Aquí es el programa Españoles en el Mundo donde entrevistan españoles que viven en ciudades por todo el mundo, incluso Chicago, Nueva Orleans, y Nueva York será la tercera ciudad americana. Sí, visitaron Chicago antes de Nueva York. ¡Toma, nueva yorkeros! (Y para que los gays aquí no estén decepcionados, el tio en el principio del episodio sobre Chicago tiene novia.)

Aquí es el programa Españoles en el Mundo donde entrevistan españoles que viven en ciudades por todo el mundo, incluso Chicago, Nueva Orleans, y Nueva York será la tercera ciudad americana. Sí, visitaron Chicago antes de Nueva York. ¡Toma, nueva yorkeros! (Y para que los gays aquí no estén decepcionados, el tio en el principio del episodio sobre Chicago tiene novia.)

 

Child, did you copy and past that from somewhere, as part of that makes no sense.  LOL

Aquí es el programa Españoles en el Mundo donde entrevistan españoles que viven en ciudades por todo el mundo, incluso Chicago, Nueva Orleans, y Nueva York será la tercera ciudad americana. Sí, visitaron Chicago antes de Nueva York. ¡Toma, nueva yorkeros! (Y para que los gays aquí no estén decepcionados, el tio en el principio del episodio sobre Chicago tiene novia.)

 

Child, did you copy and past that from somewhere, as part of that makes no sense. LOL

 

Well, as my mother used to say:

 

'Cual es la fecha? Rapidamente. Mucho gusto. El bano es cerco de la bibliotecha!'

 

She was Norwegian.

Aquí es el programa Españoles en el Mundo donde entrevistan españoles que viven en ciudades por todo el mundo, incluso Chicago, Nueva Orleans, y Nueva York será la tercera ciudad americana. Sí, visitaron Chicago antes de Nueva York. ¡Toma, nueva yorkeros! (Y para que los gays aquí no estén decepcionados, el tio en el principio del episodio sobre Chicago tiene novia.)

 

Child, did you copy and past that from somewhere, as part of that makes no sense.  LOL

 

Well, as my mother used to say:

 

'Cual es la fecha? Rapidamente. Mucho gusto. El bano es cerco de la bibliotecha!'

 

She was Norwegian.

 

Lawd!

I never did get to Uruguay....my friend came here to visit three times since my post last year.  My Spanish has improved, as now I have a whole network of people I correspond with who don't know a word of English.  I get stuck sometimes, but just find an easier word.  When in doubt, I just throw in a "boludo" or "carajo" and all works out.

 

Am still studying Frisian, and that has also improved a lot.  Was even asked to write a piece in Frisian on my life here in San Francisco for a Frisian group in the Netherlands...I told them my life was too boring and declined.  They really wanted someone who was a native speaker, of course.

I never did get to Uruguay....my friend came here to visit three times since my post last year.  My Spanish has improved, as now I have a whole network of people I correspond with who don't know a word of English.  I get stuck sometimes, but just find an easier word.  When in doubt, I just throw in a "boludo" or "carajo" and all works out.

Am still studying Frisian, and that has also improved a lot.  Was even asked to write a piece in Frisian on my life here in San Francisco for a Frisian group in the Netherlands...I told them my life was too boring and declined.  They really wanted someone who was a native speaker, of course.

 

LOL. 

 

Just speak like my father. spanish word, spanish word, spanish word, english word (when he doesn't know the spanish word or proper conjugation), spanish word, spanish word, spanish word.  LOL

Eres como el interior de una nave espacial abandonada; brillas por fuera, por dentro nada. Nada de nada.

Eres como el interior de una nave espacial abandonada; brillas por fuera, por dentro nada. Nada de nada.

 

Ms. thing your cut and paste specials dont make sense. Stick to English.

I'm also getting pretty good at chat Spanish...with the abbreviations.  Took me little time to catch on, but really you need it. Xq, tqm, x, c, q, and all the others, and t intead of of tu, l for el/la/los/las/...but I guess we do lots of that in English too. 

I'm also getting pretty good at chat Spanish...with the abbreviations.  Took me little time to catch on, but really you need it. Xq, tqm, x, c, q, and all the others, and t intead of of tu, l for el/la/los/las/...but I guess we do lots of that in English too. 

 

Thats "spanglish" for you and/or how familiar you are with a person.

Hey Musky. You lived in Japan a few years? You must know a lot about speaking Japanese. I'm currently studying Japanese right now. There's some things that confuse me and I'd ask my grandparents for help (they live in Tokyo) but I want to surprise them by knowing the language well, next time I see them. Do you still post here, frequently? I could definitely use your advice on some stuff as I come across problems. Unless you or anyone else on here knows of a good foreign language forum?

 

So who are our Japanese speakers?

 

Sumimasen, Konichiwa.          (Excuse me, hello)

Hajimemash!te.                    (Nice to meet you.)

Tukareta.                            (I am tired.

Sayonara, MyTwoSense-san.  (Goodbye, MyTwoSence, my friend)

 

 

"San" is used for "friend", too? I got that impression from "Karate Kid" but whenever I was around my Grandpa's cohorts I remember having to always use, for example, "Anamoto-san" like out of respect for my elders - kinda like "Mr./Mrs." or "Sir". So is it like a very formal version of "friend" as well? I hate when words have double meanings or vague meanings. Urgh. I took Shorin-Ryu Karate and grew up around my grandparents so I got a taste but it seems like the sh!t you have to learn is endless with this language. Certainly a hell of a lot harder than Spanish was in H.S.

Nevermind, I see it is used for "friend" as well.

