How many languages do you know?

[Erik Mesoy]

Two and a half, and two tenths, and three sixteenths, or something like that.

(Fluent: English, Norwegian.
Learning: German.
Phrases: HTML, Quenya.
A few words: Latin, Hebrew, Japanese.
To do: Greek.)

Yes, I am seriously planning on speaking over five languages. Where's the "2, working on another 5" option??

 

[The Last Conformist]

In the linguistics community, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and so on are pretty universally considered separate languages. The variation within Mandarin is greater than that among the Continental Scandinavian languages.

 

[Fox Mccloud]

Then what are they?

They are called languages.

 

[Chukchi Husky]

I barely know English...

 

[Dann]

In the linguistics community, Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and so on are pretty universally considered separate languages. The variation within Mandarin is greater than that among the Continental Scandinavian languages.

I can attest to that.

There was a thread here in a Chinese forum here where they wrote one sentence in standard Mandarin followed by translations of that sentence in every major dialect. The first few ones in Beijingese, Nanjingese, etc. were almost identical to standard Mandarin. The next lot like Hunanese, Szechuanese, Guizhouhua etc. starts to differ a bit, but you can still get the gist of the sentence. Further down, Shanghainese and a lot of others become undecipherable unless you're a native speaker. By the time they get to Cantonese the sentence already makes no sense whatsoever if you read it as Mandarin. And finally upon reaching Hokkien they can't even find Chinese characters to represent some of the sounds, and had to just spell out those words using Roman letters.

 

[bad_ronald]

Not even Cantonese, Hokkien, Mandarin, etc.?

I am also a linguist, and they are most certainly separate languages. The difference between a dialect and a language is mutual intelligibility (that is the mutual intelligibility of the spoken language not the written language, since a literate speaker of Chinese may even be able to extract the meaning of a Japanese sentence through the kanji - not likely, but possible). However, the term "dialect" with regards to Chinese specifically has a slightly different meaning for linguists. Chinese is traditionally grouped into eight different "regionalects" which are not mutually intelligible; they are: Mandarin (Putonghua), Wu, Yue, Northern Min, Southern Min, Xiang, Hakka, and Gan. Each regionalect can have any number of dialects, and any two dialects which are members of the same regionalect are mutually intelligible, but two dialects of different regionalects are not.

To make it slightly simpler, each regionalect is its own language, and each "dialect of Chinese" is actually a dialect of one of eight distinct languages (regionalects).

It is true, however, that some dialects that are spoken in a border area with another regionalect may be mutually intelligible. This is very similar to the Modern Romance languages where the Spanish spoken near the border with Portugal may be very close the Portuguese dialect spoken right across the border. Such areas are said to form a "dialect continuum". The only other dialect continuum that I have studied is that of the Germanic dialects of the period right before the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain (in a History of the English Language course).

 

[The Last Conformist]

There's alot of such dialect continua around. As I was saying in galgacus European languages thread, Continental Scandinavian is one, as far as the local dialects are concerned.

(In case that "also" refers to me, no, I'm not a linguist. I'm just tolerably adept at impersonating one. )

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

English, forced to work on Spanish in school.

 

[Azadre]

Fluent = English

Learning Farsi and French

 

[airrahul]

Marked three and learning another. Can speak and read English 100% as it's my native language. I put down three as I speak Telegu and Hindi (south Indian language and nat'l language of India respectively) around the house and consider myself fluent enough in both so that if I spend time with relatives or go to India, I can speak them fine in like a week. Can read Hindi also. I'm working on French, with two years behind me and a third ongoing, but still have a ways to go. I'd like to learn Arabic in college and then maybe Farsi along with Urdu (though Urdu is really similar to Hindi). My goal is to learn aas many languages as possible.

 

[YNCS]

Having been born in England and lived in the United States for over 30 years, my English is colloquial. Having lived in Quebec for eight years, I can read, write and speak Quebecois (Canadian French).

BTW, I've always liked the comment one French Canadian made to me: "I speak English, I don't understand it."

 

[Vladyc]

Languages I can speak fluently: sadly, only English. But I still have plenty of time to learn more.

Languages I am learning: Spanish and French

Languages I would like to learn: Gallic and Russian

 

[ShiplordAtvar]

Dialects are'nt considered languages.

Heh. It is a bit of a joke. I realize that the regional differences in the spoken English language don't rise to the level of regular mutual unintelligiblity. Sure does make it pretty easy figuring out where someone grew up though.

And wouldn't you know it, but there's about five different accents/dialects in Texas alone.

 

[ShiplordAtvar]

German, English and French
studying Latin in school, but I can't talk in Latin

@the-one-who-thought-all-European-speak-several-languages-but-whose-name-I-forgot There is a big difference between the big monolingual countries (Germany, UK, France) and the small multilingual countries (Switzerland, Belgium) and the Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, etc.. ). The first don't need to learn a second language that much, so they don't do it properly. The second learn their second or third national language in school from 'early' on, and are therefore better than their bigger neighbours. The third and last need to speak these languages perfectly, because most of the young people want to leave their country and come to Western Europe (that was my experience in Bulgaria).
Plus, it has a big influence if you live in a border region. I myself encounter French in everyday live because most of the service man/women and the ones you pay in the Supermarket (blackout in name for them ... ) here come from the Alsace.

mfG mitsho

mitsho

It was me. Well, I should have let it be known that my experience of Europe is rather limited, consisting primarily of what I soaked up on a ten day trip to London in college (when I wasn't getting drunk or laid).

I also realize that this is like someone from perhaps France or Moldova feeling qualified to opine on matters American after having spent a week and a half in NYC chasing beers & babes.

With regards to the border area thing, damn near every school district in any state along our border with Mexico teaches Spanish. Kinda dumb not to when there's a whole bunch of hispanics here, a large portion of whom (for whatever reason) don't learn English.

There's some parts of Texas where kids still learn German (I think its an offshoot of old High German, from settlers from 160 years ago) and Czech. In the area where I live, you have more people with Czech & German surnames than Spanish ones.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Languages I can speak fluently: sadly, only English. But I still have plenty of time to learn more.

Languages I am learning: Spanish and French

Languages I would like to learn: Gallic and Russian

Gallic? You're not speaking of Gaulish, are you?

 

[LouLong]

English, German (but getting rusty), written Spanish (fluent) but I never practiced the oral, basic Polish, Mandarine (very advanced), Japanese (intermediate).

Would be hard to count 5 or 6 though as I am far from fluent in most.

 

[mitsho]

@Shiplordatvar Sorry for forgetting your name And, well it's always interesting to learn some more...
The border area thing seems something that is correct everywhere...

mfG mitsho

 

[Vladyc]

Gallic? You're not speaking of Gaulish, are you?

I'm taking a course at school currently about ancient Irish mythology, and as part of the course we learned some of the language. I thought it was an interesting and cool sounding language, and I might want to learn more. Obviously it has little to none practical usefullness, but it is fun to know languages like this.

The actual name of the language is Gaelic.

 

[Smidlee]

I barely know English...

yeap, I still having trouble learning my first one: English

 

[Damnyankee]

Fluent in English, Spanish,and Italian

Working on French and Arabic