I took both Spanish and French. Studied Spanish all my life, from grade school to college (and I should speak it better). Studied French in grade school and college, and still try to improve it (coffee break French podcast anyone?).

Cat person.

ETA: oh yeah, and Latin. A bad experience which I tend to block out.

I had to take mandatory French for 11 years, haha. I also took German.

I am definitely a cat person, as well.

I love Latin. It just...makes sense to me. I never took it formally, but speak fluent botanical Latin just from my work.

I did have a hard time with you, Cloud- interesting that you took both.

I had a terrible time with PDBsg- he's a dog person, but seems like he has a French personality. With people who grew up in areas with either a strong French or Spanish influence, it's always hard to tell. Like GPB- Almost everything in Canada has both French and English on it, so you can pick up quite a bit of French just going to the grocery store. Or Josho- I don't know what his answer is, but growing up in Cali, does one want to learn MORE Spanish, or does one just figure that they get enough of it daily and turn to French?

PDBsg grew up in New Orleans, which has an equal Spanish/French influence, so that was tough. Turns out he took Russian.

Not a dog or cat person, I am both.

Can you tell me what languages I want to learn? Wuahaha

Hmmm....interesting. I don't see you as wanting to learn an Asian language for some reason.

I'm going to venture a guess for German?

I would venture to say that I am both a dog and cat person as well. I took Hebrew as a child and Chinese and Japanese in college, but I'm still not revealing the high school answer just yet.

You didn't ask I know lol but

French

Dog person

lol

No, I'm interested in everybody- if I didn't list you, it's just cause I don't know you well enough to guess or I just had a brain fart. Nobody is exempt from this game.

My area is predominantly German in addition to being part of Canada (so bilingual). Right now we have Oktoberfest; the biggest outside of Germany is in my city. Everyone goes to the festhallens to celebrate and drink beer. It's HUGE. Then we have the Christkindlmakt around Christmas. We have several German clubs scattered around the city. Our name prior to WWI was Berlin but it was changed for obvious reasons. Very German community.

Choice of language study is somewhat dependent on geography, too. As a Western girl, Spanish is much more useful than French. For GBP, and other Canadians, French would be more useful. For Aussies . . . Pacific Rim languages? Do they teach, like, Japanese or whatever they speak in Malaysia in high school?

LOL, you were right. I think the cali was the hint though

and to be honest, i dont remember a single word of it. I got a whopping D- in Spanish 1 and transferred out of Spanish 2 about a week into it.

I'm gonna go with BK's question too, though. What language would I prefer to learn?

Also, I'm moreso a dog person than a cat person, but have 2 cats wtf.

See, that's where I get hung up. Like I said, if you live in an area where Spanish is widely used, do you just pick it up and assume that taking it formally would be redundant? Or do you make a conscious effort to study it because it's useful?

josho wrote:

I'm gonna go with BK's question too, though. What language would I prefer to learn?

Hmmm. You have a very curious and independent personality, and are not afraid of what you don't know. I know that you find a challenge to be invigorating, and that you have a wide variety of interests that may influence what languages you may be interested in, so this one is tough.

Logically, I'm thinking that it's either something really esoteric and exotic, or something influenced by your family history.

For the former assumption, I might say Russian, Japanese or Arabic? I can picture you attempting something as local as Welsh or Irish, even.

I don't know your ethnic heritage, so any guess on that front is out of the question, but at least let me know if I hammered the reasoning behind it.

I'm tempted to say German for you as well. Not sure why.

Well, for the fact that it's the most widely used language in California besides English (or maybe even sometimes more than English), I figured it would be more practical to at least attempt to learn it. Being bi-lingual in CA is a huge benefit. But I never picked it up - I can tell when people are talking crap about me in Spanish, but that's about it. I also know how to ask where the library is. The rest of my Spanish knowledge is basically half the city names in CA (Los Banos, for example)

I quickly realized, though, that I'm horrible at it. Seriously, it's not even funny how linguistically inept I am.

Phalaeo wrote:

josho wrote:

I'm gonna go with BK's question too, though. What language would I prefer to learn?

Hmmm. You have a very curious and independent personality, and are not afraid of what you don't know. I know that you find a challenge to be invigorating, and that you have a wide variety of interests that may influence what languages you may be interested in, so this one is tough.

Logically, I'm thinking that it's either something really esoteric and exotic, or something influenced by your family history.

For the former assumption, I might say Russian, Japanese or Arabic even. I can picture you attempting something as local as Welsh, even.

I don't know your ethnic heritage, so any guess on that front is out of the question, but at least let me know if I hammered the reasoning behind it.

Ding, Russian. I've always been enamored with the language (or maybe it's just my love of vodka).

however, ethnic heritage has nothing to do with it (though i friggin wish i was Russian! )

eta: seriously though, do you work as a fortune teller on the side? you could start a business. Landscaping/Fortune Telling!

