What languages do you speak/are you learning?

[Ashcristokos]

I like asking these sorts of questions because I like learning foreign languages. Pelt me with hatred and rotten vegetable matter if you must!

Anyways, what languages do you guys speak, or which ones are you learning? I'm not sure where the majority of the people on this board come from. Americans tend to be monolingual English speakers who can count to ten in Spanish; continental Europeans, in my limited experience, are often bi- or trilingual in English (though their English is often very...interesting), their native tongue, and some other European language spoken in neighboring countries.

Me? Well, English is my native language, but I speak German fluently and Arabic...at an advanced level I suppose, though I often feel like the language is kicking my ass. I can communicate in basic Dutch, but so can any German speaker, and I'm learning Brazilian Portuguese because I have friends from Brazil...and well, why not?

 

[sophie]

Welcome to OT. We get one of these threads like, every 6 months, so next time try to do a quick search first.

Anyway:
English (native)
Spanish (fluent)
French (Reading+semi-fluency; I can understand speakers fluently for the most part, but I'm still not a great speaker)
German (3rd year student)
Welsh (some very basic words and phrases, decent knowledge of rudimentary grammar; my pronunciation isn't terrible)
Italian (I can generally understand an Italian speaker provided they go very slowly)

Over this next year I'm going to be looking to pick up Latin and refine my French and German. With those tools I'll be well ready for Graduate School I think. Oh I'm going to have to pick up Fraktur at some point too. Not looking forward to that.

For fun I'd love to pick up Old English. I have a heavy interest in historical linguistics of the Germanic family so that would be a great one to start with. I don't think I'd be doing this for a long time though. I'm much more likely to be learning the intricacies of the cluster[copulation] that was MHG and EMHG during the Late Middle Ages/Early Modern Period.

If you're interested in practicing your languages we have a couple threads that allow posters to converse in languages other than English (otherwise you aren't allowed to carry on conversations in non-English and any non-English has to have English translations provided).

Here are a few:
French
German
Chinese

There's also a Spanish one, but I can't seem to be able to find it, and I could have sworn there was one for Latin as well but that one isn't showing up to searches either. I don't remember if there were ones for Russian or Arabic. We certainly have some Russian speakers here though. There aren't many Arabic-speaking regulars here, to my knowledge; maybe one or two.

 

[ywhtptgtfo]

I am learning Javascript, XSL, and JSP at the moment.

 

[warpus]

Polish (native)
English (perfect)
German (used to be fluent, now not so fluent)
Spanish, French (i know some words)

 

[Praise_Satan]

continental Europeans, in my limited experience, are often bi- or trilingual in English (though their English is often very...interesting), their native tongue, and some other European language spoken in neighboring countries.

Oh yes. You should hear me pronounce English. Finnish is my mother tongue and in Finnish you put stress on the first syllable every time and we Finns tend to do that when speaking English too. I guess it makes the speech sound very monotone.

This is what I'd put in my CV:
Finnish: native
English: fluent
Swedish: rubbish
German: miserable

 

[Winner]

I like asking these sorts of questions because I like learning foreign languages. Pelt me with hatred and rotten vegetable matter if you must!

*hides a rotten tomato* Uhm...

I speak Czech (my native language), I understand and can approximate Slovak (which most reasonably intelligent Czechs who've had some exposure to it can do), I am reasonably fluent in English, and I am trying to learn German, although the progress isn't what I'd like it to be.

Long term plan: learn Russian und später vielleicht ein bisschen Spanisch.

I feel that for a Central European, English+German is the winning combination, whereas some knowledge of Russian can only boost your career opportunities. Spanish would be interesting because it's spoken in most of Latin America, but I am pretty sceptical about my capacity to learn it on my own.

Oh yes. You should hear me pronounce English. Finnish is my mother tongue and in Finnish you put stress on the first syllable every time and we Finns tend to do that when speaking English too. I guess it makes the speech sound very monotone.

Ditto Czech. Stress always on the first syllable. I've managed to get my word stress and rhytm pretty good for a non-native speaker, but it's sometimes incredibly hard to teach to beginner/intermediate learners. Especially since the English stress patters are INSANE (=irregular is the technical term, but I prefer the former).

I've met a few Finns, and their accent is indeed very recognizable. Cute, usually. I think you also have a bit of a problem with the post-alveolar affricates (sh as in sheep or the first sounds in giraffe or jam).

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Primary: German, the language of the country I live in, the language in which I think and the language that I speak without an accent (well, maybe a regional Rhineland accent).

Secondary, and I dare say pretty much native speaker level: English. The language of most media I consume now and most scientific papers I read. I often write in English, but I have barely spoken it in years. I'm fluent but I'm sure I have a pretty strong German accent by now.

Tertiary: Serbocroatian, the language of my parents. It was the first language I learned in my life, but now I only use it now to communicate with family. I don't write and I rarely read it. I'm fluent but I wouldn't trust myself to read or write a scientific paper or hold my own in a debate.

Almost tertiary in the sense that it's slowly becoming better than my Serbocroatian: Mandarin. University courses and only a bit of practice. I'm semi-fluent and have still problems with the tones if a sentence becomes too long. As for writing and reading characters, I'm now at the level where the Chinese government would officially consider me (barely) literate.

Honorable mention:
French: I had three years of French in school, but that was a long time ago. I still know the grammar but I have forgotten most of the vocabulary. I'm still able to comprehend some of it when I hear/read it.
Bulgarian: Similar enough to Serbocroatian to be mutually intelligible if the other guy doesn't speak too fast.

Many other slavic languages depending on the context, but often to a far leser degree than Bulgarian. Polish seems to give me the most trouble.

