What languages do you speak/are you learning?

[cybrxkhan]

Technically my native tongue is Vietnamese, but my English is probably more fluent. I still consider myself relatively fluent in Vietnamese, or, well, at least it's much better than a lot of second generation Vietnamese or so I've been told.

I was somewhat conversational in Mandarin Chinese once, but my Chinese has declined to the level of my Japanese at this point, meaning, I can recognize a sizeable - but otherwise irrelevant - number of words. I also used to know a bit of French when I was younger, and I was somewhat conversational in a couple of my conlangs, but that's about it.

 

[Mouthwash]

Other than my native English, I know a smattering of Hebrew, and I can read if it has nekudot.

 

[Hojsimpson]

Doesn't matter if this post is from a year ago? Ok

I speak spanish, I want to improve my english. I want to learn a bit of catalan (It's easy to understand for me, german and I'm looking for lessons of Japanese or Chinese, don't know what to choose, any suggestion?

I wanted to learn sign language also, seemed interesting and cool, but then I discovered that there are different languages in sign language, there is an "universal sign language" something like esperanto, but few know it.
So I lost the interest in sign language.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I am fluent in southern English, American standard, and Received Pronunciation. My German is strictly at a beginning level, though I've imposed a recent reading-German four-days-a-week discipline on myself. I'd like to restore my high-school Spanish, which is more practical considering the United States' increasing hispanic population. I'm interest in Danish and Dutch, though, so moving more into the Germanic languages would serve me better.

 

[NovaKart]

My native language is English.

I can speak Spanish and Turkish to an upper intermediate level but I'm really out of practice with Spanish.

I can read French but I can't really speak it if that makes sense.

I am learning Sorani Kurdish and can speak it enough to get around but still have a lot of trouble with it. There's about 4 or 5 different types of Kurdish, 2 of which are common in Iraqi Kurdistan (I think Hawrami is only spoken in one town) and all are different enough to not really be mutually intelligible. I was in the northwest where they speak Kurmanji yesterday and it was difficult to get by but fortunately a lot of people can speak some Turkish there.

I can read Arabic and end up using a lot of the vocabulary because a lot of it is used in Kurdish as well but I'm very bad at it really.

 

[Smellincoffee]

My native language is English.
I can read French but I can't really speak it if that makes sense.

In The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond mentioned meeting a great many people who claimed to be able to "hear" many languages, just not speak them.

 

[NovaKart]

I don't really understand that. Of course I can "hear" any language. Anyone with ears can do so.

 

[Hojsimpson]

I don't really understand that. Of course I can "hear" any language. Anyone with ears can do so.

I can hear and understand english and catalá if someone is talking with me, their voice tone, the words, the sound of the words, their gestures, the context, etc makes it easier to understand them.
A friend of mine wrote literature in Valenciá (dialect of catalá) and I understood most of the text even though many words were new to me. (Is a language close to spanish, but those words were not any similar to any spanish word)
I can speak english with not a high level, but I may understand someone with a higher level than me of english.

 

[NovaKart]

Yeah, maybe I'm being too particular. There's a big difference between hearing and understanding.

 

[Mouthwash]

I think that's what he means.

 

[Phrossack]

I'm pathetically bilingual. Fluent in English, merely conversational in German. I'm planning on picking up a third language when I study in Germany, but I don't know which.

I might be in love with Hungarian. It's glorious. But the uni I'll attend in Germany next spring teaches Mongolian, which I planned on learning anyway for various reasons, in part because I really want to visit Mongolia. I've been going steady with German but it's, well, boring, and I can improve it in Germany and pick up another language there, too. My family thinks I'd be better served by going for French or Arabic or Russian, and they're alright, popular, and pretty handy, but not really my type. Meanwhile, I've been eyeing Georgian and Lithuanian as well.

Argh! What do I do?

 

[dusters]

Japanese/ English are kinda native. Latvian and Russian i was forced to learn. I studied Latin and Lithuanian at Uni. I had some German at high school. I self-taught French, Polish and Italian.

I can boast that I'm a language person, but there at philology department almost everyone knew something in 5+ languages, so it wasn't a big deal.

Right now i'm looking forward to find some pen-pals to communicate with in French.

