Keith?

Taike

I'm quite an expert in Pig Latin. anCa ouya eakspa igpa atinla?

onDa asonMa