Which foreign language did you take in high school or middle school and why? For the purposes of this thread, programming languages will not count. But feel free to add them (with reasons why you took them) too.
Me? I took two years of German. I didn't want to take Spanish because everyone else seemed to be taking it so the classes were really crowded, and because I figured it would be easier. Well, and I needed a foreign language to graduate high school. :P
I took 2 years of Japanese in High School. I needed to learn language to pass too.
And I was curious as well
I took spanish. It was the only language available at my school.
learned Arabic at school (OK, the written version). English mom taught me.
also had a semester of German and of Latin.
Quote from: Ibrahim90 on February 05, 2014, 09:15:53 PM
learned Arabic at school (OK, the written version). English mom taught me.
also had a semester of German and of Latin.
Which Dialect?
They gave us the option between Italian, Spanish, or French. Everyone I knew was taking Italian and Spanish, so I figured I'd be different and take French.
I wholly regret that decision.
I took French because I had had it in elementary school in Canada, so when we moved back to the states, it was an easy A (which I was in desperate need of).
Quote from: Skm1091 on February 05, 2014, 09:24:44 PM
Which Dialect?
well, the written version is standard for all Arabic speaking countries. spoken? Palestinian Arabic--specifically the variety spoken in Hebron). No, I didn't grow up there: I grew up in Kuwait.
Two years of German, because Latin wasn't an option.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 06, 2014, 07:25:54 AM
Two years of German, because Latin wasn't an option.
Are you my twin? O_O Because that's EXACTLY what happened with me! I had two years of Latin when I was home-schooled (all of which I forgot :P), but they wouldn't count it so I took German! Though, to be fair, the 'Latin' my mom was teaching me was more stuff resembling where English words come from and was more of a vocabulary course to that effect. I think...it's been too long. XD
And yeah, I took a year of computer science in high school too (Visual Basic), and two semesters of it (Java) in my two year college before transferring. Wish they taught me C++ instead of Java though. :(
Quote from: Travis Retriever on February 06, 2014, 11:14:46 AM
And yeah, I took a year of computer science in high school too (Visual Basic), and two semesters of it (Java) in my two year college before transferring. Wish they taught me C++ instead of Java though. :(
Count yourself lucky: I had to learn Pascal!
I took German back in high school. I failed miserably at it. Looking back, I wish I took Spanish instead. Then again, I was really stupid back then.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 06, 2014, 12:37:54 PM
Count yourself lucky: I had to learn Pascal!
I've never even tried to learn that language, so I can't really say. :P Sounds like an old/hard language though. XP
Quote from: Travis Retriever on February 06, 2014, 03:39:04 PM
I've never even tried to learn that language, so I can't really say. :P Sounds like an old/hard language though. XP
Well, it's not Fortran or COBOL, so it could have been worse...
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 06, 2014, 03:50:39 PM
Well, it's not Fortran or COBOL, so it could have been worse...
I only had BASIC :(
I've failed Spanish, German, English, and Japanese, in that order.
...
Whoops, English isn't a foreign language for me!
Has anyone ever noticed that foreign language classes try to teach you to speak like a native, but English classes try to tell you how you, as a native English speaker, are doing it wrong?
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 07, 2014, 06:56:08 AM
Has anyone ever noticed that foreign language classes try to teach you to speak like a native, but English classes try to tell you how you, as a native English speaker, are doing it wrong?
Yeah. Go figure.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 06, 2014, 03:50:39 PM
Well, it's not Fortran or COBOL, so it could have been worse...
Or Assembly or binary. >.>
Quote from: Travis Retriever on February 07, 2014, 07:49:03 AM
Or Assembly or binary. >.>
There are lots of advantages to assembly. Steve Gibson and Mark Thompson write all of their programs in assembly, for two.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 07, 2014, 08:56:17 AM
There are lots of advantages to assembly. Steve Gibson and Mark Thompson write all of their programs in assembly, for two.
I was mostly thinking about the stuff we did in engineering school, which was basically using binary commands to mean "shift, add, move" etc to individual pieces of data and where to access it in memory, etc. I didn't do very good in that class because I couldn't get the damn interface to work/get set up until it was too late (it involved using some program from the university called PuTTY or something). >.< That, and I had a WoW subscription at the time (HUGE mistake).
I bet I would have nailed it if the two above weren't such a big deal--as we later moved to something else using a different interface (still a bit related though) and I did extremely well. First impressions with programs/interfaces/languages are kind of bitch like that. >.>
There used to be a tank game called Omega, where you made a tank and you could fight either a computer tank or another person's. As you progressed, you got tanks with more and more features etc. But here's the thing: you had to program the tank for the attack strategy, with a computer programming language. So it was really up to who was better at programming their tanks!
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 07, 2014, 09:19:57 AM
There used to be a tank game called Omega, where you made a tank and you could fight either a computer tank or another person's. As you progressed, you got tanks with more and more features etc. But here's the thing: you had to program the tank for the attack strategy, with a computer programming language. So it was really up to who was better at programming their tanks!
Sounds like fun, actually, if a bit tedious for my tastes. :3 lol
But back on topic...so...why'd you pick German instead of say, Spanish, or French?
I took Latin my freshman year but during the summer the Latin teacher died. So the school just put us into Spanish.