Thread: What languages do you speak?

Originally Posted by Howard Newell

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

I can't make up my mind whether that's either incredibly cool....or terribly sad.


Anyway, I speak English, Dutch (native), get around in german, can ask my way around in french, understand scottish quite well (no, that's not english) and can say "shut up demon Lama" and "I'm a tree by proffession" in spanish.

Native Dutch,
Fluent English.
Basic French,
Can survive German.

Native: American English
Fluent: Mandarin Chinese
Half-functional: Japanese
Bits n pieces: Xhosa, Spanish, French, German, Norwegian, Swahili, Taiwanese, Ojibwa, Latin, and probably a few other things.

I always sucked at languages when I was young (10~15 years old), so after getting expelled from high school and putting up with a mediocre technical college for a year, I decided to push myself to learn at least 1 language to decent fluency.

Take your weaknesses, make them your strengths n all that jazz.

Originally Posted by jaegerhund

English -barely --- and a little French. Maybe someone can confirm this, but an interesting thing about languages, is that as spoken there are no pauses between words -- this is why foreign languages seem fast --- but upon learning the language, pauses (or breaks) are artificially placed between words by the old membrane. I think this is interesting.
Justin

I am afraid the same applies to English as it is spoken in a lot of movies and tv series: no pause at all! It took me 2 years living in the UK understanding native English speakers speaking to one another. If people would speak to me there were pauses and understanding them became a lot easier. I have noticed that since I returned from the UK 10 years ago I lost some fluency in both active and passive use of English, American English being even more difficult to understand sometimes.

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 -

Justin

English is basically a Germanic language with many French words in it. William the Conqueror invaded England from Normandy (=France) which was populated by Anglo Saxon (= Germanic) tribes. The ruling class has been French speaking for a long time while the people in the street would speak AngloSaxon.
If I remember correctly this is mentioned in the novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott.
The funny thing is: though French is a language derived from Latin, the word French is a Germanic word. The Franks, were a Germanic tribe that invaded the Roman Province Gaul but adopted the language of the Gauls which was a language heavily influenced by Latin.

For those of you interested in ethymology: in the above I made the words derived from French red, the words of Germanic origin were left black.

Grew up speaking Portuguese at home, and all my schooling was in (the Queen's) English, so I'm at least bi-lingual.

Took 2 years of German and 5 years of French in secondary school. I reckon I could order a beer in either language pretty easily.

Taught myself conversational Italian before my wedding, and we had a wonderful honeymoon in Italy! My wife was totally amazed and dependent on me while in Italy, but she loved seeing me get mistaken for a native Italian!

I like to consider myself a bit of a renaissance man, as I also have a bachelors and masters degree in mechanical engineering.

Originally Posted by Tierdaen

Native: American English
Fluent: Mandarin Chinese
Half-functional: Japanese
Bits n pieces: Xhosa, Spanish, French, German, Norwegian, Swahili, Taiwanese, Ojibwa, Latin, and probably a few other things.

I always sucked at languages when I was young (10~15 years old), so after getting expelled from high school and putting up with a mediocre technical college for a year, I decided to push myself to learn at least 1 language to decent fluency.

Take your weaknesses, make them your strengths n all that jazz.

Ok, I have to ask- how was Mandarin? What part of the US are you from and did you find being tonal difficult?

English. they made me take 3 years of Spanish in HS but I did my level best to forget most of it. Would like to learn Lojban someday.

At any point in time, I am fluent in at least a dozen non-spoken languages,
because I spend 90+% of my time talking to machines and not people.

Originally Posted by Quick Orange

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

Similar here, for both myself and my wife.
My grandfather was born here during a visit, and raised in Poland. He joined the US Army during WWII (he was a citizen after all) went back to Europe, got wounded and all sorts of other stuff, then after coming back here, was hit by a car and had to re-learn everything. Alphabet, pronunciation, all of it. Dad said before that he spoke 6 or 7 languages. I mostly remember him cursing in broken English, some Polish(didn't know it at the time) and some German.

I know English. Americanese if you prefer....

My wife's father is Mexican-American and met her mother while he was in the Air Force. They know *some* Spanish, but he wanted them all to speak English so they would have a better chance in life. So now she understands a little bit but does not speak it. Confused the telemarketers who would call for Ms. Rivera(not anymore) and start speaking in Spanish though....
John P.

If only they knew that they were getting their children $10K+ a year more by being bilingual...