Poll: Do you know/are you learning a second language?

[awmperry]

Well, I'm half English and half Swedish, so I speak both of those fluently and have done for as long as I can remember. I started learning French when my parents bought me Muzzy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzy_in_Gondoland] as a child, got worse at it when I took it at school in Scotland (with a teacher who spoke French with a Scottish accent), and finally got better when I started living in Brussels. Also picked up Dutch and Flemish then, and did a year of Latin.

My wife's Afrikaans, so I'm learning that as well, and picking up the odd bit of Zulu from her housekeeper. Then of course there are bits of other languages I've picked up out of interest; Russian, Japanese, Chinese, enough Greek to ask for chips with salt and vinegar... I don't know *much* of them (at all, really), but I know the basics.

Then of course there are the Scandinavian languages - just about any Swede will be able to at least understand written or spoken Danish and Norwegian, and anyone who speaks Dutch can at least make some sense of German.

So yeah. One or two languages. ;-)

 

[brass munkey]

I'm not learning any at the moment but I want to learn German or Russian.
I also took three years of Spanish in high school but don't remember much of it.

 

[NerdElf]

Well, everyone on the internet besides people who were born in a country with english as the main language already knows more than one language, so this thread is quite useless.
Anyway, I know 3 languages, I'm trying to learn serbian, then maybe something new, like french.

 

[James Crook]

I'm French, so I know French, and I can speak fluent English, that makes me bi-lingual... now, I'm learning Chinese, so I have to say yes

 

[Discon]

I speak Norwegian, Danish and English fluently. I know SOME German, and I'm currently learning Italian and French ^^

 

[NBSRDan]

I'll be learning C++ next spring in the hopes of increasing the number of skills I can monetize.

 

[RyanBishop]

I speak English.
Еще говорю по Русски. Родной язык.
Und, schliesslich ich lerne Deutsch. Aber ich kann nicht sehr gut Deutsch sprechen. Oder schreiben, ja. =)

 

[moonlantern]

Ich bin studiert Deutsch wegen viertel Deutsch bin mich. (I think that's right.)

Der einzige Fehler ist, dass man "lernen" benutzt würde. Also glaub ich, dass es sein würde:
"Ich lerne Deutsch wegen viertel bin ich." Aber, ich weiß nicht, wie man "viertel" benutzt würde. I weiß nicht, ob das sinn macht oder nicht.

anyway, you have good German, just watch out for using "bin" when you really don't need it. If you write "ich studiere" that means "I am studying (at a college)"

=]

Thanks for the critique. I'm pretty new at this and it didn't help that is was the middle of the night. XD

This is what I was trying to say:

I am studying (at a college) German, because I am one quarter German.

 

[EpicEps]

I'm hoping to start learning Japanese, soon. The main reason?

This.


Hell, I'll import the game regardless of whether or not I learn Japanese by then.

先生は日本語のガムをします。日本語をならいますから。

My Japanese teacher said to play Japanese games, because it will help us learn the vocabulary. I would recommend that you start learning the hiragana and katakana, because that is one of the major difficulties I've had.

 

[Bobbovski]

I speak Swedish, English, some Spanish and a tiny bit of German.

 

[Laurents van Cauwenberghe]

i speak dutch english french and a bit of german

 

[Quaxar]

English and German fluently and I should be able to speak Italian though I haven't in quite some time.

Oh, and I learned some basic Serbian from my girlfriend.
Svan'o ti je sudnji dan!
It means "your doomsday has come"... granted, it's not what you'd expect but it's all I need once I have my deathray pointed on Belgrad! It's just a bunch of laserpointers on balloons right now but you have to start with something.

 

[SckizoBoy]

What is Yue? Is that like Mandarin or Cantonese?

Yah, I was just being a difficult ass there... Yue is the linguistic name for the group of dialects spoken in southern China, often called Cantonese, though that's not technically right. Cantonese is specifically the sub-dialect of Yue spoken in Guangdong. Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong can be divided into dozens of regions, each of which has its own form, though most people are just aware of the Hong Kong version of 'Cantonese'. Nearby Guangzhou Yue is a bit different...

