I was looking at the signatures in my yearbook earlier today trying to find one of my friends' phone numbers. and I came across a signature that I had forgotten about. It was by my kind of sort of friend( we don't talk that much because we really can't) Denari. And I realized she wrote it in Spanish I understood a few word like " que' "("what", I believe it is) " feliz "("happy") and "familia"("family") but other than that I had no idea what it said. and I felt very sad because I felt just so stupid I was racking my brain like "what does this word mean?"

Anyways…. the question here is :

did you ever know anyone that spoke a different language and wanted to say something/write something to them but couldn't?

yea....there was this swedish foreign exchange student at my school and she had awesome clothes but every time i asked her where she got them she would say "the sheep, they make cloth" and i was like "no...where'd you buy them?" and she was like "bye? ok bye!"

yes. when i was trying my hardest to explain to a man in costa rica that my lamp wasnt wroking.

then it turned out to work, i just hadnt figured out how to turn it on. oh dear.

i used to try to talk to the mexican girls in spanish in 7th grade math, but at that point id only taken half of the first half of spanish I, so it didnt work to well. but still, it beat trying to learn from the zimmerbitch, because that was impossible

yes a lot. this one girl didn't speak english so i was like do you speak english she is like no. then what do you speak? she said no. i'm like no what? she said no. where are you from? she said no again. then i said "no?" she's like yes! she confused the heck out of me

Hmm. One time, I went to Taiwan....and they speak mandarin chinese and taiwanese, right? I can speak mandarin chinese, but whenever I have to speak it in front of people I don't know, I get nervous and start forgetting how to say specific words and such. So, one time, I went to a McDonalds, and I was about to order some food and such. I said order number one, and I wanted to say "6 Chicken Nuggets" or whatever, but I completely went blank and forgot how to say it. So, I started freaking out and started explaining that I was an ABT and such....and the McDonalds person just stared at me like I was an idiot. Bah, it sucked.

Mmm chicken nuggets..

Haha anyways, sometimes I wish I could speak Vietnamese because there are A BUNCH of Vietnamese people at my school and I want to understand them.. most of my friends are Vietnamese.

And I wish I could speak Mandarin. It's such a cool language. Haha.

there are alot of korean fobs here and all i know how to say is "jhu ge le" and "gochibara"

Vietnamese is an awesome language! I wish I could speak Korean, though. That'd make me feel special. Mandarin isn't all that great :P Can't you speak Cantonese? Sorry, I can't quite remember. But anyway, that's a cool language too

in third grade there was this vietnamese girl who just moved to the us and she couldn't speak english at all and this teacher who knew i was thai asked me if i could try talking to her and helping her. i just looked at her all crazy and was like 'but we don't speak the same language'. she kept saying 'just try'...but i didn't because that would look stupid. i guess she thought that all asians spoke the same language.

but i wish i coulda helped her...i felt bad but i couldn't really do anything.

Haha , never happened to me. But I would probaly freak out and just walk away if they asked me.

Heh, I wish I would know Chaldean so I would actually know what half of my friends are talking about.

Hm, yeah. I learned plenty this year though. Surpassed my brain capacity.

Nope .. i dont make friends who only know other language besides English in America.

I had this Korean girl write this sentence in korean and she told me to figure out what it means and winked at me.....

i know some people that dont know english; but then i could communicate with them in chinese. Just not write.

Yeah I can speak Cantonese. Not Mandarin.. My parents didn't speak Mandarin enough around me. Not like my aunt&uncle though. Their daughter (my cousin) can speak Shanghai, Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. Little bugger. But I guess it's because her grandparents speak Mandarin and she sees them all the time.. Anyways.

I only know how to say a couple things in Mandarin.. and I can understand VERY VERY VERY little. VERY.

Like.. "Aiyah ni pong dao wo luh !" .. "Bee drei !" .. "Bun dan !" .. "Ni su wo da pong yo." Haha.

... Okay Yvonne how about this.. how about we trade our languages. Although I only understand most of what is said in Vietnamese. I can neither read/write nor speak it. But hey, at least you would be able to understand Vietnamese if we switched!

Sooooo many times I wish I could say things but I can't speak Vietnamese anymore.. I up and plum forgotten. Ah well, someday I'm hoping to learn Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean. Then I'm all set. >=] Yay manga/manhwa/chinese graphic novels

Many times I've picked up the phone and my mom's friends would ask if she was there and I could only answer in English that she left to go to blah blah blah or blah blah blah. They get all confused and I try to tell them in my horribly broken Vietnamese. It's quite sad, really.

I was the only decent Mandarin speaker in my PE class, and I had to translate the game of hockey to this guy new from Taiwan. Wtf? i don't even know what the word HOCKEY is in chinese. So I was like, "Uhh...you just...uhh...hit the ball...with the stick..."
lame, yeah, i know.

LOL Sounds like something from a TV sitcom...

I'm mexican and spanish (It's different. ><), but I only know english. -_- In this school I used to go to, EVERYONE was Mexican and knew spanish (the mexico spanish)... except me... And they would talk about me and my crush in front of me and I knew not one word they were saying...

Ooh. That sucks I would know Taiwanese, but my parents didn't teach me. Oh well...

Haha, those phrases are adorable.

Nope, if I don't know their language, I just don't talk to them.
Easy as that.