What the Folk!

Okay, moron here...what is Catalan?

How to use an apostrophe

Basically it is IT'S if you can say IT IS.. and it is ITS if you could also say MY refering to yourself instead of the thing.

it's awful= it is awful
its awful= its awful what? its awful..screws are too big? ..or my awful mother in law is a snarky beotch?

Hope it helps

it's my first language A Romance language spoken by approximately 10milion people..in my neck of the woods. it's official in Andorra and co-official in the eastern regions of Spain, southern regions of France and a small island west of Italy.

Ooer, sounds fancy! Wish I could learn another language.

I love the Spanish girl explaining English grammar to the native speaker Godd on ya, Amanda

SuzyBatt: Three languages is impressive! (I speak German, but not nearly well enough to call myself trilingual )

I consider myself bilingual now (English and Norwegian) but I didn't learn English before I was about 10, which is quite late. Fortunately I picked it up really fast and loved using it even outside the few classes at school. Now I prefer English in many situations; reading books in the original language is a given, and I also found it easier to write my M.A. thesis in English. (The thing I get mixed up between the languages is the use of punctuation ... In Norwegian you always put a comma before but, which is not always the case in English, but I do it anyway )

I started toying with the idea of speaking English full time many years ago to teach my children the language from birth (while my husband would speak Norwegian to them). This was before I even had kids. I soon found out that it did not come natural to speak in a foreign language to my baby, so I kept it native. I would read English books to them from birth though, so they would get used to the sound of the language. After they started English nursery I would speak to them in English from time to time. -

Now though, like you can see from the original post, they are attending Norwegian school, and if they don't keep using English the same thing will happen as with Suz and her French. So I'm giving the full time English another go. Luckily the kids are not complaining about it or finding it weird. But let me tell you (again) it is tough speaking a foreign language 24-7. I keep slipping, but it'll get better:) And when they go to bed, or when I'm alone with my husband I speak Norwegian and it is sooo relaxing.

DUDES. I love this topic! I'm a total language nerd. Spanish was my second major in college and many moons ago I was able to speak it fairly well. I can still read and write it well, but when it comes to holding an actual conversation...hoo boy. I have some refreshing to do. I'm itching to start learning French or something too.

I should totally refresh my mediocre German, and my awful French !

But is much more fun to learn completely new languages I started learning Welsh before Xmas but then, with the move and everything I had to take a break, and now I don't rmemeber much. I found a wonderful course online though, so I know where to go to get back on the horse

*double post*

I still vividly remember learning the apostrophe stuff in school so that's never been an issue for me.

The effect and affect thing is something I know I will never get right.

Alot is a word to me. The only reason I know it's not is because it is currently underlined in red on my screen. When J wrote back to me once I noticed right away that he spelled it as 2 words coz he's obviously better at grammar than I am.

Still trying to find time to learn languages, but am totally knackered all the time at the moment!

Really hope arrival on new colleague eases strain.

Does anyone own a copy of The Elements of Style? It's a good resource to have, even if you think your grammar is fine. The first few pages cover how to use apostrophes appropriately.

I had about seven years of Spanish in school, so I should be waaaaay more fluent than I am. I can read it somewhat (I was able to help my husband on some of his work when he went to Mexico recently on business) and depending on how slowly the conversation goes, I can sometimes follow along. But I'm pretty worthless asking someone something, or being an actual participant in a conversation. I have a feeling if I lived in a Spanish-speaking country, I could probably pick it up fairly quickly.

I've always wanted to teach myself German, but I'm not quite sure how to go about starting...

My first language was technically Spanish, because my mom doesn't speak English, but I learned English at a really young age, too. I think by the time I started kindergarden I was mostly fluent in English, but they stuck me in the Spanish speaking class anyway. I remember being the only girl in that class until I was out for about a week with chicken pox, and when I came back, there was another girl in the class! We became BFFs, of course.

I remember with my little brother, who is 12 years younger than me, we spoke to him in Spanish at first. Then my parents told my older brother and I to speak to him in English so that he would learn that. So we started speaking to him only in English and that's how he learned that. It's truly amazing how quickly little kids can pick up languages!

Anyhoo, where I grew up, mostly everyone speaks Spanish since it's so close to the TX-Mexico border so I never thought it was that big a deal. It wasn't until I moved away and met people who were so envious of my bilingualness that I began to appreciate it more. I can read and speak Spanish just fine, but as far as writing and spelling, I'm really terrible at it. It kind of makes me wish I had taken some Spanish classes in high school. I took French instead, and while I am glad that I did, I hardly remember any French at all. But it did come in handy when I lived in Italy for a semester since Italian is somewhat a mixture of Spanish and French.

Show off

that's exactly what I was thinking