How many languages do U speak?

[history1me]

It's an international forum.

I'm just curious where everyone is from and the languages you speak or have tried to learn.

Edit: What language do you want to learn (next?) ?

[Anubis Nine]

I only 'speak' English.

When I was in Grade two my entire class was taught sign language. Which was really very cool. I still know the alphabet but after moving away I lost that.

I was placed in French class upon entering grade four, and by grade six when the teachers saw that I was only passing French class.. they took me out of that class to place me in a remedial class. (They could have taken me out of PE).

In grade nine I started taking Japanese. When I moved away from my last town in the end of grade 11 to realize that my new Japanese teacher was incompetant I dropped the course.

One out of four attempts. Man I suck! XD

[history1me]

Ouch!
But you know, if you take any of those languages again, it will come back to you or you will "get it" a lot easier because buried down in your subconscious, it's still there.

[Firefly]

Fluently, English.

Small bits of Spanish and Tagalog. And I'm studying Japanese =)

[CuPoNoOdLe]

I speak English fluently.
I speak Cantonese also.. but not really well im afraid.. enough to get around though.
I took Spanish for four years through high school, wouldn't say im at all good at it either.

[Jiant Flying Panda]

English: Fluent...... No shit.

Tagalog: I can't speak it but I understand enough to get by.

Spanish: Took this class for 2 years in high school and pretty much faild every term (1 D and 3 Fs) lol. I didn't understand all that esatenta shit and how it changes due to some fricken situations.

[Shamu]

I speak English (obviously)
Hablo espanol tambien.
I also used to speak alittle Swedish and a smattering of Japanese (what little of it I can remember from High School)

[history1me]

Je parle francaise mais pas trés bien
English of course
Y tambien Español

I studied in Hungary and learn a bit, but forgot most it now.

[Soli]

English, and a little Latin, Japanese, Spanish, and French. I do have a horrible boston/southern accent, though.

[history1me]

I want to learn Brazilian Portuguese next. or perhaps Italian.

Any Brazilians?

[Benaire]

Engrish
Cantonese
some Japanese
some mandarin

[Dana]

I am a native speaker of English.

I speak Japanese at about an upper-intermediate level.
I speak enough Finnish to get by. Though its quickly leaving me ;__;
I speak some Russian.
I can read Swedish and understand it but have a hard time speaking it.

[JustTooCrazy]

I obviously speak English
I am studying Italian in school. I think i've taken it for 2 years so far.
Voi capite l'italiano?

[Stephy]

I speak English and Portuguese (I cannot read or write Portuguese words though)

[Lateli]

English.. That's about it, though, I do know enough Spanish to say I can't speak it.

[moo]

English, russian, spanish,
and some "military" or whatever its called ie... alpha, bravo, charlie.....x-ray,yankee,zulu

[KujiInRetsu]

English, 3 years of Japanese, and almost a lifetime of listening to Cantonese. I can understand simple, everyday Cantonese phrases because, well, they've been used every day around me. More advanced ideas... eh... I'm not gonna get it. Face it, a Hong Kong 2nd grader has a better grasp of the language than I do, and probably can speak English almost proficiently.

[history1me]

I speak English and Portuguese (I cannot read or write Portuguese words though)

How did you learn Portuguese? I'm thinking of moving (eventually) to Rio. Ah, the things I do for life. :D

[sharpie]

English and Spanish.

Travelling to and from Mexico to visit relatives, you kinda have to know spanish or you will get ridiculed.

[Stephy]

How did you learn Portuguese? I'm thinking of moving (eventually) to Rio. Ah, the things I do for life. :D

My mother is full-blooded Portuguese and can't speak English well. Ever since I was a baby to present time she would speak to me in Portuguese because her English is so broken. It's easy to learn if someone speaks to you in the same language for about 16 years.

[history1me]

Makes sense. I grew up speaking English at school but Spanish at home.

