What languages do you know/speak?

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lorenzomicron

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I thought it would be cool to hear about what different languages people know/speak, because we did this for a club I am in and we were all surprised by the languages that came up! So, let's say what languages we know/speak and how we learned it? (apart from English)

Anyways, I'll go,

Dutch, native tongue
Spanish, from school/college
Hindi, from family members
Farsi, taking some classes now
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American English, native.
Spanish (studied ages 4-17)
Japanese (lived in Japan, major)

Plus some Arabic, Cantonese, and Vietnamese, though that's limited, from family.
 
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Estonian (native language).
English.
Some Russian and German. Studied these at school.
 
lorenzomicron said:
I thought it would be cool to hear about what different languages people know/speak, because we did this for a club I am in and we were all surprised by the languages that came up! So, let's say what languages we know/speak and how we learned it? (apart from English)

Anyways, I'll go,

Dutch, native tongue
Spanish, from school/college
Hindi, from family members
Farsi, taking some classes now
Click to expand...

why are you learning farsi?
 
Wow, you learned all that from your family? Must be very diverse! that's so cool. do you think it gets easier to learn more languages the more you know?

Janieve said:
American English, native.
Spanish (studied ages 4-17)
Japanese (lived in Japan, major)

Plus some Arabic, Cantonese, and Vietnamese, though that's limited, from family.
Click to expand...
 
Farsi khoob balad neestam

 
Last edited by a moderator:
English (native)
Spanish
a little bit of Italian because of family, but I understand much more than I can speak.
 
lorenzomicron said:
do you think it gets easier to learn more languages the more you know?
Click to expand...

I'm fluent in 3 (2 I learned growing up, and the third I learned through many years of classes/conversing/studying in the country), and basically conversant in another two. I think your statement is definitely true. I've tutored a lot of languages informally and formally, and what I've noticed from students that pick up the language quickly vs people that don't, is that it's a shift in mindset that helps you learn the language, rather than just learning a bunch of words and rules. I think people that already have a couple languages under that belt naturally understand that, whereas people that only know one don't realize it at first.

I think a problem people have when learning and using a new language is they try to think of the sentence in their native tongue, and then attempt to translate that sentence into the desired target language. This is recipe for disaster. What's better is to start thinking entirely in the target language. Obviously you can't do much when all you have is a semester under your belt, but I think its much better and useful to be able to say "I go to car" rather than attempting to translate "I am going to my car now" and then giving up because you don't know how to say that.

Someone told me that I was "brainwashing" them when I was teaching them to try and think that way :laugh: I like to call it "learning" 😛
 
American English (now lives here)
UK English (went to high school in London)
Urdu (born and raised in Pakistan)
Hindi (watch Indian channels)
Arabic (because of my religion Islam)

🙂
 
English, native
German, lived in Vienna, married to an Austrian
Japanese, by no means fluent, took 4 semesters in college and still read, speak a bit.
 
Spanish (I'm Colombian)
French (two years in hs. Spanish helped a lot too)
 
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English
Russian
Understand but can't speak Ukrainian

I need to get Spanish down one of these days.
 
American English (Been living in the U.S. for almost 10 years)
British English (Learnt in Pakistan from kindergarten to high school)
Urdu (Grew up in Pakistan. English and Urdu are Pakistan's official languges.)
Hindi (I've a lot of Indian friends and I watch Indian movies often.)
Arabic (I can read and understnd Arabic but can't speak.)
Spanish (Worked in a restaurant during college years and learned from Mexican co-workers.)
 
English and Spanish from growing up. Starting teaching myself Dutch when I was 13 because I planned on emigrating there.😀 Lived there for 3-4 months when I was 18 and realized being an uneducated immigrant that only wanted to party and hang out in coffee shops around Amsterdam wasn't as easy as I fantasized it would be.😳 Started teaching myself French not to long ago. I still suck at it. 😎
 
French - first language learned + 3 years in high school
American English
Haitian Creole

Spanish - definitely understand more than I can speak (2 years in undergrad)

Japanese - I watch tons of Asian dramas, especially J-drama, so I started picking up words. Finally decided to teach myself last year

Tagalog - boyfriend is Filipino and I'm totally trying to impress his parents lol
 
American English (native)
British English (from watching too much BBCAmerica)
Japanese (four years of high school)
 
Both English and Spanish are native to me. I speak Italian as well.
 
