How many languages do you speak fluently? Where did you learn them?
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How many languages do you speak fluently? Where did you learn them?
Well, does ASL (American Sign Language) count? I know most of that, so I guess you could say I'm fluent??
I can speak english fluently, but the other languages, I can only just speak enough to just barely get by, So, I only speaks one fluently.
Swedish and English, obviously. My German used to be fluent but could use some practice, and I think I could still manage to make myself understood in high school Spanish. I love languages.
Wow!! Swedish!! I bet that's a beautiful language. Good for you!
I speak spanish, english, and a little bit of french (not fluent though, just learning, need french subtitles to understand though). Spanish was my first language, then I moved here 10 years ago, and I learned english, while in the house I spoke spanish. As for French, I'm just learning it in high school, but I plan on using somehow... well... I don't plan on forgetting it (most likely will though, sadly)
Everytime I read the title of this thread, I imagine it being spoken by the robot in Jabbas palace from star wars episode VI return of the jedi "How many languages do you speak" c3p0 "I am fluent in over 6 million forms of comunic...." "yes or no will do!"
:D b
Are we counting only languages we're fluent in, or languages we can carry on a basic conversation in? I'm only fluent in English, but I can get by OK on my Italian and French (and read them fairly well) though it sometimes takes me a few days to really get back into speaking them if I haven't done so in awhile . I also have "small Latin" as Jonson said of Shakespeare, but I doubt I'll ever get the chance to speak it unless I get an audience with the pope someday or something. :D
I was curious as to how many languages people have had dreams in. I've had dreams in all the languages I've studied, including Latin (though Latin was weird because it wasn't spoken audibly in the dream. I was reading it on scrolls that emerged like captions out of the speakers' mouths :lol: ).
English is my first, and I'm studying sign language, and hope to some day work with the deaf. <><
I'm just a silly English speaker. I studied French in high school, and Latin for one semester in college, and I have a few German language books sitting beside me on the desk, but I can't be said to speak any of those. I can read basic vocabulary, but seem to hit a wall when it comes to crossing over into the realm of conversation. I want to learn all the languages ever known to man, and read the great literature of different races, and trace them all back to the first whoopings in trees uttered by our ancestors, but I can't even manage to understand one French movie without subtitles. :(
I can speak English, Urdu and Punjabi. I can't speak Punjabi and English very fluently.
My father is Urdu-speaking and my mother is Punjabi so I have learnt Urdu from father's side and Urdu is also our national language, while Punjabi is from my mother's side.
I learnt English from books and school. I was always good at languages. I mean essays, application, and this kind of stuff. I can write good Urdu essays but my Urdu hand-writing is an earthquake.
I can also understand Sirayki but I wouldn't count it as I can't speak it at all.
Wow. And how old did you say you were? That's quite an accomplished young lady. You write english perfectly, probably better than me.Quote:
Originally Posted by Pensive
I was thinking of the languages we are fluent in when I started the thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by Petrarch's Love
I am completely fluent in UK-English. I’m almost fluent in Canadian-English, but I’m still learning. Until recently I thought that the Canadian/American word for “cling film” was “surround wrap” – seemed logical. It turns out that the word is actually “saran wrap” – how embarrassing! :blush:
I speak a few languages. If you can call them languages. I speak English, Spanish, Spanglish, Ghetto, Ebonics, Mexican, El Salvadorian, Yaponiase, and Wapyoass. :lol:
But fluently I can speak English and Spanish (Espanol). English is my first language. I can speak Spanish really well and read but I can't spell Spanish. I end up spelling like English and it becomes Spanglish. I learned Spanish growing up in a Mexican - El Salvadorian family. When I was 4 I went to El Salvador for the first time. The whole time I was there that first time I was lost I didn't know a lot of Spanish then and nobody there knew English. My mom is Mexican-American and my dad is El Salvadorian so growing up around a Spanish speaking family I just picked it up.
And right now, I am trying to learn French. I don't think that I will be able to do so. It is very difficult.
Virgil, Thanks for the compliment but I know that your English is far more better than mine. Maybe, someday I will get better, as there is always space for hope. Anyway, thanks for the encouragement.
I can speak French, English and Spanish quite fluently. I'm learning Japanese this year also but I find it tough to write or read it, yet it is easily spoken.
I would say two: My native swedish, and UK english. It is a matter of definition, of course...Quote:
Originally Posted by Scheherazade
Could i pass for a native, speaking english? I doubt it, in spite of good pronounciation and a huge vocbulary.
I can get also get by quite well in french and german, but fluent? Not a hope.
/Claes
i'd say two...
Hebrew...
English...
This days i'm studing Spanish.. but i'm really bad at languages so... it ain't going so well...
no that is not true. you are doing very well and you forgot one language dear Willow.you speak absolutely perfect and fluent Mushroom. Not many people can boast about that. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Weeping Willow
We count ourselves fluent in a language in which we can read a book so we are fluent in two- english and estonian.
We have learnt german for five or six years or so, but we can't read a book without needing to look up a word in a dictionary in every sentence.
Have been learning French for this year too, but haven't learnt much.
So:
1 language - Estonian
0,96 languages - English
0,62 languages - German
0,11 languages - French.
Summing up, we speak 2,69 languages.
