To wonder why foreign langage chat threads don't really happen on MN?

[lazylinguist]

There must be tons of MNers who are bilingual/learning a language/want to brush up their rusty French or Spanish etc. Occasionally there's an attempt at starting a thread, but they always peter out really quickly.

I speak (and teach) French and German and would happily join in with threads in those languages (and help out anyone on the thread who was learning). But I'm also learning Spanish and would most of all love to be able to do MN chat in Spanish! I know there are FB groups etc for that sort of thing, but I'd much rather chat on a forum where I'm already comfortable and feel like I know the atmosphere/tone iyswim!

JaneJeffer, that is brilliant! I feel his pain - I’m trying to learn via Duolingo and it’s giving me really useful phrases like

‘Ta an fear sa chuisneoir’.

wtf is he doing in the fridge?

wtf is he doing in the fridge?

Who knows! It throws up other gems too like turtles drinking milk and dogs paying for cats.

All very useful phrases.

Reminds me of this Eddie izzard stand up

‘Ta an fear sa chuisneoir’
Sounds like an episode of Line of Duty

Kan godt kjøre på med noka norsk her jeg, men svensk gir meg hodepinne ;) Bedre en dansk da, sikkert.

"I'm impressed that people can use other alphabets unless they have a different keyboard!"

You can just use a key combination to switch between alphabets. On macs, it's space and the apple key. So on mine, you can toggle between English and Korean (and on my work computer, also Chinese, which is annoying when I have typed out a load of stuff and then look up to realise it's all in Chinese.)

Tippen auf deutsch ist ohne deutsche Tastatur zu aufwendig.

And I don't have a numberpad so I can't use ASCII codes and so can't do umlauts unless I copy and paste every time! I'm always impressed that my German friend types English so quickly on her German mobile phone but I suppose it's easier the other way around, other than the Y and Z being the wrong way round.

Pnawn da pawb

Phones are really easy Berlin, usually if you hold your thumb on the letter you want (so A for Æ for me) it pops up a window with the alternative options. It's not QUITE as fast as typing on a straight out native keyboard for the language, but it's not far off.

So you went to the barbers to get potatoes. What's with the confusion drama?

@gruntley123

Ich wuerde gerne deutsch sprechen, aber denke ich habe viel vergessen!

Ja ja, es ist schade, dass ich auch viel vergessen habe.

Yup

I see Google Translate is going into meltdown on this thread

A me piace come facciamo un misculio tremendo di lingue in questo thread. Più divertente così secondo me! Vorrei imparare il greco, ma è veramente difficile!!

@TheCanterburyWhales e @Camomila, avete proprio ragione sui siti italiani per le mamme! In realtà, anche tante delle mamme in classe con i miei bambini che incontro sono un pò troppo fissate sulla pappa, l'ansia della febbre e di non sudare mai ecc ecc. Ma ci sono le donne interessante italiane....dove sono?!

Ma va là! Ci sono tante donne italiane interessanti! Bisogna superare la fase di pappa/pannolini però- e poi aiuta trovare altre mamme come me che ce la fanno senza l'aiuto di un esercito di nonne! Siamo più concrete e abbiamo meno paura degli spifferi.

Je ne comprondez.
Pah!

Cymraeg unrhywun?

Byddai’n gret sgwrsio yn Gymraeg!

@SerenDippitty Dwi'n cytuno. Mae'n anhygoel! Sgwrsiwch i fi, plis.

@PentreBachCymraeg Prynhawn da. Sut dach chi, heddiw?

A bun fight auf Englisch is doch viel besser.

mein AC mag das Uber haupt night.

I am currently trying to improve my French with Duolingo and looked at the recent French thread, but decided it was a bit beyond my level. There was also a reference to people not having their grammar corrected.

I would want one at the right level, so that would could understand it, but I'd also want knowledgable people to correct me when I'm made mistakes. Otherwise I wouldn't learn anything.

On the current French thread I'm happy to correct when people ask - we've even invented an acronym for it - CSVP Corrigez s'il vous plaît! There's a mix of native speakers, pretty advanced people and really pretty rusty people.