What languages can you speak?
 

Despite choosing the 'maths' route and studying software engineering, language has always been a big passion of mine. In fact, I didn't take any computing subjects at high school. Instead I took French and Latin and competed in French speaking contests.

Sadly I haven't had much time to pursue lingual interests since high school, though I did start learning Russian last year. In order to refresh my French, I've been reading some novels and trying to understand the French version of the Office. I regret not taking any Chinese papers at uni and I envy those born into an environment where multilingualism is a requirement. For me, reading/writing/speaking come fairly easily but I struggle with listening.

So this thread is for the discussion of language (both native and foreign) whether you are bilingual/trilingual by upbringing/compulsion, have studied a foreign language at school and liked/disliked it, are learning a new language for travel/business/pleasure, are studying linguistics or are simply fascinated by language in general.

mostly fluent in french, used to know basic spanish but i forgot it

the idea of being completely fluent/billingual, and learning more languages appeals very much to me... gonna keep taking french in college. i'd like to learn to understand/speak mandarin but the idea of learning the alphabet turns me off completely

i took about eight years of German but i'm not entirely confident in my ability to speak it. i can listen, read and understand it though, that's a plus.

My first language was Vietnamese. Second: English. Sadly, my English is better than my Vietnamese. Also, I've been studying Spanish for about four years. I love learning new languages. It is especially interesting to compare and contrast different languages and dialects. I really believe if multilingualism became more popular, we could begin on a completely new level of understanding each other.

lucifer s.: are you in an environment that permits you to practice German?

English and an embarrassingly small amount of Spanish for a person with a Spanish-speaking parent. That's it. :(

^ It's never too late. I heard after your third or so language, it's really not that bad. Right now, I feel like the more I learn of one language, the more I lose from the others. It could be a mental thing.

i go to a school that offers German classes if that's what you're asking.

my engineering advisor suggested i take it more seriously, take classes and whatnot but i don't think i have time in my schedule to pursue it more actively. there's still a few years for me to decide whether i want to take a semester abroad, it would certainly be neat to explore a country whose primary language wasn't English.

Hm, I guess what I'm really asking is do you practice orally outside the classroom? I found that when I did this a lot, I really got a feel for the foreign ways you move your tongue while learning a new language.

yes, I agree. getting to a country that is not dominantly english-speaking is pretty amazing. it forces you to connect with the natives differently. i love it. when I was ten or so, my parents sent me to Vietnam for two or three weeks. even though I was quite fluent in vietnamese already, I still struggled to communicate for the first week. i am a strong believer in familiarizing yourself with the culture along with the language, so those few weeks are crucial in how i speak now.

I agree that's it's never too late. At the end of last year I was really making an effort to learn more, listening to language CDs and going to meet-ups but I kind of fell off. I'm hoping to get back on the ball with it once I get back to the east coast.

i hear there's way more Spanish speaking people in Massachusetts than southern California.

Haha. I actually live in Northern California and am moving to Philly, but there are way less spanish-speakers in Philly than Boston so your point is even more true than you realize.

Learning Mandarin would be a massive commitment. One that I feel I could have made if I'd started a few years ago, but now probably couldn't make.

And yeah, there is the possibility of learning it on a spoken level rather than written which is much more feasible and still useful.


I think that practice is necessary for listening skills. My high school Latin teacher who majored in French told me that he went to France and could only really converse properly with the locals after about a week of being there.

I don't think I've forgotten much French vocab since high school, but my listening skills have deteriorated... I can't be the only one who finds listening hard. Mind you, French isn't particularly phonetic and the speed/enunciation/elision can make it difficult to understand.

its more or less because the city i live in has the highest visible minority population in canada... 59%, most of whom are from china, hong kong or taiwan. mandarin & cantonese are practically spoken just as widely as english here. maybe not cantonese as much, but still a huge amount of the population speaks at least one of them.

