44 replies to this topic

[taikara]

I'm sort of curious what languages everybody knows, being that this is a multicultural forum.

Personally, I'm fluent in English (hey, it might seem obvious, but many Americans couldn't honestly claim to be), conversational in Japanese, and can grunt well enough in French to get my ideas across  

I'm currently attempting to learn Norwegian (Tom gives excellent though lengthy lectures ), as well as some Dutch (I can sing a few children's songs in Dutch thanks to Kon-Tiki, hehe).

For the record, I'm awesomely bad at languages, though I really enjoy hearing them. The proficiency at Japanese was a fluke occurance, it's the only language I've studied that just "clicked." I'm about twenty times better at Japanese than French, though I studied French twice as long.

I can also say some rather choice phrases in German and Italian... but I wouldn't call that knowledge    German is sort of weird for me, I understand it to some extent, but can't really speak it.

Oh, and I can say "I love you," and "I'm freaking cold," in Russian, hehe.

[DakaSha]

I speak English and German fluently although as youve prob noticed i cant spell worth a crap in either.

I'm learning spanish once i get into my next school semester.

[Abi79]

I know English, Romanian   and some French (I can say yes or no )

[A. J. Raffles]

Arranged by how well I know them: English (well, obviously), German, Latin, Norwegian, French and Swedish; I can more or less fudge my way through Danish and Dutch texts if I need to, but I speak neither of those languages.

It's not as impressive as it looks, though; I'm only fluent in English and German, really (I'm half German, actually). Norwegian I can read and understand reasonably well, but I'm not very good at speaking, and I have an atrocious accent (I've only been doing it for about two and a half years, though). Swedish I've been doing for a year, so I know the basics of grammar and that sort of thing, but most of the time I tend to cheat and Swedish-ise Norwegian words. And I have a knack for making correct guesses. I used to be pretty good at Latin, but I haven't really used it much after I left school, and French... well, French is the language that just didn't "click".

There's lots of languages that I'd love to learn, but I probably won't have enough time for that.

[PrejudiceSucks]

I can speak English (with an old turn of phrase ) well...

I can speak quite a lot of German although I can't say that I'm fluent (I'm the best in my year at school at it, but that's because I pick a lot of it off the internet).

I can speak quite a bit of French, although I hate speaking it.

So my favourite language is German. English is ok. French is a bit lame.

I can count to 2 and say yes and no in Russian and know the word for station. I can what nationality people are in the scandinavian languages too. I can also say that I don't speak dutch in dutch.

[BeefontheBone]

English, with a smattering of French from my GCSE (A* baby, though it's mostly reading - my grammar is too bad to write well nowadays) and a few words of German. Plus a basic grounding in Latin. Oh, and I know a little British Sign Language too, though it's not spoken, obviously.

[a1s]

taikara, on Jul 20 2005, 04:49 AM, said:

Oh, and I can say "I'm freaking cold," in Russian, hehe.

I'd really like to hear that, hehe.

anyways I personly am fluent in Russian and English, I can get my thoughts across in  Latvian (yes, I suck at my own national language) and I can tell the theme of a german text.
I allso know lot's of obscure phrases in different languages (french, german, spanish, latin, and possibly a few others I can't remeber off the top of my head).

[MdaG]

Swedish (fluently)
English (second best)
German (need to rehearse my skills somewhat)
Sinhala (Mostly just understand bits of it when others speak)

*edit*
O yeah I forgot, I also know C, C++, Java and some assembler (+ some web languages)  

*edit*
I forgot. I can also understand norweigan and danish fairly well. Norweigan is far easier to understand than danish though...

[Tom Henrik]

I am fluent in Norwegian, English and German, but I do have an accent in all of them. At least for a while.

Think of me as a chameleon.
I begin speaking a total mix-up of different dialects (like mixing Southern and Northern American with Cockney and Walesian), and by listening to the target, I adept myself to speaking just like him/her. It's not done intentionally, though. It just happens. My Norwegian is a mix of every single dialect in Norway, and by spending time with someone else, I start talking in their dialect only.

For this reason, my German is mainly Schwäbisch (Southern German), as my dad lives in Giengen an der Brenz (Close to Ulm and Heidenheim).

I also know a little Spanish, but that is mostly things like "Una soupa di crema, por favor." and "Puede agregar o cambiar cuentas al iniciar sesión. En Panel de Control, haga clic en Cuentas de usario."

I also did a very tiny study of cantonese.

Edit:
I am a devil at saying "Genre"  

Edited by Tom Henrik, 20 July 2005 - 09:34 AM.

[A. J. Raffles]

Heh, that's funny. In one of my Norwegian classes there was somebody who came from Giengen an der Brenz as well. I doubt it was your dad, though.

[Tom Henrik]

I bet they know eachother, though
Giengen an der Brenz is a tiny tiny place.

[A. J. Raffles]

So I hear. Does your dad know someone called Peter, then?

(Ahem. I'm getting off-topic again...)

[Himmler]

I know Romanian( i guess), English(needs to be sharpened), and i studied French for about 8 years now and i still don't know anything else then just reading...and i can translate some words like oui( yes ), non(no) and je'n sais pas (i don't know) ...oh and i car read russian letters...ahem..those were learned to ...know something extra at my exams....



And I would like to know  German(my favourite sweet language) and Norwegian.

[A. J. Raffles]

Hmm, as I said, my French is pretty bad, but shouldn't that be "Je ne sais pas"?

And I think that's just about the first time I've heard German described as "sweet".

[Himmler]

"je'n sais pas" is a kind of shortcut...ah and tombe (to fall)