Completely OT rambling

[Risu-chan]

Cable modems ruuuuuuuule... ^________^

I'm typing on this at the same time I'm playing phone tag with businesses. Gotta set up my firewall and do some NAT and VPN testing next, but life is good...

I was hoping the account would come with enough space to host some chapters for S-C.net, but unfortunately the maximum space limit including email is 5 meg. @_@ There are some chapters that wouldn't fit in my account at all... well, at least I can put up a bunch of Japan pics...

I've never actually had high-speed access at HOME to the Internet. My parents got a cable modem years ago, but it was also years after I left home... I'm going to have to make sure I don't spend too much time surfing up obscure Japanese CDs that have been out of print for 10-15 years on Yahoo Japan! ^^;;; That always used to be a lunch hour only hobby because most auction sites are way too graphics-heavy for my patience over a dialup modem, but NOW... ^^;;;; okay, new rule for self: can only go obscure-CD-hunting over lunch or dinner hours!

And I was so embarrassed today... I was in a mostly-French-language chat channel and I could read everything they were saying, but when I tried to come up with replies to write, I could only come up with Japanese! Japanese has taken over the foreign-language-buffer in my head and crowded out almost everything else I used to be able to speak... it's left me reading ability in about 5 other languages, but when I try to speak anything other than English, my brain fills in the holes with Japanese.

True story:
Trying to figure out how to say "Sorry, it's my fault everyone's speaking English in here at the moment" to a newcomer who commented on it.

First attempt at sentence: Sumimasen, ima wa eigo dake no ga atashi no sei nan desu.

(blink blink)

That's Japanese. Okay, how do I say it in French?

Er, je regrette na no wa... no wait, that's Japanese again... je suis desole que ima wa... rewind, desole que c'est eigo nan dakara... wait... AUUUUGH!

And by this point they're about 10 lines down in the conversation and wondering why I'm not answering anything so I gave up and spoke English like a dumb American. Okay, I am a dumb American, but not THAT dumb; most Americans don't read six languages and (theoretically) speak four. I should have been able to remember enough French to converse at speaking speeds; I knew everything they were saying except for the web shorthand phrases. But when I try to think in another language, Japanese seems to be the only other language I'm wired to think in anymore... ~_~

Of course, I'm glad I *can* think in Japanese at speaking speeds; I just wish I could do it in more than one language at a time... okay, not literally at the SAME time, but I wish I could switch back and forth reliably...

any other multiple-language people run into that problem...?

[yukawai]

that's a major problem often in our school, especialy when sometimes in the morning we had "french, english, spanish". No doubt that half the class will be all mixed up after 20 minutes of each. Usualy in spanish, when we do orals mostly, we start talking in english, in english we start talking spanish and in french every damn other language we know ( from cantonese to south affrican passing by italian, german,etc.) Since french is supposed to be our natal language, the french teacher is traumatised and we manage to make 4 teachers break down in two weeks last year, it was the best since 5 years and our class was very proud of it. (break down in the sence of running out of class crying their eyes out and never coming back)

The worst is because their is so much different cultures here we all put a bit of what we know from another language even if we can't speak said language. In the end you can even think in a languge you don't know.

From what I saw that problem is pretty common Risu, so if you explained it on that french chat you were talking about, I'm sure they'll understand,and you won't look like " a dump american" at all. It's pretty normal.

<font color="#660033" size="1">[ July 17, 2003 07:22 PM: Message edited by: yue ]</font>

[jadey]

ahhh yah thats a problem for me too. I know 90% spanish (im still bad with the subjunctive verb tense thingy) but then when i went to Brazil I learned some portugeese and oh man when i got back to usa....i kept getting back grades on my test cuz i kept answering everything in portugeese. Plus i have this thing where i pick up the accents of wherever i am....so when i was in the airport in miami...i speaking this terrible version of english with a portugueese accent..its weird.

hehe but nooow..im going to rome in october and i know abosuluty noo italian so i dont think ill have to worry about speaking or picking up accents.^_^

[xjckimberly]

Language mixing is pretty normal. In fact, where I am, we have to take 2 languages in school each, English and mother tongue, for at least 10 years, and become equally proficient in both. Many of us who are chinese have to learn dialects, like Hokkien or Cantonese at home too. So when we converse, it is a strange mix of english, chinese, malay and dialects that is known as Singlish. Haha. It was so bad that there was a time where there was raging debates in the papers about whether Singlish is harmful to Singapore. Craziness.

