<p>Yeah, Quebecois French is pretty different from France French. Some of my teachers speak Quebecois, and some of them speak regular French, so I’m able to understand both without any problems.</p>
<p>.flac files are so annoying.</p>
<p>I have a question for the French speakers. It is driving me crazy.</p>
<p>So I’m doing my French summer work and there are a bunch of sentences about kids and “le symbole.” I have no idea what “le symbole” is and I can’t find anything on the internet about any of its meanings but “the symbol.”</p>
<p>One of the sentences is pretty straightforward, despite my having no idea what “le symbole” is: “The students tease the carrier of le symbole.” One of them is "L’enfant qui a le symbole tra</p>
<p>Hmm, okay. I really have no idea. I looked in my Larousse French dictionary, and their definitions of “symbole” wouldn’t apply to any of those sentences. I’ve spoken French for my entire life and I’ve never heard of “symbole” used that way.</p>
<p>However, the first sentence you wrote means “The child who has the symbol drags his leg(s).” "Tra</p>
<p>Thanks for the help! You cleared up a lot of things. But I guess “le symbole” will forever remain a mystery… until I ask my French teacher about it on Tuesday…</p>
<p>Cool, tell me what it means when you find out.</p>
<p>I am a schizophrenic when it comes to foreign languages. I obsess about them ALL the time. And I’m only fluent in English. Due to an awkward Spanish education, I can read and write Spanish fluently, but I can’t really speak or listen fluently. I just feel so incomplete without foreign languages.</p>
<p>I’m weird, I know…</p>
<p>I love languages, too. I try to pick up little bits of every language, which I’m sure annoys my friends to death. (“Oh, you speak Hindi? Cool! Let me show you the five sentences I can say!” “Oh let me try to help you with your AP Spanish/Latin/Russian/German homework even though I speak about ten words; I just want to see if I can figure it out heh heh!”)</p>
<p>I understand random words when people speak Spanish. And I don’t even know Spanish.</p>
<p>Croatian sounds really awesome. It’s kind of like Esperanto. Rocker probably doesn’t think it’s like Esperanto, but I do. Croatian looks easy to learn.</p>
<p>I can pick up random words in French, but that’s pretty understandable. I would be so lost if my school offered more than just Spanish. I’d have my whole schedule full of foreign languages.</p>
<p>Croatian is really difficult to learn, actually. I’m a native speaker and I struggle with some aspects of it. Croatian has 7 cases which each have their own declensions (which don’t exist in English, French, or Spanish. If you’ve had no experience with Slavic languages, you’ll have a lot of trouble to learn Croatian. And, on top of that, the pronunciation is difficult for a native English speaker to learn. And, Croatia has hundreds of islands, and a different dialect of Croatian is spoken on each of them, and people from one island have trouble understanding the language of those on a neighboring island. Standard Croatian is only commonly spoken by a small amount of the population. So there.</p>
<p>How is it like Esperanto, JB?</p>
<p>My school offers French (obviously, because it’s a French school) and Spanish. I’m taking both and I’ll try to continue, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to. Spanish is reeeeeally easy for me, because the grammar is basically identical to French grammar, just 15 times simpler.</p>
<p>If you’re really up for a challenge, learn Sign Language. I randomly decided to take classes for it a year ago, and it’s much, much more difficult than I expected.</p>
<p>I always ramble.</p>
<p>Oh, and Canada has less gold medals than Michael Phelps. Yeah. Canada. A country. 330 athletes.</p>
<p>Canada does better at the winter games, I’d imagine?</p>
<p>Canada does seem to do really well at the winter games. Figure skating, curling, and hockey are Canada’s strong points.</p>
<p>Anyway, Croatian is like Esperanto because of the pronunciation. The dialects thing would be really annoying. I’m glad we really don’t have that problem in English. The only time it’s hard to understand someone speaking English is if a) the speaker is using some weird Welsh slang, or b) if the speaker doesn’t know English very well.</p>
<p>I didn’t think the pronunciation was very difficult with Croatian. Of course, the web page where I looked had only a few samples, but the sound samples sounded like they’re spelled. The cases probably would be difficult to learn, but those aren’t that important for someone that’s just picking up a few phrases. I saw this guy on Jeopardy! once that said he could speak all the major languages of the former Yugoslavia. But he was a freakazoid. Haha, I love that word.</p>
<p>Former Yugoslavia had three languages, all of which are extremely similar. I speak one of them, but I have no trouble understanding the others. </p>
<p>You’re right about cases, though. You only really need to learn them if you want to become fluent in the language. They’re just really, really difficult to pick up. I used to make so many mistakes with them, but now I’m a lot better. </p>
<p>Yeah, everything is pronounced exactly the way it’s spelled, but it’s still difficult. The Croatian word for “swing” (as in a swing set) is “ljuljacka.” It’s pronounced something like “lyoo-lyah-tch-ka.” It’s really not as easy as it seems, haha.</p>
<p>I would gladly be the guinea pig of new technology which transmits foreign language knowledge into the brains of others.</p>
<p>I can say swing in Croatian, so I’m, like, practically fluent.</p>
<p>All of you would CRY in Latin. Or really like it. Whatever.</p>
<p>I have a super old Latin book at home that my aunt used in the 60s, back when schools still offered Latin. I remember “Casa est casa romana.” Is that good or what? I can also say “E pluribus unum.” I just have mad Latin skills.</p>
<p>But really, I hate Latin. I’m a chronic Latin hater, and no one is going to change my mind. No one.</p>
<p>Lasescisne non?</p>
<p>Look it up.</p>
<p>I wish I could take Latin. But oh well. If I don’t take it in high school, which I won’t, I just won’t learn it ever. So.</p>