 

[LamaGT]

There was probably another thread like this but let's do it anyway.

My primary language is probably Italian, but it's not my mother language. Still, there's really no difference between a native and me.

My mother language is Russian but I only speak it with my family, often mixing Italian words in it. My Russian accent is still fine, I've only lost a bit of the phrase construction order and forgot some of the vocabulary.

Next up is English, I can write and understand it pretty well, not sure about speaking but I suppose it's not bad. My English vocabulary is also bigger than the Russian one

Honorable mention goes to Ukrainian which I can understand well but I'd be lost if I had to say even one word, and French which I studied in school a bit and due to similarities with Italian I can understand decently.

 

[Praise_Satan]

Ditto Czech. Stress always on the first syllable. I've managed to get my word stress and rhytm pretty good for a non-native speaker, but it's sometimes incredibly hard to teach to beginner/intermediate learners. Especially since the English stress patters are INSANE (=irregular is the technical term, but I prefer the former).

I've met a few Finns, and their accent is indeed very recognizable. Cute, usually. I think you also have a bit of a problem with the post-alveolar affricates (sh as in sheep or the first sounds in giraffe or jam).

Aww It's recognisable all right, but not cute.
Yah, 'sh' is hard cos there's no 'sh' in Finnish, just 's'. Ship, sheep etc. We've borrowed the word shopping from English (shoppailla) but it's really pronounced as soppailla. Same with shampoo, shakki (chess) etc borrowed words, most people pronounce them 'sampoo' and 'sakki'. Languages can be so fun and interesting. Giraffe and jam might be hard to pronounce correctly but there's one word I'll never learn to pronounce and that's 'squirrel'. It's impossible! u and e in the same word like that and a consonant cluster. Barf. No vowel harmony at all.

--> off to buy some Czech beer

 

[AdamCrock]

Polish - native
English - hope my english is not truly screwed up !
German - basic education / can remember few sentences - words
French - just a few words
Spanish - as above

 

[Winner]

Aww It's recognisable all right, but not cute.

Well, most of the Finns I talked to were girls, so... ehm

Yah, 'sh' is hard cos there's no 'sh' in Finnish, just 's'. Ship, sheep etc. We've borrowed the word shopping from English (shoppailla) but it's really pronounced as soppailla. Same with shampoo, shakki (chess) etc borrowed words, most people pronounce them 'sampoo' and 'sakki'. Languages can be so fun and interesting. Giraffe and jam might be hard to pronounce correctly but there's one word I'll never learn to pronounce and that's 'squirrel'. It's impossible! u and e in the same word like that and a consonant cluster. Barf. No vowel harmony at all.

I currently study something that includes a bit of phonetics and linguistics, so it never ceases to amaze me how varied and weird/funny/different languages can be Finnish is of course a bit of a special case since it doesn't belong to the same language family as most other European languages (do you guys understand Estonian?).

I've got a friend who's been learning Finnish (he considers the language "magical"). The question he gets most often from Finnish native speakers when he tells them he's learning it is "WHY?!"

 

[Smellincoffee]

I'm trying to retain and improve my uni-level German, and have every intention of reviving my high school Spanish. I enjoy German more, but Spanish is more useful in the US..

 

[Tahuti]

Human languages:

Dutch: Native
English: Native level
French: Passable, near-fluent reading skills
German: Passable
Spanish: So-so
Russian: Rubbish, but almost passable
Mandarin: Same as with Russian, but with much lesser reading skills

In addition, I also know a smattering of Swedish, Italian, Hebrew and Armenian.

Programming & scripting languages:

C#: Good
UnrealScript: Good
PHP & all those other standard webdesign languages: Passable
C/C++: Passable
Java: Passable
Python: Rubbish
Lua: Rubbish

 

[Praise_Satan]

Well, most of the Finns I talked to were girls, so... ehm

I currently study something that includes a bit of phonetics and linguistics, so it never ceases to amaze me how varied and weird/funny/different languages can be Finnish is of course a bit of a special case since it doesn't belong to the same language family as most other European languages (do you guys understand Estonian?).

I've got a friend who's been learning Finnish (he considers the language "magical"). The question he gets most often from Finnish native speakers when he tells them he's learning it is "WHY?!"

Tere. Minu nimi on ... Ma asun(?) Soomes(?). Nägemiseni. (Estonian, excuse my poor skills)
Terve. Minun nimeni on ... Minä asun Suomessa. Näkemiin. (Finnish)
Hello. My name is .... I live in Finland. Goodbye.
And these languages were separated some 2000 or 1500 years ago and still look so similar. It's pretty cool and amazing. Finnish came to these areas 500 years ago, before that it was Sami languages that were spoken here. Bloody hell.
Estonian sounds familiar but different. Some of it I can clearly understand but a lot is lost but still Estonia <3

How is it with Czech and Slovakian? They're are similar, no? How similar, does it sound like drunken Czech? How would you say those previous sentences in Czech?

 

[AdamCrock]

Kaiserguard: Would You like some vodka ? (note: if not than russian not "passable"

 

[classical_hero]

I am a native English speaker.
I can fluently read French but not speak it or listen to it, since it has been far too long since I tried to do that.

 

[Tahuti]

Kaiserguard: Would You like some vodka ? (note: if not than russian not "passable"

Da, spasiba.

 

[AdamCrock]

Da, spasiba.

Spasiba ! (You have passed the test )

 

[AdamCrock]

Not that Germany makes one of the best beer in the world and I got tempted .... well YES I got tempted !!!!!

 

[Ajidica]

Speak English natively, learning Spanish (300 level), and want to learn Russian.