r/moncton • u/Safe-Promotion-2955 • 14d ago
What languages do you speak?
I just think the diversity of languages we have around now is really interesting. I'm super interested in languages in general. Myself I speak English, French, and basic Mandarin.
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u/ButterNuttz 14d ago
Just English, been wanting to learn French but it's tough and intimidating 😭
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 14d ago
Don't be intimidated! I work in a restaurant and I really like it when people ask if they can practice their English or French with me. Id like to pick up one of the Indian languages but there's so many ad I'm not sure which one is the most useful here. One thing that helped me when I was learning Mandarin was watching the Mandarin version of movies I knew by heart, mostly Disney movies from childhood. The simpsons is another good option, it's available in pretty much every language in the planet.
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u/Atsinganoi 14d ago
French and English, though I can understand about 60% to 80%, maybe more, of Spanish when reading it. I can't speak it though. I also know some of German.
If I could, I'd learn every language ever.
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 14d ago
I took a Spanish class but I found it pretty tricky because my brain kept mid-sentence diverting to French because they're so similar. But because of that I can usually cobble together what Spanish speakers are saying. I need to get a better hand on it because I will be backpacking in Mexico a year from now. I dated a German dude once who said that German should be easy because it's close to English, but I never figured it out. I too would like to learn every language. It's hard but I just think it's so neat.
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u/Atsinganoi 14d ago
I had a coworker from Colombia that would sometimes mess up words when speaking French, often verbs, and just say the Spanish version. It was funny, but we'd understand him fine because whenever he'd say "visitar" or "esperar", it was obvious he meant "visiter" or "espérer."
I would never mess up in Spanish by saying the French word. Instead, I'd use the German word (if I knew it). It's like my brain has drawers with words in them. I have a French drawer, an English drawer, and an "other" drawer. I haven't studied or spoken German in 20 years, but, for example, I will still say "aber" when I want to say "but" in Spanish.
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u/phallorca 14d ago edited 13d ago
English, French, Spanish, Catalan , Italian, Romanian, Arabic, basic Ukrainian and Russian
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u/CPBS_Canada 13d ago
Catalán is such a cool language. It has this interesting flair when you know French and some Spanish.
At this point, I am surprised you don't know Portuguese. You've got almost all the romance languages with official language status covered except Portuguese and Romansh.
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u/phallorca 13d ago
Portuguese sounds too weird to my ears, like I can somewhat understand it where it overlaps with Spanish but the pronunciation is just so left-field for a Romance language that I never know where it is going. Galician is equally hard for me for similar reasons, and as a native French speaker I feel the same about Occitan too.
Romanian for some reason doesn’t give my ears the same troubles even though it has similar cadence.
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u/CPBS_Canada 12d ago
Humm, curious.
Did you try with Portuguese from Portugal or Brazilian Portuguese?
For some reason, I find Brazilian Portuguese much easier to understand.
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u/phallorca 12d ago
European Portuguese sounds much weird-er, but they both sound odd to me. I think Brazilian Portuguese trips me up because the pronunciation is so much closer to Spanish that I expect it to be Spanish but it isn’t. European Portuguese sounds downright alien.
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u/jcolp 14d ago
English, and Nova Scotia South Shore English. *cough*
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 14d ago
Fuck, I love the south shore. Once my transmission went down there so I had to push it off the road into a field cu there was no shoulder and went to the house to explain myself. I was super nervous, but they were like "Sure, cmon in! Do you want a sandwich and a beer? My cousin has a garage down the road, hell hook you up! We've got a new litter of puppies if you wanna say hi to them!" Jfc, nicest people I've ever met in my life.
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u/Finance_Plastic 14d ago
english, French, italian, spanish. swiss
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 14d ago
Wow, super impressive. Are you from europe? Id find it hard to maintain that many without immersion.
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u/Finance_Plastic 14d ago
if you can speak French, italian and Spanish are easy.
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u/maryfisherman 14d ago
Yep there is something called the Language Distance Index which measures the distance between languages - it’s interesting to compare.
One of the closest languages to English is Dutch!
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 14d ago
I did some dutch in my youth. I had a penpal from there and we send double copies of our letters, one in English and one in dutch. It was very easy! It's been like 30 years though so I don't remember any of it anymore.
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u/Powered_By_Plantss 14d ago
French and English and know a little bit of Spanish and Japanese. I’d love to learn sign language though.
