Poll: Do you know more than one language?

[shitoutonme]

"Pfft. Another language? I'm American - we don't need to learn another language, 'cause we got every other country learning English just so they can mimic us, the cool kids. Trendsetters, *****!"

Is what I'm tempted to say, but no, unfortunately, I don't know another language. The main reason for this is my own laziness and contentment. When I was younger, I studied both French and Spanish for two years each, and I can't speak either of them fluently. I should be ashamed, but...

Cajun French
and Boston English and i hate to say it but I know alot of Ghetto no not where the Jews were but you know what i mean

I believe you were referring to Ebonics, yes?

 

[Thundero13]

I am from Ireland, I speak fluent English, i'm learning Spanish & Irish in school.
I hate learning Irish & i'm terrible at it but I like Spanish.

 

[Wintermoot]

my native language is Dutch but I also speak English (I actually prefer English over dutch when using electronic devices like phone,s or computers)

 

[CrystalShadow]

Oh. One of these again. I suppose it has been almost a year now... XD

But yeah, I speak multiple languages.

English. Dutch.
German, though not as well.

Also fragments of Japanese.

(And a couple of computer programming languages, which I won't bother mentioning)

That's actually a bad record considering I have over the years been exposed to a lot more than that, and have also spent non-trivial amounts of time learning Indonesian and French...

You'd think having spent about a year learning those two, I would actually remember a word or two of it...

Contrast this to German, which I studied for 3 years or so, where I can understand most of what's being said, and respond in an understandable, if definitely odd manner should it be the only language I have in common with another person...

What's best about learning languages is the subtle things it tells you about a culture though...

 

[Kargathia]

It's a rather funny question to ask on an international forum. Per definition anyone who doesn't come from one of the English-speaking countries is bilingual.

And to be nice and answer your question:

Fluently: Dutch, English. Dutch being my first.

I can sort of understand: Latin, Old Greek, French, German.

Talk to some Germans and they'll say Dutch is just a version of German .

Talk to some linguists and they'll tell you the same =) Would've been helpful though for the Dutch if High German didn't become standard in Germany itself.

You should have quoted the guy who said he speaks Flemish.
Why ? Coz if Dutch is a version of German. Flemish isn't a language at all.

Flemish is just butchered dutch

Whether Flemish is an accent or a separate language I'm not too interested in debating.

The confusion here seems to stem from the difference between modern German, and Germanic languages as a whole.
Thing is that both Dutch and German are Germanic languages, both descended from a different branch. Dutch, Flemish, Fries, etc are Low-German languages, whereas German as we know it today is actually High-German.

 

[DanielBrown]

English, Swedish and some(very little) Spanish.
Being a Swede I can also understand Norweigan pretty flawlessly. Depends on which of their two languages they speak!

But no Danish eh?
I see, I get the picture :-(

Afraid not. People from Scania usually understand it, from what I've heard, but I'm from Stockholm and up here we can hardly even understand what the Scanes say when they speak with their full dialect. I don't want to spark this discussion here, but to me Danish sounds like random sounds from the back of the throat. I can on rare occations make out a word, but mainly it's jibberish to me. I've heard that Danes have the same problem with Swedish though.

 

[game-lover]

Spanish is the main one.

Then there's French and some Japanese.

 

[Thaliur]

Yep. English, Dutch and a little German

For me it's similar, English, German and a little Dutch, because of growing up on the border.

Actually, since this is more or less an international site with English as the common language, maybe it would be better to ask "Do you speak a language other than your mother tongue and English?".

 

[l3o2828]

I speak English and Spanish.

 

[Denamic]

What kind of school does not teach a secondary language to a degree of proficiency?
We started in 3rd grade and added a third language at 6th grade.

 

[Saelune]

No. I want to learn Japanese though. If I intend to move to Japan one day, I should KNOW THE LANGUAGE.
Anyways...
I took Spanish for like, 5-6 years, but I wasnt into it, and I learned basically nothing.

 

[LCP]

Spanish and English, and Spanglish... I'd like to learn a bit more Asian languages tho... either Chinese or Japanese

 

[corsair47]

yes, fluent in english and french, and i know a little bit of spanish

 

[The Apothecarry]

Grew up on English and took two years of Japanese in high school.

 

[Chalacachaca]

Fluent: Spanish and English (Almost every accent from South and Central America, standard Spanish accent, and both standard American and English accents, a bit clunky with irish and scottish).

A bit: French and Portugese (I can read portugese, but not speak it).

Want to: Japanese and Russian.

 

[SilentCom]

Unfortunately I only know one language. I know a little bit of Japanese and tiny tidbits of other languages, but I am not fluent in any of them.

 

[DSQ]

Unless you count scots as another language, witch I don't no matter how much the scottish goventment try to force me, then no.

I live in the UK witch is pretty bad as teaching languages go and the family that I have that is from overseas come from english speaking countries (St.Vincent and Jamacia).

I tryed learning German at high school, I went all the way up to scottish higher level, but both my german teacher and I agreed languages and DSQ did not not go well together.

I am a big supporter of learning languages but I myself seem to never progress far in my language studys unless I am forced to speek another language daily.

That is why I am going on a gap year to japan in two years. Wish me luck.

 

[NicolasMarinus]

Being from Belgium, we have our three local languages (Dutch, French and German). I'm also fluent in English and have a feeble grasp on Spanish (enough to get me to the next town and find a bed).

 

[TheBadGamer]

Yes, fluent in Swedish and almost fluent in English.

 

[Dereck Fok]

Currently...
Fluent in: English, Cantonese, and Japanese
Studied but mostly forgotten: Mandarin, French and Spanish
I know a little bit: German and Korean