I have always loved learning languages and over the years have studied French, German, Spanish and Italian. I also did GCSE Latin about 5 years ago at night class and enjoyed that.
Learning languages has changed over the years. When I did my first 'O' level back in the 60s the emphasis was on written but now it seems to be on speaking and listening.
Irene xx
aww i would love to do latin! at my uni we do all 4 equally; reading, writing, speaking and listening, but i think for me being able to speak and understand what is being said back to me is more important than all the spelling and grammar stuff (which i also love i have to admit
) xx
My view is, what's the point in doing something you don't enjoy?! If you enjoy language then it's no different from someone studying..geography for example. Imagine if nobody was to ever learn another countries language, we would be pretty screwed then lets face it. How the heck would we get our imports of cocoa beans :O There so much you can go into purely by knowing another language!
When I told people I was gonna do nursing I often got asked 'what the hell do you wanna do that for?!'.. because I enjoy it!!
I did French and Welsh for GCSE
bit confusing at times, a good bit of 'frelsh' and 'wench; was spoken at times
yeah exactly, i love my languages and thats why i chose to do them at sixth form and why i chose to carry them on at uni and i hate having to explain myself to people all the time! frelsh sounds very interesting
xx
I am a French and Spanish teacher so I'm obviously an advocate! Also, languages helped me meet my OH. They have changed my life, enriched my experiences abroad and opened my eyes to totally new worlds.
yayyy!!
i wish i carried french on now, dropped it halfway through first year of uni, mainly because of a teacher i really didnt get on with and i really regret it now
what level do you teach at? xx
I'd love to be able to speak another language. I did GCSE Russian at school, and started A Level but the jump was too much for me to cope with! Can barely remember any now, but I can still read and write the alphabet! Didn't do any more language learning then until last year when I went to Kenya for a month. Picked up a fair bit of Swahili, and really enjoyed it. I obviously needed the whole 'immersion in language' thing to get anywhere, because within a couple of weeks of coming back, I'd forgotten the lot!
I do think language learning is really valuable though. And would imagine it opens a fair few doors employment-wise?
wow russian and swahili?! check you out
definitely being imersed helps i think, im sure you would pick it back up again if you went back! im not sure about the jobs thing, we've always been told it does but i guess i wont know until i graduate! xx
Very impressive. You obviously have a talent for languages.
How could speaking another language be considered a waste of time ???
Catalan and Valencian are very similar. The Catalans says the Valencians stole it from them and the Valencians say the same about the Catalans.
I agree with you about the opening your eyes.
Having lived here for almost 30 years I can not understand the expats who do not speak the language. I could not bear not to understand what is going on around me and would have missed so much of the wonderful culture here.
Our Spanish friends are so important to us and we love being involved.
We are selling up and coming home to the U.K. It has nothing to do with Spain and everything to do with wanting to be closer to my family.
We have had a brilliant 30 years here, enriched by speaking the language.
thanks Sue
i would love to live in Valencia, you are soooo lucky! i too cannot understand expats who make no attempt at even learning a few bits of the language, it just seems really ignorant to me like "oh well everyone can speak english i wont even bother" definitely not the right attitude in my eyes!
my catalan teacher (from mallorca so biased i guess
) has always taught us that from a linguistic point of view, catalan and valenciano are the same language, but with a few
dialect differences in the spoken forms, and that they're only called seperate languages from a political point of view... not sure how accurate that is though
xx
I learned French to a decent standard at school, but as a youngster, i never really loved the language. I then started falling in love with Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein etc. and learned German via a combination of books, night class, visiting and friends.
I always wanted to learn Italian too, but I have so many other interests and so little time - or so it seems
Steve
thats the thing i think, once you develop an interest in one language it just spreads and you end up being able to converse with half of europe
xx
thank you all for your input guys and girls xxx