The Languages Thread (Survey in OP)

[20832]

I did legitimately study it for one year at university, to be fair, so my Dutch is probably better than most German people's Dutch.

Depends on the region though. Anything near the border and you'll notice, that a lot of people are able to either speak dutch or understand dutch (like myself).

BTT:

I'm from Germany, and I'm able to communicate well in two languages well (German & English), understand dutch and lower german (Plattdeutsch), speak a little spanish as well through school.

 

[Whitestar]

Strictly speaking (no pun intended): 5 languages, since Swedish and Danish are quite similar to Norwegian.
Besides those three: English and German (not very well).

 

[AerodyManiac]

Chinese (2 1/2 dialects Mandarin, wenzhou and cantonese dialects).

Another Chinese speaker! What prompted you to learn Cantonese though?

I can write in English and Chinese fluently, while I know how to speak English, Cantonese, and Putonghua. I don’t think I’m all that good at Putonghua, and sometimes I’m tempted to believe that mainland Chinese are trying to understand what I’m saying based partially on guesswork, so I think that’d count as 2 1/2 languages. Although I can understand simplified Chinese characters most of the time, I can only write in traditional Chinese characters, and I’m glad I learnt it instead of the simplified version, chiefly because some traditional characters are combined to form a single simplified character, which I believe can cause confusion, especially in classical Chinese. And also because of some local sentiments.

With that said, however, my Chinese writing ability is starting to atrophy, which is why I insist on using handwriting when typing Chinese on my phone, and it’s definitely got nothing to do with me being too lazy to learn Cangjie.

As an added bonus, I can type spoken Cantonese well, if it’s of any use.

 

[PocketZeven]

Another Chinese speaker! What prompted you to learn Cantonese though?

I can write in English and Chinese fluently, while I know how to speak English, Cantonese, and Putonghua. I don’t think I’m all that good at Putonghua, and sometimes I’m tempted to believe that mainland Chinese are trying to understand what I’m saying based partially on guesswork, so I think that’d count as 2 1/2 languages. Although I can understand simplified Chinese characters most of the time, I can only write in traditional Chinese characters, and I’m glad I learnt it instead of the simplified version, chiefly because some traditional characters are combined to form a single simplified character, which I believe can cause confusion, especially in classical Chinese. And also because of some local sentiments.

With that said, however, my Chinese writing ability is starting to atrophy, which is why I insist on using handwriting when typing Chinese on my phone, and it’s definitely got nothing to do with me being too lazy to learn Cangjie.

As an added bonus, I can type spoken Cantonese well, if it’s of any use.

I am not a native speaker by any means. My cantonese is very very rough, thats why I rated it as 1/2 dialect. HK chinese has a history in my country as being once the dominant immigrant chinese in the Netherlands, which in recent years have been reduced to a minority. I used to date a girl from HK origin and used to watch vhs tapes of HK movies and TVB.