Writer's Block: Parlez-vous francais?

[dakegra]

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I know a smattering of French, can say hello in German and Japanese and know a few words of Spanish.

I also studied Russian up to A level - our school was one of the few which gave that option. We had to sit a test in Swedish towards the end of first year of school. They gave you a few Swedish words, then gave you some sentences and asked you to translate. Those who did well got to do German, those who did really well got to do Russian.

So, I ended up doing Russian, but not French. Long story.

Oh, and I can also say 'there is the cat' in Finnish. Mate at uni had a Finnish girlfriend, who had a Teach Yourself Finnish book, which, bizarrely, was entirely in Finnish.

Comments

[shriker-tam.livejournal.com]

We had to sit a test in Swedish towards the end of first year of school. They gave you a few Swedish words, then gave you some sentences and asked you to translate. Those who did well got to do German, those who did really well got to do Russian.

Huh? This, I think, requires some further explaining...why swedish?

[dakegra.livejournal.com]

As far as I remember, the reason given was that it was a language we were unlikely to be familiar with. Those with some aptitude for languages could take the words they knew and come up with some kind of plausible sentence in which those words and constructions would make sense. If you could do that, they felt that you stood a better chance of understanding other languages.

Basically everyone got to do French, and those who wanted to, and did well in the test, got to pick German or Russian, though I think it was only those who did really well got the Russian option.

I loved it. Sadly the other subjects I chose precluded me from studying French as well, as I was really good at it. Unfortunately, the Modular IT options I chose weren't well presented and a large proportion of us didn't do very well at it, much to the annoyance of my language teacher!

[primitivepeople.livejournal.com]

I attempted to learn Romanian from a book once, and got as far as learning how to say "the lamp" and "there is a train", but I can't say I've ever had cause to use those phrases.

[shriker-tam.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting concept :o) I've never encountered anything like it.