I have been studying French for nearly 8 yrs and Japanese for one year. Its funny that you brought it up as I just finally got into both for this quarter at school, lol. I'm also working on trying to learn Italian, I know a little, but not much. Also, I'm both a dog and a cat person, may be more into cats as I've had more and currently have 3.

See, that's the thing. Your personality type suggests to me that you would not be afraid of learning another alphabet like Cyrillic or Greek, but knowing you personally, I would think that you would find it a real pain in the ass.

So.....speaking wise, I think you would take on anything, but i would think that you would be put off any choice that required you to learn a new alphabet.

No, I just try to be really observant, and look for patterns in things.

So...do you know anybody who will pay me for me to tell them what language they took in high school? How much should I charge?

You are all getting a very valuable free service today, lol.

actually, the last time I tried to dabble in Russian, the Cyrillic is what held me up. I did pick up a lot of it, though, but it was the biggest difficulty in most of it. But I think the written part is definitely what held me up the most.

But what held me up in spanish the most was the fact that everything was so friggin different. The writing wasn't bad at all, but holy crap gender and tense.

I was a clever clogs so I took two languages, one of them was french, well done!! But guess again

I am most definitely a cat person.

Mmmmmm...
took a bit of german when we lived in germany in the first and second grade
had all I could do the master "American" in highskool

What was amazingly hard for me with Chinese is the tonality. Like I said, my hearing sucks balls, and the fact that you can say the same syllable with four different inflections and it means four different things? I once screwed up and called my teacher a rat. That day sucked.

I had no problem leaning the Hebrew alphabet, and even attempted Arabic a few years back because the two languages are so similar, but I didn't get far.

Alka wrote:

I was a clever clogs so I took two languages, one of them was french, well done!! But guess again

I am most definitely a cat person.

I don't really know what is offered in High School in the UK... I know it's mandatory to take Irish in Ireland, and you're not from Wales, so I don't think you took Welsh.

I don't see you as taking any Asian language... perhaps Italian, Greek, Latin or even a continental language that they wouldn't teach in America like Dutch? Given the choice between Greek and Latin, I would tend to guess Greek for you.

This other one baffles me.

I do enjoy to baffle. German was my primary language, in my first high school we took one or the other, I chose German. In my second high school everyone took French and then if you were particularly good you did German as well (and if you were particularly stupid you took Spanish...sorry). They (obviously) let me continue German and I had to take French up 1.5 yrs behind everyone else. Booooo.

Oh, and I chose German because of my heritage and it's the language I'd most like to learn. However, I'm going to start a Spanish course when I can be bothered to apply.

Just for information's sake, what are the language requirements in the UK, and what are the languages commonly offered?

In most US states, you are given a choice of French or Spanish, although some high schools offer Latin, German, Russian, Italian, and very rarely Chinese or Japanese.

My school offered French, Spanish and Latin. I was talked out of taking Latin by my parents cause it "wouldn't be useful". Isn't that ironic?

Another interesting thing to throw into the mix is whether or not someone has the personality type to learn a whole new alphabet. Not that it's good or bad if you choose to or not, but there are very few people on tribe that I see as wanting to learn a language with a different alphabet.

I think those would probably be

Primal
Gracie-Chan
PDBsg
BadKitty
CerealKiller
Cloud
Alka
DollParts
and Josho, like I said- He was a toss up because he would probably really like to, but would think it was a giant pain in the ass.

Oddly, I just reviewed this list, and most of the people on it have a career in or a strong interest in science or mathematics- two fields where you have to learn different notations and "alphabets" (symbols) in order to communicate in a standardized manner.

I hope you guys don't find my observations and musings to be too boring- it's my day off and my brain is just free-associating everything today.

I don't find this at all boring! I think this is ace. Although strike me off the maths bit of that list, booo to maths. Quite like Science but I wouldn't call working in Holland & Barrett scientific lol.

I'd love to learn Icelandic though.

LOL! I just checked out the look-like thread, and you have Mea Culpa tattooed near your ass!

C'mon, I wasn't TOO far off on the Latin then, was I?

Hahaaa
Shut up you.

I definitely took French, though I'm not fluent by any means. I'm both a dog and a cat person. I especially love my cat since he behaves like a dog. The only other language my school (a small, rural one) offered was German.

And you're right, Phal, I wanted to take introductory Greek or Russian in my first year of uni, but neither of them would fit into my schedule. I know the entire Greek alphabet thanks to physics classes, haha. I would mostly want to take it just to be able to say I could speak a bit of it. My husband took a couple of online (Scots) Gaelic courses, and I picked up a few phrases from that.

And this is definitely not boring. It's pretty cool that you're bang on.