What languages do you speak/know?

[AttackLife]

My native language is English, but I'm almost fluent in German and know a little Spanish as well. My goal is to become fluent in German, then proceed to learn Brazilian Portuguese or Hindi, or maybe both. I've taken four semesters of German, but I want to learn more languages. Speaking multiple languages opens so many more doors and opportunities than someone who can only speak one. I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this.

[David Turnbull]

My native language is English and I can count to 6 in Japanese.

Yeah, my language skills are lacking. I know that comfortable in French is comfortaab (might be incorrect spelling though). Not sure how far that would get me though unless the only question I'm ever asked in France is "What is that seat like?"

[ArthurHung]

I know 9 different languages, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Indian (Hindi), French, English, Armenian, Greek and Spanish just from hanging around cool people who want to teach me how to grow more in their own way. I would be most fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese, however the others will enable me to connect with more conscious people in the world.

... at least, that's what I wrote in my visualization journal entry last week

Currently though, I speak fluent English and Cantonese (Chinese), dabbling in Mandarin (Chinese) and Japanese.

[newmark]

English & Mandarin Chinese. I'm working on Portuguese...

[supertom]

english and hindi(first)

@ ArthurHung awesome

learning from people is much better since they use street lingo, esp something like spanish/latin where they teach formal in classes but in the street you would look like an idiot. Thinking about it i could have learnt mandarin, always had close chinese friends but i just didnt think of it.

Michael thomas appears to have the best method of teaching, seems his students learn the fastest

[runningbird]

Native English and very slowly learning Esperanto. Had 3 years of Spanish and 2 Latin but those academic forays went out the window.

[Michelle]

English, German, Swiss-German (which really is a language!), French and some very bad Italian

[aelle]

By order of proficiency:

French (native)
English (bilingual)
Japanese (business)
Spanish (daily use)

can understand only, but hardly speak:
Dutch
German
Italian

am working on:
Korean.

David Turnbull, "comfortable" in French is spelt "confortable"

[davidchung]

I'm most fluent in English.
I can speak some Thai, Cantonese and Mandarin.
I understand a smattering of Indonesian and very basic French.

And last but certainly not least, I speak Spirit.

[CoolBee]

Native British English (different language from American English )

Some French, German, Norwegian, Arabic and I can make sense of some written Dutch, Swedish, Danish.

Ability varies on context! I am better at understanding than producing!

My written arabic is nowhere near good enough - I know all the letters etc and make every effort to read all the signs etc especially the different caligraphies, but my formal grammar and vocabulary are somewhat limited. On the other hand, I can get around on the buses, generally make myself understood in shops etc in a way that I can't in, say, French - though I can read some novels in french to a certain degree - especially written in 'historical tense' like La Reine Margot by Dumas for example.

It's good exercise in a foreign country to attempt to make yourself understood without resorting to English. My first trip to Norway years ago, as soon as I spoke in Norwegian, they would turn round and speak to me in English. On my second trip, they would give me a funny look and say "er du dansk?" (are you Danish ) which made my day. My Norwegian friend said 'shows how bad your accent is' and I tried to explain to him how wonderful it was that they hadn't instantly known I was British

[aelle]

Originally Posted by CoolBee

It's good exercise in a foreign country to attempt to make yourself understood without resorting to English. My first trip to Norway years ago, as soon as I spoke in Norwegian, they would turn round and speak to me in English. On my second trip, they would give me a funny look and say "er du dansk?" (are you Danish ) which made my day. My Norwegian friend said 'shows how bad your accent is' and I tried to explain to him how wonderful it was that they hadn't instantly known I was British

It's exciting, isn't it? Last time I was on the phone with Japan, they asked me if I was Korean...

[Scipio]

Originally Posted by David Turnbull

My native language is English and I can count to 6 in Japanese.

Yeah, my language skills are lacking. I know that comfortable in French is comfortaab (might be incorrect spelling though). Not sure how far that would get me though unless the only question I'm ever asked in France is "What is that seat like?"

Any words ending in able are usually spelled the same in French, you just turn the able into aahb (with an extremely light touch an L at the end).

Comfortable sounds like confortaabl
Probable -probaabl
Etc

So many words between French and English are only differentiated by accent.

[Scipio]

I have an enormous respect for anyone who has learned a second language to the level of a college educated native. For the past month or so I've spent hours per day on my languages and I often feel like I'm getting nowhere, but sometimes I feel like I'm having a big breakthrough. Studying Korean this morning, I felt everything was clicking, and on my Japanese lesson earlier today, I was getting lost.

