December 24

[Sa'ar Chasm]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0]Me, I basically speak English and a smattering of Chinese.[/quoteost_uid0]

I can attest that her accent sounds like that of every Chinese-speaker I've ever met, except that she's fluent in English.

I can just about speak my birth tongue, and little else. I took French in school from Grades 7-11. I can get by reading street signs (as the recent trip to Quebec proved), and I can make myself understood, after a fashion. However, I can't understand anything that comes back, especially if it's in arcane Joual or Acadian accents.

I can say thank-you in 9 languages: English, French, German, Dutch (thanks, Cat), Spanish/Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Mandarin (thanks for the spelling, dear) and Japanese.

I also have a smattering of Latin and Greek root-words (mostly from English words built on them) as well as Sindarin and Quenya (although it's even money whether I'll be able to tell which is which).

Oh, and I can say "little buddy" (or something resembling it) in Russian, which came in handy when I was writing Nuclear Weasel.

People who are bilingual make me feel unworthy.[/colorost_uid0]