Know Thyself

[SwordSkill]

...title courtesy of Socrates.

I thought I might do this formal intro since everyone's doing it and I have a few minutes to kill anyway. So...

I'm 18/F, I live in the Philippines, I'm Filipino by citizenship and Chinese by blood.

I just finished my third year of college, so I'll be on my fourth after two months.

I speak Filipino/Tagalog, Hokkien (a Chinese dialect), English, and barely enough respectable Mandarin (it's my should-know language). Then a smattering of recognizing French and German (learned from the university for two years) and Japanese words (from watching anime...you do pick up stuff along the way).

I love reading books and writing fiction (I wish to become a writer, so please don't squash my hopes), playing the guitar and the piano, playing basketball, drawing and doing graphic design, and...stuff. Yeah, mostly stuff. See you folks around.

[cbwing0]

Thanks for letting us get to know you better!

You speak quite a few languages...all I have is English and Spanish.

[HikariChan]

great ta knoe yae!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kaji]

Impressive. I am curious, are you ahead of most other Filipino people your age (as far as your education/ mental capcity)?

I know very few 18 year-olds who can speak as many languages as you, let alone are attending their third year of college. God has definatly gifted us all in our own ways.

At any rate, its a pleasure to meet / get to know you a little better.

-kaji

[Link Antilles]

I speak Filipino/Tagalog, Hokkien (a Chinese dialect), English, and barely enough respectable Mandarin (it's my should-know language). Then a smattering of recognizing French and German (learned from the university for two years) and Japanese words (from watching anime...you do pick up stuff along the way).
.

Guten Tag! Wie geht es Ihnen?
Wow. That's impressive...... I'm really bad at foreign languages, except German. I get confused in my Spanish class... and I tried Japanese, some.... that fried my brain. Anyways, that's really cool! Did you learn them at a yougner age?

[SwordSkill]

Impressive. I am curious, are you ahead of most other Filipino people your age (as far as your education/ mental capcity)?

Not really. I was accelerated by a year when I was a kid, but that's pretty much it. Kids my age here are usually just one academic year lower than me because of that, so my situation is still pretty normal. Filipino students go to college early because directly after the sixth year of elementary school, we move to high school immediately. I actually know two people who are only seventeen years old and are already in their third year in the university (one of them is studying physics). Now they are really something else.

Guten Tag! Wie geht es Ihnen?
Wow. That's impressive...... I'm really bad at foreign languages, except German. I get confused in my Spanish class... and I tried Japanese, some.... that fried my brain. Anyways, that's really cool! Did you learn them at a yougner age?

Es geht, danke. ^^ Und Sie? Sind Sie Deutsch?

I speak Hokkien, Filipino, and English everyday...Hokkien with my family and clan relatives as well as family friends, Filipino with everyone else in the country, and English in the university because I'm studying Anglo-American literature. Mandarin was mandatory study in the Chinese elementary-and-high-school I studied in (but how much I actually remember is a completely different thing).

[Kokhiri Sojourn]

It's been great having you around here. Didn't you post on Haibane Renmei a time ago? Anyway, stick around, and keep posting.

[Ingemar]

I speak Hokkien, Filipino, and English everyday...Hokkien with my family and clan relatives as well as family friends, Filipino with everyone else in the country, and English in the university because I'm studying Anglo-American literature. Mandarin was mandatory study in the Chinese elementary-and-high-school I studied in (but how much I actually remember is a completely different thing).

(emphasis added)
Ah, this confirms what a linguist I read said when he noted that Filipino is spoken by a native language by only 1/3 of its population.

My mother taught in a Chinese high school for a while. No, she is not Chinese--in fact, she is only half Filipina (but grew up there in typical Filipino fashion--that is, poverty). What little experience I had in the Philippines showed me that most of the Chinese living there were very rich. One of my Mom's former students ended up owning (running) this computer place. His name is Norberto Chinkwango (sp?)