Counting On, Season Four Part 4

[DancingPhalanges]

A language not mentioned yet (I think) ASL. I'm learning now and picking it up quickly to my surprise. I go to a MeetUp group to practice. 

Had French all through high school and that's completely gone, but I'm so far from high school that it's not surprising. 

My youngest started Spanish in 6th grade and it's required through graduation. 

[SayWhat]

 

On 7/4/2017 at 3:48 PM, Dutch_girl said:

According to their blog:

- went to SA in July 2015

- came to the US in Aug 2015

- went back to ScaryAmerica in October 2015

- came to the US from Aug 2016 till February 2017

- when they went to SA

- and they returned in May of 2017

 

Sooo in the last two years (since they went tot SA), that makes around 14-15months in ScaryAmerica in 24 months

^^^This just makes me  

Thank you Dutch_girl for putting that together. It certainly tells a story. 

How much vacation time is the norm for fake missionaries ?  8 months of vacation or not being in the field 8 out of 24 months ?   They will   go and come back for Joe & Kendra's wedding unless they are going to hang around for it.  Than they will be back for the next wedding and more babies.  Airfare for a family of 4.  Travel time wasted.  

Why don't they just stay in the USA and D-wreck can do mission work in poor areas of rural America or the inner city,  where they speak ENGLISH. It would save on travel time to and from the Dugger compound and the McMansion.  I am sure there is an inner city somewhere in Arkansas and there probably plenty of rural poor.  What a waste of resources.  How effective can JillyMuffin be as a missionary in Scary America with toddler Izzy and new Baby ? She isn't going to be using her mid-wife skills.  What the heck is she doing there in Scary America that she couldn't do for Jesus or D-wreck in the USA ?  Wake up sheeple and stop supporting these fake missionaries. There are better uses of your resources.  

 

 

 

 

[Incognito22]

My problem is I can ask how to get somewhere in Spanish but neglect to remember that the answer will then also be in Spanish.  Lots of habla mas despacio por favor and then it becomes an interpretative dance after that.  

Luckily on our last trip my boyfriend and his daughter speak zero Spanish.  I looked like an ass to everyone but them.  I was probably asking for polluted napalm chickens and they thought I sounded great!

[VelociRapture]

36 minutes ago, HermioneSparrow said:

Hahahaha it is birds! Good job, if you can pronounce you might have skills to learn languages. Spanish is difficult! Latin derived languages are pretty damn hard.

Thanks! I took three years of French, followed by a year of Latin, and then three years of Spanish. So I know a very little bit. Not nearly as much as I wish. They're all such gorgeous languages. This conversation did make me download Duolingo again, so hopefully that helps me brush up on some vocabulary.

I found Arabic extremely challenging. I honestly don't remember anything from that semester. Our Professor was a native Arabic speaker originally from Nazareth who literally only covered part of the alphabet with us because he knew how difficult it was to learn a language so different from what we were used to. He was a fantastic teacher and his class was always a lot of fun.

[DancingPhalanges]

Just for fun:

http://www.babysignlanguage.com/dictionary/b/bird/

@VelociRapture my older son said the same thing about Arabic in college his first semester. Loved his teacher, but the language was difficult. 

Edited to add: polluted napalm chickens killed me @Incognito22!!!!

[Playagirl]

6 hours ago, VeryNikeSeamstress said:

I learned French at school from kindergarten to graduation. The city I grew up in (Ottawa, Ontario) is very bilingual, and I was lucky enough to use my French at work after graduating. I also spent almost a month in France when I was 18, and when I came back, all the Francophones I knew thought I sounded like a German or British person speaking French.

Fast forward almost 20 years, and I'm living on the west coast and hardly ever speaking French. I have a piece of paper that says I'm bilingual, but am embarrassingly out of practice. I imagine if I could go somewhere and immerse myself, I'd pick it up again.

I also tried to learn Spanish years ago in University. It came to me fairly easily, but anytime I had trouble remembering Spanish words, or expressing myself in Spanish, I would automatically revert to French.

