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I think that you may have mistranslated something...

Japanese also uses the Latin alphabet, which it refers to as romaji.

Generally speaking, there's not really a "canon" out there of those kinds of stories; they tend to vary dramatically depending on the telling, after all. And in general, I usually see PPC continua being narratives that have consistent recorded forms. Fairy tales are a good example; there are many different published versions of a single tale that have contradictory details (Perrault vs Brothers Grimm, for example), so you can't really enforce canon for them as a whole, though maybe you could for a specific version. Plus, most conspiracy theories are supposedly true events in World One, so it kind of falls into the category of RPF if you think about it.

That said, there are certainly plenty of continua that are influenced by conspiracy theories, X-Files being one of the most well-known. And as VixenMage mentioned, the PPC itself is probably rife with its own conspiracy theories, as well as potentially being a source of them in World One. That'd be an interesting background for a World One agent, actually; maybe they found the PPC while trying to figure out where exactly all those young people who get mysterious jobs and then disappear have gone.

• My first language is Polish
  
  - I've started learning English in pre-school, when I was six. I hadn't had much of a choice, and it followed me ever since. Every school I went to had mandatory English. At first I started learning from Disney's Magic English tapes, but slowly I started going on English websites, then watching films (at first with subtitles), and finally to English novels.
  
  - If I am to count all languages I know how to express my thoughts it would be Polish, English and German. Even though Fangirl Japanese doesn't count, I do know enough Japanese to talk to natives (happened quite a few times when working at McDonald's), and bits and pieces of Russian and Italian.
  
  - English and German because it was mandatory. Italian because I have family in Italy. Russian because it's very similar to Polish. Japanese... well, I am a fan of the culture as a whole, not just anime and manga.
  
  - Eh, can't remember, really. I just tend to pick them up now and then. I don't simply sit in front of a book and study them anymore.

I mean, on a low-level scale I just assume the PPC is full of them. All Cafeteria food is made from the bodies of Sues, in some way or other. The Flowers are aliens. The Flowers are Old Ones. The Flowers have a secret plot to drive all PPC agents insane. There's a department whose job it is to kill agents when they get too close to being Sues. The Escher Room provides a secret portal room to outside the multiverse. Makes-Things is immortal. Makes-Things is secretly a Flower.

I mean, there has to be, right? So much of the reality in HQ is constantly in flux anyway, you'd think these things would thrive. I think they'd be part of the canon in that they're absolutely something Agents would believe, but conspiracy theories are by definition usually counter to canon itself. Does that make sense?

(And yes, I do think the ones in Real Life are pretty bad.)

I was born and raised in Ohio, so English is my native language - but since my parents were both from Indonesia, I was able to pick up a few Indonesian words and have been learning since then. Sadly, I still can't hold a conversation in Indonesian (I wish I could, though!).

I also learned French from audiotapes as a hatchling, but obviously my skills with that language are really freaking rusty - pun not intended, of course. ;)

You may see the first episode here!

~Mattman, hoping Monty sees this

Right now, my only other language is Japanese, though I think I can still understand Spanish on some level. (Thanks, JumpStart and high school Spanish classes.)

I've been studying Japanese since my freshman year in college. I picked it because...well, honestly, because of anime. Of course, I'm hardly alone in this, and I've discovered that a lot of Japanese history, culture, and especially folklore/mythology is AWESOME. But really, my weeaboo phase is at the heart of it.

Hey, I plan to marry and have kids with S.O one day
I am picking up S.O at her apt this week for our date.

After all they are presented as theories instead of stories or anything like that. They get disproved rather easily too. Only time I could imagine they hold any effect is if the canon someone was in used one of them.

They fit pretty well into things like Welcome to Night Vale, though, and since there's no cure for stupid I just roll my eyes and move on.

My first language is German.

I learned English in middle and high school (age ten to eighteen).

I learned French as a required second foreign language starting in third year of middle school (age twelve), but this may not count, because due to a lack of practice, I can’t hold a basic conversation anymore and I can’t read French without extensive use of a dictionary.

Nowadays, German education is much more flexible, but I wasn’t allowed to choose my languages at the time.

I also studied Swedish for one semester while I was at university anyway, before I went on a hiking tour north of the Arctic Circle. But again, this may not count, because I forgot most of it over the last four decades. I decided to learn Swedish because being able to read basic instructions and to understand people shouting warnings at me is a matter of politeness while traveling in foreign countries. I can’t expect the natives to translate everything for me.

HG

• My first languages are Corsican and French, though I sadly lost most of my fluency in Corsican. I can still carry out a conversation in it, but I lack vocabulary.
  - I've been learning English ever since primary school, but most of what I've actually learned is from the Internet and TV shows.
  
  - I'm fluent in both French and English, I can speak Corsican as mentioned above, and I can manage a basic conversation in Italian. I also took some Latin from 6th to 9th grade but it didn't stick.
  - Corsican and French are my first languages as mentioned above, and I took Italian at school because I had to pick between it and Spanish and I already knew enough Corsican that Italian was easier.

