ILE foreign languages represent

viborgu, i've been curious about pimsleur & often tempted to buy it. i studied in college for two years & studied abroad for 6 months. that was approx. 5-6 years ago. what level should i start with?!

ee-i-ee-i-oh, dammit

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2005/09/23/international/i171947D03.DTL

Half of Europe's Citizens Know 2 Languages
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Friday, September 23, 2005

(09-23) 17:19 PDT BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) --

Half of European citizens speak a second language, according to a European Union survey released Friday.

The poll, conducted in June across Europe, found that tiny Luxembourg had the highest percentage of bilingual citizens, with 99 percent of those questioned saying they could master a conversation in a second language.

Hungary had the lowest number with 29 percent of its citizens able to speak another language. Britain was second last with 30 percent.

The survey also found that almost eight out of 10 students — ages 15-24 — can have a normal conversation in at least one foreign language.

In the United States, by contrast, 9 percent of Americans speak both their native language and another language fluently, according to a U.S. Senate resolution designating 2005 the "Year of Foreign Language Study."

In the European survey, English was identified by 34 percent of respondents as their second language, followed by German which was a second language for 12 percent, then French which was spoken as a second language by 11 percent, according to the survey....

Apparently the myth that Belgians can speak a lot of languages is not true. Ah well.

However, the subgroups and their possible similarities Finno-Ugric, Romance, Germanic obv complicates stuff (see parenthesised post).

OleM, on average, what percentage of Norwegians speak German? I can;t help but notice a striking similarity, at least in the last sentence there. And tell us more about katakana!

We shan't kiss your balls, m'lady.

I speak Dutch fluently. My passive command of German is good, but I get tongue-tied when I try to speak it because it's too similar to Dutch. I can make very very small talk in Spanish but wouldn't say I can speak it.

?

(that's supposed to be book, one of very few that I know)

I'm such a liar.

I want to start a new language study but I'm torn between the following: Hindi, Farsi, Portuguese and Welsh.

I'm learning French (8 years plus) and Spanish (nearly 3 years), I study them at university, but I am not remotely fluent and perhaps never will be. Even after seven months in Spain, my speech is littered with mistakes and I often have to ask people to repeat what they've asked me. I have met people who have spent less time than me in Spain/France and have studied the languages for a similar length of time or less who claim to be "fluent". It's possible that I am just rubbish and slow at languages, but I suspect a lot of these people are actually at the same level as me and passing themselves off as fluent. Similarly, since being in Spain a lot of Spanish people have told me that they or their friend can speak English, and when tested on it can't really at all.

Knowing how to sum up language experience on my CV is really tricky, especially since I don't have any way to grade it that would make sense to UK people (GCSE's etc). Or really to US people for that matter--my skillz are all too patchy but I still feel like they count for something.