Quote:
Originally Posted by Sundae Girl
I only speak English. I can understand French if spoken slowly (I haven't spoken it myself since 1988, but am remembering it because my Manager on Saturdays is from Togo, an East African former French colony) a little German and tourist Italian and Spanish. I can swear in Dutch and Punjabi.
IMHO I think those languages most foreign to us are most important - Japanese, Chinese, Indian (although the last two have dialects so diverse there is no official language). To learn to converse with people who have not only a different language but a different structure is to me a huge commitment. Dwellars with good memories will know I signed up for Chinese but the course was cancelled - I'll look again (NOW I HAVE A JOB!!!! sorry, still excited)
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If you learn Mandarin or Cantonese, you'll be understood everywhere in China, and if you learn 'Tokyo Japanese' you'll be understood everywhere in Japan. One thing I find very interesting about Japanese, is that there are island where the language itself has evolved into other dialects, so in order to communicate with someone on an island that you can see, you have to speak a dialect from a totally different area of the country.