Writer's Block: Multilingual

[kjpepper]

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I'd love to answer this with Bruce Willis' line from the Fifth Element. "Lady, I only speak two languages, English and Bad English!" But that's not quite true, so...

Well, I do speak English. Specifically American English. Ridiculously specifically, Northeastern American English (New York City peppered with enough Western Mass to brand me a State Traitor when I'm down here... with a side of AAVE).

Most of that's me being silly. I speak English. Full stop.

I used to be reasonably conversant in French. I won't say fluent, because honestly my grammar is hopeless in any language (I still fuck up tenses in English, FFS), but I could speak and write fairly well once upon a time (if you overlook my complete disregard for accents.) I can still read well in it, and a couple of weeks ago managed to direct an utterly lost couple back to Manhattan on the subway in it, so I haven't lost it completely.

I also used to be slightly less reasonably conversant in Russian too. A lot more of that's gone except for random things (music, children's poetry and insults mostly).

I can't speak worth shit, but thanks to a lifetime of bilingual signs on the subway and a knack for pattern matching, I can read in Spanish well enough to get the gist of things.

Other than that... I know how to insult your mother in a few different languages, several extremely silly things in German, and a fair amount of Japanese vocabulary. I'm also a little surprised that 1337speak or /b/tard doesn't classify as their own dialects by now.


Real entry to follow later.

Comments

[stefka.livejournal.com]

Several dialects of English.

French (actual French, fluently)

Quebequois (a bit shakily; I keep expecting real French)

American sign (if you go slowly enough)

Gaelic (a smattering)

Latin (more than the Gaelic, though not really fluent)

Spanish (not really to speak it, but I can generally pick it up when I'm reading)

Esperanto (reading, not speaking)