asian languages!
It seems that everyone (or mostly everyone) on here speaks English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, etc. However, I'm curious as to how many of you guys speak asian languages!
I, myself, speak English and I'm also currently learning Spanish and French (with hopes of one day learning German). But also, I speak Vietnamese because I'm a native-born Vietnamese and I'm also learning Cantonese on the side (a chinese dialect) with hopes of one day learning Mandarin!
So any others here that speak any asian languages?
I'm Chinese but why y'all always saying that Chinese is the biggest language in the world? I dont think so. If by chinese, u mean mandarin and by biggest u mean the number of native speakers, well that's a totally twisted concept. The number of native speakers of mandarin is like, what, 200 million something at most (I dont know the exact figure just guessing), while most other chinese have whole different native tongues, which someone might think as dialects. Well, languages or dialects? I dont know, its kinda political and i dont wanna talk about it.
My point is to cut all that "biggest language" nonsense and just think even if it's the truth, what can it possibly bring to us? And yes, we are gonna try to put chinese on the international map as a lingua franca but not because it's the "biggest" language in the world or anything, because people want to learn it. Just remember people dont make lingua franca, lingua franca makes itself. See, there are whole anglophone haters or whatever, but they learn english anyway.
And btw, to Brennus, I dont have an accent at all when speaking english. lol
native speaker of mandarin means people who learned to speak mandarin since childhood. it doesn't matter if he prefer it over his local dialect or not.
"And btw, to Brennus, I dont have an accent at all when speaking english. lol "
you don't, but many other people do.
Wow, that's pretty interesting this website does not allow the use of Chinese characters! But I guess that makes sense--it could be something obscene or vulgar.
And to A.T., I think it's a peculiar how you say "I don't have an accent at all when speaking english." I think that's pretty interesting because I thought the exact same thing, until someone pointed out to me that I had a little bit of an asian accent. Maybe you DO have an accent, but you're just not aware of it ;). No offense intended O=)
To Marquel
ummmmm... i dont know. Probably i do have an accent when speaking and the ppl around me are just being polite not to point it out. lol. And what is vietnamese language like? i didnt have a chance to hear any of those. just out of curiosity, does vietnamese use characters or latin letters?
To the guest above
well, to me, PERSONALLY, i think native language is the first language u learn when u start to talk. if u insist mandarin be the native tongue of chinese, i am actually happy too. Cuz that makes us biligual from the very beginning. aint that cool?
peace
alright, whatever. the difference in our figure shows the difference of our own version of "native language". u seem to have a valid ground for your figures. oh btw, the link doesnt work for me.
as i just said, it's cool that many chinese were born bilingual which isn't a bad thing. so i aint arguing on that number of native speakers thing.
Mmmm, to answer your question about the Vietnamese writing system...
The Vietnamese writing system used to be like the Chinese writing system; we used to use characters. However, with the French occupation and all the European influences, the latin alphabet was introduced. However, with the use of the latin alphabet, certain symbols are applied to vowels and some consonants to change the pronunciation and tone of the word.
And to answer your question conerning a vietnamese accent. I wasn't thinking when I said that I spoke with a slight asian accent. My friends actually tell me that I speak with a slight British accent--that being really weird because I live in Southern California! I guess I like the British so much that I've adopted their speech. XD
But trust me, you don't ever want to hear a person speak English with a Vietnamese accent! It's really bad!
«Wow, that's pretty interesting this website does not allow the use of Chinese characters! But I guess that makes sense--it could be something obscene or vulgar.»
Uh, you totally can. Just mess around with the language text encoding on your computer. Also, it would be really impractical to say that Chinese wouldn't be monitored - after all, all of the other languages are read and edited very well.
tagalog? a crazy language? haha?? what makes it crazy?
I don't really like any of the Eastern languages.They are awful.The pronunciation is very absurd.What's worse, they lack grammar, especially Chinese! When you think Polish or Russian grammar, you will see that Chinese has nothing like grammar.So I can cal them a language.By the way yeah I watched Tagalog movie, and it's soo soo disgusting.Oh God! Anong oras na? It is so influenced by Spanish I think.What an awful language, Ahh yuck!
Oh Drujnik. You're just trying to start controversy!
You might have an aversion to Eastern Asian languages, but there are much more diplomatic ways to express your dislike of them.
Just some suggestions...Since controversy seems to always start over the littlest things on this forum.
<<tagalog? a crazy language? haha?? what makes it crazy?>>
What makes it crazy? Well, in the first video, the narrator says that if someone asks you "Anong oras na?" you can either answer:
"It's ten to seven", or
"Menos diez (dyis) para las siete" (The narrator called this "quote unquote Tagalog"), or
"Sampung minuto bago sumapit ang ika-pito ng umaga" (He called this "formal Tagalog").
And if you don't have a wristwatch, you can say "Menos balat, para buto"!!!
Tagalog can't decide whether it's Romance, Germanic, or Malayo-Polynesian!
Obviously, the first two responses are NOT tagalog! The first one is obviously English and the second one is obviously Spanish. The only real "Tagalog" is the last one.
Granted, the first two may be accepted, but that doesn't necessarily mean it can be classified as the same language as the third response.