How many languages / What languages do you speak?
- Thread starter Giambattista
- Start date
English, Spanish, and Pig Latin. I also know all of the Greek letters, but I cannot speak "Common" Greek.
S
science man
Guest
I voted two because I, well, obviuosly know English and I took two years of Spanish which where I live is extremely handy and I plan to continue learning Spanish but also learn Italian because I'm half Italian. If my school oftered Italian I would've never taken Spanish but it doesn't so to fill the requirement I chose the language to it.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Knowing Spanish will be a tremendous help in learning Italian, since they're both descended directly from Latin.
- Nouns, adjectives and articles have gender.
- Verbs are conjugated in enormous, complicated paradigms.
- Many of the inflections (grammatical suffixes) will be familiar to you.
- Many of the words in their vocabulary are identical except for some simple phonetic alterations.
There's a huge community of expat Italians in Argentina. They've developed a patois that is a mixture of Spanish and Italian.
Italian is so easy. Almost no irregulars. Pronounciation is as the written. If you studied Latin or understand French, you'd learn it in 6 months at most. I am not fluent in Italian, but will be the easiest one to go. And it's a lovely language. Spanish is much more complicated.
I know one English I would like to someday learn the African Bushman Clicking Language.
S
science man
Guest
Wow I heard that Spanish and Italian were similar but never that Italian is easier than Spanish. THATS AWSOME!!!
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Not true. Many of SciForums' members are not Americans. Outside of our country it's quite common for people to speak multiple languages. They have a cute riddle in Europe:
Q: What do you call a person who speaks three languages? A: Trilingual
Q: What do you call a person who speaks two languages: A: Bilingual
Q: What do you call a person who speaks one language: A: American
actually, i am a european, and i would think that joke has american origins, quite a few americans that bash the shit out of their own country. i dont think that europeans in general occupy their time like that. not to say that america isn't disliked/thought lowly of among a large part of the european population.
so you dont think that there are a bunch of people that go to this thread to simply brag and stretch the truth a little to be able to brag more? sure, there are some that don't do this. im not putting your language skills in question, fraggle rocker. ive read enough from you to know that
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It's European as far as I know. I heard it countless of times from them. They also call the person 'American' simply without the riddle.
to be fair, that is because the main language doesnt change every 30 miles.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Of course there must be people who have done that, but I doubt that it's very many. Linguistics is not the most popular subforum on this website. The people who bother to come here are generally very interested. They usually stick around long enough to demonstrate their language skills.
Besides, nobody follows the rule any more of rating their fluency on my powers-of-three scale. (E.g., 4 = 100 words, 7 = 3,000 words.) So if somebody says they can speak Polish and all they can really do is order food in a Polish restaurant, pronounce the words correctly, and get what they thought they were ordering, well then that just means they're around level 3.
Which is not necessarily an advantage. Unless you're a musician, sculptor, etc., most of your thoughts are formed in words. Therefore the paradigms of the language you speak shape and limit those thoughts. If you can think in two languages, you can test the thoughts in one language against the other and it might make you a better thinker.
S
science man
Guest
Man you are so right. I found an Italian verb conjugator online and saw that conjugations are soooo much easier on top of the fact that there's only one to be verb instead of Spanish where there's two.
philipthegreat
Registered Senior Member
English and Spanish and I also speak some broken French.
English and some japanese.
i feel all bad now!!
i know English the best, very little Spanish, and i live around alot of Spanish.. i also live around the Navajo Indians and can't speek it either...
i would love to learn Italian, German-my heritage, also Turkish, and i am sure some others.
i know English the best, very little Spanish, and i live around alot of Spanish.. i also live around the Navajo Indians and can't speek it either...
i would love to learn Italian, German-my heritage, also Turkish, and i am sure some others.