- 111
- Antarctica
English 1000%
Last edited:
How many languages can you speak?
- Thread starter exigeracer
- 309 comments
- 19,665 views
- 963
- Toronto, Canada
- times_fade
Fluent in German, relatively fluent in my second language of English.
- 3,492
- New York
I can speak English and Italian both fluently 
- 7,436
- Canada
- photonrider
English, and nothing else.
Learned Latin in school, but I'm trying hard to forget that. Bad memories.
I'd like to learn Spanish well enough to speak it. I'd like to learn how to calligraph Japanese.
Hopefully one day. Knowing multiple languages is a wonderful asset - and I wish I had spent more time when I was younger on a few other languages. My faithful love for English kept me chastely ignorant till too late.
Learned Latin in school, but I'm trying hard to forget that. Bad memories.
I'd like to learn Spanish well enough to speak it. I'd like to learn how to calligraph Japanese.
Hopefully one day. Knowing multiple languages is a wonderful asset - and I wish I had spent more time when I was younger on a few other languages. My faithful love for English kept me chastely ignorant till too late.
Last edited:
- 687
Two: English and Scouse.
I also speak a bit of French, some German, a little Latin and enough to get by in most European contries (and by "get by" I mean "buy beer").
I also speak a bit of French, some German, a little Latin and enough to get by in most European contries (and by "get by" I mean "buy beer").
- 7,436
- Canada
- photonrider
Buy beer = "Corripe Cervisiam!"
What the Roman Centurion would yell at the Barkeep.
Before he went off to scream, "Veni, Vidi, Vici!" while smoking Marlboro.
I'm kidding of course.
But only about the Marlboro.
What the Roman Centurion would yell at the Barkeep.
Before he went off to scream, "Veni, Vidi, Vici!" while smoking Marlboro.
I'm kidding of course.
But only about the Marlboro.
- 2,529
- G-D Luxembourg
- GTP_Vince_Fiero
- 589
- Manila
I can read a bit of simplified Chinese but the traditional script is well beyond my capabilities.
I have Chinese blood too, although it's stained into my jeans from a student with a busted nose!
Oh ya that's because your in mainland china.
Many Chinese in this country lol.Most people here only have 2 languages as you see in this thread lol.
- 9,262
- Corsham
- lipming
Thought I'd revive this.
I've taken an increasing interest in languages and linguistics recently. I'm using an fantastic free online language course website called Duolingo to learn German, Dutch and Spanish. Soon they'll be releasing a course in Danish which looks interesting. It's surprising how much one can learn about their own language from learning others. All European languages show their Latin and Greek heritage through the amount of loan words and rules of grammar, syntax and inflection which aren't found outside the Indo-European language family. German has been quite hard because there are so many rules to learn which are absent in English. In particular is the highly elaborate grammatical case system which means you can get away with having an incredibly fluid word order because the cases used specify the subjects and their degrees of importance within in the sentence. Whereas English has a highly rigid word order because our virtually non-existent case system has only three words (the, a and an), which means even for native speakers context and meaning can sometimes be misconstrued, and if you divert from the typical word order the sentence falls to bits.
The German case system is incredibly logical, it's just incredibly hard to learn, as is the learning the correct gender pronoun for each verb. There are a lot of words which are either the same or very similar to their English counterparts, which helps, but then are some which either absolutely nothing like the English or they mean the opposite of what you'd think (i.e. "aktuelle" mean "current" and not "actual". Most sentences also lack the typical auxiliary verbs found in English.
I've only been doing Dutch for a few weeks, but it's helped by that fact that it's very similar to German anyway, so learning the vocabulary isn't that hard. Plus, like English they've more or less abandoned the case system (only 2 words for "the" instead of 20), and are down to two gender pronouns instead of three. However, spoken Dutch deviates a bit more from written Dutch that German does, as it uses the soft J sound (which, incidentally, virtually all languages seem to use other than English, French and the East Asian Languages) and the G sounds like it came out of Hebrew. Spelling is a bit tricky, but vocabulary and grammar are so similar to English and German that it makes it easier to learn.