I study Korean, Japanese, French, and Esperanto. My study plans are a bit like this:

Korean:
Listen to yesterday's Pimsleur (30 min)
Do a new Pimsleur (30 min)
Figure out new vocabulary, shadow, and listen-read an audioblog by Hyunwoo from Koreanclass101 (30 min+)
Study some intermediate KClass101 lessons with transcripts (20 min)
Anki sentence cards (5 minutes)

Japanese:
Yesterdays Pimsleur
Todays Pimsleur
Anki cards (Kana only, Pimsleur transcripts)
Heisig's Remembering the Kanji

French:
Michel Thomas, 1 disc.
Some days I add in 1 Pimsleur lesson
(I'm just reactivating my French right now. We learned a lot of writing in school but no listening or speaking). I'm learning French because my girlfriend is a French major and we're taking a trip to Quebec soon, but I don't really have much of a reason to learn the language.

Esperanto:
Spend a few minutes doing a short lesson on the Lernu site and review some Anki cards.

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by davidchung

And last but certainly not least, I speak Spirit.

You talkin' to me?


Native: Dutch
Fluent: English

I speak German enough for conversation, I can manage tourist French, and know dirty words in Spanish and Rumanian.

Studying Thai now, why did I start that?

[seeker5]

I speak French and English fluently.

I know tidbits in other languages, and have taken 4 years of school in Spanish, but I can't say I'm fluent in those other languages or can converse naturally in them.

What surprises me is how often people will claim to be able to speak a language when they only know some basic stuff. I've seen people put down "French" on their resume as a language they are fluent in, and when I try to speak to them in French, they back down and it becomes obvious they only really took a few courses at the university level and feel that's good enough to claim they can speak it on their resume. To me that's disingenuous and that's why I don't bother put down Spanish on my resume even though I've taken 4 years of it.

[Michelle]

Originally Posted by spirit4711

You talkin' to me?


Native: Dutch
Fluent: English

I speak German enough for conversation, I can manage tourist French, and know dirty words in Spanish and Rumanian.

Studying Thai now, why did I start that?

Have you ever tried talking to a Swiss-German with your Dutch? It works amazingly well

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by Michelle

Have you ever tried talking to a Swiss-German with your Dutch? It works amazingly well

Maybe it works so well I never noticed?

I don't think I ever talked to a Swiss-German.

[Michelle]

Originally Posted by spirit4711

Maybe it works so well I never noticed?

I don't think I ever talked to a Swiss-German.

I am amazed you didn't know that! Dutch and Swiss German are actually really similar! Similar enough that it is possible to have a conversation where each speaks his own language and both understand the majority of what is being said.

[aelle]

Originally Posted by Scipio

I have an enormous respect for anyone who has learned a second language to the level of a college educated native. For the past month or so I've spent hours per day on my languages and I often feel like I'm getting nowhere, but sometimes I feel like I'm having a big breakthrough. Studying Korean this morning, I felt everything was clicking, and on my Japanese lesson earlier today, I was getting lost.

It takes tremendous effort and commitment to get there, though, effort that may not be worth it. I did not reach true fluency in English (well, what I consider to deserve to be called fluency anyway, though others would use it earlier) until I performed most of my activities in the language, including work, part of my studies, social life and dating. You may not want to switch girlfriends just for the language...

Originally Posted by Michelle

I am amazed you didn't know that! Dutch and Swiss German are actually really similar! Similar enough that it is possible to have a conversation where each speaks his own language and both understand the majority of what is being said.

Isn't that true of (regular) German and Dutch too, though? When my boyfriend wants to be understood by Germans he says he just speaks Dutch with an accent

[Michelle]

Originally Posted by aelle

Isn't that true of (regular) German and Dutch too, though? When my boyfriend wants to be understood by Germans he says he just speaks Dutch with an accent

I do think German speakers can make their way in Dutch, but Swiss-German seems to be much closer.

Spirit, how about giving a listen and letting us know?


YouTube - Roger Federer Interview Swiss German Ad "Nationale Suisse"

[ioio]

Native: English
Intermediate: Dutch (B1 going on B2 level if you're familiar with the European Common Framework of Languages)

I'm actively learning Dutch and I intend to start learning either Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese or Esperanto next year.

[Sam kovacs]

Native: British
Fluent: French. Like real fluent, most alduts, who think they kno their way around current street lingo wouldn't understand me.

And good enough german for conversation, although while speaking german I allways start veery long sentences which i get muddled up in.

I also know tourist Italian. And I'm only 15

[CoolBee]

Well I spent a day in Belgium just after Sweden joined the EU not-talking-English at all and making my way round with my half-assed Norwegian and smattering of German done in a Dutch accent and found that the shop keepers obviously decided I must be Swedish and started saying 'please' and 'thank you' to me in Swedish.
Again, it was utterly delightful that they didn't even think I must be British

[spirit4711]

Originally Posted by Michelle

I do think German speakers can make their way in Dutch, but Swiss-German seems to be much closer.

Spirit, how about giving a listen and letting us know?


YouTube - Roger Federer Interview Swiss German Ad "Nationale Suisse"

Oh dear, I'm going to break your bubble here...

I can't understand it at all! (OK some words then).

It sounds like a kind of Flemish (the Dutch variant they speak in Belgium), but it's gibberish to me for the most part.

The Germans I have talked to don't speak Dutch. On the other hand most Dutch have had at least a few years of German in highschool.

