Which languages do you speak?

I thought it might be nice to get an idea of the linguistic makeup of this site, and maybe this thread could act as a general language discussion thread if people are interested. So PFers, which languages do you know? How well can you speak them? How and why did you learn them? Apologies if I left out any major languages in the poll.

English and French are the only ones I can honestly say I speak genuinely fluently/at a native or near-native level. English is my mother tongue (yep, for real) and was the language my parents spoke to each other since they each spoke a different native language. I've known French since I was 4 but only started getting really good and studying intensively in the last 4-5 years of my life, and it's now almost at the same level as my English. My Croatian (100% mutually intelligible with Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrin, but my dialect is standard Croatian) is fairly fluent too at this stage, but I make more mistakes, particularly in writing and when I'm not careful. This is the one I taught myself, so although it feels more natural to me, I'm not as grammatically well-trained.Then there's German, in which I'm solid (upper-intermediate) but not fluent and my comprehension is far better than my expression, and Spanish, in which I can hold a passable conversation but my grammar and vocab are rusty and I can't discuss anything technical or profound. Those are the only 5 which I usually say I can speak, though whenever I speak in Spanish I inform people that my Spanish is not very good. I can also get by in Russian, though some of the Russophones here will know that my Russian is godawful, understand everything in Gujarati and Hindi/Urdu but speak very badly and I know Latin at an intermediate level but obviously can't speak it. I really, really have to work at my Russian, but I'm working on brushing up my existing languages at the moment.

 

Danish, Italian, Portuguese and English.
My German and Spanish is ok. Swedish and Norwegian are very similar to Danish, but that is practically cheating.

I learned Italian and Portuguese at home. English I studied in elementary, high school and uni. French and German in elementary school and high school.

 

You Scandinavian people are so good at languages it's not even fair :'(

How come you learnt Italian and Portuguese?

 

My dad is Italian and my mom Portuguese.
You are pretty good yourself. I see no reason to complain.
You have the chance to learn a lot of languages. They are also very dependent on knowing them given their size.

 

That's an interesting mix! I guess so, but I never got the chance to learn 3 at school. The most we can possibly do is 2 and many people do none.

 

Andalucian (dialect) Spanish, and Castilian if I slow down a bit.

 

I studied Spanish, the Spanish style in high school. I come close to forgetting it until I read or hear spanish then it starts to come back.

German I picked up in Germany but never was real fluent. I could travel around Germany and have enough language to get food and places to stay and get directions.

A funny thing happened to me in Berlin. I was not far from the bombed out catholic church and this guy came to me and in German asked me how to use the Ubahn. Subway to the english speakers.

I was telling him how to get from A to B on the transportation system of Berlin when he suddenly blurts out if I can speak English. I heard his English are immediately knew he came from England. We finished in English.

 

I think Spannish is a beautiful language; I learnt to speak it during my two years as an RAF police dog handler in Gibraltar (hence the Andalucian bias). Apart from the gender issue it's probably the easiest language to learn because it's so phonetic - if you know the peculiarities of pronunciation of the alpha characters then you are able to say the words.

 

I know english..........and I have an app for the rest.

 

I speak Mandarin Chinese, and I can marginally understand sichuanhua. My understanding of Mandarin in northern provinces is petty decent, and I can understand standard Mandarin decently well.

I majored in Chinese, FYI.

 

Feel it is time to bump this thread because I have no life.

I speak Swedish and English on a fluent level (previous being my native tongue as I am born and raised in Sweden) and I also speak Turkish and Finnish as I grew up speaking those languages with my parents.

I took French from 7th grade 'til I graduated high school, but my French is nowhere near as good as it should be in relation to how many years I spent learning it. Now, I have not read or spoken it for 6 years and it is sort of fading away although it still surprises me how much I understand of written French.

I am a huge italophile and have been able to learn some Italian only by listening to it alot. If I actually made a serious effort learning it, I'd master it within 6 months or so.