[MajorProblem]

English, russian, spanish,
and some "military" or whatever its called ie... alpha, bravo, charlie.....x-ray,yankee,zulu
Phoenetic alphabet...Alpha-Bravo-Charlie-Delta-Echo-Foxtrot-Golf-Hotel-India-Juliet-Kilo-Lima-Mike-November-Oscar-Papa-Quebec-Romeo-Sierra-Tango-Uniform-Victor-Whiskey-X ray-Yankee-Zulu
'tis not a language, it's an alphabet :p

I'm fluent in English (uh-duh).
I'm in my 3rd year of French, and I'm pretty good. I'm going to try and become fluent.

[Pierrot le Fou]

Native: English
Ages 5-11: French (was fluent at age 10, am near-fluent but rusty now)
Ages 12-17: Spanish (it is jumbled in my head with French and Japanese, but would come out easily if I moved to a Spanish speaking country for some time)
Ages 19-20, 22~: Japanese (near-fluent I'd say. Watching TV and discussing economics are not beyond my level, and though I make mistakes I can still communicate, and don't feel awkward in the language)

So I guess that's 4. I want to learn Chinese for future employment possibilities, but it ain't lookin' like a realistic possibility.

[MajorProblem]

Native: English
Ages 5-11: French (was fluent at age 10, am near-fluent but rusty now)
Ages 12-17: Spanish (it is jumbled in my head with French and Japanese, but would come out easily if I moved to a Spanish speaking country for some time)
Ages 19-20, 22~: Japanese (near-fluent I'd say. Watching TV and discussing economics are not beyond my level, and though I make mistakes I can still communicate, and don't feel awkward in the language)

So I guess that's 4. I want to learn Chinese for future employment possibilities, but it ain't lookin' like a realistic possibility.

...just when I think I'm sophisticated for learning French, here you come with your quadlingual status. I think you're just trying to make us look bad. I'll just make YOU the villain now.


You know I'm joking :p . Really though, it must be hard to not confuse two seperate Romance langauges.

[Pierrot le Fou]

Nah, I learned them at different times in development, so they are very distinct. Plus spanish and French phonemes are very different, and I'm an aural learner.

Now spanish and Japanese...

[moo]

Phoenetic alphabet...Alpha-Bravo-Charlie-Delta-Echo-Foxtrot-Golf-Hotel-India-Juliet-Kilo-Lima-Mike-November-Oscar-Papa-Quebec-Romeo-Sierra-Tango-Uniform-Victor-Whiskey-X ray-Yankee-Zulu
'tis not a language, it's an alphabet :p

.


BAH shut upppppp *whiny voice*, people speak in it :(.

[h2orowe]

I speak English, a small bit of spanish (Yo soy gringo, so I can pretty much only write it, my white tongue won't let me speak it T_T )

Ok! Here's the scoop fools, I was learning German, FAST! I was way willing to learn, I learned it from 5th grade summer, 6th grade (through the internet, and a book) I took German class, and loved it, BUT our school was sooooooooooooooo fucking dumb, I had planned on learning German, and maybe living there when I grew older, I'd be a completely different person, probably, if it wasn't for this.
They made us take three languages through three trimesters in one year. German, than French, than Spanish.
So, when I started French, all my hard work in German got kicked out of my head, now I only know like Schiesse! and Nein Teisten Luter, and Guten tag T_T WHY?!
Than, when I took Spanish, all the French I knew crapped out too. I only know like Comon ta pelle tu? and like J'em appelle Joey.
Spanish is slowly going through my head, as I started learning Japanese. I haven't done shit in months -.- I'm so lazy, stupid fucking computer. I was doing better when I didn't have it, aww who am I kidding, all I did was sleep T_T I'm disgusted with myself. Don't look at me!

[Kragar]

I am a native English speaker.

I am functional in Mandarin Chinese, having lived in Taiwan for 3 years and studied for two of them. I can read newspapers & novels in Chinese, though I don't understand every word.

I can read and mostly understand clear French, but I can't comfortably speak it. Lack of practice. I'm working on a translation project (French --> English) with friends online.

