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ost_uid0]Me, I basically speak English and a smattering of Chinese.[/quote
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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.[/color
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