 

Only french (native) and english (learned at school but I had to learn a big part by myself), I speak only a little bit german however. I took re inforced german at school, then english, but the lack of opportunities to use it made my german really poor.

 

Swedish, Norwegian,English and German. I learned German in school and I've been there a many times to watch Football/Soccer, and thats one of the reasons I've learnt it. Im a huge fan of German football and I travel there atleast 4 times every year.

 

English

Ebonics

Enough German and Spanish to get by on.

Some Vietnamese and Comanche.

 

I picked up Thai and Lao working with the Thai and Lao army during the war. Then married a Thai girl, been married close to 50 years now. My oldest daughter married a Laotian. So it isn't unusual in my house to have three languages used in the same sentence, English, Thai and Lao.

 

English and Pig Latin.

I studied Latin and Japanese in school, but I barely remember anything of those.

 

English and bad English, the latter I have mastered. I also know enough Japanese and German to initiate a conversation that would be beyond my ability to keep up with.

 

I am Spanish, also speak catalan, and my English it is not that bad. I did 2 years of German at high school, although it was a waste of time.

 

I majored in Japanese at the GCSE level in community college.
I'm most proud about knowing how to use my smartphone in Japanese; It's another alphabet on my phone, like English and Emoji, I also installed Japanese... I set my phone to Japanese 1 time, and ever since going back to English, I've had 3 fonts.
At first, the Japanese keyboard threw me and I saw characters I hadn't seen in over 10 years, they felt like old friends to me that I hadn't seen in a while.

Languages aren't like riding a bike, if you don't practise, you'd forget how to do it.

 

I did learn a fair bit of Mandarin as I was doing a lot of work with the Chinese communities in the UK but I'm losing that as I hardly speak it any more. I was getting pretty good, able to hold a reasonable conversation.
Indonesian is my main language at the moment as I live here but I also have a smattering of Javanese.

English is my native tongue.

 

French, German, Italian, Cantonese, Indonesian, English. Some fluently, the others enough to stay alive for 24hrs.

I don't really remember what it feels like to speak only one language. I think now, it would make me feel a bit isolated or separated from my fellows. As though there was a link missing betwixt me and people on the other side of the planet.

Edited to add that I have a smattering of Arabic, also. A beautiful, musical language. Would love to have more.

 

English is my mother tongue, I can speak patois... I learned that from growing up and going to school here and all the other kids, black, white, asian, Indian, whatever right, just a rainbow of kids including yours truly going wawrong if something's up and wapen to find out wagwan, (What's going on).
My father is older and I'm a throw back.
He's also a Cockney from Hoxton born in 1939 prior WWII and when war broke out, we migrated to Battersea and he never was evacuated, etc.. etc... and he taught me Cockney, the language of his people.

I know he's a Guvnor, I know also I'm Guvnor, and in my day job when I'm working (not studying); I like to use Cockney (it just helps).. But there's more to Cockney than just Guv' -
You drop the H; How becomes Ow. Hat becomes At, Home becomes Ome..
Moggy is a cat.
Camel is a bus.
Ow's your belly full of spots? means How are you?
Toad is road.
Apples and Pairs is stairs.
Kambibalongo means river.
Coal means guitar, or fiddle.
(I'm just joking about the last 2 'river and guitar', but the rest are true).

 

Bagus, sekali. Anda super pintar!

Selalu lupa Bahasa saya. Aku seharusnya lancar, tapi tak bermimpi di dalamnya lagi. Sedih

 

I swear Swedish is Scandinavian and not Germanic.

 

Japanese 101

I am, Jinsei no retorikku Sensei, but you may call me retorikku Sensei.

I'm going to start you off with Hiragana & Katakana using Romaji.

すし
Sushi

すし is how you spell Sushi in basic Japanese...
If you ever read すし, it says Sushi.
す Su
し Shi
すし Sushi

Comprende?