Bad Language Skills

[kawanabe]

It must be wonderful to be able to converse fluently in another language.

To those ABers that can - How did you achieve it?
I have tried,maybe not hard enough,but lack the confidence and the"Mindset"to carry it further than"Basic understanding".

Should the UK Government now be thinking of putting more money into training/education in Language Skills,now that the UK has to make its own way in the World re Trade Deals.

[NoMercy]

We had a Spanish registrar recently. When I spoke to him in Spanish, he always spoke back to me in English. Very strange.

He told me I had a "good accent".

[GenuineclAss]

My sister learned fluent Spanish to go and live in Cuba, when she was a journalist, but when she got there, she found that Cuban Spanish is quite different. Much more of a "street", relaxed form of Spanish.

[Cloverjo]

I did German O level, and learnt lots of words, but I would still struggle to put them together in a sentence. I made a chart of when to use 'der, die, das, die, den, dem' etc. and a list of prepositions, which I would recite in my head to do my schoolwork - not very helpful when trying to talk to a German.

[Jackdaw33]

The phrase you were looking for, Clover, is Iechyd Da, meaning Good Health or Cheers, as a toast.

[Dazzleflash]

English is the main language of communication on the Internet. IF it were another language kids would be queuing up to learn it. They don't teach a language in schools, they teach you vocabulary and grammar which is learnt verbotim to pass exams.

[atalanta]

By far the best way to learn a language is horizontally. Get a foreign girl-friend/boyfriend. It helps if you have a flair for languages - some have, some haven't. My brother tried for many years to get his O-level French, but never did. Me, though - I studied many languages and enjoyed every minute of those studies.

[cassa333]

My two 13 yr olds do two languages at school.

Unfortunately for them there was no real foreign languages taught in juniors so they are a bit behind.

One does French and Spanish the other does French and German.

The UK has always done trade with the rest of the world. It is only since being strangle holed by the EU that it has slipped a bit.

Those that need to speak other languages learn or get good interpreters. Well that's what we used to do in colonial days, that and make everyone else learn English lol

I have no head for learning languages. Sometimes my English slips a bit so another one has no chance lol