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Languages!

whale_bone

whale_bone

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
What languages do you speak? What would you like to learn?

From most fluent to least fluent: English, French, Spanish... a little Quechua and some German. I'd like to learn Russian, Mongolian and Mi'kmaq next!
 
Well, I know some decent German (I was born there), but I'm about to start to seriously sit down and learn Dutch (about to move there at the end of the month). I'll actually be doing some classes when I get there. I know some basic conversational Japanese and can read/do basics in Russian (my parents were Russian linguists).

BUT, ideally, if I were to learn any others- I'd like to get better at Japanese or learn some French. Although the basics of different ones are handy, I'd really like to be fluent in another language sometime.
 
I only speak English, but would love to learn Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, and Swahili.
 
Boringly monolingual for the most part. Really only fluent in English; I know enough Spanish to be able to read it fairly decently with an assist from Google Translate but I'm pretty much hopeless when it comes to speaking it. I also have a tiny smattering of German from taking a semester in college years ago and an even tinier smattering of Japanese picked up from watching hundreds of subtitled Japanese films.
 
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I speak Mandarin and English, though I picked up a little bit of German and Japanese. Guten tag... hai.

I know some Geordie, for example, but I telt you so, argh... Not too good at it. Never set foot in the friendliest city of England (Newcastle) though.
 
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ruennsheng said:
I speak Mandarin and English, though I picked up a little bit of German and Japanese. Guten tag... hai.

I know some Geordie, for example, but I telt you so, argh... Not too good at it. Never set foot in the friendliest city of England (Newcastle) though.
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What is Geordie?
 
ruennsheng said:
It's ok just knowing English in some places, I suppose?
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I always have a lot of respect for those who can speak more than one language. At least the basics of another.
I wish America taught other languages much earlier. Everywhere else seems to be much better about this than us. :/
 
kasmanaft08 said:
I wish America taught other languages much earlier. Everywhere else seems to be much better about this than us. :/
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I also wish our language education was better. I think that isolationism and the "Everyone oughtta just speak American!" attitude you get from a lot of people probably holds that back a little bit.
 
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I speak Portuguese, English, Spanish and a little French (which I'll improve by myself someday).
I'd like to learn Latin - not sure why - and German.
 
IContainMultitudes said:
I also wish our language education was better. I think that isolationism and the "Everyone oughtta just speak American!" attitude you get from a lot of people probably holds that back a little bit.
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I feel like no one takes it seriously, either- for that reason possibly. In my high school, we had to take two years (which could leave someone with some decent basics) but no one I know came out of high school having learned a totally new language to get themselves around. They either studied it in depth in college (or the military), or already had some background in it.

Not to spiral off topic,
But I really get annoyed the way the school system goes against everything researched in cognitive psychology. Yet, they'll take things like food habits and marketing strategies seriously? Weird.
 
I started to listen to English broadcasts from BBC and VOA and CBC and ABC from say me 10 years old. but I am not good at it. I tried to learn German in school around 1970 but I have forgotten all of it.
I looked into Esperanto and IDO and Interlingua and other such made up languages but I don't speak any of them. I liked the approach of Interlingua.
Say I managed to remember some 400 to at most some 1000 words of Interlingua. Those being the most used words in "Latin" kind of languages like Italian and Spanish that would allow me to "read" an Italian Newspaper or book and to be able to wild guess most of what the texts was about even of I miss all details or nuances of the text. I would get enough words that was similar between Interlingua and Italian or Spanish that one get the intent of the text even if one failed the details of the text.

That feature of Interlingua was most impressing to me. I guess to really be fluent in it then one really have to study it though. I only skimmed it for a short while and at most learned maybe 1000 words? around 1980 now not much remain in my brain. I am too old now :)

It would be cool to know Mandarin so one can follow what them write about cheap Pad and Smartphones and so on.
 
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Indeed, China has smart iPads and smartphones, so it's good to know Chinese - do you mean the PRC system of Chinese? Oh, for the economy's sake, maybe it'll be useful for the next 5 years.

That aside, I'm looking forward to learn either Hindi or Urdu. South Asia looks like the next emerging market for me to look out for opportunities in businesses.
 
I know English (American dialect and some British/European grammar/spelling of it). I would like to learn German though and I will this semester coming up. :D
 
This is weird, but I'm really into Yiddish right now. I took a Holocaust class last semester that I can't imagine I fared too well in (still haven't even looked at the grade), but it got me interested in Jews in Germany and Yiddish in particular.
I am especially interested in how they have so many words for male genitalia (putz, shwanz, shmeckel, shmuck). There's practically nothing for a woman's.
Or all the words they have for clumsy person or loser. The old joke among Jews about the shlemiel-shlimazel dichotomy is that the shlemiel is the one who accidentally knocks over the bowl of soup, but the shlimazel is the one whose lap the soup lands in.
Yeah, Yiddish.
 
I learnt French and German in school and I could hold simplish conversations, especially when I went on holiday. Although I've forgotten practically all of it! Languages sure do decay when you have noone to speak to.
 
Yup - I feel you. I think I'll need to see the type of environment I'm in to even learn languages. If I really work in Thailand for a long time, for example, I may consider to learn Thai
 
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