Thread: What languages do you speak?

I'm always amazed at the different languages spoken by the people around me.

I'm limited to English, some Spanish and a dab of German. Pretty much just enough of all three to get me into trouble.

I speak and write pretty fluently in my native language (bulgarian), although being in US for a while is definitely affecting my skills. I still cringe at most news though - but it was long time since the journalists actually cared about writing well and even grammatically correct (same case in USA it looks like, although I do find plenty of intelligently and well written stuff).
Apart from it I consider myself fluent in English, Russian and I can manage pretty well in Italian too (took 2 years in University and lived a year in Italy). I can reasonably understand some other slavic languages - Macedonian (I'm not going to elaborate on this one ), Serbian, Chech, Polish..., I can manage with Spanish, and I guess a tiny bit of French. I lived 3 months in Germany, so I certainly can do it on the beer level.

I'm a fan of foreign movies with subtitles, and it's often interesting to realize that once I read the subtitles, what I hear makes quite a bit of sense too (in pretty much any european language).

My family could easily have been bi-lingual, but being German and coming over just before WWI, they wanted their kids to be fully American and wouldn't allow any German at all. Thanks forefathers

I am definately going to bring my children up speaking both English and Polish. I think it gives them a good start with languages(especially as polish is such a complicated one) and makes it easier to learn a third at school. Maybe German, French or Russian. I would love to speak more but I just didn't have the opportunity when I was young to learn in a good environment(damn English education system)

Originally Posted by nickyspaghetti

I am definately going to bring my children up speaking both English and Polish. I think it gives them a good start with languages(especially as polish is such a complicated one) and makes it easier to learn a third at school. Maybe German, French or Russian. I would love to speak more but I just didn't have the opportunity when I was young to learn in a good environment(damn English education system)

It's funny how this type of thing works out. My uncle married a lady from Costa Rica and had three boys. The oldest two learned Spanish well and liked that part of them. The youngest (who is one of my best friends -- like a brother), almost refused to have anything to do with it and managed to learn little from his mother --- almost out of embarrassment or something. I don't understand this but I wasn't put in his position --- but it seems like a waste to me --- the ability to naturally learn another language is something special.

Justin

I don't want to get this off topic, but may I ask those here who learned English as a second language, does English sound Germanic or like German ?-- it is a Germanic language -

Justin

Originally Posted by Howard Newell

I can speak Spanish and I'm fully fluent in Klingon.

NUQ DAQ O' PUCHPA E'........

I speak Welsh and English and a bit of Spanish, few words of Korean.

Originally Posted by jaegerhund

I don't want to get this off topic, but may I ask those here who learned English as a second language, does English sound Germanic or like German ?-- it is a Germanic language -

At least to me it is. Having idea of three language groups (slavic, romanic and germanic) I can say that to me they are very similar. Relating to this I always mean to look up Chomsky's universal grammar stuff and never get around to it.

English is my native language

I'm fluent in Vietnamese (though my accent is horrible), my parents were from Vietnam but I was born here.

I took French in highschool so I know a bit of it

and living in Santa Ana you gotta know enough Spanish to figure out if people are making fun of you.