Wed 8 Jul 2009
Traveling also feeds my fascination with languages, dialects, and various accents. After traveling all around the world, I became fairly proficient in Spanish and could get by with a modicum of French, German, Italian, Romanian, Turkish and even a tiny bit of Vietnamese.
Here is a list of languages I encountered and dabbled in while traveling:
- Spanish (for about 4 months of trip)
- New Zealand & Australian English
- Cantonese (in Hong Kong)
- Vietnamese
- Cambodian
- Thai
- English in Singapore
- English in Dubai
- Turkish
- Romanian
- Hungarian (learned one word…extremely difficult language)
- Slovak
- Polish
- German
- Dutch
- British English
- New Yawk English
- French
- Italian
- Arabic (in Egypt & Jordan)
- Hebrew
- Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian
- Swedish
Although I feel truly lucky to speak English as a first language and never had any problems mainly because so many around the world can speak some English, it’s always so much nicer and more respectful if, as a traveler, you can at least greet someone in their native tongue and it goes without saying that ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ go a long way.
Gracias! Merci! Grazie! Toda! Shukran! Danke! Tack! Arigato! Paldies! Dziękuję! Efharistó! Mulţumesc! Spasibo! Tesekkurler!
Here is a cool vid that a friend showed me months ago. See if you can figure out where she’s from.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:27 am
Nice! I've been trying to get my tongue around spanish for the last 2 months and just arrived in Brazil for a completely new language.. It's wonderful to learn something new, but sometimes it just gets a little bit too much!
July 9th, 2009 at 7:00 am
This reminds me of a stay in a hostel in Australia. I was born in Bavaria (emigrated to US at 2) and have that German dialect. While speaking with two brothers from Belfast, a guy from England, my friend from Dresden, a few others from various nations, a young lady also from Bavaria asked me to explain what the Irish guy said. I responded, "I didn't understand him (again)" to which she replied "but you speak English"! My response was yes, and so do all of us here. Me, American, and we also have Irish (some Belfast neighborhood), British, Aussie, and yourself with your German English!