The Break Room (Non-Technical Discussions)

[#1]

Dose, English and a el'bitO of Spanish.

Many years ago I could read Arabic, couldn't speak it but had to read enough back in Desert Storm to figure out what was written and what the POW's were up to.

[#2]

The only French I need to know is "Deux Bier s'il vous plait"

[#3]

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AllenJessup wrote:

I speak English plus a little Fortran, Basic, Lisp and a little AutoLisp. How practical that may be depends on the day.

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Human languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and some English.

Programming Languages: Assembler, Fortran, COBOL, PL/1, C/C++/C#, VBA/VB.NET, Lisp, etc.

P.S.: I still kept punch cards and magnet tape ...

[#4]

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troma wrote:

No, not that I can remember.  Not outside of school, that is.  The final exam included an interview with an examiner, so yes, I did speak.  Obviously you prepare for something like that with a lot of memorized phrases about school, family, future plans etc.  But I got by.... then.  I wouldn't anymore.  

It's a nice language, but it is probably dying.  Shame, but they can't all survive.

I just found some interesting info.  Apparantly 2013 is the "Year of Irish": "Bliain na Gaeilge"

http://gaeilge2013.ie/

http://www.coimisineir.ie/index.php?page=baile&tid=1

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My MIL is Irish, and can speak it quite well. Most of the younger folk I've met aren't quite as adept with it, though.

One of the quotes she has shared with me over the years is (pardon me for copy/pasting, hope it's accurate): "“Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.”

[#5]

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Wanderer-MOTD wrote:

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... "“Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.”

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A land without language is a land without soul?  Nice.  The inference is its own language, not just any language.  It's a sore subject in Ireland, because everyone wants that sense of identity.  It goes along with the Nationalism and decades/centuries of struggle for independence.  They eventually got the EU to recognize Irish as an official language, along with the 20 others or so.  So people have a sense of pride in it.  But at the same time it is dying.  Everyone knows that for the economy, English is the way to go.  Google and Intel wouldn't put their European HQs in Dublin if no-one spoke English!

[#6]

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troma wrote:

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Wanderer-MOTD wrote:

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... "“Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.”

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A land without language is a land without soul?  Nice.  The inference is its own language, not just any language.  It's a sore subject in Ireland, because everyone wants that sense of identity.  It goes along with the Nationalism and decades/centuries of struggle for independence.  They eventually got the EU to recognize Irish as an official language, along with the 20 others or so.  So people have a sense of pride in it.  But at the same time it is dying.  Everyone knows that for the economy, English is the way to go.  Google and Intel wouldn't put their European HQs in Dublin if no-one spoke English!

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~nodding~ Yeah, she definitely had mixed feelings about it. She seemed resigned, but, is a bit sad that my husband and his sister don't speak any Irish at all.

And, looking at America, of the 250 languages spoken here before the Europeans arrived, maybe 8 are still spoken today, but, not by many people.

[#7]

English and "Maine" and ten words of French; enough to get in and out of Canada when I need to. also remotely remember punching cards for fortran.  found the best thing not to do to the university system was cause the printer to expel about fifty blank pages of that wide paper with no ink on it. other than that don't know much of any cumputer language.

Dave

[#8]

I SPEAK MAINE!!! AYUH I DO!

[#9]

I am fluent in Nerd and Sarcasm.

Formerly fluent in French, due to having a little tiny French tartar of a teacher who permitted no English in class after the first week.

[#10]

I was fluent French but it was one of those didn't use it, so I lost it type of things. I can still read quite a bit of it and can muddle my way through reading Italian (can't speak a word of it though).

I do fall into accents pretty quickly though. My mom is from the South and my dad is from Boston, so I grew up with both accents and quickly fall into either if I'm around people talking like that... especially the South.