Just curious to see how many languages people around here speak (not just your first language).

 

Personally, I speak English well, and French poorly. I also know a small amount of Spanish. I've been trying to learn French some more though as it is one of Canada's official languages..

 

Vote away :)

English fluently, French semi-fluently...It's not quite perfect but it's a lot better than most people's.

Finnish as my native language, English fluently, Swedish and German somehow.

English and three years of Spanish.

Both english and spanish fluently.

Even tought my native language is spanish, I think my grammar in English is far better. Then I speak Spanish more often.

English, with not nearly enough Spanish to get by. I'm told I was fluent in Italian when I was younger (And learned it first), though. Planning to re-learn it someday.

I only speak English. I've tried to learn french, but the number of words I actually know in french can probably be counted on my fingers and toes. The number of french words I can recognize and translate back to english probably gets me up to a 50-60 word vocabulary. However, any complete sentances I can utter are just memorized. I lack the vocabulary to actually piece together a coherent sentence on my own. If I see it written down I can sometimes divine the meaning from words I recognize in written form, but am unable to recall from memory or pick out by ear.

 

The worst part is, I used to know more french. I was probably at my peak french fluency when I was like 11. I think after that, I started to give up.

Fluent in both French and English.

English, and enough Japanese to stop me from looking like an idiot if I ever go there.

I can ask if where the bathroom is in Spanish, does that count?

 

Kidding, obviously. I took 5 years of Spanish, and at my peak could probably have a decent conversation in it, but now off the top of my head I only remember really basic stuff.

 

And I speak English, clearly.

English is my primary. I took spanish in high school, didn't take it very serious but I can speak the basics. I took french in college, but I'm still not very good at it either. I can read it decent, but speaking is another story. I'm still trying to improve my french though, I really want to become better at it, even though I have such a hard time learning languages.

Primarily English. My Mandarin is absolutely horrid; I speak like a primary school student (if not worse!). I can understand bits of conversation but that's about all.

 

And I'm ironically Chinese :unsure:

English is my main language. Chinese (or Mandarin) is taught here, although I'm more or less fluent because my mother and grandmother only speak Chinese. I can also read a little French, although not nearly enough to count towards knowing the language.

English is my primary language but I have had 5 years of French classes in school and was a decent speaker. However I haven't used French in the last couple of years so I've forgotten a lot of it sadly. Might take a French course in Uni since I'd like to be bilingual.

Fluent in English in all three skills, only fluent in speaking Spanish.

English, and a small amount of German.

English and Dutch, smatterings of French/German/Spanish etc. Enough to order coffee :P. German's easy to cheat with when you know Dutch though, so that doesn't really count.

German as mother tongue, fluent in English and I've learned french for a while, though it's getting rusty with years of not speaking it.

English is my native language. I took Spanish and French classes throughout school so I know them okay, but definitely not fluently.

I can speak, read and understand English and Dutch fluently, I can speak, read and understand French well enough to be able to handle myself in France. I can read Latin, though it takes a while because Latin is a pretty complex language. There are few (if any) people that can still actually speak Latin fluently.

 

And then Arabic. I'm of Egyptian origin, so I could hold a pretty basic conversation with an Egyptian, and understand most of what they say, though I have a harder time understanding Arabic from other North-African and Middle Eastern countries (ranging from Morocco to Saudi-Arabia) because the differences in accent are pretty large. I used to know the Arabic alphabet, but know my knowledge of it is pretty limited: I can still write my own name and still know the majority of the signs, but it takes me ages to actually read anything in Arabic.

Primarily English. My Mandarin is absolutely horrid; I speak like a primary school student (if not worse!). I can understand bits of conversation but that's about all.

 

And I'm ironically Chinese :unsure:

You're the same as me if I replace Mandarin>Punjabi and Chinese>Indian however I can understand it, just not speak it as well as I would like to. It's pretty bad that I cannot speak it well seen as though 70% of my family use it to communicate with us.

 

I can also read it ^_^ It's pretty annoying to read because there's a lot of characters and like I said, I can't speak it well so most of the time I'm using incorrect pronunciation.

Swedish as it's my native language, and fluent enough in English. A few years of school-Spanish. I used to be able to string together sentences in Irish well enough to get by, but I've forgotten most of it now (although I somehow still remember the lyrics to Oro Se Do Bheatha 'Bhaile). I'm interested in learning French as soon as I finish uni.

Primarily English. My Mandarin is absolutely horrid; I speak like a primary school student (if not worse!). I can understand bits of conversation but that's about all.

 

And I'm ironically Chinese :unsure:

I'm curious as to know - were you born into a Mandarin speaking background at all? I know from personal experience that whilst I do not have as good vocabulary in Mandarin/Chinese as I do in English, I manage to have a basic conversation fine in it - most of the time.

 

*was born and raised into a Cantonese speaking background in the UK, whilst also interacting with Beijing foreign students who worked at the family business. wut*

Primarily English. My Mandarin is absolutely horrid; I speak like a primary school student (if not worse!). I can understand bits of conversation but that's about all.

 

And I'm ironically Chinese :unsure:

I'm curious as to know - were you born into a Mandarin speaking background at all? I know from personal experience that whilst I do not have as good vocabulary in Mandarin/Chinese as I do in English, I manage to have a basic conversation fine in it - most of the time.

 

*was born and raised into a Cantonese speaking background in the UK, whilst also interacting with Beijing foreign students who worked at the family business. wut*

I can't speak for him, but the educational system here doesn't do a very good job of encouraging people to speak their mother tongue (like Mandarin/Chinese). Most of (going by personal experience here) the people who do not speak their mother tongue at home tend to be poor at it. I guess I was lucky to be brought up bilingual.

Estonian as my mother tongue, English practically as good or even better aswell, Norwegian quite fluently, though now I start mixing it up with German, German enough to get by, though my grammar sucks, as I know Norwegian well, I can handle Danish and Swedish. Add a wee bit of Russian and you've got me.