# What is your native language?



## Crystal (Aug 8, 2017)

My native language is Chinese. And you?


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

English, even though my parents are Chinese


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Dutch ...........................


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Double Dutch.........


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Crystal said:


> My native language is Chinese.


Mandarin or one of the local Chinese languages, like Cantonese, Hokkien or Shanghainese?

Mine is Dutch, my wife's is Shanghainese.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

BBC English  .....


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Becca said:


> BBC English  .....


Not received then............


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Becca said:


> BBC English  .....


Are you a fellow Brit then? I'd always assumed that you were American based on your location but this illustrates the danger of making assumptions.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

chill782002 said:


> Are you a fellow Brit then? I'd always assumed that you were American based on your location but this illustrates the danger of making assumptions.


And don't assume gender either woof woof.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Dan Ante said:


> And don't assume gender either woof woof.


I wasn't as that is irrelevant to this particular thread.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

chill782002 said:


> I wasn't as that is irrelevant to this particular thread.


Yes of course it is absolutely


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## T Son of Ander (Aug 25, 2015)

English (American).


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I tend to favor, not favour, American English.

Brooklyn, New York is my place.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Crystal said:


> My native language is Chinese. And you?


I think you are jolly clever being able to speak Chinese. Tonal languages always seem impossible to me.

Are you compiling a dossier on us all (age, favourite colour, language)? :lol:


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Dr Johnson said:


> I think you are jolly clever being able to speak Chinese. Tonal languages always seem impossible to me.
> 
> Are you compiling a dossier on us all (age, favourite colour, language)? :lol:


When you are born into it, it is relatively easy.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

Mainly standard English, garnished with rich Northern vowel sounds & an earthy tang of Anglo-Saxon (on rare occasions).


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

hpowders said:


> When you are born into it, it is relatively easy.


Oh dear. I hadn't thought of that.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Dr Johnson said:


> Oh dear. I hadn't thought of that.


Sorry to disappoint you.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

Another "senior moment" on my part.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Dr Johnson said:


> Another "senior moment" on my part.


At least you didn't send two million pounds to your long-lost cousin in Kenya who desperately needed help.


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

hpowders said:


> At least you didn't send two million pounds to your long-lost cousin in Kenya who desperately needed help.


Once again, oh dear......


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

BBC English too :wave:


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

chill782002 said:


> Are you a fellow Brit then? I'd always assumed that you were American based on your location but this illustrates the danger of making assumptions.


Yes, grew up on the Lancs/Cheshire border when BBC English was what was expected in the schools.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Becca said:


> Yes, grew up on the Lancs/Cheshire border when BBC English was what was expected in the schools.


I see. I'm not sure of the extent to which BBC English (by which I assume you mean RP) was expected in schools when I was there (for the part of my childhood that I spent in the UK anyway) but I plead guilty. American friends of mine say I sound like Hugh Grant although I'm not sure I can hear it myself. I suspect that some Americans (not all) think that anyone from England sounds like that.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

English.

Having lived in Wales, I sometimes talk to our cat in Welsh.
This is pointless, as she is deaf.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Pat Fairlea said:


> English.
> 
> Having lived in Wales, I sometimes talk to our cat in Welsh.
> This is pointless, as she is deaf.


Welsh is a beautiful language although I can't speak a word of it. It reminds me of Elvish in Tolkien, at least it sounds somewhat like that to my uncomprehending ear. Was it a difficult language for you to learn?


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Pat Fairlea said:


> English.
> 
> Having lived in Wales, I sometimes talk to our cat in Welsh.
> This is pointless, as she is deaf.


Alla i ddim siarad Cymraeg yn dda.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

chill782002 said:


> I see. I'm not sure of the extent to which BBC English (by which I assume you mean RP) was expected in schools when I was there (for the part of my childhood that I spent in the UK anyway) but I plead guilty. American friends of mine say I sound like Hugh Grant although I'm not sure I can hear it myself. I suspect that some Americans (not all) think that anyone from England sounds like that.


'RP'? I'm not familiar with that abbreviation. I was there in the 1950s, came to CA in my teen years.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Becca said:


> 'RP'? I'm not familiar with that abbreviation. I was there in the 1950s, came to CA in my teen years.


Received Pronunciation. Sometimes referred to as a "Home Counties" accent.


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## Forss (May 12, 2017)

Swedish, unfortunately. It is a rather crude (and small) language, I'd say, but at least we've got Swedenborg, Strindberg, Lagerkvist, Tranströmer, Bergman, etc. My favourite authors/thinkers all _wrote_ in German. (I may also read Kierkegaard or J.P. Jacobsen in Danish, or Ibsen in Norwegian, which, so to speak, expands my horizon somewhat.)


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

English .....................


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I am very multi-lingual ... in addition to English, I also speak American, Canadian, some Kiwi and a smattering of Aussie.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

Finnish, which didn't help me at all in school when trying to learn all these weird "Indo-European" languages.