I have studied Russian, Spanish, Japanese and German, and remember enough to be just above "beginner" in each. You can probably say the same for Latin, but it's been a while and I don't know how much I remember. I am currently taking a Japanese class and I'm trying to start a Russian language exchange with a friend.

Between my background in French, Spanish and Latin, I can mostly read Italian, but I can't understand a frickin word of it.

I have also studied bits of Tagalog, Indonesian, Irish, Taiwanese, Ancient Greek and Persian, but I don't remember enough of any of them for it to mean anything. I also had a self-study book on Swahili, but I never got past chapter 4.

It sounds like a lot, but don't be too impressed. Sometime in college I had a semester that didn't have a language course and it felt really weird. After that, I've been continuously studying something, or some things, just because it felt wrong to stop. For a long time, I didn't really focus on any one language, so I can't use a lot of the things I studied. I've started to fix that, but I'm not impressive...yet.

Edit: I just saw the part about what languages do you want to learn. The short list is: French, Japanese, Russian, German and Arabic. Of these I have only not started the last. I want to know a language that gets spelled backwards. I might also be learning a little Indonesian soon, but that's because she's really cute.

[l337m45t3r]

I can speak fluently in English & Greek.

I can swear in English, Greek, Japanese & Klingon.

[Collapse]

Fluent in both English and Tagalog. Heck, someone even commented a while back that when I speak English, I don't have the Filipino accent anymore.

And I'm just in Vancouver for 4 years. Probably the last 3 years I took English in both high school and university.

[akitaka]

English nativity, and grown up around a fence of Japanese. However, since for some reason my mother never spoke it to myself or my siblings from younger ages, I've never been able to really step in the field. Currently I'm working to change this, however.

Next year, though, I'm hoping to enroll in Spanish. I'm wondering what will happen if I sign up to a conversational JPN course with it. Jaspanish would be a freaky language.

[h2orowe]

Spainglish, Engrish, and now Spapanese?

[Kragar]

Japanese and Spanish shouldn't interfere with each other. The idea of getting two languages confused when you're learning them only makes sense if you've never tried it. Languages don't sound alike, and confusing languages would be like confusing colors. Japanese sounds like Japanese and Spanish sounds like Spanish.

The only thing that would be confusing would be learning grammar if you had to memorize all the rules in your native language without remembering the examples, which you shouldn't do anyway.

[Vidgmchtr]

English was my first language.

I started learning Spanish in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade because a lot of Spanish people were in the area, and they thought it'd be good for us. Can't remember any of it.

After I moved, I stopped learning because I moved to a 91% White area.
I started taking French in 8th grade, and continue taking it today, but I'll most likely stop soon.

I plan on learning Japanese in college, though I know all Kana, as well as a small bit of Kanji, and a tiny bit of grammar.

[Praetorian]

Dutch fluently, English... well. A lot of you native English speakers I talk to over skype say I'm fluent, so I guess I am.

[history1me]

Japanese is very cool. Gosh, I watch enough anime to begin to notice settle things spoken words and to have them stick to in my head.

who knows, I know Portuguese will be one of the languages. But beyond that, it could be German, Ruissian or Japanese.

[BluZytrix]

I have taken two years of Japanese and can hopefully get around with it as I have a mere 5 days before I acutally to got Japan. I took french for three years in high school and can ramble some weird stuff and recall some of the most stupid things every now and then.(Je ne sais pas rien.) Acutally, in trying to be more fluent in Japanese, my brain with sometimes default to a French word when I don't know it in Japanese instead of English. Kind of bizzare considering I haven't really touched French in 3 years. I love learning Japanese because it is so interesting when I can't think of something in English and only in Japanese. I have acutally had to apologize to people because I have blurted out some Japanese phrase by accident. But, I believe I'm far from fluent. The other interesting question that I have had to ask myself is "What does fluent mean?" What classifies someone as being fluent in a language? Is it the ability to talk about advanced subjects or just to be able to shoot the breeze? Either way, I'm looking forward to coming back from Japan being fluent in Japanese. I believe I can do it and will try my hardest to make this dream come true. がんばります！I know also realize that learning other languages in it of its self is skill that one has to learn. How do you teach yourself things, what does it mean to acutally know something and how will you get that information to stick in your head? These are all fun questions I have been trying to answer as I become bilingual and love it.