Tribal language up in hurr from a desolate area in central Africa, found hidden deep in the forests.
 
English - native
Spanish - grew up in Cali and worked in restaurants for years and years, plus a few college classes.
French - 4 years in HS, 5 years in college (yes, it took 5 years) as a French major
Arabic - 1 year of intensive (40 hr/wk) courses via the military
 
lorenzomicron said:
Wow, you learned all that from your family? Must be very diverse! that's so cool. do you think it gets easier to learn more languages the more you know?
Click to expand...

It definitely gets easier to learn new languages when you already know a few. It really is a mindset type of thing. You don't learn to speak a new language; you learn to think it. Which admittedly can be awkward; there have been times when I spoke the wrong language to someone just because I was in that mindset. (For some reason, Starbucks always makes me speak Japanese to the barista)

As for my family - yeah, a little bit, I guess. Funny how you don't realize it until it's pointed out to you!
 
inb4 do programming languages count & following debate
 
Finnish - from family, plus living there for a while. It's getting rusty.
Swedish - required in Finnish schools. Extremely rusty.
Italian - I ROCKED college Italian (intermediate) classes, sadly it's slipping away too. If I hadn't majored in bio, I would've totally gone for Italian, love it!
 
English (obviously) - native

Dutch - I can speak a few words, but understand way more than I can speak. My grandmother is fluent and used to speak to my mother in it all the time so I wouldn't know what she was talking about. 😛 I pieced enough together to learn when they were speaking about something I should care about.

Spanish - 1 year in middle school, plus I grew up in South Florida. Read/Understand a little.

French - 2 years in high school. Read/Understand some.

Latin - 2 semesters in college, formerly reading proficient. Still not too bad.

Romanian - I can read Romanian rather well for someone who has never met a native speaker or really anyone who knew any Romanian at all, I know a few phrases as far as speaking goes. I'm much better at reading though.

Russian - 1 semester in college. Do not ask me to read it unless it is transliterated. I can understand a little, but my ability to speak is almost non-existent.

Yinglish - no one as far as I can tell can make up their mind if this is officially a language or not. It's a Yiddish/English mixture. When I get stressed, I switch to it. Technically that would be the only other language I am fluent in.
 
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familyaerospace said:
Yinglish - no one as far as I can tell can make up their mind if this is officially a language or not. It's a Yiddish/English mixture. When I get stressed, I switch to it. Technically that would be the only other language I am fluent in.
Click to expand...
Haha definitely not a language. I guess I "speak it" as well.




Since I'm posting here I'd add that I'm fluent in Hebrew.
I also have basic knowledge of Yiddish, and I am slightly conversant in it.
 
You guys are all tools for saying "American English" instead of just straight up "American."
 
Swahili. I lived in Tanzania for about two and a half years.
 
Deutsch! Because my family lives in Germany and I spent a year there for grad school (and English, obviously).
 
I'm Canadian, so English and French equally well.

Everyone needs to stop listing languages of countries they visited once for a week, or languages they took one semester of - "Intro to ____ Part 1" - in college.
 
Aside from English, I'm only fluent in Russian, but based on the criteria of "knowing" languages in this thread, I also "know" Spanish and Hebrew.
 
wanderer100 said:
Haha definitely not a language. I guess I "speak it" as well.
Click to expand...

The reason that I mentioned it is because at one point it was recognised as it's own language and had it's own language code (yib). The code was retired in 2007 because they said native English speakers could understand it completely. Right! Try speaking Yinglish in most parts of Georgia, LOL. That is how I know when I am getting stressed. No one can understand a word that I am saying unless they are Jewish or came from a Jewish heavy area.
 
english and chinese

honestly i am kind of surprised at how many people know some form of asian language.

oh and LOLCATNESE

can i haz cheezebergur
 
Cleavername said:
english and chinese

honestly i am kind of surprised at how many people know some form of asian language.

oh and LOLCATNESE

can i haz cheezebergur
Click to expand...

For shame. For shame.

It's i can haz cheezburger. And you call yourself a speaker of the language!
 
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