How many languages / What languages do you speak?

[winer36]

My mother language is Croatian and I speak Enlish perfectly and I also speak a bit Greek and Albanian...

They used to say before "the more languages you know, the more you are worth"

 

[Aldrnari]

English is my first language, and I'm fluent (perfect comprehension, above-average vocab/grammar/accent) in Swedish, which means I can also understand Norwegian and written Danish. I'm working on learning Italian and Latin. I took Spanish in high school, so I have a kind of vague understanding of what people are talking about if they speak Spanish to me.

My plans for the future are to learn more Old Norse/Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon. We'll see how that goes!

 

[Anouk]

ok, I'll be generous to myself and give
a 10 for my mothertongue: Dutch (duh!)
an 9 for my English and French
a poor 4 for my once fluently spoken Bosnian
and a final 2,5 (are half points allowed?) for my Russian and German
...makes me pretty multilangual after all...thumbs up for myself

 

[skycloud86]

I am unfortunately a monoglot for the time being, that language obviously being English. I know very basic French, and a few words from many other languages, but nothing even close to enough for even the simplest of conversations in that language.

I would like to be able to speak Spanish, French and the Scandinavian languages fluently. Of course, I would be happy just having a second language regardless of which language it is, even if it happens to be some artificial language like Esperanto.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

I am unfortunately a monoglot for the time being, that language obviously being English. I know very basic French, and a few words from many other languages, but nothing even close to enough for even the simplest of conversations in that language. I would like to be able to speak Spanish, French and the Scandinavian languages fluently. Of course, I would be happy just having a second language regardless of which language it is, even if it happens to be some artificial language like Esperanto.

Well then by all means start learning Esperanto tomorrow morning. You'll be able to pick it up in just a few months. The vocabulary will help you when you finally get around to studying French or Spanish, and in the meantime there are lots of us who know the language and can give you practice.

 

[skycloud86]

Well then by all means start learning Esperanto tomorrow morning. You'll be able to pick it up in just a few months. The vocabulary will help you when you finally get around to studying French or Spanish, and in the meantime there are lots of us who know the language and can give you practice.

Yeah, I could do. I have tried learning it before, but with little success, so perhaps changing the way I learn languages will mean better results.

 

[Brolybdenum]

English - 9.999999

Spanish - 8. I've been learning it for the last 8 years in school but I've never lived in a place where it's used frequently so I don't think I'll ever get beyond this unless I move.

Tamil - I'm not sure This is my mothertongue and it was the first language I learned to speak along with English, but I "unlearned" it somehow when I was little. Now I can understand pretty much anything people speak around me/anything on TV in Tamil, but when it comes to putting sentences together I blank out and I can only manage a few words. I can't read or write it either with the exception of my name.

In the future I want to learn Tamil (properly), German, French, Mandarin, and Hindi.

By the way this is my first post on these forums

 

[kimfuji]

I speak English and Japanese. I lived in Japan for 6 years teaching English at Saitama University.

 

[Astral]

Bonjour!

I am very interested in meeting people who love languages.

I speak a bit of English.
Mi lernas esperanton.
Ich spreche ein Bißchen deutsch.
Je parle un peu de français.
Hablo un poquito de español.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Mi lernas esperanton.

Mi lernis Esperanton antaŭ kvindek-tri jaroj.

 

[Astral]

Esperanto

Actually I am still learning Esperanto after discovering it in the 1960s.
I still struggle with being able to write it, mainly due to my inability to
remember all the little connecting words, which are somewhat confusing.

I've only met a few Esperantists online and most of them talk mostly
about Esperanto and how wonderful it would be if everyone could speak
Esperanto as a second language. I happen to agree with them, but I am
not sure it will ever happen. I hate the x notation.

Mi legas kaj komprenas multe. Mi ne skribas bone en esperanto.
Kiel vi fartas?

Quel âge avez-vous, monsieur?

J'ai beaucoup d'ans, presque soixante. Je suis ancien.

Ich kann viel besser deutsch schreiben, aber nicht perfekt.

Liebst du Esperanto?

 

[Astral]

Translation:
ESP:Mi legas kaj komprenas multe. Mi ne skribas bone en esperanto.
ENG:I read and understand a lot . I not write well in Esperanto .
ESP:Kiel vi fartas?
ENG:How are you?

Crude, but effective, as Mr. Spock would say!

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

I've only met a few Esperantists online and most of them talk mostly about Esperanto and how wonderful it would be if everyone could speak Esperanto as a second language.

I collected "pen pals" in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, before there was such a thing as e-mail. Most of them were in eastern Europe, where if you hop on a train and get off three hours later you're in a different country where you can't understand anybody. So they really appreciated Esperanto's practical nature and were not very concerned with the "movement." When I went to Europe in 1973 I met several of them and it was really nice to be able to talk in person.

I happen to agree with them, but I am not sure it will ever happen.

If it was going to happen, it would have happened in the 1920s when the movement was at its strongest and millions of people could speak the language. Today there are probably not even one million.