[psychoflex]

only 3 so far

German, French and English
learning Japanese for a year now.
spanish, korean or chinese is next! most likely it will spanish...

[Jay]

I speak three languages. English, Gibberish and Rubbish.

[whispering]

I speak enough Finnish to get by. Though its quickly leaving me ;__;
Sun pitäis puhua sitten useammin :p

I speak the most beautiful language in the world and english well enough for my needs.

[Illusion]

I'm a Chinese. I can speak Mandarin, Hakka, Cantonese, English & Bahasa Malaysia (national language of my country).
I always mixed up Hakka and Cantonese though. I do not learn any other languages besides these, I don't have any talents in languages.

[Jay]

Hang on, wait a sec!

I'm a Chinese.

Bahasa Malaysia (national language of my country).

...whaaaaaaa?

If you're Chinese, how can Bahasa MALAYSIA be the language of your country?

[Praetorian]

Sun pitäis puhua sitten useammin :p

I speak the most beautiful language in the world and english well enough for my needs.


Didn't know you could speak Japanese?

[Mushu]

Fluent in somalian, swedish and english.
i cant write or read somalian, and got a bit of problem with writting english as its my third langauge. I lived in russia 2 years were i learned to speak russian fluently, but as movnig to sweden and started to learn swedish i forgot it, mainly lack people to speak with. but im sure it wouldnt take me long to relearn it again. Gonna take russian class once i return from japan and learned japanese

[Daishikaze]

Hang on, wait a sec!





...whaaaaaaa?

If you're Chinese, how can Bahasa MALAYSIA be the language of your country?


Because Malaysia has alot of chinese people living there

[Mushu]

Sun pitäis puhua sitten useammin :p

I speak the most beautiful language in the world and english well enough for my needs.
i dont know if i would call finish a beautiful language :D

[Jay]

Because Malaysia has alot of chinese people living there

Oh. Okay then.

[Snake eyeS]

Dutch, english and i get get by in germany, but i need to talk it for a week orso before it really comes back to me.. in my school(12-17) i was able to speak french aswell, but i dont like it that much cause of the people ive met that are french. so im happy to say i forgot all about french.

[CopraSanctum]

The languages that I can speak or have learnt or am learning:
1. Indonesian (National language)
2. Malaysian language (because it is so similar to Indonesian)
3. Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin (a bit of each)
4. Japanese (Learning)
5. French (I learnt it concurrently with japanese last year for a year. I am planning to continue it next semester.)
6. English

Right now I am focusing on Japanese, then French (because most likely I will go to France for exchange next year). Once I have become fluent at both, I want to start honing my chinese, especially Cantonese. After that, if my brain still has the capacity to learn any more language, I am very eager to start learning Hindi.

[h2orowe]

Wow! I seriously, need to learn more languages. Joey! Get off your fat American ass and learn!

[Illusion]

Yeah, what Daishikaze said, Chinese is about 25% of the country's population.

You have to learn it to pass your exam because the papers are in Bahasa Malaysia (BM) and you will not be awarded the SPM (similar to O-level) certificate if you fail the BM Language paper.

Funny thing is, the Malays do not practice proper BM in their conversation and tv programs. The conversation has their own way of talking which I find it quite difficult to understand, especially the elders'. In the Malay tv series/drama, they like to mix English in between the Malay lines. For example, the most common one will be 'I', 'you', 'we', 'me', 'I love u' instead of using the Malay ones. Maybe they think it's cool, but I find them irritating.

[history1me]

Now, I wish that schools in the U.S pushed languages at younger ages like they do in Europe. It's not as necessary as it is in europe but it's cool and becoming more so as the world culturally shirks.

