How many languages do you understand?

[naervod]

I have had dreams in Spanish, but sometimes they are in French when I dream about French babes.

 

[The Yankee]

I know English (I mean REAL English, not some of what you try to decipher on some of the streets) and I understand most Spanish. I can't follow fast talking Spanish and I may get into a trap trying to speak it, but I can read and write in it.

EDIT: I'm wondering what language I want to study in college. I'm torn between Mandarin, Japanese, Russian, and Arabic.

 

[Grisu]

I understand three languages: German (native), English and to a lesser degree, french.

It's four, if you count Swiss-German as a separate language

 

[Johan Lackland]

If a Norwegian says he "automatically" understands Swedish and Danish (implying, I assume, that no formal education is needed by a native Norwegian speaker to understand clearly a Swedish or Danish speaker),...

Actually, I (and most other Norwegians) wouldn't understand a Danish speaker clearly if he didn't speak slowly and repeated himself a few times. On the other hand, we would in most cases understand a Swedish speaker without problems. The strange thing is that written Danish is better understood than written Swedish by most Norwegians (it's not a big difference - most Norwegians read Danish and Swedish well).

This is because the largest written language in Norway (we really have two written Norwegian languages - and i write the smaller one (that is, the one with fewest users (OK, start reading the sentence over again ))) simply is Danish "made Norwegian". The reason why we have this special language situation is that were in an union with Denmark for over 400 years and during that time Danish were the official language in Norway. The spoken language were of course the different dialects - only the rulers and the "upper class" spoke Danish. After the union ended in 1814 (and we got into an union with Sweden), and we got our own Constitution, people started thinking about getting a written language that is Norwegian. Some would base this language upon Danish, and some would base it upon the dialects. Some lunatics would even base it upon only ONE dialect, but apparently they didn't gain much support, so today we have two written languages, nynorsk (New Norwegian), wich is based on the rural dialects and were made by a guy called Ivar Aasen, and bokmål (book language) wich is based upon Danish.

I really hope you like history...

 

[yaroslav]

Spanish (my mother tongue) and I'm trying to improve my English constantly.

I would love to learn other "latin-derived" languages, like Portuguese (nice language) or Italian...

 

[greece's_prince]

Hmmm...Well I know English and modern Greek for sure (there's three forms of Greek), I know some Spanish (you kinda have to know Spanish if you live anywhere in southern Texas) and a little ancient Greek.

I can't carry on a conversation with a Greek if he or she is speaking fast.

 

[Stapel]

I can understand Dutch, English, German and French. Though understanding French becomes hard, when it is spoken rapidly.

Furthermore, I won't die when left alone in Spain or Italy. I am not able to understand radio news there, but a paper is fine!

 

[Knowze Gungk]

Nun

 

[Ren]

I'm fluent in English; I can understand most any accent thrown at me, but I can sometimes be beaten when a lot of unusual slang is used

I can understand a lot of written German, but I can't get meaning from spoken unless it's slow, repeated and in short common words I can write a bit if I have time to think about it (IE I can't speak very well when put on the spot). I learn German at school now.

I did French for 1 year back in year 8 (in year 11 now) and I remember 1 or 2 sentences and about 10 words I intend picking it back up one day...

Voting 2.

 

[Ancient Grudge]

English

working on arabis very slowly

 

[Darkness]

3 - Dutch, English and German...

 

[Stormbringer]

ok, lets see. English, Spanish, Italian are the once i learned, so I am not completley fluent, but can speak and understand. Russian is my first language, so thats 4. Now, Ukranian and Belarusian are a given, also Tatar and Kazakh (i'm from over there, lived in tatarstan and visited Kazahstan a lot) so all together that makes 8 at least. Also some polish, rumanian etc, but not enough for a news report or a newspaper.

 

[Chris85]

English and French mainly, but I can partially understand Spainish and German.

 

[mrtn]

I voted two, English and Swedish, but maybe I should have voted four, after reading the scandinavian debate. If a Norwegian/Dane speak slowly I'll get the gist, but they have to give me some help. I read comics (and not only childrens' ones) in both languages without problem, but I don't think I'd read a book.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

3 - two of which are exotics to you guys. English, Mandarin Chinese and Malay. I also understand a couple of Chinese dialects fairly well, which are practically completely separate languages fr Mandarin.

 

[durfal]

I'm fluent in Dutch (native) , English and German.
I speak and understand some French.
I studied Spanish for a year but reading and understanding is going better than speaking it.
Also can read a bit of Portuguese and Italian but don't speak or understand it (most native spreakers speak it too fast for me to understand)

 

[HuckFinn]

5... Finnish (mother tongue), English (fluent), Swedish (near fluent if I ever used it a bit, mandatory second language of the country, god I hate it so much on historical and political grounds), German, French (in the can-read-newspaper category)

 

[covok48]

English and Spanish.

Does C++ count? Since that took me as much time and frustration to comprehend as Spanish.

 

[HuckFinn]

oh... if those count..

Java, C, C++, Scheme (other Lisps), Prolog, BASIC, bash scripts, x86 assembly...

And of course a number of languages that don't qualify as programming ones.

 

[Benderino]

English, some Italian, even less German, even less Spanish than that.

I can read Hebrew and pronounce it, but I don't actually know much of what I'm saying. It's like learning two languages at once.