Fluent to point of conversation, reading and writing,
English
Danish
Norwegian
Indonesian
Learning French, can converse, but mostly about the weather :)
and i like most danes presume that I can speak swedish. In any case I can understand it perfectly.
i only got two for now:
Filipino
English
Japanese is next soon, so would be French. i understand Spanish, though can't speak it fluently.
Do I have to count my native language when voting in the poll???
I speak Italian and I'd say my English is fluent. Sometimes I'm in doubt about whether it can be defined as fluent, because in another forum I visit some people whose English is much better than mine claim they are not fluent... :confused: ...so what should I say?
Anyway I'd say it's fluent as I can have most kind of conversations with not much hesitation, even if my spoken English is much worse than my written and I have a clear Italian accent...
Using Taliesin's category, that is ability to read a book, then I should add French, but although I can read books, I don't feel fluent as I speak quite badly and my grammar is not too good.
But I think I consider fluent a language in which I can talk almost of everything, and that would be Italian of course, and English - and almost fluent in French.
I can slowly cope with books in Russian, with a dictionary though...
I can understand Spanish but speak very little of it; I know some German but not very much, just for basic conversations and with many mistakes. And I know some basics of Hungarian, I can understand simple sentences but my making of simple sentences mostly leads to tons of mistakes.
i speak three hole languages, English, American(lol) and Pig Latin
My `isshah tum us guldaste se bhi khubsoorat ho, jo bharat ke saare auraton ko milaakar bana hai. At least to me (and preferably to none else).
So is that all you know or can you speak it well? :)
By the way, you don't actually know what he looks like, do you? Just how he is painted later on by various artists? Or do you mean in yoru imagination?
Scheherazade, what five languages do you speak?
What languages do you speak, Mililalil? And what did you say before?
actually I speak none fluently.
Portuguese, French, and studying Russian. I have little Latin and German left because I have no need, and you know, it kinda depends on the medium and listener. I want to include Irish and NewYork, because I can be fluent with two fingers, and totally dumb in bar conversation. hehe
Scher, Isn't your mother tongue English? You live in England, right?
Hehe, my grandpa said that he would teach me Persian one day. I can understand a very few Persian words. You know that Urdu and Persian are quite alike?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mililalil XXIV
That doesn't mean 'good friend', I hope?
(if it did, most theories about the world would be screwed ;))
Dutch is native, and English is fluent. I can get by in 5 or so languages.
well i speak arabic,english,french,turkish and turkmenian
Referring to "jo bharat":
Actually, Koa, I used "bharat" here as in the meaning one would find in looking up "Bhaarat" - a name, it would seem, culled from a reference to a certain family line, which came to be applied more generally to the whole country wherein that family resided traditionally. Any idea what the country is?Quote:
Originally Posted by Koa
I think Scheherazade took the "bharat" as the proper name of the individual whose name extends to that house after whom the country in question has been often named. I think she may also have taken the two opening words - "My `isshah" - as if in the same tongue as all the rest of the sentence to follow. These two words are not only in a different tongue than all the rest (which from the third word to the end are of one language), but are not even of the same language as each other. Taken for what she may have naturally saw them to be, presuming they were of one tongue with all that followed, they might still have made much sense to the sentence even without a proper understanding - but in such a way, in fact, as to reinforce the course she seems to have taken with interpretting "bharat".
I hope I have made myself perfectly clear!
[`Im qara` ha`ish ha'aravah, yada' mah `amarti baderekh "My `isshah".]
Well Mil (sorry I can't seem to be able to spell all the rest of your name ;)), I atcually have just a vague clue of what language is that, but those two words resembled a lot to some Hungarian words, and since Hungarian is not really related to other languages, I was wondering if it could have this striking similarity with this language - though I perefectly know that some words are identical to words that in other language mean something completely different, and there are plenty of examples.
Unfortunately, no.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mililalil XXIV
I am aware that you have used word from different languages but I assumed it was merely because you were not very fluent in the main language you used in that sentence.
'My Issah' = 'My Jesus', I should think.
And the rest of the sentence vaguely makes sense as there are run-on words because you don't seem to have a clear idea of words in that language (where one ends and next one starts) when written.
Well, my native English aside, I'm almost fluent in Spanish and Japanese. I can carry on a conversation in Japanese, but my Spanish is rusty from lack of use. Which is unfortunate, because I was very fluent in Spanish when I was using it, what with living in Florida and having relatives in south Texas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Taliesin
hum... I never learnt a single word of French and can't even say the simplest things in French but i can read and translate it well enough (as long as it's high-brow enough), because I did 7 years of Latin at school... academic French is just like Latin, only it's spelled differently and they pronounce it in a funny way....
alrite, i admit i've never tried to read a whole book in French, so I probably wouldn't pass Taliesin's test....
I only speak 2 languages fluently: English and German... oops, I've just spelled fluently "fluentyl", well,.. just because you're a linguist doesn't mean you know how to spell words and just because you can speak a language FLUENTYL doesn't mean you know how to spell it FLUENTYL either :)
I'm studying Russian right now.. the bits i already know i can say fluentyl enough, does that count? hehe, mathematically speaking, if I know 0.01% of the Russian language but can use these without tripping myself over 100%, I'm 100% fluent.
:rolleyes: SleepyWitch has gone bonkers due to too much caffeine. I'd better get back to my term paper