I hate the x notation.

Yes. Even in the 1950s I thought it was very short-sighted of Zamenhof to create six new letters that had never existed before. It was impossible to write on a typewriter. Going back afterward and adding the circumflexes and breves by hand was really stupid. Today it's only slightly easier on a computer. In some word processors you can create a macro to type the special characters. But it would be so much easier if he had simply used the letters that already existed in, say, Czech or Croatian. If he had simply co-opted Q, W, X and Y (like the Chinese Pin-Yin system), he would only have needed two new ones and surely he could have borrowed them from any of several languages. If he hadn't bothered to make C, Ĉ and Ĝ separate letters and just wrote them as TS, TŜ and DĴ, in addition to using QWXY creatively, he could have gotten along without any extra letters at all!

Mi legas kaj komprenas multe. Mi ne skribas bone en esperanto.

Via skribo aspektas bone al mi.

Kiel vi fartas?

Tre bone, danke.

Quel âge avez-vous, monsieur?

Soixante-huit.

J'ai beaucoup d'ans, presque soixante. Je suis ancien.

Vous etes tres jeun.

Ich kann viel besser deutsch schreiben, aber nicht perfekt.

In 1973, wann ich in Europa reiste, sprach ich auf deutsch. There were still millions of people who had been forced to learn German at gunpoint and they could still speak it. They thought I was a German tourist because I bought a BMW motorcycle at the factory in Munich so it had a German license plate--and they were still very kind. When they discovered that I was actually American they became even more friendly.

Liebst du Esperanto?

I love all languages. I appreciate Esperanto but I find it somewhat constraining. The system of suffixes and prefixes and compound words makes it very easy to learn, and I appreciate that because I can speak, write and understand Esperanto far better than Spanish, German, Mandarin, or any of the other languages I have studied. But that same system results in a very simple and restrictive vocabulary, so it lacks a certain richness.

 

[Astral]

I've never actually met anyone who spoke Esperanto to me, at least not in real life. I am still a huge fan of Esperanto, despite its seeming lack of popularity. I notice the Chinese post news in Esperanto instead of English.
There's also Vikipedio. I might be able to live with switching to Esperanto for full-time use, but it would take me some time to learn to speak it fluently.

One of my major concerns is automated translation, as you will soon find out if you hang around me much. My newest pursuit is developing smart phone apps, for iPhone and Android. Building the dictionaries is extremely tedious.

 

[Astral]

I lived in Germany for about 2 years altogether, in 1979-80 and in 1983-84. So I
learned a lot of German during that time. I am sure we could swap a lot of stories.
I lived in Bremen for 16 months and near Friedrichshafen for about 9 months.

I did listen to replays of old Polish radio broadcasts in Esperanto, fairly recently.
I can understand most of what I hear, but I don't have a lot of practice at it.

I lived near Zurich, so I learned to understand Swiss German pretty well, not to
speak it, just to understand it on television. There were also French and Italian
programs, and Räto-Romansch.

I too love languages, although I am not sure I love them all equally. I would like to,
but I have my preferences.

I am interested in learning Russian as a goal.

And so on, ad infinitum.

 

[Twelve]

I am very fluent in two languages but I'm very jealous of all who can speak, listen, read and write English well.

 

[Gremmie]

I am very fluent in two languages but I'm very jealous of all who can speak, listen, read and write English well.

Why is that?:shrug:

I am fluent in other languages,,,But, I'm not jealous of anyone, just because they may have a stronger grasp on a given language than I do.

 

[Twelve]

Why is that?:shrug:

I am fluent in other languages,,,But, I'm not jealous of anyone, just because they may have a stronger grasp on a given language than I do.

Sorry, I think that I haven't used the right word indeed. I wrote it positively. I wanted to tell that I wish that I could be fluent in English as so many milion people in the world.

I mean that I think that people who have English as a native language are very lucky, as English is the main language of all the languages in the world now.

I wrote the word "jealous" because I wanted to tell that it's not easy to learn a new language. I think I could only understand about 5% of the contents of all your posts if those were not written but only listened.

I'm sorry if my post was not understood.

 

[Gremmie]

I haven't used the right word indeed. I wrote it positively.

I mean that I think that people who have English as a native language are very lucky, as English is the main language of all the languages in the world now.

I wrote the word "jealous" because I wanted to tell that it's not easy to learn a new language. I think I could only understand about 5% of the contents of all your posts if those were not written but only listened.

Oh, OK...I think I know what you mean.

It's true, English is probably the most spoken language these days.

I was born and raised in the U.S.A., and English is obviously my native language... But, in my honest opinion,to even make an attempt to learn a different language, other than your "mother tongue" is awesome.

You should be proud of yourself...

 

[Twelve]

Oh, OK...I think I know what you mean.

Thanks!
When you are a kid you think that foreign languages are little things and you'll be able to learn new languages by the dozen ... ! But later you realize that learning a new language is like learning to be a doctor or another job: you need a lot of time and dedication.