[Shamu]

Now, I wish that schools in the U.S pushed languages at younger ages like they do in Europe. It's not as necessary as it is in europe but it's cool and becoming more so as the world culturally shirks.
I totally agree! I think the US needs to get going on the teaching foreign language thing!
When I was in elementary school they made us take French and Spanish, and my 4th grade teacher was very into foreign languages, so she made us learn to count in Spanish, French, German, Russian, and Japanese.
And living in the southern part of the US, I'm really glad that I can speak/write/read Spanish!

[Manaka]

-German, + the dialect we are speaking here could almost count as a whole new language :D
-English
-and I'm learning French and Japanese

edit: just found this on wikipedia :However, if it goes into the dialects of the deeper valleys of Tyrol, sometimes even other Tyroleans are helpless to understand the dialect.

sad, but true ^^

[caseylim]

I'm speking chinese dialect(hokkien,canto,mando) abit, Some english and some malay. I do learn abit of jap from animes. that's all.

[Citizen]

One.

All I need. All I care to know.

[Valerie]

English, Bad English, and a little spanish :P I'd like to study Japanese one day, but I need to learn Spanish first (I live in Florida, lots of Cubans -_-, & Puerto Rican family on my moms side) Gonna take classes when I start taking college classes :P

[Pete]

Native english speaker, but I did French up to GCSE (although I've forgotten a lot) I think I could get by. I could also just about get by in Spanish, but it'd be pretty rudimentary - i.e. Donde esta el baño. Yo quiero uno cerveza por favor :p

[Slartibart]

Norwegian Bokmål (which means i can perfectly understand Danish, Sweedish and Norwegian Nynorsk alltho i dont speak or write them.)

English , I can pretty mutch understand every phrase you throw at me unless you got a really fucked up dialect. Though i am kinda rusty in speaking english.

I can understand VERY basic german but not mutch more than that.

[houkouonchi]

English(Fluent)
Japanese(Not fluent yet)

英語「ぺらぺら」
日本語「まだぺらぺらじゃない」

[Sbabbari]

English- Native Speaker
French- 4 years in highschool, can make basic conversation
Hebrew- Fluent
Japanese- In the process of learning
Italian- Just a teensy bit, from hanging out with Italians and Swiss in Japan :P

[Your Biggest Fan]

Spanish- native
English- just 3 years speaking
Brazilian portuguese- Only understand, cant speak it well.
French- a little bit.

[Urban~Ninja]

English, russian, spanish,
and some "military" or whatever its called ie... alpha, bravo, charlie.....x-ray,yankee,zulu

Phonetic Alphabet is what you mean for Miltary, and its not a langauge its used so that if the radio's cut out people still get what they meant, i learnt this in Australian Army Cadets.

[Janken]

English and some German.

[renegade]

hebrew as a native
english
some japanese
some russian (mostly swear words)
some french (same as above)
and one word in hungerian (or maybe its two?) ishtenem oziot -ithink it means wellcom
not sure at all

[Kaji]

Japanese and Spanish shouldn't interfere with each other. The idea of getting two languages confused when you're learning them only makes sense if you've never tried it. Languages don't sound alike, and confusing languages would be like confusing colors. Japanese sounds like Japanese and Spanish sounds like Spanish.

The only thing that would be confusing would be learning grammar if you had to memorize all the rules in your native language without remembering the examples, which you shouldn't do anyway.

No offense, but do you know what you're talking about? It is possible to have two languages that consist of nigh entirely the same phenomes, and Japanese and Spanish are pretty close when you factor out the L in Spanish (yes, that's even taking into account ñ).

Example:

Yo hablo japones.
???????????

