Q & A Tower of Babel

[Eugene]

Bucking the trend of AMA's again, I'd like to ask about languages.

What languages does your character speak? English? Bad English? Where did they learn to speak these languages, and why?

If they only speak one language, what languages would they like to learn and why?

 

[Jacqueline Hyde]

Jacqueline speaks English and a few stray phrases of Latin she remembers from school. She'd most like to learn French, since it's considered a beautiful language and the language of love.

Hyde likewise speaks those few bits of Latin, and occasionally throws them in for dramatic effect, but has no desire to learn any other languages, even if she were around long enough to. It seems like a distraction from the important business of making people's lives difficult.

(OOC, I speak English, some French, a little Spanish, and tiny bits of Swedish and Japanese.)

 

[Pitya Ivyr]

Ivyr speaks fluent Gaelic, English, and a bit of Spanish. Gaelic is her home language from where she grew up, she has no interest in learning new languages at the moment. If you ask Ivyr what languages she most commonly uses it is by far her home language. She has even taught the K-9 unit commands in her language. It is all that is left of her home. English is tough on her- she had to take many classes on English before getting it right. With her accent sometimes her words can be hard to understand.

(irl i speak fluent English and Spanish though I can sing in over 7 languages. I will be learning Japanese and Nepali for my own time and volunteer abroad.)

 

[Claire Yeon]

Claire was raised speaking Korean at home and English in school. She studied both French and Latin extensively in college, a natural progression for an art history major; she still speaks French regularly but the Latin has grown rusty. Because her work requires her to interact with clients from all over the world, she has a basic command of about eight other languages (though she often needs to refresh her knowledge before speaking them in a professional setting). Of those, only Spanish is used often enough to where she has gained some traction toward fluency.

 

[Charlet]

English and American Sign Language (learning)

 

[Jade]

Jade speaks mostly English for her whole life...however she can speak Spanish because she took Spanish class at her high school for three years and she can speak a bit of Filipino because of her mother speaks that language to Jade's relatives (aunts,uncles and cousins) on Mom's side (you know her mother was born in the Philippines).

She learns other languages herself by reading foreign dictionaries,a book of foreign terms,and some traveling books (beside Spanish and Filipino) are mostly French,German,Italian and Japanese,some Portuguese,Mandarin Chinese,Swahili and Hindi,a hint of Russian,Greek,Latin,Polish and Hebrew and a bit of Vietnamese and Korean.

The only language she needs to learn is sign language because she's not very good at it but tries to once in a while.

 

[Invader]

I can only speak English, unless non human languages count.

 

[Chase]

I want to add something here that clarifies how agents learn languages

• Agents in-training spend up to 8 hours daily in language classes and additional hours of homework per night.
• In 3 months they are fluent.
• In 6 months, they become native speakers.
• Once in the field, they do not speak anything other than the intended language.
• This intensive training program is available to any ACME agent wishing to learn a language, even if you're not set to be country-specific cells.

Chase's current list of languages is mutable because of the above program. He could learn/refresh a language at any time. And because of the basics already available to him, introducing new languages becomes easier.

His current linguistic proficiency includes:

• Germanic Languages
  • English (Natural Phonology: General American) - Native Fluency
  • German (Phonology: Standard High German) - Native Fluency
  • Netherlandic (Dutch) - Conversational Fluency (with non-fluent comprehension of Flemish)
  • North Germanic (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian) - Conversational Fluency
• Romance Languages
  • French (Phonology: Metropolitan) - Native Fluency
  • Spanish (Phonology: Latin American) - Native Fluency
  • Italian (Phonology: Metropolitan) - Conversational Fluency
  • Portuguese (Phonology: Brazilian) - Conversational Fluency
  • Romanian (Daco-Romanian) - Conversational Fluency
• Slavic Languages
  • Russian (Muscovite) - Native Fluency (due to a long case)
  • Ukrainian (Odessa) - Unique dialect, Fluent (in relation to a case)
  • Czech (Common Czech) - Conversational Fluency
• Minority Euopean Languages
  • Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic - Dialog comprehension
  • Greek, Cypriot, Doric - Dialog comprehension
  • Latvian, Latgalian - Dialog comprehension
  • Tos/Gheg Albanian - Dialog comprehension
• Semitic Languages
  • Hebrew (Modern Hebrew) - Conversational Fluency
  • Arabic (Modern Standard) - Conversational Fluency
  • Amharic (Ethiopian) - Dialog comprehension
• Indian Languages
  • Hindi (Standard) - Conversational (non-fluency)
  • Tamil - Dialog/Reading comprehension
  • Urdu, Punjabi - Dialog comprehension
  • Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam - Distinguishable, non-proficiency
• East Asian Languages
  • Chinese (Mandarin, Phonology: Beijing) - Conversational Fluency (reading viable, writing non-proficiency)
  • Japanese (Phonology: Osaka-ben) - Conversational Fluency
  • Korean - Reading Comprehension
  • Vietnamese - Conversational (non-proficiency)
• Southeast Asian Languages
  • Tagalog (Filipino) - Conversational (non-fluency)
  • Indonesian (Bhasa Indonesia) - Dialog/Reading Comprehension
  • Thai (Metropolitan) - Dialog Comprehension (non-fluency)
  • Cambodian (Metropolitan) - Dialog Comprehension (non-fluency)
  • Laotian/Northern Thai/Myanmar (Spoken at the SE Asian Golden Triangle) - Dialog Comprehension (non-fluency)
• Classical Latin - Reading Comprehension
• Sign languages
  • ASL (American Sign Language) -- required for ACME training
  • International Sign (Gestuno) -- auxiliary language

((The above is entirely fictional (particularly spy-fictional), goes without saying.))

 

[Joe Kerr]

Joseph speaks English, Italian and Chinese.

He knows a small amount of Spanish and Japanese.

And like all VILE agents he is fluent in ASL

 

[Flag]

Flag speaks two dialects of Ogaitian, a language from his home planet - which sounds like Austrian but nobody understands it save Carmen (though Neb's figured out how to read it). He is fluent in English, understands enough Russian to know what words mean trouble and how to get out of it, and has given up on trying to speak Spanish though he can read it.

And like all VILE agents he is fluent in ASL

I guess he knows that too.

 

[Jacqueline Hyde]

His current linguistic proficiency includes:
[a thousand and one fricking languages]

Of course it does. Of course it does.