Topic: The Chit-Chat Thread

I can see that some very interesting things have happened. Plus, I hate ATM touch screens, its also like that Coke machine where you choose your soda too.

Nothing I love more than touching public display screens. It’s like an immunization shot for free. Once you get dysentery, most common Iillnesses are child’s play. Lick the ATM for good measure.

It's not like it's any nastier than regular buttons.

I lick those too

Arcade button licking is always good fun too, you might even get a taste of some pineapple pizza too if you lick the right joy stick!

@NEStalgia I guess that's kind of a decent enough explanation. Sometimes it's hard to relate for me to my own roots, and to not forget that even though American schools also teach foreign languages, it's never as many as in a lot of Western European countries. Over here, I always had at least three languages when I was in college, and there was also an option to get the "language package", which added two or even three more.

Needless to say, all of them obviously languages based on the standard alphabet.

Besides that, I have a knack for learning languages, so picking them up in any kind of capacity comes rather naturally to me. But although I'm pretty sure I'd ultimately also be able to get to grips with Asian languages,
I definitely do believe that it's going to be so much harder to learn those.

And not just because of the ridiculous number of characters...

@AlohaPizzaJack Please tell me you're not one of those idiots who think that putting their tongue on a frozen lamp post is a fun idea...

@ThanosReXXX Back here, well, back in my day anyway, who knows what they do now, but back then, they had the usual Western European languages offered (FR, IT, SP, Scottish (j/k), DE, Latin.) 2 years of 1 langauge was required, and that was it. Focused basically on tourist type situations. They also had Japanese, and were pushing it hard since it was newly introduced, but I unfortunately took FR instead. Japanese seemed too impossible and I wasn't particularly interested in Japan at the time. And the teachers were generally "fluff course" teachers. The idea of 3 languages seems outrageous here. Not even 1 is taken seriously (or was at the time.) It was about "enrichment" more than actually learning the language (a.k.a. wasting taxpayer money on things that sound culturally diversifying but accomplishing little of merit.) OTOH very few people are true polyglots. The 5 pack of languages seems....extreme...and impractical to actually learn any of them. Learning one thoroughly is a huge undertaking.

Then again, what is the official new rating to get to JNLP1....22 years of experience or something like that? I'd be on my deathbed by the time I'd be accepted as viable.

@NEStalgia Well, to add to what I said earlier, the mistake I sometimes make when comparing US schooling and EU schooling, or rather: Dutch schooling, is that I figured that since there's also plenty of Spanish speaking territories in the States, and a couple of French ones as well, it wouldn't be all that weird to at least have the option to learn those two additional languages.

One big difference though, is that US residents obviously already speak English, a language that's already internationally-focused straight out of the box. Dutch obviously isn't, unless you're only going to have to deal with Belgians and South Africans...

So, that's probably how the language package has come into existence over here: it's a small country, and a lot of Dutch people travel and/or work abroad, so already having some languages under your belt, is a pretty good start for being able to get around in Europe, and some other countries outside of the European continent.

The base package consists of the native tongue, Dutch, so mostly grammar and so on, and then English as primary foreign language, and German as second. French is third, Spanish fourth, there's also courses in Latin, or dead language courses, as we call 'em over here, for all those who want to get into science or medical studies, and then there's additional languages such as Portuguese.

Wouldn't even surprise me if modern day Dutch schools actually did offer Japanese language courses, but never mandatory, unless of course your education is heading in a certain kind of direction.

As for you not having had any interest in it back in the day: wasn't anime already a thing in the States in those days, or was that a bit later? Would have been the only excuse I would have needed to dive into a Japanese language course...

Would have finally given me a conclusive answer on how close these fan subs really are, to the actual meaning of the words as intended by the makers of the anime series and movies that I used to watch.

@ThanosReXXX Yeah, I'd say the Spanish programs are probably the strongest....to a point....but of course there's the other problem. A lot of the Spanish teachers are native Spanish teachers, but from countries other than Spain....which don't really speak "proper" Spanish, but the curriculum is "proper" Spanish. It's like learning textbook English from a Welsh teacher.

Or, as a Venezuelan friend of mine once said (yeah, Venezuela....from before the darkest days...though things were getting bad back home then as well.... ) "Mexican Spanish isn't Spanish." @Morpheel

But sure, the option for those languages and others exists (usually no Dutch. Plenty of Deutch though. ) It's just that they don't actually teach languages, they just teach playing at languages. If they dropped graduates off in any of said countries they'd be helpless newborns. (Maybe it's different today, I don't know...we're going back to the 80's & 90's here. )

I always thought it would be fun to be fluent in Latin. IANAL and all that. Just fun to be natively fluent in a language that's been dead for 2000 years.

But don't worry. Soon, Mandarin will be mandatory for everyone worldwide! Then you'll get to learn all those symbols you were avoiding from Japanese. Except Japan uses only 5000 or so of them, not the full 20000+ Mandarin does. Of course even most of China doesn't natively speak Mandarin......"One China" my rear .

Yeah anime was just starting to become a thing back then. It was pretty fringe. Very eccentric. But it was a thing. But I wasn't actually interested in anime. I'm still not. That's the funny thing. If you tell people you have an interest in Japan it's assumed you love anime and are a total weeb. I don't even really like anime. I can appreciate it particularly in games, but beyond that I don't go out of my way for it. It's actual real-world Japan, and the general social behavior there that speaks to me. I like kawaii culture as much as anyone, but I'm not an anime fan per-se. I don't hate it, I'm just ambivalent about it. Though when they were offering language courses I wasn't even aware anime existed. Japan=Nintendo/Sega/Konami/Square/Ninjas to me back then ...but I wasn't familiar with much else.

Don't worry, every Spanish talking country hates every other Spanish talking country.

It's like that scene with groundskeeper Willie in the Simpsons, but with language.

@ThanosReXXX Heck no! Flag pole ice has no taste.

@Morpheel LOL that explains a heck of a lot of history....

I fell into the Wish trap and made an account. Spent 11 dollars on a wrist watch and two caps. Let’s see how it goes...

Have someone ever study Indonesian language ?
Well, the language of my country. 😉
And whenever you play Super Mario Odyssey on Lost Kingdom, the music there is represent Indonesia from Gamelan and Javanese flute you heard.

Ugh....Public touch screens.

I can definitely appreciate how difficult it is to learn another language, even one that has similar roots to your own. I need to brush up on my German again; it's been awhile since high school and I've lost a lot of what I don't use. I still recall the meanings of a lot of words and was surprised how much I could understand a game trailer I watched in German awhile back, but my sentence composition has definitely suffered.

And that's not including the fact that I wanna learn to at least read and understand Japanese, plus obtain at least a bit of a grasp on Spanish lol. Unfortunately I find more than enough to occupy my free time already. I've looked into Spanish audiobooks on Spotify, but from what I can tell they can't be listened to offline.

I can teach you the basics:

Si = yes

No = no

Donde está el baño = where’s the bathroom

Knew the first two, got the gist of the second (but important!) phrase. I've picked up a few bits and pieces of Spanish over time from printed words and TV shows as a kid (thanks Sesame Street), but I'm in no way fluent. XD

I sometimes wish I'd grown up in a multilingual house; I think learning a language is easiest when you're exposed to it early and often.

You would probably have two funny accents instead of just one nice one.

Haha something interesting I’ve noticed growing up visiting my family in the US every year, is that the kids will often vehemently refuse to speak any single word in Spanish until they’re like 10 years old. They clearly understand it, but you can’t really make them speak it for some reason