The only differences between the two are the R in the Japanese rendering of 'hablo', and the 'u' at the end of 'japones', which isn't generally pronounced anyway. I started taking Japanese 101 immediately after taking Spanish 101 and when I didn't know a noun I needed in Japanese offhand I would subconsiously insert the Spanish word for it (sometimes ending up with sentences such as '??(queso)???????' as a result). I picked up a fair bit of Spanish from working at McDonald's for two years, but when I went back to work for them summer of last year for a few extra dollars before I left for Japan I found that while I could understand what the Mexicans in the grill were saying to me, I could not respond in kind to save my life because I'd instinctively respond in Japanese due to the phonetics. Hence, I evolved from supplementing Japanese with Spanish vocabulary to fill in the holes to the point where Japanese has obstructed Spanish to the point of no longer being communicable in that language. I understand it when I hear it, but I have to focus everything on my words to sometimes do so much as say the standard polite phrases in Spanish without switching them to Japanese. (It would also be good to note that Japanese has yet to hamper my study of Mandarin, and vice versa...)

I'm not saying that everyone suffers from this problem, but it's impossible to deny that it does happen. If your mother tongue is either Spanish or Japanese then you're far less likely to confuse the two than someone who tries to learn both due to the protected nature our mother tongue gets in our head.

[Alphonse v.2]

English
Russian
French
And a wee bit of Protugese

I do plan on learning more Portugese

[The Divine Comedy]

I am fluent in English. I've been learning Spanish for about the past eight years and can carry on/understand a fairly basic conversation, but anything past that is beyond me. O, yo hablo espanol un poco.

[Marblehead]

Bad English, horrible Japanese and pathetic Spanish.

[Pierrot le Fou]

You need to use a browser other than IE or Safari (read: firefox or mozilla) if you want your Japanese to show up in OSX.

And I confused Japanese with spanish when I was learning too.

"What's the word for 'world'? ムンド, right?"

[Kragar]

No offense, but do you know what you're talking about? It is possible to have two languages that consist of nigh entirely the same phenomes, and Japanese and Spanish are pretty close when you factor out the L in Spanish (yes, that's even taking into account ñ).

Did you see the post where I listed what I've learned? I've juggled learning three or four languages at the same time. I think I know something about it. Plus, I was a linguistics major when I first went to school.

Sure, the languages can use the same basic sounds across the board, but there's more to a language than the basic phonemes. The way they combine the sounds are quite distinict. Japanese has the half-swallowed -su and -tsu that help give it a distinct quality, while Spanish has a rapid trilled r to give it an extra pop.

More importantly, the vocabulary is very different, and the way the vocab is set up is quite different. For a native English speaker, Spanish is at least mildly familiar because it comes from similar Indo-European/Romantic roots. Japanese is much more alien, coming from a different place altogether. It has a different rhythm.

And I've experienced interference before, too. There was one oral test in my first year of Chinese that I did poorly on because I could only think of the French for my answers. I'd try to to think of Chinese, and the French would come up on the screen inside my head, but I never once tried to say it thinking it was Chinese. It was interference, memory playing tricks on you, and not confusion, where I mistook one language for another.

The best way to learn any language is to get your ear used to the sound and letting your mouth follow. If you try to memorize letters on a page, then you run into problems where your memory is better than your ability. If your ear can't distinguish what language you're hearing, then you need to listen better. Also, speaking and listening are two different skills. If you never practice speaking, then you can't do it, no matter what your ears can hear.

[Kaji]

You need to use a browser other than IE or Safari (read: firefox or mozilla) if you want your Japanese to show up in OSX.

And I confused Japanese with spanish when I was learning too.

"What's the word for 'world'? ???, right?"

Eh? Never had any problems with Japanese in Safari over here. May just depend on the version of OSX, though. I know Tiger comes with nearly all languages supported by default...

[Pierrot le Fou]

All of the kanji you've used comes up as ???

It has nothing to do with Japanese language support in OSX, it has to do with the way that IE and Safari (though 2.0 may be better, I don't know) render those characters on websites when you send them through a form. Your current browser does it wrong, and I had the same problem when I first typed Japanese into OSX (how else would I have known you were on a Mac?).

Point is, if you want to type or quote Japanese characters, you really need to use Firefox or Mozilla.