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March 29, 2005
Hey PGLAI77 - thanks for the tip
I probably drive Jordan crazy with my English.
It is not my first language - those who know me are aware that my first language is German.
My brain is also no longer big enough to learn more languages. I am happy that I learnt English in school, and French. Throughout my life (and this is probably wrong as well), I learnt to speak Spanish (out of interest) and Italian (I had an Italian girlfriend and her family didn't speak German or English - but wow, great Pizzas).
During my travels in Sri Lanka I picked up 5 words in Singhalese and still remember 60% of those, and some Ashanti in West Africa - gone by now.
I forgot all those languages - all besides French. In French, some tiny fragments are still left.
While in Asia, I started to learn Bahasa, but I wrote about my challenges with this before. Interestingly, every time I speak French, I somehow flip to Bahasa, for whatever reason.
I am always saying that my brain is not big enough anymore and that every time, I learn a new word in Bahasa, I sure forget one French word. Probably more!
I also tried to learn Mandarin, and while I think it is a beautiful language, well, the lessons nearly broke my jaw!
One strength of mine is to see mistakes in reports - in writing, or in the logical sequence. It is fun to put a beautiful report together.
I admit my English is not perfect - and I still dare to blast those who make mistakes.
A PGLAI77 picked up on my usage of "then and than" in my blog entry about "Picking up a Meme" I checked it out at Acden and it hopefully won't happen again!
Another person, JD, wrote "Pot calling the kettle black. Your spelling is quite questionable itself!" as a comment in my entry about the wrong spelling in the promotion for English Tuition - Pity, neither e-mail address nor web-address was provided in this case.
I want to thank both of them, but especially PGAIL! The difference between Than and Then is one of those cases in English where the words are so damn confusingly similar. I tend to make mistakes in those cases (is it those or these??).
Thanks - please come back and correct me some more (sorry THAT one). Or anybody else, for that matter. This might be the only way for me to improve.
Posted by Andreas at March 29, 2005 06:20 PM
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I think I must be driving everyone at the university crazy, because I'm so picky about grammar and spelling. My boss had to edit almost every question in his cognitive psychology exam after I read it.
The 'then/than' thing drove me nuts too, but I let it slide. Didn't want to seem too picky. ;)
Posted by: Jordan at March 31, 2005 10:43 AM
Hahaha I'm feeling u. I'm Chinese by descent, so I speak three different dialects. On top of that I went to an American school all my life so I speak English. Because I was born in Malaysia, I had to learn to speak Malay as well. Then I went on a Western Europe trip with my parents and fell in love with the French Language. At that time j'avais seulement onze ans donc mon cerveau avait la capacite pour un langue nouveau. Then I moved to Indonesia when I turned 13. So I was forced to learn Indonesian in school. It was that Ricky Martin era then, so I took Spanish while continuing my French. My Spanish improved so rapidly that it was the same level as my French. 2 years later, J'etais tres melange entre les deux. Hahahaha. So I dropped Spanish.
Now I'm trying to be bilingual with Mandarin and English. And then trilingual the next year with French.
With 8 languages, I starting to forget words too. I might know this word in French but then forget what it is in English. Or I'd know the word in one of the Chinese dialect and forget what it is in English. And as I improve my French and Chinese grammar, I'm forgetting my English. LOL. So as a native speaker I make a lot grammatical errors unconsciously.
A revision is always good. I suggest you read http://www.painintheenglish.com regularly. It help points out a lot of our common mistakes - this especially goes to native speakers. =)
Posted by: Ivy at March 29, 2005 10:45 PM
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