met an English guy the other day who spoke......

.....31 languages! Professor from Cambridge University. Said that he could only lecture in 15 of them tho. Thick lovely person.

 

Do former Soviet republics all speak Russian?

 

Did he speak them all at the same time?

Bet he got confused - I know a lass who teaches Mexican kids in America, because she is teaching other aspects of the curriculum to them whilst they are also learning English, she will teach maths, geography etc in Spanish so they learn stuff whilst their English is not so good. Means she spends her working day mainly speaking Spanish - when she comes to speak English she ends up putting some Spanish words in cause she ends up thinking in spanish!

If you se my meaning.

 

'Spanglish' if you will......

 

in theory yes, however.......

a lot of people in the Baltic states don't like to. Anyone over the age of about 30 will understand you, but some are quite loath to speak it back to you, and you certainly won't see any signs in Russian any more. When I was in Estonia last yeat I was in a shop and I asked the assistant something in English and they looked at me blankly. So I asked the same question in Russian, which was understood perfectly, yet I received a reply in Estonian. Cheers like.

 

Do you know her as well - that's what she calls it.

 

Bloody hell ! No, that's what I've called my pathetic attempts at conversing with Johnny Foriegner when in foreign parts. Whatever the country.

 

he didn't seem to get confused, though....

... he spoke English with a slightly strained accent, and spoke Russian with a very Anglicised accent. His Finnish is absolutely ****-hot though which is a pretty impressive achievement as it's gramatically one of the most complex languages on the planet. Unfortunately it's also one of the most useless, even in Finland.

 

How's your Russian coming along?

 

RE: How's your Russian coming along?

Slowly but surely! It's painfully difficult and I still have a lot of trouble understanding people, though I can speak OK (which means that a lot of my conversations are quite one-sided!) But I can read a newspaper or a crappy Mills and Boon type novel without too much difficulty and can watch kids TV fine and an adult film as long as it is subtitled (in Russian). But I reckon it will be worth it in the end. The next aim is to be able to do my wedding speech in Russian - I've got ten months yet, so we'll see what happens!

 

RE: How's your Russian coming along?

Why are you bothered about subtitles in an adult film? Most people just watch the pictures

 

Ooops!

:S

for an English graduate that was a very obvious one to miss.

 

how did you know that?

can you speak it??

ff

Im learning spanish at the moment and its coming along nicely. Found out the other day that people who have suffered strokes etc and lose the ability to speak as they have lost their english and english pronunciation etc have still been able to communicate as per normal using a second language because its stored in another part of the brain!

Always useful to know!

 

easy innit

every year we go away boardin with the lads - be it france, andorra, etc within the day we are fluent:

le pub
le beer
le bangin tits
le snow

 

Shouldn't that be

"La" bangin tits ?????

 

RE: Shouldn't that be

depends on country.

mi burro es roto! necisito unos agua.

 

RE: easy innit

Me-o want-o beer-o dago

 

RE: how did you know that?

It sounded like pretty good Finnish to me!

That's a cool fact about the stroke victims - never knew that.

 

RE: how did you know that?

Hehe, nice one.