Other than Danish I'd love to try Russian and Japanese, but I think I've got enough on my plate with these so far!
I've taken an increasing interest in languages and linguistics recently. I'm using an fantastic free online language course website called Duolingo to learn German, Dutch and Spanish. Soon they'll be releasing a course in Danish which looks interesting. It's surprising how much one can learn about their own language from learning others. All European languages show their Latin and Greek heritage through the amount of loan words and rules of grammar, syntax and inflection which aren't found outside the Indo-European language family. German has been quite hard because there are so many rules to learn which are absent in English. In particular is the highly elaborate grammatical case system which means you can get away with having an incredibly fluid word order because the cases used specify the subjects and their degrees of importance within in the sentence. Whereas English has a highly rigid word order because our virtually non-existent case system has only three words (the, a and an), which means even for native speakers context and meaning can sometimes be misconstrued, and if you divert from the typical word order the sentence falls to bits.
The German case system is incredibly logical, it's just incredibly hard to learn, as is the learning the correct gender pronoun for each verb. There are a lot of words which are either the same or very similar to their English counterparts, which helps, but then are some which either absolutely nothing like the English or they mean the opposite of what you'd think (i.e. "aktuelle" mean "current" and not "actual". Most sentences also lack the typical auxiliary verbs found in English.
I've only been doing Dutch for a few weeks, but it's helped by that fact that it's very similar to German anyway, so learning the vocabulary isn't that hard. Plus, like English they've more or less abandoned the case system (only 2 words for "the" instead of 20), and are down to two gender pronouns instead of three. However, spoken Dutch deviates a bit more from written Dutch that German does, as it uses the soft J sound (which, incidentally, virtually all languages seem to use other than English, French and the East Asian Languages) and the G sounds like it came out of Hebrew. Spelling is a bit tricky, but vocabulary and grammar are so similar to English and German that it makes it easier to learn.
Other than Danish I'd love to try Russian and Japanese, but I think I've got enough on my plate with these so far!
- 2,980
- Greensboro/NC/U
- jarod336/GTP_torque
- Paperorplastic/ manherollen
English and Japanese.
Learning kanji will take years off your life expectancy i swear.
But kana in general is fun in it's self.
Learning kanji will take years off your life expectancy i swear.
But kana in general is fun in it's self.
- 4,572
- Moscow
- Rage_Racer_VOLK
- RageRacer48
Russian and English, and now Ukrainian (not sure if I can speak it fluently, but I understand it easily) - with the recent events, my knowledge of Ukrainian was seriously improved 
- 6,255
- Jutland
- GTP_DeanJ
If you ever need any help in Danish @PeterJB, just ask.
Anyway, I chose the "six" option as I do speak English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German and French. I'm not 100% fluent in German and French, but I'd say I'm on a medium level in German and medium-low in French. I'm trying to improve my French using Duolingo, which I also plan to learn Russian with, once the course's released.:tup:
Anyway, I chose the "six" option as I do speak English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German and French. I'm not 100% fluent in German and French, but I'd say I'm on a medium level in German and medium-low in French. I'm trying to improve my French using Duolingo, which I also plan to learn Russian with, once the course's released.
:tup:
- 15,460
- Orange County, NY
- GTP_GT916
- Nii916
English, and learning Spanish. Still counts as one though because I know not much Spanish.
- 15,994
- United Kingdom
- haitch40
- Xbox?
I swear I posted here but the forum software says no.
Just English fluently but also a little Japanese which I am learning as an add on to my uni course. (Although it doesn't affect my main degree grade but the uni run the classes.)
I have a friend who can speak Russian, Lithuanian and English well and is also looking at learning Japanese.
Another one of my friends can speak French, German, Swiss German and English and is learning Japanese.
And another can speak French, Japanese and English.
