Tick les boites por favor, danke

[chickenfeet]

I'm curious about my flist's language skills. Please answer the following poll which asks you to indicate languages in three categories. The first I've defined as "fluent", meaning that you could do essentially anything in that language that you could do in your mother tongue. Second up is "reasonably competent" implying the ability to carry a conversation or read a text. Finally, "smattering"; can order a meal or read a tombstone kind of thing.

[Poll #592981]

Comments

[thidwick.livejournal.com]

Sadly, my language skills have deteriorated. There was a time when I would have considered myself nearly fluent in Spanish, but a lack of use has caused my knowledge to erode into the "reasonably competent" category. Same with Japanese -- I used to know more than a smattering, having taken it for two years in college, but I've regressed to only a very basic vocabulary and I remember very few of the characters I'd once memorized.

My knowledge of French and Italian is derived entirely from all those years of studying Spanish. I cannot wrap my mouth around French to save my life, but I can read it reasonably well and can understand speakers if they use basic sentences (this knowledge was gleaned when I spent a week in Paris by myself ;-)). Ditto Italian, though I find pronunciation much easier.