[QUOTE=Dubslow;420153]English is her first language, Romanian second? What's SWMBO's first language? Where did the little one learn Mandarin (which is what I presume you mean by Chinese)?[/QUOTE]
SWMBO is Romanian and her field was medicine, when we were in Ro. She re-qualified as nursery/kindergarten teacher (primary years programs, blah, blah) as there is no way to work in health in Thai, for a farang, contrary to teaching jobs which are plenty. Her English is as fair as mine, her Thai worse.

We came here when little miss was 1 year and half.

She was going to an international school ever since then, starting with k1 when she was 3, and she moved to k3 in few months because the (Australian) teacher said she "knew everything, and all the routine, songs, etc" (she didn't speak a word in English when she joined), and she "is like a mother for all the toddlers around her" - she was very well developed physically, i.e. larger than the Asian colleagues, and very motherly. She learned English extremely fast, in weeks/days, and during parties and play groups she was speaking simultaneously in English, Thai and Romanian, with her friends and us, and never confusing them. Actually she was associating each person with a language. She started confusing them, mixing expressions, sometime resulting in extremely funny mot-a-mot translations/sentences, when she grew older. Due to that "fast transfer" from k1 to k3 she was always the youngest in her class, actually she will only be 17 when she will finish the high school.

The English being her first language is due to the "exposure", she was exposed to school environment, where the teachers mostly are British, Australian, American, and also many "farang" colleagues. She did a plain 9 (max mark) at listening, reading, comprehending whatever on IELTS (by British Council) and a general score of 8, and she wants to continue her studies in Australia.

The "exposure" to Romanian was only what we are talking at home, or with relatives (over the net) and friends (few Romanians living here around, few other at home), and SWMBO pushing her through some grammar and literature lessons when she was younger (like 9, 10 or 12, now it is no way to do that, better go to the zoo and fight the tigers!). Therefore her Romanian is as good as our family's Romanian is. It means somehow "regional" or even less that that, i.e. not quite literary (every family has its own expressions, vocabulary, internal jokes, etc.), she has quite a good grammar but restricted vocabulary. Well.. that is supplemented by English words, like for example when we had some Romanian friends visiting, they asked her how she likes Thailand, and she, doing a visible effort, said in very clear Romanian: "I like Chiangmai better than Bangkok because here the air is clean; in Bangkok the pollution is very high", she was thinking that in English and translated it "on spot", it is what all we do when we try a foreign language, well, she got everything right, between her thoughts and her mouth, except the word "pollution" which was not translated to the correct Romanian word "[URL="https://translate.google.com/#ro/en/poluare"]poluare[/URL]", but it was easier to come to one whose sound was closer to the original English word: "poluție" (pronounced about "polutzie", closer to the English "polution").

Well, the last word exists in Romanian language, for sure, but google is not translating it right: we only use it for [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnal_emission"]this[/URL]. And she didn't understand why everybody was rolling on the floor, literally, with laughing.

About Thai she studied at school the mandatory classes only (few hours per week), but she speaks it every day when she goes around with her friends. She is very "handy" to have with us when we visit local markets, Thai people are very friendly with you and hold you in high esteem when you speak their language, especially if you are young little lady and get all tones right, like a native. Therefore, we get discounts at potatoes :razz:

Mandarin she also learned at school, she liked it a lot, she can also write most of what she can speak (which I can not, I speak it, because I was working in China, but I only know about 30 of those alien signs, the simplest ones, like yi, er, san, zhong, etc, which I can't make a sentence with them).

Wow, she can even write Hanzi?! Color me impressed! You must be a very proud father!

And... as far as mistranslations go, that's almost certainly the funniest I've ever heard, haha.

[QUOTE=Dubslow;420163]Wow, she can even write Hanzi?! Color me impressed! [/QUOTE]
Well, what I always said, actually it is not so difficult, if you learn one per day, then in about 13000 days you learn all of them. What's that, compared with M48? :razz:

[QUOTE=only_human;420158]I can't converse very much in anything other than American English.[/QUOTE]

Ditto. In fact, I often have trouble even communicating in (Canadian) English...

I am highly envious of those who can speak/write in more than one human language. My sister can speak fluently in English, French and German, and flip between them (sometimes in mid-sentence) without even thinking about it.

I've tried (hard) to learn French and Spanish, and just can't do it. It might have something to do with my dyslexia.

On the flip side, I have programmed professionally in over a dozen computer languages, and have no problem picking up a new (computer) language given a day or so. I often wonder which of the two skills are more empowering; I suspect the ability with human languages....

[url]http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1319/showcase-of-beautiful-typography-done-in-tex-friends[/url]

[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzV_UCQFY6w&feature=youtu.be[/url]

[QUOTE=pinhodecarlos;420298][url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzV_UCQFY6w&feature=youtu.be[/url][/QUOTE]
Thanks, it was nice to watch a video and realize that I was smiling.

[QUOTE=only_human;420299]Thanks, it was nice to watch a video and realize that I was smiling.[/QUOTE]

Seconded!

A blatant self-promotion ("It's got like a hundred and 70 million views" when in fact it has 1.7 million views), but very clever. :smile:

[QUOTE=LaurV;420147]Man, how do you make those weekly scores? Are you really investing so much time daily, or you know a trick to the big scores? Like working against the clock, for example, I found out that it gives two times more points per time unit (you get 20 instead of 10, if you do good, when the lesson ends). But I am only able to do that with English, and not with other languages I went through. So, are you really polyglot, able to race against the time in all those languages, or you really spend 25 hours per day there? (both will be worth my admiration!).

(Edit: yes, I am following you since Nov.23 when you posted here, and trying every day to beat you, in the limit of available time, and never succeed!)[/QUOTE]
Ha! You beat me this week. Start your engines, we both have 0 xp for this new week.
I think I'll jump to Italian, I thought you might be working on that and I want to take a break from German.

[QUOTE=pinhodecarlos;420298][url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzV_UCQFY6w&feature=youtu.be[/url][/QUOTE]

Now I know WOtE and Key of Awesome. :tu:

Food for thought... How this looks today. Watch it, it worth the 30 minutes of your life!

[YOUTUBE]YIBhPsyYCiM[/YOUTUBE]