English is my second language. I was born and grew up in Belgium (till 9 y/o) and unfortunately don't practice the French nearly enough. It's quite embarrassing when speaking with relatives. :( I took a continued education course last summer and it helped a little, but not enough. What I need to do is join a group of French speakers in town and get together a few times a month to socialize. That would really help mature my vocabulary too. Part of why I'm embarrassed to speak it now is because my education in the language only went to age 9. Sure I've spoken French on a somewhat regular basis with immediate family in the past 24 years, but not enough to really improve. Barely maintain is more like it.

I wish procrastination would let go of it's choke hold on me.

well my family's from the Dominican Republic, so Spanish

You can probably find some good french groups in your area on meetup.com. That's where I found my spanish group.

I studied German for a about a year, and was fine right up until they asked me to do some exams. I can speak it a little, and could probably make it through a day in Germany without having to spend money on a phrasebook, but I wouldn't exactly call myself fluent at it.

English and a little French.
Just enough to talk to and understand salespeople in Montreal.

Un pequito espaniol'.
(No idea about spanish punctuation......)

I know sign language, jive, redneck and I can speak a little bit of Jon Anderson.

That would come in handy if some deaf klansmen started trouble at a Yes show in Harlem

Lol.

Not really much. Russian, Latvian, English, German and a little bit of Korean.

dude, you're spanish too, I didn't know that ****. Are you sure we're not related?

Indeed...that's where I found out about several groups when I first moved to this town a couple of years ago. I went to one French meetup and found it helpful, but it was a bit of a distance from me, and it was winter/dreary so I wasn't motivated to go back. I kept hoping for another one closer to me but never went. Times weren't that convenient either. Excuses excuses...

Haha, you're spanish too? We're a rare breed on the south shore! I don't think anybody besides me in my high school graduating class was spanish. :beer:

Jealous!

My old French correspondence teacher was from Latvia. Sounds like a fascinating little country.

I speaka da English...but I took Spanish in high school for three years (but only because I failed the second year). Incidentally, I also failed English my senior year by my teacher passed me anyway. Guess languages just aren't my thing. :) I would love to learn Japanese though. I bought a Japanese language tudor for my Nintendo DS but haven't had a chance to really get into it yet.

Um, I think I'm pretty much bilingual. I do most of my conversing in "Cronglish" and I'd say I'm equally good (or bad) in both. I took Italian lessons for like 3 semesters but gave it up for some reason. I can't really speak it but I understand a bit. Not enough to use it when we go shopping in Italy...:laughing: Oddly enough I think my Spanish is better, maybe because I've been exposed to it much longer and more frequently (each day we have like 3 hours in the afternoon of non-stop mexican telenovelas). I'm interested in learning more languages (I've downloaded Rosetta Stone in an attempt to learn French but aren't disciplined enough to use it every day) and improving my Italian and Spanish to the point I can actually use them...Lord knows I get plenty of chances to use Italian...:\

Mexican telenovellas? You're on the continent, why did you come across the pond for them?

i can speak some spanish, oh and english. lol

English and Spanish

English, Afrikaans and Xhosa

^ what the hell is Xhosa? And Afrikaans is African?

My dad attempted to teach me Welsh but we had to keep on taking breaks so I could wash off all the spit, it is truly an ugly language.

Good grief.

Xhosa is a local, so called "black language" ... No, I am not black, I come from rural areas and the farming community so that explains how I know Xhosa.

Afrikaans is the language that derives from the dutch settlers... Very similair to dutch and to a lesser extent German.

This is to date one of the most ignorant posts I have ever read on this site.

It's definitely up there.

There aren't, and because there aren't everyone assumed I was super spanish.

I'd get all of my military paraphernalia in Spanish. I ended up not joining the military because all of their good points were in comprehendible.

There were two kids in my school with my last name, and he was ESL and his parents didn't speak English.

to this day I get the "you're Spanish?!?!?!?!" comment from dip****s who think we're all deep brown and dance to mariachi.