Languages

[obfuscator]

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 :)

[Guest Rob]

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

[The Runar]

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

[champion]

English and three years of Spanish.

[proton]

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.

[Alg]

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.

[Randox]

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.

[Sbrideau]

Fluent in both French and English.

[Kaphias]

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

[Skull]

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.

[stevepole]

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.

[Saradomin_Mage]

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:

[sohkmj1]

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.

[Gandorf61]

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.

[Giordano]

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

[MonkeyChee]

English, and a small amount of German.

[Quyneax]

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.

[Jonanananas]

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.

[tripsis]

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

[Distracted]

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.

[Star.]

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.

[Azvareth]

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.

[Assume Nothing]

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*

[sohkmj1]

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 dude]

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.