Multilingual and Polyglot Wannabee Thread! MK I

Had the advance info meeting for autodidacts sitting the Studieprøve (my badass C1 Danish exam) today. Feeling a lot more confident about everything except the writing. The guy holding the meeting was the one who reads out the listening texts as well, so now I know what he sounds like and how fast it is and so on. I also found out I can rock up with my laptop for the writing - I thought you had to have arranged this beforehand but no. It'll be weird being able to edit my essay while writing it, I'm so used to the (scarier and less convenient) process of sitting there and planning meticulously in a bid to not have to mess the essay up with corrections and arrows and asterisks afterwards! I also got some photocopies of most parts of the exam from Nov/Dec 2012 so I have another set to work with now (had two already). Not only that but we were informed that they've changed the short written answers section of the reading paper to multiple choice, which is freaking awesome in my opinion. I hate having to try to work out how much information to give and what to leave out in case it makes your answer seem less accurate.

for Ronove! Je suis du meme ₁ avis. (*That multiple choice is so much easier) Je suis très heureuse au'jourdhui. J'ai passé mes examens pour le francais. Alors je peux apprendre le francais et je ne m'inquiétera pas que j'apprends les autre choses. (*And that I am learning something I don't need for the exam, and not learning something I DO need.) Maintenant, chaque mot francais, que j'apprends, est bon!

Je suis ni nul en langues ni douée, mais je peux travailler!
1) how come my phone can do é è É and ø but neither e with a caret on it, nor a small Ç?!

Hey how and where does one do language proficiency exams? I realise I could Google this but it's nicer to ask a real person

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Well here in Denmark you can do the exams at a handful of different language schools across the country. If you've actually got a registration certificate (the thing EU citizens get that just confirms their right to reside and work here)/residence permit you're entitled to free lessons and you'll be informed of this, but I'm looking for work so I don't qualify to get a registration certificate, hence no free lessons and I had to sort everything out myself.

All I did was research the exams and then rock up at the language school of my choice and pay to register for them.

I don't think it's possible to take the Danish exams in the UK but that'll mostly be due to it being such a unpopular language. It should be possible to take the exams for many other languages in the UK though. It appears you can take the German exams with the Goethe-Institut in London and Glasgow, and possibly Manchester (Manchester is listed as one of the UK Goethe-Institut bases, but I can't click it to go to an individual webpage like with the others). I would have thought there were similar opportunities available for Spanish, French, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

For German you can look up Goethe-Institut as mentioned above, they have lots of info on the courses and exams. A cursory glance at the website for the London base didn't turn up any info about people self-teaching and going in for the exams, but where it states the fees for the exams, there is an 'external candidate' price (for the C1 exam this was £160 as opposed to £130 for internals) which would suggest it's absolutely possible. For Spanish, Instituto Cervantes should be useful. Though I'm fairly sure both of these organisations are just very big and popular ones, rather than the only ones that have anything to do with administering the exams or teaching the courses. If it's the same as Denmark (and I expect it is, from my experience of the German courses at least), it's the Ministry of Education that writes and controls the exams, while various organisations/schools are allowed to teach the courses and hold the exams.

Oh wow okay thanks Will be a while before I think about taking any in all likelihood, but it's good to know

Good luck with your Danish

Jo tak.

Ich habe keine Ahnung, was das auf Englisch heisst

Something vaguely relevant: the Japanese proficiency exams are held in London. Something like twice a year and it's called something like the NJPT. There's five levels- it goes from 5 (easiest) to 1 (congratulations, you speak Japanese!).

在我上个信写了是曼彻斯特大学
我真的切盼去那里！


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Could be. But I feel certain there's an N in there! But it's too much like hard work for me to google. *pathetic expression*

Qu'est-ce que vous pensez que *New Stone Age Farmers* est un nom magnifiquie pour un orchestre rock?

Jo is 'yes' when the yes is an answer to a question asked (as opposed to 'ja', though there are instances where you can answer with 'ja', I'm not quite in a position to explain though), and tak is thanks.

Something vaguely relevant: the Japanese proficiency exams are held in London. Something like twice a year and it's called something like the NJPT. There's five levels- it goes from 5 (easiest) to 1 (congratulations, you speak Japanese!).

Oh right, Danish has a three-form system for answering questions like German (ja, doch, nein) If "jo" worked like German "doch" it would be used to contradict a negative statement/question. I can't actually find a Wiktionary entry for it in Danish (but there is one for Swedish)

Ah

Idioms

I did notice you speak German earlier and I would have explained it in relation to 'doch' if it were the same, but it's not, unfortunately. Doch is far more limited in usage. I would say 'jo' is the correct answer more than 'ja' ever is in fact. My other half enjoys pulling me up on it.