Hey, we could have been neighbours. I moved to the Ottawa area as a kid and took French all the way through school. Got straight A's but couldn't speak a word of it at the end.  I was sent on French language training through work but still really struggled to speak it as the formal french that was taught isn't the way real people speak. It took marrying a quasi-French guy, sending our kids to French school, moving to a predominantly francophone town and working with French-speaking colleagues to become proficient 30 years later.  Unfortunately as I get older I find myself forgetting the more complicated verb tenses so I have trouble being as precise as I'd like. And I'll never get rid of my English accent, and I can't even come close to rolling my bloody R's!!!

I tried to learn Spanish a couple of years ago but gave up because I would constantly revert to French too and it seemed to be an exercise in futility.

[HarryPotterFan]

3 minutes ago, Playagirl said:

I tried to learn Spanish a couple of years ago but gave up because I would constantly revert to French too and it seemed to be an exercise in futility.

My dad took French in high school, but when we went to Costa Rica he tried to learn some Spanish. He ended up embarrassing the family by speaking Spanglish in a French accent 

1 hour ago, DancingPhalanges said:

A language not mentioned yet (I think) ASL. I'm learning now and picking it up quickly to my surprise. I go to a MeetUp group to practice. 

I have a friend who knows ASL/tactile ASL (signing into someone's hand, which enables blind people to use ASL). That friend is fluent in English, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese....I think also French. And at one point was learning Mandarin Chinese and Arabic. No idea how many languages they know now. I should ask. I remember having conversations with them in high school, and they'd just respond in whatever language they happened to be thinking in at the time.

[Penny]

My Mom talked me into taking Latin in High School.  What a waste! I hated every minute of it. 

My Daughter is in college for ASL. She learned some words in 1st grade and a couple years later could piece together a conversation of a group of deaf people on the train. She has turned me on to some Youtube video's of people signing to different songs. It is very beautiful to watch.

[HermioneSparrow]

31 minutes ago, VelociRapture said:

Thanks! I took three years of French, followed by a year of Latin, and then three years of Spanish. So I know a very little bit. Not nearly as much as I wish. They're all such gorgeous languages. This conversation did make me download Duolingo again, so hopefully that helps me brush up on some vocabulary.

I found Arabic extremely challenging. I honestly don't remember anything from that semester. Our Professor was a native Arabic speaker originally from Nazareth who literally only covered part of the alphabet with us because he knew how difficult it was to learn a language so different from what we were used to. He was a fantastic teacher and his class was always a lot of fun.

I'm jealous! Wish I had the experience to learn languages that differ from our alphabet, it's interesting... and difficult.

I use Duolingo for my very rusty french, is a great app. Get back on the horse and learn Spanish! 

 

[SHERA]

On 7/4/2017 at 10:31 PM, calimojo said:

People are rarely just one thing.  I see controlling aspects in jeremy's personality, but that also doesn't mean that he wouldn't be supportive of Jinger becoming her own person.   

I use to work with athletes all the time. It might seem controlling, but we would call it leadership. Jeremy is leading his new soccer team (him and Jinger) to whatever victory they are working on. He probably needs to teach Jinger how to work on a real team with a real sport instead of JB's team in the sport of Gothard.

[Mela99]

I grew up with Italian family and took 5 semesters of it in college. Sad that I've lost the knack for a lot of it (except for cursing people out, that is as fluent as ever). I'd like to get back into it when BabyOfMela appears someday. I already have Italian language nursery rhyme books and kids books. I really want to expose her to the language and the culture.  I wish I had grown up learning more Italian but nobody spoke that much of it, save for recipes and prayers. My mother told me her mother wasn't allowed to speak it in school or anywhere outside the home because of anti-Italian sentiment, so she didn't grow up hearing too much. Sad. 

 

[HarryPotterFan]

7 minutes ago, Mela99 said:

My mother told me her mother wasn't allowed to speak it in school or anywhere outside the home because of anti-Italian sentiment, so she didn't grow up hearing too much. Sad. 

My grandmother grew up in Germany. I don't think she ever spoke German again after coming to America and learning English. After escaping Hitler she and her family just wanted to be American. So my mom and her sisters never learned German.

ETA: She also spoken French (she was in France for a couple years before coming to America). No idea if she still remembers any.

