At My School.........
 

Our school offers French and Spanish. That's it...and quite pathetic.

Yes, you can say chinese, because when you do, it refers to mandarin the same way the square root of 9 refers to 3, not negative 3.
Taiwanese speak mandarin anyways.

its not Twainese. Its a set of different dialects as my family comes from mainly southern China but each family group speaks primarily Twaisanese and Cantonese dialects. And yes these are Chinese....juust like in Spanish there's Castilian Spanish, Puerto Rican Spanish, etc... Manadrin I believe is from the North, being from the South, we don't like the North (if you look at Chinese History, the South is where thetrouble starts for the most part). Furthermore, its a regional thing...each region...different dialect. Now the writing is the same (well there is a difference between the PRC's characters and prior to PRC characters as the People's Republic of China to help combat illiteracy simplief writing) but the dictions, phonics, etc... is different so they are languages all to themselves.

They are not that different. If you speak Mandarin to someone who speaks any dialect (not cantonese) you will understand each other. Everyone speaks Mandarin, just different dialects of it.

Actually, not exactly, because some dialects may be like cantonese where it will be very difficult and hard to understand each other. It's sorta like trying to use cognates to find out what they're saying in spanish

Re: At My School.........
 

My school has:
1. English (duh)
2. French
3. Latin
4. German
5. Spanish

Thank you! Some dialects have differents tones, dictions,the only thing that is the same is how you right the characters. Fish in Mandarin and Cantonese is two differen sounds altogether (don't remember what the madrin one is as I never use it). Some one who knows Cantonese will not understand what the person who is speaking in Madarin, or even Twainsanese. Youhave to remember before Emperor Chin unified the country in XXXX B.C., it was seperate states, each with their own dialect and different writing style. Only the educated knew more than one dialect, that of their region and the court (government official). Chin standardized writing and the court dialect was of his region. The common peasants only needed to know regulations, tazes, etc... therefore the educated.....member of the court and bueacracy need to know multiple dialects to conduct business. These dialects survived as there was no educating the peasants, only the wealthy could afford it. In fact even today in Chinatown, its Cantonese, Twainsanese, not necessarily Mandirin in some places.


But what does this all have to do with the topic of the thread....my point is....I can swear and insult people with very few people who know what in the world I just said. It also comes in handy when I visit my family....a) I look better as I can actually say stuff and hold a conversation.... b) I can get stuff (order stuff like food but I'm not allowed to as I am not fluent)...c) out of all my cousins...I understand the most! When someone who doesn't understand it is around, knowing the another language helps in doing stuff that you don't want them to know. Actually, Pamela (she's on 179, not 180), my best friend, finds it interesting and impressive that I know other languages.

Oh wow! I just remembered...it seems like it's been ages. In my 8th grade Spanish I class we each wrote two or three pickup lines. That was so great!

I'm going to make one up right now.

;)

Me das fiebre. Por favor, viene a casa conmigo.

;)

Its better (and cleaner) than the ones I've heard.

Re: Re: At My School.........
 

My school only has Spanish. And it's not the spanish from Mexico, it's the spanish from Spain.

Re: Re: Re: At My School.........
 

Our school teaches crap really. Odd how you got 2 types of spanish, and it's the same name

I'd say it's more like spanish and portugese. Not very difficult. My second uncle speaks beihe, my grandparents speak shaanxi. Not a problem. Sometimes different dialects use different words more frequently, but besides that, it's not too hard to understand.

I've been told that it's easier for non-native speakers whose pronunciation is terrible in the first place.

BTW, I beleive the correct names for the spanishes are american and castillian, not "from mexico" and "from spain."

There are like....5 dialects of Spanish in Spain itself, ¿no?

Topic..Topic, here boy!
 

lol, this thread has become what language do you speak? hahaha, guess we ran outta pickup lines..lol, it only took, what..16 pages...lol

Oh, and add to the tangent we've gone off on


Our school's got:
1.) English =I take
2.) Spanish
3.) French
4.) German =I take
5.) American Sign Language