Spinoff thread; What languages do you speak?

Tiltsta

Tiltsta

Show me your frittatas
Staff member
Another thread got me thinking about this. What languages do you speak? Feel free to classify level of competence and such. Nothing wrong with speaking the only language where you live, but I wonder about the diversity of what MWGL could cover if pressed. My language skills came from my parents and my wife, but they are really weak compared to plain old English.

As for me…

English (my main language)
Dutch (I converse like a 3 year old)
German (Like a 4 year old)
Spanish ( a bit, with pointing and lots of bad verb/tense issues, but understandable, like a slow 4 year old)
Frisian (I converse like a 3 year old)
Turkish (a few words, sentences)…from my wife, no real understanding.
Zaza (even fewer words)...from my wife, even less real understanding.

Again, nothing wrong with only speaking your home language. The smartest guy I know speaks 'english and chemistry'. I just thought it would be cool to see what we could cover as a group. Please don't let this descend in to some crazy 'intellectualism' madness. The only languages I know, aside from English, I learned from interacting with people who are close to me simply by coincidence of where they lived.
 
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fluently....only english
words and phrases, bits and pieces.....russian, greek, vietnamese, french, spanish, navajo.
 
I know English pretty well.
I know German a bit - rusty on vocab but strong on grammar.
I can read menus in Spanish, French, and Italian.
 
'Merican....

That is all I will claim. But at one time...

Spanish - two years in school - and lived in Spain for two years. I was functional in Spanish at one point.
German - three years in school.
Norwegian - I was raised by a Norwegian immigrant Step Mom from age 6 on, and most of her good friends were Norwegian. I understood a small amount of the language at one point. My first childhood crush was a Norwegian girl named May-Britt Salt. She moved back to Norway when i was in 6th grade.

Latin - at one point I could read a Latin text and at least understand what was being said.
 
I took private Japanese lessons for several years, and passed the level 3 JLPT and was ready to take the level 2 test before my life got too busy to keep that up.

I also studied Latin, German, French and Swedish, but now there's nothing left in my head of those languages besides useless fragments.
 
Quebecois is a funny one. I used to work with a bunch of French scientists and a few French Canadians, and the French insist that Quebecois is like 17th century rural French. No idea if that is the case, but I've heard people tell me this for years. I only know three or four 'traveler' sentences in French, so I can't really testify to this statement.
 
It's definitely different than the French you learn in school. I stopped taking French in school because it was not helping me communicate with my French Canadian cousins.
 
English, fluently.

I can hold a conversation in Spanish and everyone knows what I'm saying, but the guys at work laugh at me when they think I'm not looking. :lol:
 
I should add, I can understand (usually) a conversation in Irish, but really can't speak very much of it....not that it comes up much anymore these days.
 
I speak English and some conversational Spanish, though I'm a bit rusty. I can usually read Spanish pretty well, and understand basic conversations.
 
I listen to german radio every day,and work on my German usually every day for about an hour. I can undertsand it MUCH better than I can speak it(Das Grammatik gives me FITS)
 
Just American.

I took 3 years of Spanish in High School, not really good enough to follow Spanish-speakers, but I could pick up a newspaper and read it. After 30+ years of not using Spanish, I've forgotten almost everything :(

I used to be pretty fluent in DOS, too :tongue: Haven't used that in years, either :(
 
Jbird said:
Just American.

I took 3 years of Spanish in High School, not really good enough to follow Spanish-speakers, but I could pick up a newspaper and read it. After 30+ years of not using Spanish, I've forgotten almost everything :(

I used to be pretty fluent in DOS, too :tongue: Haven't used that in years, either :(
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I see what you did there, and I use it almost every day.
 
I used to be able to have a basic conversations in Spanish with my in-laws as that was all they could speak. Since they passed away, I am out of practice and am losing it.

My #2 daughter is fluent, is studying it in school and is now learning Portuguese. Her goal is to be come a Spanish teacher. She is tutoring now part-time.
 
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