Anyone on this forum speak french?

;~;
I just want to be loved!

 

I can speak French. Regular, slang and drunk. Oh yeah, I' ll go places !

 

Less than 1/8 of the population of Wales knows any Welsh, and even less can speak it fluently. And I thought Hebrew was strictly a religious language and Israel used modernized Aramaic. Eh, I can't be right all the time.

I wouldn't know many of the English words in my vocabulary if I hadn't taken Latin, and I wouldn't be as good with foreign languages that use Latin derivation, such as Italian, most of its sister languages, modern Dutch, and modern German, to an extent. Hell, I once held a conversation in Dutch for a good two minutes (not long, but whatever) before the lady caught on that I was figuring it out as I went. Then again, I've always been slightly better than average with languages, so I'm probably not the best example. All I can say is that taking Latin benefited me greatly, regardless of how little it's done for anybody else.

 

You are a bit too critical towards French though. Especially since 30% of all English words have a French origin <_<

 

30% = f.

 

Eh, I have a tendency (which I'll admit can be pretty annoying) to use in-jokes where they won't be understood.

Spoiler: In Joke Explanation

In this case, back in school most students went with French because the subject was easier than Latin (something I still don't understand) but not too easy like Spanish, then complained about how they wished they had taken Latin either (a) because they were doing badly on our Beowulf and Canturbury Tales units (which were best understood in the original Old and Middle English, which borrowed most grammar from Latin) or (b) because the Latin teacher was much better at teaching than the French teacher. So we'd frequently make stabs at the French students for their poor choice. We also didn't like the Spanish students, but that was for a different reason entirely.

So I don't really dislike French, just students of French.

However, I do have one major problem with French itself. I can't use Latin to figure out French, which is derived from Latin and the language of the Gauls (don't remember what it was called), yet I can figure out all of its sister languages and a few more distantly related languages by the same method. If you recall, I could even figure out Dutch. French is like that one equation that you just can't solve despite being able to solve countless other equations that are pretty much just like it, causing you to switch to a liberal arts major instead of following your dream to become an engineer. It's extremely annoying in that sense.

 

Celtic. There' s also a bit of langue d' oc, langue d' oïl, Franco-Provençal and Frankish (old Germanic) so it' s quite messy.

 

Ah, I see. That would explain why the native Irish language is called Gaelic. Thanks for the explanation.

 

It's actually called Irish Gaelic, to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic.

 

Thank you for the clarification.