Re: What languages do you speak? read? write?
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Mandarin Chinese: speak, poor; can't read or write.
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Same here. Speaking and reading/writing are COMPLETELY different in this language. But for anyone wanting to learn something, speaking is highly learnable. The grammar is quite simple. No verb tenses. The subtle pronunciation is not easy, but so much is context-based that you will always understand and be understood. One problem is that Chinese people as a whole tend to be very shy about speaking the language with you, don't know why, it's just my experience. Difficult to gain experience with it. But it's exotic, easy, and fun. Pinyin (the English alphabet translation of Chinese) is a help, but there are stupid parts to it too (use of X and Q to sound noises that are nothing like X or Q). Wah shwaw jong wun. Wah she-hwan pai. (That is not the actual pinyin but I think it's closer.)
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