[Flippp]

I grew up in Louisiana and I learned French in high school (8th & 9th grade). I later migrated to Texas for college and my major required foreign language so I decided Spanish would be the logical choice. I never did well in either subject (in fact I switched majors so I didn't have to take foreign language since I couldn't pass one of the classes ) mostly because my basic English skills are poor cuz of that Louisiana learnin. LA schools are at the bottom of quality rankings (currently ranked around #46 according to usnews.com [not sure how reputable that is]).

[MadeItOut]

3 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Just like kids and husbands.

Pretty much. 

She's my world though, so she gets a pass on personality. I just love that we live somewhere that allows assist dogs to have personality.

2 hours ago, Penny said:

My Mom talked me into taking Latin in High School.  What a waste! I hated every minute of it. 

My Daughter is in college for ASL. She learned some words in 1st grade and a couple years later could piece together a conversation of a group of deaf people on the train. She has turned me on to some Youtube video's of people signing to different songs. It is very beautiful to watch.

Guessing you've seen them, but if not, you'd probably love Bohemian Rhapsody and for the humour of it (sign humour rocks IMHO) 'Re: Your Brains".

[bella8050]

5 hours ago, Million Children For Jesus said:

At one point, I could answer the phone and take a reservation in about twelve languages. Now? Not so much. Use it or lose it.

 

Use it or lose it is what happened to my grandfather. He and his brothers came to the US when he was 11, he would speak a little Italian with my great uncles who all lived near by, but when he would call his sister who stayed in Italy he would bring the phone outside so he could be alone and concentrate (this was pre portable phones so when you saw the phone cord out the back door you knew who was on the phone) and he would always come back inside in a bit of huff because he was so rusty with his Italian and would complain his sister talked too fast.  He would go a bit Ricky Ricardo on us when he was really mad though, I guess the bad words are easier to remember. 

[season of life]

I took French throughout all four years of high school. I can't speak French at all. I lost any ability I gained. One day I may try to learn the language again.

[potato]

6 hours ago, Carm_88 said:

I can't roll my R's either.  I'm 28 and it sounds like I'm doing car sounds. 

I can't either, and I turn 23 at the end of the month!  It's definitely an issue when I speak Greek and when I took my year of Arabic in undergrad.  My mom wanted me to do speech therapy for it in school when I was younger, but they refused because you don't roll your Rs in English   Learning Mandarin was always my favorite, partially because you don't have to roll your Rs!

[feministxtian]

Its funny that although I didn't really speak Spanish much after I moved to Indiana, it's come back big time now that I live in the southwest. Fortunately too I have friends I can practice with. I can roll my r's with the best of them. My husband sort of, almost speak spanglish...he understands quite a bit. My daughter is fluent in Spanish and speaks passable French too. My sons? My older son's Spanish extends to ordering at Taco Bell. My younger son is close to fluent. I just wish my mother didn't try to completely ignore her own culture and heritage. 

[Italiangirl]

5 hours ago, Mela99 said:

I grew up with Italian family and took 5 semesters of it in college. Sad that I've lost the knack for a lot of it (except for cursing people out, that is as fluent as ever). I'd like to get back into it when BabyOfMela appears someday. I already have Italian language nursery rhyme books and kids books. I really want to expose her to the language and the culture.  I wish I had grown up learning more Italian but nobody spoke that much of it, save for recipes and prayers. My mother told me her mother wasn't allowed to speak it in school or anywhere outside the home because of anti-Italian sentiment, so she didn't grow up hearing too much. Sad. 

 

I don't knowof you can found but when i was a kind a really like the Gianni Rodari book for children. I still remember now a lot of grammaticale hint that he gave on his books as little story. Like when to use m and n in some words... know i want to go back and read again some of my favorite xd 

Spoiler

 

 

[Gobbles]

Ah, I remember. You have the same subjects every day. Not over here, you have a timetable for a week and every day you have different subjects. Wouldn't really be possible to have the same lessons daily. For example we had two hours of sport once a week or three hours of my technical class. Or for example we had only one hour of music once a week. 