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## Bix (Aug 12, 2010)

English of the English variety.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Xaltotun said:


> Finnish, which didn't help me at all in school when trying to learn all these weird "Indo-European" languages.


Is it true that Finnish and Hungarian are the only languages in their particular language group? Or are they separate language groups by themselves?


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## Krummhorn (Feb 18, 2007)

American English. 

I would like to learn Danish though.


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

chill782002 said:


> Is it true that Finnish and Hungarian are the only languages in their particular language group? Or are they separate language groups by themselves?


Finnish and Hungarian are in the same group, and they are the most prominent languages there. But there are some others, like Estonian, and a bunch of very small minority languages in Russia, like Mari and... cannot remember right now, but they are there.

To a non-linguist, Finnish and Hungarian do not really seem similar at all, but Finnish is very similar to Estonian.


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## Guest (Aug 20, 2017)

American English, but I speak and write it better than the majority of Americans!


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## musicrom (Dec 29, 2013)

Depends on your definition of "native language" - Russian was the first language I spoke, but I moved to the United States when I was 3, and had already started learning English before that. Today, English is far-and-away the language I speak the best, and while I can speak Russian, I don't know whether or not I can say that I'm fluent in the language.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

American English, with a twist: although I have lived my whole life in a relatively constricted area of the American South, I have no trace of a Southern accent. People are always asking me "Where are you FROM?" in a confused way. Once, I asked a nice lady who did so if she would like to guess. She looked perplexed, and finally suggested "Pennsylvania?"


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

chill782002 said:


> Welsh is a beautiful language although I can't speak a word of it. It reminds me of Elvish in Tolkien, at least it sounds somewhat like that to my uncomprehending ear. Was it a difficult language for you to learn?


Welsh was the source of inspiration behind at least one of Tolkien's Elvish languages, and so was Finnish. Both very beautiful.

My native language is Russian. But since I carry a very German first and last name, some people get confused. Someone recently asked me whether my accent came from Bavaria  I just about melted for joy.


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## wolkaaa (Feb 12, 2017)

musicrom said:


> Depends on your definition of "native language" - Russian was the first language I spoke, but I moved to the United States when I was 3, and had already started learning English before that. Today, English is far-and-away the language I speak the best, and while I can speak Russian, I don't know whether or not I can say that I'm fluent in the language.


Same situation, only with German instead of English.


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## Antiquarian (Apr 29, 2014)

English, but you would never be able to tell this from my brain-wrong posting style.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

English, though also guid braid Scots.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Huttese and English


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

English (American).


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## Anankasmo (Jun 23, 2017)

SiegendesLicht said:


> Welsh was the source of inspiration behind at least one of Tolkien's Elvish languages, and so was Finnish. Both very beautiful.
> 
> My native language is Russian. But since I carry a very German first and last name, some people get confused. Someone recently asked me whether my accent came from Bavaria  I just about melted for joy.


Haha i'm from Franconia which is the upper part of Bavaria and i would hate anyone who told me i have an Bavarian accent


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Anankasmo said:


> Haha *i'm from Franconia which is the upper part of Bavaria* and i would hate anyone who told me i have an Bavarian accent


I have had the best musical experience of my life (so far) a few weeks ago in Franconia. Guess, where in particular? 

Hey, there are quite a few Bavarians on here.


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## Marc (Jun 15, 2007)

Forss said:


> Swedish, unfortunately. It is a rather crude (and small) language, I'd say, but at least we've got Swedenborg, Strindberg, Lagerkvist, Tranströmer, Bergman, etc. My favourite authors/thinkers all _wrote_ in German. (I may also read Kierkegaard or J.P. Jacobsen in Danish, or Ibsen in Norwegian, which, so to speak, expands my horizon somewhat.)


Swedish crude?

I find it one of the most beautiful languages that I've ever heard.
It's very melodic!

My native language is Dutch.
Now that's crude, but I don't care...


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## Dr Johnson (Jun 26, 2015)

ArtMusic said:


> *Huttese* and English


I had to look this up.

Apparently it is a language spoken by slugs.

Do you get much chance to use it?


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

Forss said:


> Swedish, unfortunately. It is a rather crude (and small) language, I'd say, but at least we've got Swedenborg, Strindberg, Lagerkvist, Tranströmer, Bergman, etc. My favourite authors/thinkers all _wrote_ in German. (I may also read Kierkegaard or J.P. Jacobsen in Danish, or Ibsen in Norwegian, which, so to speak, expands my horizon somewhat.)


This unwarranted self-contempt is one of the reasons why Sweden is currently ruining itself.



Marc said:


> My native language is Dutch.
> Now that's crude, but I don't care...


Not to speak of Danish.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Improbus said:


> This unwarranted self-contempt is one of the reasons why Sweden is currently ruining itself.
> 
> Not to speak of Danish.


