Languages. How good are we?

I love learning languages, I will learn enough conversational language for whichever country I visit!

I used to be fluent in French, but with lack of use, it's not up to scratch anymore

I speak an okay amount of Spanish, Russian, German and Gujarati!

(and am now improving my Spanish with the help of Rigel and my Gujarati with the help of altzerina!)

I love language....you could call it my `thing'. I did Japanese (and taught it in the end) for 11 years, German for four years, Italian in primary school for five years, and French and French literature at University (with Japanese, too). I am, at the moment, teaching myself Russian - and it's HARD!!!

But I don't speak any of those languages fluently having not been to any of the countries unfortunately.

I also did Linguistics at Uni, which is the study of the science and origins of language. I kind of did a language-specific degree.

Languages and language itself are very cool, IMO! My party trick is being able to count up to ten in eleven different languages!! Yeah, good for me huh....lol lol lol

Originally Posted by KitEKats4Eva!

I am, at the moment, teaching myself Russian - and it's HARD!!!l

Click to expand...

Oh Yeah, Russian is very hard! Once you overcome the confusion of the script, the most challanging part is Grammar!! Even the numbers have genders(1,2)!!

I took french in High school, but I barely remember any of it, even though it was only 4 or so years ago. I also know a few words and phrases in Arabic, which is only because my husband is Lebanese.

I dont speak any other language but english fluently, but I know all the bad words and my name in spanish

I studied French for eight years in high school and college and had the chance to use it when I was stationed in the Army in Belgium, so became fairly fluent. It's been a while since I've used it, so I'm pretty rusty now.

I speek fluent English of course but also Gaelic (irish) and Inuktuc (inuit language) I have family that speek both so when I was young it was easy for me to learn I still speek Gaelic quite often but my Inuktuc is suffering from lack of use.
I can also Read and speack french, my spelling is awful and my spoken vocabulary needs work. I would love to learn Manderain and Farsi, I think they are amazing languages that could be useful in my work

English
Signlanguage
Italian
German

There isnt a difference between ESL, AUSSL, NZSL Just some words are different than others, which is normal as it goes by slang.

My native language is English, but I spent a lot of time in France as a child and have never stopped using it since, good as I am going to live there permanently! I did my first degree in Mandarin, and have been learnig Serbo-Croat (the Bosnian version) since I came here ten years ago. It is a Slav language like Russian, and is, I agree, very hard. I can get by as a tourist in Spanish and Italian and wish I spoke them better.

Cool! There are a lot of ppl here that are bi- or tri- or even quadlingual! That's more than i expected.

So zoggy. You are the closest to me in age, can you tell me if russian is hard to teach yourself? I am about half way through the alphabet. I started the day before yesterday.

And Marie-p, Votre premiere langue est francais? C'est interessant. Moi, pour un americain, je peux parler en francais assez bien, mais il est difficile a comprendre. Il va trop vite pour moi. Desolee pour les accents ; je ne peux pas faire ils dans ce site!

I know this dude that speaks russian and french fluently(he lives in russia now), and he told me that once you get the alphabet down, russian is easy compared to french. But i have see a lot of ppl say it is hard. I really have no idea, again i haven't even finished the alphabet.

Joecool

speak and read: Turkish, Croatian, Spanish, French, Russian, German
can read, but have an awful accent in: italian, portuguese
Speak but not read: Some Japanese, Some Arabic

I felt russian was easy, but I already speak a slavic language, as It was my baby language so... :shrug:

English is my first language and fluent French here too!

Vraiment? C'est chouette!!

Oui c'est tres chouette!

Je ne parle pas francese.... ma io parlo italiano. Ho habitato a Firenze per cinque mese. Dopo sono tornato (I think) a Cincinnati, non ho parlato per quatro mese. Ho una classe tutti giorni a la settimana, ma non parliamo molto perche ci sono molti studenti. Ho dimenticato molti dopo vivendo (verb form?) a Firenze, e ho(con accento) un po' triste.

I hope I didn't destroy the language too much there...

It looks a little like french, a little like italian, an a little like spanish.
No you didn't butcher it badly, because that is how italian is supposed to look.


Here is a good question. How many people on here speak a native language other than english?

Other question: Who is considered by others to have a cool accent(like Australian, Scottish, Irish, etc.)? I am especially fond of the Australia/New Zealand accents myself. I wish i had an accent.

Did French for my degree at university but 6 years have passed since then so starting to forget it now

Need a holiday back to France I think

I have an australian accent!!!!!!!!!!
Although apparently im starting to lose it after living here for 4 years and mixing with alot of americans and british people.

English and italian are my native languages though.

I can understand a fair bit of written French and German, with a tiny bit of Spanish. Can't speak them very well anymore though, too many years since I studied them!

My boss is Arabic and speaks to his Mum in Arabic, us in English and some friends in German. Very strange to hear him sometimes when he switches from one language to another in the middle of a sentance, he doesn't even realise he's doing it! Or he drops the odd English word into an Arabic conversation

I can read and speak Hebrew (plus a little Yiddish). I studied it and used the language quite a bit when I was learning about Judaism.

I'm of German descent, so I know a bit of German through family, and I studied it for a bit as well.

English is my first language.