 

Some things I've been thinking about while currently learning Japanese:

 

1.) Japanese is supposedly the hardest or one of the hardest languages to learn (like Mandarin, Russian, etc.) but I don't think its that bad at all. I think the way they speak is more efficient and makes more sense. You could easily screw up the grammatical structure and still be understood. That's because you know that sentences always start out with the subject/object. You put a particle like "ga" or "wa" after the subject so it's always immediately clear what the person is talking about. I think this eliminates a lot of excess words too. I noticed us English-speaking people tend to prattle on without getting to the point. "I would also like to point out that in terms of the blah blah blah". I can see why it's so hard for people to understand English. 

 

2.) Japanese is extremely tied to culture. I'm starting to think that English isn't at all. There's many degrees of politeness and many words that are only appropriate for certain scenarios. That's the biggest barrier for me. In some cases, it's extremely rude and repulsive to respond with "no". For instance, if someone says, do you want to go do such and such later, or meet up...  "Iie" (no) is an extremely repulsive response. Instead, you shower them with excuses of why you can't do it. You also don't accept praise at all. You don't answer "thank you" if someone compliments you. That's extremely arrogant. Instead, you insist they're wrong and say something self-effacing lol. Some people think that kind of stuff is ridiculous and just consider us Americans to be more "real" but if you think about it, when we ARE actually trying to be polite, we really do the same thing. They just have higher expectations of themselves, I think.

 

3.) When I scan my brain for words to try and repeat sentences in Nihongo, I often think it en Espanol first; wtf? I guess its true that learning another language is beneficial in other ways since it activates the part of the brain where language and memory are.

 

4.) I think schools need to do more to promote people learning other languages. Americans are particularly bad when it comes to this and it's ridiculous considering we're the melting pot, we travel the world and we import/export products, services and culture more than ever. My ancestry is entirely English and Welsh and even I am trying to expand my linguistic horizons. You would think people would at least want to learn the language their ancestors spoke, out of fascination, especially if the language is still relevant today. It feels good to learn another language; why don't more people do it?  :? I think people assume they're not capable. We have immigrants here learning English at an older age, every day and a lot of them aren't even from a well-educated background. Like 1/6th or 1/5th of the U.S. population is Latino; imho everyone here should learn a little Spanish. At least enough to say some useful phrases or strike a conversation. I used to work with Mexicans (mostly illegal-hah!) at the Convention Center and I could tell they had more respect for me than the other Americans because I actually tried to communicate with 'em in Spanish (even though my nickname was Gringo Loco" which I didn't like, but anyway... lol. I know people think, "Well this is America, everyone should speak English!" That's true, and immigrants here should DEFINITELY learn English, but we would have a better reputation with foreigners if we took the time to learn a little bit of other languages. In America, we're not happy, surprised or flattered at all when an outsider speaks English. We just expect it! It seems like in other parts of the globe, they see it more as a sign of respect. Hell, as Xenophobic, isolated, discriminatory and protectionist as Japan is, they still require four years of English and it's popular to take English classes as an adult. There are signs with English and Romaji print all over Tokyo. Even if a lot of them can't speak it well, they tend to be able to read or understand it. Switzerland has 4 official languages and that doesn't even include English which is common to speak in business and as a bridge between the predominantly German/French/Italian speaking communities.

 

You can get excellent jobs right now if you learn Farsi/Arabic, or Mandarin. There's a lot of government funded scholarships for it, too. They're really important for National Security. I think the days of us being the number one super-power are probably numbered. America, EU and Japan are going to be among the top dogs probably forever, but Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, Bengali, Portuguese (people in Brazil speak that, not Spanish), among others, are only going to increase in importance. I couldn't believe how many business majors I knew who took 1 or 2 years of French as their second language at my school, probably because they thought it sounds cool. Unless you're in the fashion industry or lived 250 years ago, it doesn't seem nearly as relevant as other European Languages like German, Spanish, or maybe even Russian.

 

Edit: Wow, that's a long rant  :-o I need a blog.

Starting the new year, I thought that I'd resurrect this long dormant thread.  For the last few months I've been writing for It Nijs, a Frisian language on-line news service  as their American correspondent.  They invited me to write for them after seeing my blog of my life in San Francisco.  I had no idea anyone other than my friends and family ever looked at the blog, or even cared.  Just for fun, I included captions in Frisian...I'm assuming that they did a google search for blogs in Frisian and mine came up.

 

So far I have only written four articles, but have more planned. I wrote about the elections and results, as they are baffled by our campaining system, the general weirdness of the elections, the parallels with the current European situation.  The Tea Party really fascinates them, but not in a good way. Americans are looked at as a type of giant oddity, kind of like the elephant in the room. 

 

This is all volunteer work, under the auspices of the Council for the Frisian Movement (an umbrella group promoting Frisian culture in the Netherlands) and funded by the Province.  They have been enormously supportive of my writing, and don't correct my grammatical errors...they love my American "accent".  Luckily I have a spell check, grammar check and three dictionaries to help me, as well as an editor.  The last time he put in two minor errors...to give it flavor. 

 

In the future I will concentrate more on life here and less on politics.  California and the Netherlands have a special bond, particularly the Bay Area, and I'll be concentrating on that.  After writing for years and having no one pay attention, it is really thrilling that at long last someone actually is interested in what I have to say and is encouraging, even if in an obscure language, in a provincial paper six thousand miles away, that can not be understood even by my Dutch speaking friends in the Netherlands. 

4.) ... isolated, discriminatory and protectionist as Japan is, they still require four years of English and it's popular to take English classes as an adult ...

My niece, a college-level English composition and literature teacher, taught English for a year in a Japanese school in a rural community. She said that although English was a requirement, few of her students were motivated to acquire fluency or a real working knowledge of English vocabulary and grammar. To them, it was just a fad or fashionable thing to be able to throw out English words, phrases, and idioms here and there, often without regard for meaning or context. She said this site is pretty much spot on.