And yeah, our teacher came up with a punishment if she catches us speaking English during Chinese classes or vice-verse - she fines us.
1 dollar. For elementary school kids, that is bad enough.

[tenjou_sama]

Yay cable modem! I couldn't live without mine, since I'm so impatient.

I remember back when I still used AOL and had the dial up, my sister would always pick up the phone when I was online just to kick me off.

Multiple languages? Never had that problem. Although I catch myself sometimes mimicking accents and I don't know why I was doing it. XD

[cutelittlekitty]

I have that problem with accents too. I pick up accents really easily and my accent changes depending on who i'm around without my even noticing it.

with languages, i learned spanish in high school. that was 10 years ago and i don't have the opportunity to use it much, but lately i joined a spanish yahoo group. i can read most of what is written, but when i want to reply to something i'll come to a word that i don't know how to say in spanish and my brain will fill it in in japanese. which is funny, since i only know about 25 words of japanese.

another interesting language story, i marathoned the last 20 episodes of Full Moon wo Sagashite one night. That night, when i went to bed i had a dream that was all in japanese. it was really weird because i understood everthing in the dream, but in reality i only know a few words of japanese.

[Spinshadow]

I'm an accent chameleon, too - immerse me in an accent, and in a day or three, I've picked it up. If I focus, I can mimic someone's accent...sometimes.

Aside from English, I'm most proficient in German but while I can read at a fairly high grammatical level, my vocabulary has steadily dwindled from lack of use. But rather than slotting in English (which would be logical, what with them being sister languages), my mind slots in Spanish or Nauhtl (how, I'm not sure, but it does). Does the same with with Japanese (lord knows why I'm trying to learn multiple languages semi-concurrently), but if I'm trying to think Spanish, it goes completely blank. [img]graemlins/hmmm.gif[/img] My mom would be so embarrassed. [img]redface.gif[/img]

I've had dreams with large chunks in langauges I don't speak or don't know well enough to understand half as much as I am in the dream. Only marginally more disturbing is listening to an inner character rant on and on in a language you don't know...and yet you know what he's talking about. [img]eek.gif[/img]

[rev.tsukiyama]

Me too. You should have heared me in Spain, I kept dropping random Japanese into the mix without realising.(Spanish and French are the two languages I've never really been able to get my head around). As it happened they were speaking Catalan most of the time anyway, so it all degenerated to conversing in charades most of the time.

My ex comes from the balearic islands, and his first language is Catalan, but he managed to take Spanish (okay, basically the same as catalan) as a second language in england. Which always seemed like cheating to me.

Kinna - your teacher fined you, that's soooo dodgy...

[xjckimberly]

Yes, I know. Urgh. I only started learning english when I got to elementary school at the age of 6, so you can imagine how much I got fined for speaking chinese in class. Even to her. Urgh. Oh well. Let's just say I contribute to the class fund. But it sure convinced's me to pick up english in a hurry. Hiaks.

Btw, I need help. At my workplace, I'm in marketing dept, trying to find business in europe, and I got this email in french that I have hell lots of problem reading.

What's
'Nous vous remercions de votre int?r?t pour les produits NEC.' (THank you for your interest in NEC products?--I'm just guessing)

and 'Bonne r?ception'(Happy receiving???)

By the way, what's 'thank you' in French?

[yukawai]

[What's
'Nous vous remercions de votre int?r?t pour les produits NEC.' (THank you for your interest in NEC products?--I'm just guessing)]

you'r right

[and 'Bonne r?ception'(Happy receiving???)]

err, it's exaclt "happy receiving" but since I doubt that makes any sence it's just to confirm she received it, a "roger".


[By the way, what's 'thank you' in French? ]

that's be "merci"