It is not my fault that you do not speak English!

[LadyAndreca]

My usual response to "Why can't you speak Spanish?" is "I took Latin in high school." That usually stops a lot of people dead as they try to comprehend such a thing.

Now, I can READ Spanish. Sort of. Enough to be able to get around in primarily Hispanic neighborhoods, and annoy my sister because I was able to translate her Spanish II homework when I was in Latin III. But I can't speak it. Native speakers tend to talk very quickly, and I just can't seperate the words.

[Jadedcarguy]

Native speakers tend to talk very quickly, and I just can't seperate the words.

That's the problem I have. I know a lot of words and phrases, but when I hear it, my brain still trys to wrap around it in english first and spit out a spanish reply, assuming the speaker is talking slowly enough for me to grasp what they're saying in the first place.

[evilhomer]

Not to really add anything to this thread other than lightening the mood:

Brian: Hola, me llamo es Brian ... Nosotros queremos ir con ustedes.. uhhhh ...
Spanish Bellboy: Hey, that was pretty good, except when you said "me llamo es Brian," you don't need the "es," just me llamo Brian.
Brian: Oh, oh you speak English!
Spanish Bellboy: No, just that first speech and this one explaining it.
Brian: You .... you're kidding me, right?
Spanish Bellboy: Que?

[Jadedcarguy]

<snip>
Brian: Hola, me llamo es Brian ... Nosotros queremos ir con ustedes.. uhhhh ...
Spanish Bellboy: Hey, that was pretty good, except when you said "me llamo es Brian," you don't need the "es," just me llamo Brian.
<snip>

I loved that episode!

[Bliss]

Btw cantonese have four syllabic entonations... mandarin have seven... and each entonation changes the meaning.

Go figure.

[Bella_Vixen]

I only speak English, French and Gaelic.

Irish or Scottish?

[Becks]

Now, I can READ Spanish. Sort of. Enough to be able to get around in primarily Hispanic neighborhoods<snip>Native speakers tend to talk very quickly, and I just can't seperate the words.

Same here.

[BusBus]

I've been in the same boat as the OP. Vancouver is very multicultural to say the least, and there is a significant amount of people who don't speak english. You get use to it. Normally, people who don't speak english are accompanied by a friend or family member to help them out and that's great. Some are forced to fend for themselves during the day while everyone is at work/school. I'm also as pale as they come and people still insist on speaking cantonese/mandarin to me (I can only do English, French and some German).

[Kogarashi]

I know enough German to manage, barely. Luckily, after 8 years of it in school, certain phrases have stuck in my brain without needing to go through the "translator" first, so I can hold a decent conversation with other German 101 students (and maybe even 200-level students, which was my last level of formal education). Luckily, I know the phrases to ask for someone who speaks English, which is the only language I know with any real fluency. I have a problem, though, with German-speakers who talk to fast. I can barely pick out one word in ten. Which makes it interesting in our complex, since there are two German-speaking families here, and I can hear them talking to their children through our windows, but they talk too fast for me to really understand anything.

I always appreciated the customers at WM who would bring someone to translate for them. Even when it was the Hispanic man who pointed to his ten-year-old daughter when I started the checkout conversation. She was fluent enough, and translated well. Plus I can always point to things, like the screen that shows the customer's total. And most of my customers at least knew "No English" and could warn me.

The only language-related suck I had was the lady whining to me about my co-workers who were speaking to each other, well out of the way of any customers, in Spanish. Like I was going to be able to do anything about it. One was the head CSM, another was the Front End Manager. And all three co-workers spoke fluent English, only one of them with a noticeable accent. The lady just ranted about how her ancestors "came over on the banana boat" and so "they should all learn to speak English!" despite my explanation that the co-workers in question did speak English.

[Gravekeeper]

Years of exposure to anime has given me basic understanding of Japanese. But most Asians in Vancouver are Chinese, Vietnamese or Korean. When I do encounter Japanese people, they're usually tourists and I am a giant scary looking white man who seems to understand some of what they're saying. So I end up Gaijin Smash(tm)'n them and they flee once they realize someone nearby actually understands what they're saying. -.-

I've already registered two Gaijin Smashes so far this summer.

[iradney]

He. You guys have it easy
We have ELEVEN OFFICIAL LANGUAGES. Yes. Eleven.
Luckily English is one of them. *Phew* which at least 80% of the population can speak. But it still gets a bit hairy.

[Bloodsoul]

Sadly enough, my only real reason to learn any new languages around this old, New England town, is because they're a requirement for the comic book I'm doing (my main character is French, and I want to learn Japanese for overall anime/manga). Haven't had much time to study when combining that with Hyper Text Markup, Cascading Style Sheets, Javascript, PHP, C++...

[air914]

I really wish that the government would require more language studies throughout school. If you go over to Europe, and you only speak one language, it makes it harder for the people there to accommodate you, but if you give them a choice of two to work with, it's much easier for them. Most people in other countries with an education are multi-lingual, and it's scientifically proven that it makes them smarter. Plus, once you pick up one other language, it's easier to pick up new ones after that./soapbox

Ooh I wish we had more language too - or that we chose to all learn one language in grade school/ elementary school and then from there you could choose if you wanted to learn another or something - just so that everyone in America could at least speak or begin to speak one other language - which I think should be Spanish b/c I think there are more Spanish-speaking people in this country than any other language - of course I could be wrong.... but that makes sense to me...

The other thing is I wish there was a STANDARD of teaching said languages. I went to elementary school and took Spanish from 1-4th grade and then switched schools and still had a decent Spanish teacher. Then I went to middle school and again, was learning Spanish and actually conjugating sentences....then I went to a private school and I watched "Muzzy" (it's on TV all the time - no these children aren't French, but yes they are learning French - or substitute any other language - it's a very disturbing cartoon btw) and learned the colors and the numbers for SEVERAL years - over and over and over. By the time I got through Middle school the best stuff I could say was "my grandpa is sitting in the green chair by the lamp"........ and how useful is that sentence???

Then when I got to highschool I said I probably just needed a "refresher" course and could move into Spanish II.... but nope I took the test and didn't have that refresher so I knew that I did know what those words meant once - but couldn't for the life of me remember them at the moment. So I was stuck in Spanish I, and after a week was bored to death..... then after that I just was so sick of Spanish and how badly it had been taught to me that I just took the one more required year and said good bye to Spanish....... there were two people at work that were speaking Spanish once and i asked "what language are you speaking?" When they told me it was Spanish I felt really stupid b/c I didn't recognize even one word of their conversation..... or recognize that it was Spanish at all!

[Andara Bledin]

English is spoken rather slowly, when you compare it to most other languages.

I had a year of Spanish in third grade. I remember nothing from it. The only phrase I really can remember is not acceptable in polite society... "ch*** to madre"

^-.-^

[protege]

I confused the hell out of someone while on vacation. I was in the sign shop buying my "no parking, stupidity is not a handicap" sign. (As a hater of stupid people, I couldn't resist ) Anyway, there was only one left, but there were other signs (not that one) stacked along the bottom of the wall. Rather than go through them, and possibly make a mess, I asked the salesgirl if she had any more. She looked at me like I had 2 heads. I then said that I didn't see any more, and didn't want to take her last one. That did the trick--she was confused, because in her country (Russia, or the Ukraine, perhaps?), people usually don't do that.