Chinese
I usually try to write the greetings in the receiverās native language if I can find the greetings in their language on postcrossingās forum
Mostly English. I can write in Spanish, but that doesnāt do me much good when most of my cards go to Russia, China or Germany!
Mostly English or Portuguese, with very rare French or Germanā¦ but I wonāt pass the opportunity to practice writing Chinese characters, when an address from China pops up!
I sent an official to a member; she wrote her hurray message in Czech which I dont know. Fortunately I teach at University and the World Language Dept is on the floor belowā¦happily one of the Russian instructors learned Czech in grad school and translated. I noticed postcards on his bookshelves and gave him the Postcrossing web link. I think he will join and probably write some cards in Russian.
English most of the time, sometimes in Spanish.
I write in Russian and English, but I write to Bulgarians and Serbs in their languages, using Translate.Google.
I mostly write in English, but also German and Swedish. If I see in a profile that theyāre understanding Polish, I like to try the few words I remember from way back when, same goes for Scottish Gaelic.
I write in English 99% of the time.
Once, I wrote almost all the postcard in Italian since the Postcrosser knew Italian and liked it. Recently, since I study Japanese, I added a couple of sentences in Japanese when I was sending to a Japanese user and also when sending to another person who was studying the language at university as I am.
When Iāll get an Italian address, I think Iāll use Italian.
Mainly in English but, I do have German relatives so, I write in German. I speak also Swedish so, to my Swedish friends I write in Swedish.
I wrote once in Dutch to a PC recipient in the Netherlands.
Š”Š¾Š±ŠøŃŠ°ŃŃŃ ŠæŠøŃŠ°ŃŃ Š½Š° ŃŃŃŃŠŗŠ¾Š¼ ŃŠ·ŃŠŗŠµ Šø Š½Šµ Š½Š° ŠŗŠ°ŠŗŠ¾Š¼ Š±Š¾Š»ŃŃŠµ.
Iām lucky as my wife is fluent in Russian (she is not Russian)so we enjoy reading the cards that come to our house in Russian, I even had one in Russian that came from Hungary. I thought it was in Hungarian but my wife said its Russian and translated it! We also send some post cards out to Russia in both languages and the address only in Russian. It depends on the age of the post crosser as most young people have a understanding of English. I am still waiting for my first post card in German or it least some of the message!
Hello! On postcrossing I usually write in english but also italian, spanish and portuguese (my mother tongue)
I usually write a message in English or Russian, depending on the language a person speaks.
Also, Iām learning Spanish, so sometimes I write part of the message in Spanish.
My husband speaks Romanian, so weāre ready to read/write a message in Romanian, however we donāt have many cards to/from Moldova or Romania
I usually write in English - also to German or Polish postcrossers, even though German is my native language and Polish my āeveryday languageā. For one, after reading the profile in English, it only seems natural to reply in the same language. And another reason is that both Polish and German are more āwordyā languages, i.e. it takes more or longer words to express the same things. So English takes up much less space, which makes it the better language for writing postcards.
Still, of course, I sometimes do write in Polish or German
if the addressee doesnāt speak English or doesnāt seem to speak it very well, or when Iām writing to someone learning either Polish or German as a foreign language.
Apart from that I have occasionally written in French or Portuguese
- just for the fun of practising these two language, which I speak very poorly - as well as in PlattdĆ¼tsch (a German dialect I grew up with) and - with the help of Mr. Google - in Dutch
, Slovenian
, and Russian
. You have to be extremely careful with translation programs, but with Dutch and with Slavic languages I think I can make a relatively safe āintelligent guessā if the text produced by those machines really means what I meant to write
Actually, there was one another time when I felt rather confused when this certain member wrote to me all in German language on a postcard which I do not understand.
But German language seems similar to English more or less, so I somehow figured that he was sort of scolding me as I mention only French, Spanish and Italian languages (basic level) for my main language study in my profile and I kind of ask people to write in either language on a postcard if possible.
I do not remember where I put that postcard but this is something I cannot forgetā¦
If I receive a postcard in a language I donāt understand, I ask for translation in the forum. Itās a fine that are so many nice postcrosses here who help with translation.
When I register the card, I see that they only speak their own language. I go further.
The language of postcrossing is English. You have not specified English in your profile. I donāt know if you used a translation program for your profile. Itās in English.
German and English are two different languages. We have adopted some English words into German. To understand the exact meaning of a statement, you should use a translation program or let it translate in the forum. Itās very easy to misunderstand, just by comparing languages and guessing.
In your profile, you only specified languages that are not your mother tongue. English, the language of the postcrossing is not included. I suggest that you also enter English in your profile.
I can understand the Postcrosser who wrote in German. He or she does not understand the specified languages and may not be sure whether you understand English at all or only with a translation program. In this case he or she can also write in their own mother tongue.
Interesting how differently people think. (Here the profile is not in what one could assume be the mother tongue, so one canāt say the sender also write in their mother tongue, right?)
I would think, when the profile is in English, when the Poststcrossing language is English - I will write in English because thatās what is in the guidelines. The profile owner seems to either know English, or to use a translator. I would not see a reason I would write in for example Finnish, or any language the profile owner doesnāt seem to understand.
I think the person was maybe annoyed because English wasnāt mentioned.
There are many German profiles who only mention German as their language, but still have the translation done to English. It never occurred to me to write to them in Finnish.
For me it feels mean to write in German, if the profile owner doesnāt know it. It would have been nicer to mention, maybe add the English. (Some think this isnāt needed, as the Postcrossing language is English.) In this profile, I would have thought those āextraā languages are the ones the profile owner is learning.
If I had gotten your address without having known you before through the forum, I would have written you a card in Italian, since you mention that in the languages (ābasic Italianā).
I therefore recommend that you also add English.
I think thatās what it means, to write in Italian, if the sender knows it? But not āhigh levelā, because they only learn, so keep it basic?
But yes, I think to add the English is good too.