English and some Spanish though I wish I knew more. My father is from Mexico but growing up he never spoke to me in Spanish. In fact the only Spanish I really heard was the nanny who took care of me when I was a kid because she didn't speak English but then I started school and none of the kids there spoke it. For the most part I can understand Spanish just fine, but putting together coherent sentences and spelling are the things I have the hardest time doing. The best thing I can do is curse which I've been able to do since I was 5, but that comes from watching soccer with my dad.

Languages
 

The words you hate thread gave me the idea for this thread. We have a lot of members from different countries, and many who have learnt English as a second language. So for those of you who've learnt or are learning a different language, what was your first language and what are you learning now? What's the most difficult thing about it?

I've been trying to learn Turkish since I got here, and it's slow going, mainly because there's absolutely NOTHING similar about the two in terms of grammar or syntax. In Turkish, most parts of speech are just suffixes, so sometimes a full sentence in English would be translated into one damn long word in Turkish. Confusing as hell. I found this on wikipedia and it illustrates this really well. Of course, most of the time the words are not this ridiculously long.

Avrupa Europe
Avrupalı European
Avrupalılaş become European
Avrupalılaştır Europeanize
Avrupalılaştırama cannot Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadık whom could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklar those whom could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımız those whom we could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan one of those whom we could not Europeanize
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mı? one of those whom we could not Europeanize?
Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdan mısınız? Are you one of those whom we could not Europeanize?

Within the same context, the longest Turkish word consists of 44 characters: Çekoslovakyalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınız = You are apparently one of those we weren't (or haven't been) able to make a Czechoslovakian.

I've no idea when you'd use either of those sentences, ever, but it's still funny.

Also, English is a stupid language.

Arabic should my first language, still I learned French before I could utter any word of Arabic. Then learned English when I was 8, though school didn't hep much with my English learning process.

I just grew up on French and American television. English is just too easy.

i've read about this element of language before, it's called agglutination. lots of languages do it to varying degrees, the ones that use it extensively come up with some pretty crazy words though. there's a hungarian one: "megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért " wikipedia says it means "because of your continuous pretending to be indesecratable," and in an interview (a band uses it) the guy says: "The meaning of this word is also kind of cool, because it's about consecration and deconsecration, and that someone is acting like he would be not the one who could be deconsecrated, and he got this thing as a consequence." pretty fascinating.

i took french for 10 years or so but i'm not completely fluent. i guess the most annoying thing about it, coming from speaking english, is dealing with masculinity/femininity, haha.

i learned the russian alphabet for shits and giggles, so i can sound out words but haven't a clue what they mean.

My parents spoke to me in both English and French when I was a kid, and I went to French elementary school. So I think I'm pretty fluent in both languages ;) I've also picked up a bit of Italian and German from my music studies over the years. Having to analyze opera arias in Italian, for example, kinda forces you to learn a bit of the language.

The most difficult thing about French is knowing when to use what verb tenses. As a nearly native speaker of French I can do this subconsciously when writing and speaking, but if I have to explain verb conjugation to somebody, it's really hard. Especially in regards to which auxiliary verb ("avoir" and "être") to use when conjugating verbs into complex tenses. I don't normally have this problem with English as the auxiliary verbs ("have", "do", and "be") and most modal verbs ("can", "will", "may", and "must") are conjugated in the same fashion for most tenses, especially when used together. And, like CC said, the masculine/feminine thing is hard at times.

Languages like French, Italian, Spanish - the Romance languages - are so lyrical in comparison to the Germanic languages like English, Dutch, and of course German, are not. I wish English wasn't such a harsh language.

I was born in Italy so I can speak fluent Italian, but moved to New Zealand and back so I can speak fluent English aswell - though English is my second language. I can speak quite a bit of French and Spanish aswell though.

I am a native English speaker, but I know a bit of chomorro and consider mysel to be an intermediate spanish speaker (only because I've lost much of my vocabulary, but I know gramar and most verbs just fine) I am now attempting to teach myself russian, and it's proving to be quite difficult, but fun. i'd love to learn arabic afterwards!

My primary language is English. I know a handful of Spanish and French but both are very sketchy. I once thought it would be cool to learn Scottish Gaelic, but it's so different from the languages I know, that I learned like one sentence, absolutely murdered it, and gave up.

if you ever feel like trying it again here's a website i think is pretty good:

taic

Wow, that's an awesome site. I like the sound key, that's where my initial issue was.