Also know a few people who can speak Mandarin Chinese and English, most of them are learning Japanese as well.
Just English fluently but also a little Japanese which I am learning as an add on to my uni course. (Although it doesn't affect my main degree grade but the uni run the classes.)
I have a friend who can speak Russian, Lithuanian and English well and is also looking at learning Japanese.
Another one of my friends can speak French, German, Swiss German and English and is learning Japanese.
And another can speak French, Japanese and English.
Also know a few people who can speak Mandarin Chinese and English, most of them are learning Japanese as well.
Last edited:
- 4,572
- Moscow
- Rage_Racer_VOLK
- RageRacer48
Roughly saying, Ukrainian is a mix of Russian and Polish (70% of the lexicon is common with Polish and 64% with Russian). It uses Cyrillic alphabet, with a few letters different from Russian. You might say, Ukrainian language is polished Russian.
A Russian and a Ukrainian can understand each other with no serious problems (just a bit slower than they would if they both spoke one language), a Ukrainian and a Pole can speak to each other with their own languages, too (but Polish uses Latin characters so they don't read Cyrillic), but a Russian and a Pole almost cannot - these two languages are a lot more different.
- 9,262
- Corsham
- lipming
If you ever need any help in Danish @PeterJB, just ask.
I do a have a couple of questions. I've been told Danish is quite hard because the spoken language doesn't bear much resemblance to the written language, is this the case? Also, how mutually intelligible is it with Norwegian and Swedish? and possibly Icelandic)
Roughly saying, Ukrainian is a mix of Russian and Polish (70% of the lexicon is common with Polish and 64% with Russian). It uses Cyrillic alphabet, with a few letters different from Russian. You might say, Ukrainian language is polished Russian.
A Russian and a Ukrainian can understand each other with no serious problems (just a bit slower than they would if they both spoke one language), a Ukrainian and a Pole can speak to each other with their own languages, too (but Polish uses Latin characters so they don't read Cyrillic), but a Russian and a Pole almost cannot - these two languages are a lot more different.
I suppose Polish using the Latin instead of Cyrillic alphabet gave me the illusion it wasn't that similar to the two. It sounds similar to the English-Dutch-German relationship. With English basically not understanding either language, though possibly a bit easier with Dutch, and then Dutch and German having a limited degree of mutual intelligibility.
- 3,894
- Somewhere
- Roflwaffle16
English, French, Spanish.
- 5,205
- Nicest part of hell
Austrian-German and American-English fluently, a few basic sentences and very limited vocabulary in Icelandic. Voted two.
And no, I'm not one of those who pronounce ''The'' like ''Zee''. Never did, not even when I was a kid and my dumbass English teacher complained about it all the time.
And no, I'm not one of those who pronounce ''The'' like ''Zee''. Never did, not even when I was a kid and my dumbass English teacher complained about it all the time.
- 6,255
- Jutland
- GTP_DeanJ
I'd expect it to correct if you're learning Danish with a non-Scandinavian (including Finnish) mother tongue. Of course people on the Faroe Islands and Greenland learns Danish, so they're to be excluded.
As for Norwegian and Swedish, quite a bit. There are some sayings that are the same and many words are similar. Of course there's exceptions, an example could be the Danish word for [something that's] fun, "sjovt" (phonetically [ɕɒʊt]) is "roligt" ([rɔ lɪt] -- I'm not sure if the T is actually silent, to be honest) in Swedish. As for Icelandic, I find it quite a bit different, without it really being so. There's differences as there is with the two other languages. I find Icelandic harder to understand when spoken and the other two when written. 👍
Last edited:
- 11,336
- The 51st state of america
- sparkytooth50001
Both English and Spanish fluently. I I want to learn Italian, German, and French.
- 586
- Where horsepower echoes in the mountains
I speak fluently german, italian and quite well english. In the region I live in it is quite unusual to speak both italian and german. Want to know why?
Read the history part here:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tyrol
Read the history part here:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Tyrol
Similar threads