I improved my Polish a lot just by writing long e-mails to a girl in Warsaw about very complicated literature theory stuff lol.

 

[Flying Pig]

I don't really understand that. Of course I can "hear" any language. Anyone with ears can do so.

Not everyone can differentiate, though, between (say) Polish and Russian, Mandarin and Cantonese or German and Dutch, which might be what he was getting at.

 

[Winner]

I always wonder how serious people are when they say they're going to learn a minor language. Personally, I couldn't muster the motivation to learn something I would barely every use.

I have a friend who's learning Finnish, sort of, but only because that for him it is a language of magic Then I met a German girl who had a pretty advanced knowledge of Czech, which was damn impressive.

I myself have learned a few phrases in Klingon and I know (theoretically) how the grammar works; but that's strictly for fun and the cool factor of being able to say things like yIDoHQo! or naDevvo yIghoS! or sing Klingon songs.

But I can't see myself spending the thousands upon thousands of hours necessary to learn a minor foreign language in any decent capacity. I suppose you either must have a lot of free time, or an iron will.

 

[The_J]

You don't need an iron will, if you have the motivation ^^.
Some people are just fascinated by some countries, and would like to stay there, and therefore they study. No matter if it's really going to happen.

I'd also like to spend at some point a holiday in Mongolia, maybe with hiking there.
I assume you'll be utterly lost in the middle of Mongolia if you don't speak Mongolian. Therefore I'd also consider taking a course before.

And else, since my last post: I've now had a Dutch course for nearly a half year.
Can now read it a bit better, and understand the other people in the course while they'e speaking Dutch, but the natives are still not really better understandable (not that it would be really necessary, but whatever).

 

[Kyriakos]

I am pretty sure that (unless i absolutely have to, ie if i emigrate somewhere that requires it) i won't learn a third language in this life

While i surely agree that knowing at least 2 languages is hugely important (so that you can contrast the languages to each other, and notice other stuff about thought and words tied to it) i am not sure if more are needed for more of the same. I suppose some may be different enough (eg ideogram based) that they would reveal more important differences, but i am pretty set on using Greek for most of my thinking/work, and English for web communication or some book reading/ other art experiencing).

 

[Flying Pig]

It's possibly germane to the thread that I just noticed that your signature is written in a blend of Classical and Modern Greek.

 

[Kyriakos]

It's possibly germane to the thread that I just noticed that your signature is written in a blend of Classical and Modern Greek.

It is classical, but i couldn't find the version with the old tonal signs too, so it looks pretty much like modern (most of the words are the same anyway, and in the case of this phrase all of the words are).

The main difference would be that (for some braindead reason in the 1960s) we no longer use most of the third clause (don't know its name in english, in Greek it is 'dotike'- δοτικ&#942 forms (as in 'όνυξι', 'κέρασι' etc), and have the meaning with an added supplementary word, usually for "through" or "by" etc.

 

[Flying Pig]

In English it's called the Dative case - most of our grammatical terms are transliterations of the Latin translations of the Greek.

For reference, here it is written out as Classical:

Λέων μὲν ὄνυξι κρατεῖ, κέρασι δὲ βοῦς, ἀνθρώπος δὲ νῷ (or νῶ&#953

Τhere's actually an I there, which the Byzantines placed as subscript because it was only slightly - if at all - pronounced, but a Classical Greek would have written it as a normal one. Mind you, the whole system of accents and breathings is post-classical anyway. It would actually have been written:

ΛΕΩΝΜΕΝΟΝΥΞΙΚΡΑΤΕΙΚΕΡΑΣΙΔΕΒΟΥΣΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΣΔΕΝΩΙ

With word-breaks indicated if the scribe was feeling generous!

I presume the two are very mutually comprehensible, then? I mean, can most Greek-speakers read Plato and Thucydides without much trouble?

 

[Kyriakos]

Thanks I will now use that version instead

Re your question: I am not 'most Greeks'

Well... i suppose significant parts can be read, but Plato is unlikely easy to read if one just speaks/knows current Greek, cause they would at least need some etymological thinking and interest, and a dictionary close by (online dictionaries make this work far easier, of course).

But older stuff, like Homer, are usually impossible to read if you don't know ancient Greek already.