Hmm... this got a lot more replies than I thought. I figured most of you were fat drunks who watched TV and play computer all day. Guess I was wrong. A lot of smart people. Or sort of smart. BTW, for people who don't know Spanish, I consider it pretty easy. It isn't a thing you can learn in a day, but it is very similiar to english. A LOT of words are cognates, which are words that are almost exactly the same. (EX: telefono.) I would like to learn Japenese some day. I heard its pretty hard, though.
I'm learning spanish now, and Chinese is next. Chinese is tough though. Lots of tonal variances. Anyone hear about the surgery thats become popular in China? Their having their doctor snip away a bit of the underside of their tongue. Makes it easier to pronounce english words for those who have been native chinese speakers all their life.
You b*stard, I'm so jealous, I've never even been to Brazil! (Even if you did go to Sao Paulo, not the garden spot of Brazil, but still...) I took Portuguese in college and had several Brazilian friends around here (yes, even in Iowa, there are Brazilians!) I had a Brazilian roommate. Man, I could rap Portuguese somethin' fierce. I have a good ear for languages, but I'm really out of practice with Spanish and Italian. I've had Brazilians ask me if I'm from Brazil; that's quite a compliment. They probably thought I was a Southern Brazilian, where the Northern European immigrants flocked, since I'm tall and fair-skinned, blue-eyed, that sort of thing. Portuguese is a beautiful language. It takes some work to get that accent. It's very idiomatic and expressive, especially in the Northeast, where the African presence is very strong. Examples of the pronunciation: "Boa tarde" (bo-a TAH-jee) Rio de Janeiro (HEE-oo jee jah-NAY-roo) restaurante (easy enough, right? heh-stow-(R)AWN-chee) Titanique (Titanic, as in, when that damn movie came out) chee-tah-NEE-kee).
English of course and I took three years of spanish in high school. High school spanish at least for me though didn't really allow me to learn enough to actually hold conversations with someone and i've forgotton most of it. I'm about to start spanish in college though so hopefully I"ll pick it up a little better at the college level... maybe, maybe no