Interesting, how is Sweden ruining itself? My general impression is that is doing quite well. Also, given that Danish and Swedish are closely related languages, the assumption of crudeness must be equally unwarranted, no?


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

chill782002 said:


> Interesting, how is Sweden ruining itself? My general impression is that is doing quite well.


Compared to most of the world and how things probably will be in the future: quite well indeed; compared to how things used to be and could have been: not quite so well, but that's a topic for another discussion.



> Also, given that Danish and Swedish are closely related languages, the assumption of crudeness must be equally unwarranted, no?


If you've listened to both languages the difference in sound should've been rather clear. While they are not only closely related but very similar they are still just barely mutually intelligible, which is pretty telling.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Srpski/serbian


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

I am exclusively and openly anglophone.


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## nikola (Sep 7, 2012)

hrvatski / croatian

I see also a neighbour here


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## atsizat (Sep 14, 2015)

My native language is Turkish.


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## Pat Fairlea (Dec 9, 2015)

Becca said:


> Alla i ddim siarad Cymraeg yn dda.


Nid wyf fi!

Welsh is a difficult language to learn if you keep relating it back to English, and trying for word-to-word equivalence. If you just accept that it is a quite different language, syntactically distinctive, strongly inflected etc, then it's not so difficult. And it sounds lovely.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

I don't speak French but to me it has a beautiful flowing sound and I love it, on the other hand Arabic sounds as if the speaker is spitting at you, not wishing to offend any one of course.:angel:


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## Forss (May 12, 2017)

Improbus said:


> This unwarranted self-contempt is one of the reasons why Sweden is currently ruining itself.


Why the discourteous tone? Who are you to make a bad judgement of another's well-considered opinion? For your clarification: I can (1) take pleasure in my mother tongue, and (2) acknowledge its relative smallness and insignificance in the world, (3) without there being any contradiction or supposed "unwarranted self-contempt" which is "ruining Sweden", etc.


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## Portamento (Dec 8, 2016)

Tamil, though I learnt English in school.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

chill782002 said:


> American friends of mine say I sound like Hugh Grant although I'm not sure I can hear it myself. I suspect that *some Americans (not all) think that anyone from England sounds like that.*


Some Americans seem to think that anyone who pronounces consonants distinctly, especially the letter "t" in words like "letter," is from England. When I was of college age I was asked more than once if I was English. I said no, but if it's a "t" it ought to sound like one. I now realize I had my own misconceptions about British English; I guess I, like some of your American friends, thought that everyone spoke like either Henry Higgins or Eliza Doolittle. I can still be taken aback by some of the regional accents on both sides of the Atlantic, and I suppose I've remained somewhat proud of having shed (I think) every trace of southern New Jersey from my speech, to the extent that when now I hear natives of the place speak I'm appalled at the weird vowels and missing consonants. But I now know that some of the things some British do to vowels can be equally weird, particularly to the letter "o" - or is that "ah-ay-ue"?


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

The letter "H" is a *H*ard one to pronounce properly. Some drop it , others keep it silent. Hardly consistently, highly variable.

Thought I find Handel and Haydn to be very consistently pronounced in name and quality.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

In the land of the long white cloud "i "is pronounced as "u" 

Hence, Fish and Chips is spoken as Fush and Chups


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> In the land of the long white cloud "i "is pronounced as "u"
> 
> Hence, Fish and Chips is spoken as Fush and Chups


And in Aussie they pronounce it "Feesh an cheeps" init :lol:


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## Taggart (Feb 14, 2013)

Please be polite to one and other. A number of off topic posts have been removed.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Dan Ante said:


> And in Aussie they pronounce it "Feesh an cheeps" init :lol:


Some more tips for the itinerant traveller to NZ.

1. Never ask for socks anywhere even in a clothing shop a) you might get arrested or b) bad things will happen and 
2. Under no circumstances, (special warning for hpowders) ever ask for 6 socks c) you could get locked up for good.......


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

EddieRUKiddingVarese said:


> Some more tips for the itinerant traveller to NZ.
> 
> 1. Never ask for socks anywhere even in a clothing shop a) you might get arrested or b) bad things will happen and
> 2. Under no circumstances, (special warning for hpowders) ever ask for 6 socks c) you could get locked up for good.......


I'd rather be a traveler than a jugular.


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## DiesIraeCX (Jul 21, 2014)

English (I'm from Houston, so no country Texan accent here) and Italian as my second language. My mother's side of the family is from Sicily, but I speak Italian with more of a northern accent for some reason, not by choice. 

Also, if you get attacked by a group of clowns, always go for the jugular.


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## Dan Ante (May 4, 2016)

Is there a tech problem with TC again?? yesterday I made a post on this thread (youtube link) and it seems to have disappeared or removed and on another thread I cant reply with a quote.


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