 

[lumpentheologie]

When I graduated high school 16 years ago (in Alaska) we were required to have one year of a foreign language to graduate.  No foreign language instruction before high school.  We were told to do more than that if we wanted to go to college, though, so I took four years of French -- the other options were Spanish, Russian, and Japanese. Spent a summer in France when I was 16, then took 2 more years of French in college, at a pretty advanced level, reading and analyzing literature in French, even writing term papers in French.  But I never used it after that, and now I can at best get the gist of conversations and order food at restaurants. 

I also took 5 semesters of (ancient) Greek in college, and then 3 years each of Russian and German and 1 year of Latin during grad school and the time I took off between college and grad school.  With Greek I've forgotten almost everything, in Russian I can still understand conversations but not really participate, and in German (which I'm still actively working on) I can read slowly and understand lots of things but my speaking is still not very good. 

For me speaking has always been the hardest part (love dead languages!).  I think it's because I'm introverted and really don't like making mistakes and sounding stupid in front of other people. I'm also really bad at mimicking sounds and learning vocabulary -- grammar has always been my favorite part of foreign languages because there's a pattern that more or less makes sense.

I really like the website/app Memrise for learning vocab, and I've started watching Netflix shows dubbed into German to get an idea of how people actually talk. It's really easy to do that for a bunch of languages with any of the shows they produce themselves. Unfortunately, at least in German, the subtitles never match what is said so I can't use both German subtitles and dubbing, but I just listen for expressions/words I don't know and either learn them from context or pause and look them up. 

I really admire people who can actually speak another language! When I'm in Europe I usually feel embarrassed for being an idiot American who can't. 

[subsaharanafrica]

12 hours ago, justoneoftwo said:

I know they say raising bi-lingual children will not slow down their speech development, but it sometimes appears to and I worry about it.  LO is also supposed to be learning Spanish, but at 14 months doesn't appear to be doing so beyond one word.  

Sorry not totally relevant, just worrying over here.

You and me both. We did one parent one language and my son is speech delayed. I came very close to saying eff it and starting to speak to him in English because of it. He's now catching up and goes to school in a third language plus we've moved somewhere they speak a fourth language. I do worry that having 4 languages floating around in his head is slowing him down but at the same time it seems like it might actually be helping him with speech issues he would have had anyway. 

His little brother is in the same situation (minus the language from school) and he has no speech issues at all. 

[melon]

My father used to teach at Universities.He taught Latin and Ancient Greek.When he was 12 was when he first began taking Latin,and he loved it,and he said he knew then that was what he wanted to do.He was very opinionated.He used to embarass my uncle on the bus ride home because my father like to study,but out loud...lol.My uncle would sit somewhere else.When he began teaching he was firm,he wanted his students to study 2 hours.He could also speak French,Spanish.He loved to read,and especially read books,like Classics,in the language they were written in.Until he became ill,he still read and practiced daily.He told me that he thought if you learn another language,you must practice it,or you will forget it.I was astonished,my mother never forgot her German.But,I do have a friend,and she started out speaking Spanish,then learned English in kindergarten,but spoke Spanish at home.They used to come and ask her to translate..she grew weary of it,claimed they were not paying her,so why should she?Also,she did not have sympathy for people who come here and work here and refuse to learn the language...just her opinion.She had a friend at work and they'd speak Spanish at lunch,in my presence.She then said she agreed with my father,that she was forgetting her Spanish because she did not practice enough.

[Jana814]

Someone I know grandmother spoke 5 languages. Polish, Hebrew, English and 2 more. When she started to get sick with Alzheimer's she lost all of her languages besides Polish (it was her first one). The person I know father has a lot of money he was able to hire 4 polish speaking nurses to take care of her around the clock. 

[karen77]

10 hours ago, potato said:

I can't either, and I turn 23 at the end of the month!  It's definitely an issue when I speak Greek and when I took my year of Arabic in undergrad.  My mom wanted me to do speech therapy for it in school when I was younger, but they refused because you don't roll your Rs in English   Learning Mandarin was always my favorite, partially because you don't have to roll your Rs!

Funny, I can roll my R's with my tongue and the back of my throat (which is great for accurate pigeon sounds and George Jetson car noises). Yes, I'm weird.