The tricky part of Dutch and German is that many words sound the same and have the same meaning, however there are also lots of same-sounding words that mean something totally different.

[Michelle]

Originally Posted by spirit4711

Oh dear, I'm going to break your bubble here...

I can't understand it at all! (OK some words then).

It sounds like a kind of Flemish (the Dutch variant they speak in Belgium), but it's gibberish to me for the most part.

The Germans I have talked to don't speak Dutch. On the other hand most Dutch have had at least a few years of German in highschool.

The tricky part of Dutch and German is that many words that sounds the same and have the same meaning, however there or also lots of same-sounding words that mean something totally different.

You didn't break my bubble . It's okay. I am surprised a bit, because I find understanding Dutch much easier since learning Swiss-German ... dunno.

[runningbird]

Originally Posted by Scipio

I have an enormous respect for anyone who has learned a second language to the level of a college educated native. For the past month or so I've spent hours per day on my languages and I often feel like I'm getting nowhere, but sometimes I feel like I'm having a big breakthrough. Studying Korean this morning, I felt everything was clicking, and on my Japanese lesson earlier today, I was getting lost.

I study Korean, Japanese, French, and Esperanto. My study plans are a bit like this:

Korean:
Listen to yesterday's Pimsleur (30 min)
Do a new Pimsleur (30 min)
Figure out new vocabulary, shadow, and listen-read an audioblog by Hyunwoo from Koreanclass101 (30 min+)
Study some intermediate KClass101 lessons with transcripts (20 min)
Anki sentence cards (5 minutes)

Japanese:
Yesterdays Pimsleur
Todays Pimsleur
Anki cards (Kana only, Pimsleur transcripts)
Heisig's Remembering the Kanji

French:
Michel Thomas, 1 disc.
Some days I add in 1 Pimsleur lesson
(I'm just reactivating my French right now. We learned a lot of writing in school but no listening or speaking). I'm learning French because my girlfriend is a French major and we're taking a trip to Quebec soon, but I don't really have much of a reason to learn the language.

Esperanto:
Spend a few minutes doing a short lesson on the Lernu site and review some Anki cards.

That's an interesting approach - wouldn't it be easier to take them one at a time, considering that reaching fluency in a foreign language becomes easier after your first non-native acquisition?

I am taking a tiered approach for that reason - after I learn Esperanto I will probably learn Indonesian, and then maybe work on re-activating my Spanish or learn Japanese.

[aelle]

Originally Posted by runningbird

I am taking a tiered approach for that reason - after I learn Esperanto I will probably learn Indonesian, and then maybe work on re-activating my Spanish or learn Japanese.

Indonesian/malaysian is probably the easiest Asian language. Extremely simple grammar, straightforward sentence structure for a European language native speaker, latin alphabet, phonetic spelling and lots of borrowed words. I hope you get plenty of opportunities to practice the language, too - great countries!

[Marko500]

My native language is Serbian but every day I get better with English (I know almost all the words and speak fluently, but I'm weaker with grammar and writing) and know a little Spanish

[Scipio]

Originally Posted by runningbird

That's an interesting approach - wouldn't it be easier to take them one at a time, considering that reaching fluency in a foreign language becomes easier after your first non-native acquisition?

How is that true? I often hear the benefit is that the person learned a lot about their learning style and grammar rules during the first language. However, you probably learn just as much about your learning style and preferences in the first 1000 hours of studying 3 languages than you do during the first 1000 hours of studying 1 language. I would like to see some evidence otherwise though. All the great polyglots study languages simultaneously and say they would have never made some of the connections they did without that method.

I doubt you're going to get the same propadeutic value children got from Esperanto in the study with elementary school students who learned French. First of all, you have an education in grammar, whereas they learned a lot about grammar through the study of Esperanto. That is one of the main benefits, "understanding language" per se. Secondly, they went on to study French, a language with a lot of latin cognates in common with Esperanto.

Anyway, right now Korean is my most urgent need, and it is rated as the hardest language for a native speaker of English to learn by the Defense Languages Institute in the US. I don't really want to put simple and quick goals on hold, such as being able to chat with my French and Japanese friends about simple subjects, which could be accomplished with only an hour of study per day right now. I'm going on a vacation to Japan in a year, not 10 years from now, so tiering my languages wouldn't make sense.

The only reason I would learn one language at a time would be for the psychological ease of saying "I'm simply going to immerse myself in this language 100% of the time, no other languages." I think that would help me from slipping and using English a lot during the day.

[runningbird]

If you only have a year to learn, maybe it wouldn't be best for you. I believe there's been a couple studies on priming with Esperanto: learning French and learning German. In both cases the students learned two languages (Esperanto and the natural language) more proficiently and in less time than the control group learned one alone.

I would guess proficiency in language acqusition progresses via a complex mechanism. If I had to give a model though, I might say that it would be easier to first learn differential calculus and then integral calculus, rather than going straight into integral calculus.

You obviously have a considerable amount of experience though, so who knows what is the best approach.