Students with language skills
You don't have to be good at it. Just say what you know.
Contents
American Sign Language
Bengali
Catalán
David Rodriguez (learned a little bit while abroad in Barcelona)
Chinese
Cantonese
Jason Law '06 can get by, but not as well as with Mandarin (though Cantonese was his first language...).
Mandarin
Jason Law '06 can get by.
Lars Enwereuzor Kana Ojukwu '07
Taiwanese
English
French
David Rodriguez (He used to be much better, but he now inserts random Catalán words in French conversation.)
Diana Davis '07 is still pretty good at French.
Samantha Peterson is majoring in it, so she probably knows a few phrases.
German
Greek
Hazen (As in I can write in it and tell you how to pronounce the letters of their alphabet. I didn't write this.)
Math nerds know the Greek alphabet.
So do Classics majors.
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Lucy Cox-Chapman '06 spent a semester in Italy
Japanese
Amanda Van Rhyn now knows how to say "my husband got drunk and hit me."
Diana Davis '07 frequently mutters small phrases in Japanese. People think she is mumbling, becuase they don't understand Japanese. In addition to randomly speaking in Japanese, she also randomly speaks English with an excellent Japanese accent.
Leah Weintraub '06 spent a semester in Japan. Ergo, she probably speaks Japanese.
Charlotte White rocks at Japanese, and is easily distracted by pretty things from Japan. She also says "WTF Japan" rather often. As should we all.
Latin
Pig Latin
Seth Brown taught a course on Pig Latin during Winter Study 1997.
Oppish
Alden Robinson '06 whopat dopo yopou thopink opof thopat?
Polish
Jonathan Landsman '05 can say "What's up, sweetheart?"
Russian
Emily Button '07 can say "I've seen more women than you've seen sparrows!"
Ilya Khodosh does an excellent drunk old Russian man impression.
Suzanne C. Walsh '05 can say, "Her breasts are as big as pineapples" and can translate for fiends who lose the ability to speak English and can only speak in Russian while drunk. She is also known to mutter things in Georgian. And we're not talking about, "y'all."
Spanish
David Rodriguez (speaks Dominican Spanish--impossible to comprehend for most other spanish speakers because it sounds more like really fast Italian than anything else)
Jonathan Landsman '05 (budding bachatero)
Sofia Torres (but apparently she speaks Mexican, a variation of Spanish)
Paulette Rodriguez can speak Spanish without consonants (also known as Puerto Rican--similar to Dominican)
Sarah Steege can speak with or without the sexy Spanish lisp.
Tamil
Turkish
Dave Senft can count to four in turkish, and also knows six through eight, and ten.