I guess the big fireworks with follow soon, eh? The parallel with the badfic was an interesting thing to do too (And now I'm asking myself how Homura would react if she listened to Connect).

Also, good luck with the sequel of this story and IrregularS. You can never update any of them too often in my opinion.

As mentioned by this very thread itself, as an Italian my native language is... well, Italian.

I learned English at middle and high school at first, and I made an effort to learn it well because many things are more easily available in English than in Italian - bonus points for me being an avid gamer and most games coming only in English, German, French and maybe Spanish at the time. Only the big ones had an Italian translation.

Then, in my last year of high school, I found the PPC and it helped me improve further (to the point an English coworker of mine was freaked out once. He says mine is the best English he has seen here in Italy... and we work in aeronautics where English is the first language wherever you are.). So... Thank you all guys and gals?

I have learned a bit of French and Latin in school too - the former in elementary and middle school, the latter at high school - but I've never been that good in either, and having the chance to drop both was actually a relief.

Here "sky" is said as "ciel" while nowadays it's always written as "cielo" (though, later "cielo" is used, too), and we don't really use "stupore" (wonder) in that kind of phrasing anymore.

Aside that, is just the overall phrasing and word order that feels a bit outdated - I can't quite explain it, it just gives me that feeling.

Well my first language is French.

And, while there was some mandatory English back at primary school, I didn't really begin it before the 8th grade, as a mandatory second foreign language. And next year, we moved up to a new town, leading me in a bilingual class English/German class, befoe the roles were reversed in high school because of a lack of options. Fun. After that, there was also the fact that a fantasy and RPG fan cannot hope survive without a knowledge of English, so now I read it fluently.

Sadly, this change and a lack of options later killed my German, despite the fact that was the language I wanted to learn first. The only other language I know is Latin, that I began in middle school.

You know those things?
You know, all that 'Roswell was aliens' and 'George Bush was aliens' and 'That random bloke in the crowd was aliens' and 'That rock that nearly tripped me over as I walked to work was aliens.' and 'Those things in that movie with Ellen Ripley was aliens.' All that nonsense.

Within PPC canon, where do they fit? Do they get their own continua, or are they something else, or are they just bollocks?

I imagine they'd work similar to old sort've mythology and folklore, but I'm not sure where those fit in, either.
Urban legends (somewhat connected, though, I suspect there's a difference I'm not noticing that'll tear the whole thing down), according to the wiki, seem to exist, what with Bloody Mary being summonable, and all.

You lot got thoughts?
Or, er, a link to a page answering my entire question that I missed completely like a ponce?

It turned out that the creatures were actual blobs of shadow, more irritated than affected by the gunshots. They began to crawl deceptively fast towards the agents, using their arms to accelerate. Meanwhile, the chains' rattling was getting louder and louder.

I can read Hiragana and know about... IDK, a hundred or so Kanji? My Katakana is very weak, however. No idea what's the fourth system you're talking about.
And, well, I think I have just enough fore-knowledge to slide in smoothly, as things are.

(My bad for not reading the whole question)

Latin because of Harry Potter; Spanish because my mom spoke a bit of it to me when I was little and I'm reasonably fluent on a kindergartener's level, basically, and wanted to expand on that; French because why not (and I knew a few PPC friends who spoke it at that point and I took it hoping ((correctly)) that it would help me understand them when they got gabbing. :)

English is my first language; should go without saying seeing as I was born and raised in the middle of the States to American parents.

As for other languages:

While my own grammar is atrocious, I took French, Latin, and Spanish in high school, and I've got two semesters of Spanish from college under my belt as well. I couldn't hope to speak or write fluently, but I can read extremely well; what I don't know, I can usually figure out from context.

I also took a week of Hebrew in my freshman year, but my teacher was nuts and I quickly transferred out. :P

1. Latin and Japanese, though not really to the level of basic fluency you mentioned anymore. That's more because of lack of practice than anything else. I can still recognize a handful of kanji and maybe have a very basic conversation, but not easily. Latin is probably one of those things that I'd remember more of if I actually tried to translate something, but I can't really remember much off the top of my head.
   
   2. Harry Potter and anime, basically. >.>
   
   3. Latin I started back in what would be the equivalent of third or fourth grade; I was homeschooling, and my mom thought I should learn a language. My choices were Latin, Spanish, or German; I picked Latin because, well, Harry Potter. I continued studying it until I graduated from high school.
   
   Japanese I tried to do a bit on my own via Rosetta Stone, but the combination of foreign language and kanji was more than I could retain with just that. I ended up taking it once I reached college, and even spent a summer in Japan; however, I eventually stopped taking the classes because, well, they weren't required any more, and if I wanted to maintain my GPA, I had to take easier electives.
   
   As far as how, mostly via textbooks and stuff. I've found flashcards to be a great memory aid, if that's the sort of thing you mean.