What Languages Do You Speak?

[son_ov_hades]

I understand where you're coming from. But this brings up another point, in Latin America you are taught there is one American continent. We, and most of the world, know it as two continents. North America starting at Greenland and ending with Panama, and South America starting with Columbia and ending with the southern tip of Chile.  I can't really say which one is correct, but the Panama canal does seem to separate the two. So there is never any confusion for us, because when we refer to the continent it's North or South America.

United Statesian or United States of America-er just doesn't sound right  .

[Trium Shockwave]

There's the matter of convenience and and smooth flow of communication. For most people, 4 syllables is about the limit for a word they need to use frequently. Anything longer will wind up abbreviated somehow. There's also the issue of there being multiple United States, particularly during the 19th century when "Americans" probably came into common usage to describe residents of the USA.

I do agree that when referring to the country it's more appropriate to say, at the very least, "the US". Saying "America" is a bit ambiguous.

Anyway, as for languages, I speak English (natively) and Japanese to an extent. I can get myself by in Japan, but it's hard to put a formal "level" on my Japanese since it's all self-taught and lacking in any real formal structure.

[Walky]

I understand where you're coming from. But this brings up another point, in Latin America you are taught there is one American continent. We, and most of the world, know it as two continents. North America starting at Greenland and ending with Panama, and South America starting with Columbia and ending with the southern tip of Chile.  I can't really say which one is correct, but the Panama canal does seem to separate the two. So there is never any confusion for us, because when we refer to the continent it's North or South America.

But North America still refers to a couple other countries besides the US, that's my point.

Some people even refer so panama and its surrounding countries as "central america"; I'm not sure about that limits wikipedia seems to have some nice info about different interpretations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America#Usage
It seems everyone (and no one) is right 

United Statesian or United States of America-er just doesn't sound right  .

I agree   



We've gone a little too much off topic 

[Walky]

Anyway, as for languages, I speak English (natively) and Japanese to an extent. I can get myself by in Japan, but it's hard to put a formal "level" on my Japanese since it's all self-taught and lacking in any real formal structure.

Yes, It's difficult to self-teach a language that is based on a completely different structure (and origin)... specially different writing characters (at least romaji makes things a lot easier when starting).

I think it must be relatively hard for native english speakers to learn to speak "good" spanish by themself (but probably not as hard as learning japanese), since we (I live in Chile) have a LOT of possible conjugations for each verb, and some other subtle differences like gender differentiations and such.

That's why sometimes foreign people can communicate quite clearly in spanish, even when using wrong words (even if conjugated wrong, the verb is still the same so it is understood).

[son_ov_hades]

I understand where you're coming from. But this brings up another point, in Latin America you are taught there is one American continent. We, and most of the world, know it as two continents. North America starting at Greenland and ending with Panama, and South America starting with Columbia and ending with the southern tip of Chile.  I can't really say which one is correct, but the Panama canal does seem to separate the two. So there is never any confusion for us, because when we refer to the continent it's North or South America.

But North America still refers to a couple other countries besides the US, that's my point.

Some people even refer so panama and its surrounding countries as "central america"; I'm not sure about that limits wikipedia seems to have some nice info about different interpretations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America#Usage
It seems everyone (and no one) is right 

Yeah but my point is America=United States Of America, and North America=continent.

[Walky]

Yeah but my point is America=United States Of America, and North America=continent.

Yes, but the meaning of the concepts depends on the place you live in. Since the U.S. have way more influence in the world that any central/south american country, it's quite understandable that it is their interpretation the one the other countries adopt (especially from overseas), since it's the one they hear/read the most  .

[Blue Protoman]

English, and a little bit of Spanish from paying attention in class.

[Rob64]

I speak english, a good amount of spanish, and can speak some german.

I hope to learn japanese, specifically reading it because I have alot of japanese cd soundtracks from games with messages from the composer and a message from Shigeru Miyamoto... and I don't know what they're telling me.

Does anyone know japanese and they could tell me how to read it?

[zombiepowder]

i can speak:

           English (fluent)
           French (fluent)
           Japanese (almost fluent)


i hope to learn more like Irish-Gaelic or German....

[nintendodork]

I forgot...I speak another language...

LOLspeak

[nurd]

I don't know if I've posted in this thread yet, but
English (duh)
And I'm in German 2 at school. :p

[Rogles]

UPDATE KIDDIES

English(Dur)
Japanese(Learning at a snails pace, YEEHAW... I mean, ぼんぢい)
Spanish(>_> Only because of spanish class.)

[Nightstar699]

English, spanish (to talk to my friend from mexico) portugese and russian (my heritage)

[nensondubois]

English (US, UK), Little Spanish (Barely anything.) I plan to learn Japanese, German, Spanish and Latin sometime.

[linkzpikachu]

english (American Southern)
some spanish (forgot after elementary)
can say the legend of zelda in japanese
can say donkey kong in chinese