 

[NerfedFalcon]

English natively, French reasonably well, currently learning Japanese.

 

[demoman_chaos]

I want to learn German and latin. German sounds like you are yelling at people when you are actually saying please and thank you, and latin has among the best sayings (like "Vae Victus" which means "woe to the vanquished").

 

[game-lover]

Yep. English being my main language.

My dream is to be multilingual. I just think that'll be so awesomes.

Spanish is the first one. I learned that when I was little so it's a given. People tell me I'm fluent but I'm still unsure. Gotta work on my confidence, I guess.

After that, it's French and Japanese. Not fluent in those but I hope to get there.

Then in no particular order, I hope for Italian, German, Russian, Swedish, Chinese, Korean, Dutch, Greek and anything else I can get my hands on.

 

[Zarkov]

Ich bin studiert Deutsch wegen viertel Deutsch bin mich. (I think that's right.)

Der einzige Fehler ist, dass man "lernen" benutzt würde. Also glaub ich, dass es sein würde:
"Ich lerne Deutsch wegen viertel bin ich." Aber, ich weiß nicht, wie man "viertel" benutzt würde. I weiß nicht, ob das sinn macht oder nicht.

anyway, you have good German, just watch out for using "bin" when you really don't need it. If you write "ich studiere" that means "I am studying (at a college)"

=]

Thanks for the critique. I'm pretty new at this and it didn't help that is was the middle of the night. XD

This is what I was trying to say:

I am studying (at a college) German, because I am one quarter German.

Ach ja, ich mache die ganze Zeit Fehler. Aber ich glaube, dass es sein würde
Ich studiere Deutsch, weil ich ein viertel Deutsch bin.

I don't blame you man, I've said some pretty stupid stuff in German and the even stupider stuff is yet to come.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

What is Yue? Is that like Mandarin or Cantonese?

Yah, I was just being a difficult ass there... Yue is the linguistic name for the group of dialects spoken in southern China, often called Cantonese, though that's not technically right. Cantonese is specifically the sub-dialect of Yue spoken in Guangdong. Guangxi, Hainan, Guangdong can be divided into dozens of regions, each of which has its own form, though most people are just aware of the Hong Kong version of 'Cantonese'. Nearby Guangzhou Yue is a bit different...

so...I'm still a little confused, is Yue similar to Cantonese like how American English is similar to British English? Or is it more like British English and Spanish?

 

[Zarkov]

I've been learning German for about 3 years, nearly 4 now. I understand pretty much everything grammar and sentence structure wise, but my vocabulary is still quite tiny, but I love the language and learning and also practicing with German speaking people both face to face and online.
I plan to then learn Dutch.

Oh, und, ich hab Deutsch seit zwei Jahren jetzt gelernt, und ich liebe Deutsch. Tut mir leid, wenn mein Deutsch nicht perfekt ist. (Use Google translate )

From what I understand, that was perfect except for the overuse of commas and the wrong case on "Jahr", but you did use Google, so no grudges shall be held.

Nö, (native speaker here) das war ziemlich genau perfekt, auch das "Jahren" - und die genauen Kommaregeln versteht sowieso niemand (You could have maybe placed the "jetzt" after "Deutsch", no biggie, though)

I really need to get around to work on my Danish, as I've been living here for almost 2 1/2 years. I can read ok, follow the contents of a conversation, but speaking... sadly, not so much.

Danke! Ich übe mein Deutsch viel, und ich will fließend sprechen. Es ist aber zu schlecht, dass schule mir nichts lehrt. Ich muss jetzt mich zu hause lehren.

 

[n00beffect]

What if you want to AND have to learn it? Like my case: I love English, but at the same time, even if I didn't, I live here, so... By the way, I have a big problem with people who decide to move from their native country, and yet refuse to learn the language of the country they plan on inhabiting. Or at least, don't even make an effort... That just sickens me; that's probably why I don't get along with people from my own country.