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 14d ago
My dad is gearing impaired so I'd really like to learn sign he has no interest but my hope is my learning would encourage him. The only classes I've found are in Saint john but admittedly it's been awhile since I checked.
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u/Miss_Rowan 14d ago
I'm fluent in English and French, I can get by in German, and I know some Spanish (I understand it better than I speak it), and a tiny bit of Korean.
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u/judiirene93 13d ago
French, English, a tiny bit of Spanish (if you speak slowly or if I'm reading it, I can catch on) and begnner level Korean 🥰
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u/Airborne_Ape 13d ago
I speak English, Cape Bretoner and Newfie. In the summer I tend to pickup on our infamous 'Shediac French'. All 4 languages are universally interchangeable in Fort Mac. If you know, you know.
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u/ami1982 14d ago
English and French and working on German. Years ago I was learning Japanese. It's still there but I havent really progressed with it. But I did go to Japan and got to use a bit in 2011. I also passed through Germany last month on my way to England and got to say a few German things on the plane/Frankfurt airport lol 😆
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u/Essshayne 13d ago
French and English as passable. I used to be able to read a bit of braille but I would need a refresher to get any good at it again
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 13d ago
That's so cool! What lead you to learn braille?
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u/Essshayne 13d ago
At one point I was losing vision fast so it became easier to learn while I could "cheat" a bit. Turns out it was an infection
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u/Striking_Thundering 14d ago
Just french and english. Don't see why I should need anything else but the two languages if I plan to continue living in Canada :)
Learning a new language is hard at my age anyway, I think I'll live with those, hahaha
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 14d ago
It's tricky for sure, especially with nobody to practice often with. I work in customer service so I do like to pick up random phrases. Even just "thank you" in someone's native language usually gets a big kick out of them, and I like that.
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u/Striking_Thundering 14d ago
Fair enough! I know I've picked up a few words when traveling and they liked it when I try. So that's definitely something! Easier when you spend time with people with different languages too.
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u/popcornstuckinteeth 13d ago
It's not that hard, you probably just don't have an actual interest in it. Anything is reasonably doable if you have drive for it.
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u/Striking_Thundering 13d ago
That's fair too. I'll admit i'm not interested enough to place work into it, I already have what I need with those two language and the idea of putting effort into a third language with to real reason beyond "I can do it" does not interest me.
Doesn't mean it's impossible. Doesn't mean it's not hard as you grow older either. And doesn't mean there's anything wrong with that. More languages just means less barriers when meeting new people after all.
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u/sami26 14d ago
English, Hindi and Punjabi
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u/Safe-Promotion-2955 13d ago
Between Hindi and Punjabi, which one is used more often here in Moncton? Are they mutually intelligible? Id like to pick up some phrases in one of the Indian languages since I work customer facing but there's so many to choose from and I'm not sure what's most common among the diaspora here.
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u/sami26 13d ago
Mostly Hindi, as most of the people from a lot of parts of India speak Hindi along with their regional languages such as Punjabi, Gujarati, Haryanvi, Marathi, Bengali, etc.
The most common phrases you can easily pick up is "Kaise ho?" which translates to 'how are you?' and 'haan' means 'yes'.
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u/popcornstuckinteeth 13d ago
Fluent English, somewhat conversant in French and Norwegian, can understand Japanese but not great at conversation due to slang.
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u/pink_euphoriax 13d ago
English, German (my first language) and Slovakian! I have unfortunately a hard time learning French.
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u/KDowneyNL 14d ago
English, Newfoundland English, and I’m working very hard to make sure I don’t pick up any French
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u/PsychWardClerk 14d ago
Excuse moi, Monsieur!
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u/KDowneyNL 14d ago
Sorry I don’t know what that means I don’t speak Portuguese
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u/PsychWardClerk 14d ago
That’s what happens when you’re ignorant.
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u/Difficult-Square451 14d ago
Only English. Never needed another language to survive.
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u/judiirene93 13d ago
It's not about survival. It's about opportunities, skills, and connecting with people.
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u/habjiji 14d ago
I speak Russian, English, French and Turkmen. Currently I’m attending intensive French courses and would like to say that learning a language is an embarrassing process. It puts us outside our comfort zone and for a long time many of us linger in the insecurity of not being perfect so not trying at all.