German and Thai.
Spanish - 6 years in school, minored in college, lived abroad, fully bilingual.
French - 1 year in college, ex-wife who was fluent, can read and speak slowly.
Russian - one semester in college, can sound out words.
I almost forgot – I took one semester of Old English in college (mainly at the “recommendation” of mid-20th-C. Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges). Yes, it’s very much a foreign language for speakers of Modern English. Anyway, it would barely fit the OP’s criteria – but I think it should be included, so add one more to “other.”
My family lived in England for the equivalent of my 7th and 8th grades (1983-1985): I went to a British school, and we were required to take French and German.
When we came back to the States and I started high school (1985-1989), the options were French or Spanish. I stuck with French, for two years, but never really got anywhere with it.
I kept taking French in college (1989-1993), also for about two years, but again I never really got anywhere with it.
My grad school program had a foreign language prerequisite, and it had been so long since I’d studied French that I started over. In 2003-2004 I took French 109 (101 & 102) and 209 (201 & 202), and by the end of the second semester I felt like I was getting the hang of it. The 300-level courses were where conversational and reading skills began, but I needed to start my grad classes and had neither the time nor the money to continue French just for the hell of it. I wish I could have, though.
These days I can understand bits and pieces of French, and I can speak a few words/phrases. A multilingual friend sometimes asks me questions in French to help me practice: usually I understand her, but need to reply in English.
In German I can still count to ten, and I can ask “What time is it?” That’s all, though.
What is a “horizontal dictionary”?
Six years of Spanish (4th-8th grade and senior year of high school).
Three years of Latin (9th-11th grade).
I have a very basic ability to communicate in Spanish. I remember nothing of Latin, although I can derive some meaning from English words I’ve never seen based on the roots.
A lover whose native tongue is different from yours, who teaches you his or her language during courtship and the making of the beast with two backs.
Spanish and Russian in college, French later in life. Still pretty good with Spanish and French, the only Russian I retain is how to read Cyrillic.
French from 6th grade onwards. I vaguely recall some very basic Hebrew when I was little, but that’s been lost in the vast abyss.
I don’t seem to have much of a talent for actually speaking other languages, sadly, but I studied French and Spanish in high school, French in college, and took evening courses in Italian and Mandarin at different points. I think my ability in most of those languages is currently limited to “hello” and “thank you.”
I’m Canadian, so technically shouldn’t be here, but what’s Skald going to do about it… fire radioactive bees at me?
Anyway, I’ve studied French, Japanese, and Esperanto in classroom settings, including immersion.
The French was regular classes from grade eight on, then (much later) courses at Alliance Française, then later still a five-week immersion course in Québec. I can make may way with many errors in the language.
The Japanese was an eight-week full-immersion class. It was just the very beginnings, but it was amazing, and if I’d kept it up for a couple of years, I might have been able to go somewhere with it. But I moved…
And the Esperanto was online, then a class, the conversational practice, then going to Europe and speaking it exclusively for a week. Now I consider my self reasonably fluent in it.
I also took German in high school, but never studied it in immersion, and so don’t really remember any o it.
I am the one who checked “Gaelic,” because I have taken Scottish Gaelic classes, but I assume you meant Irish Gaelic?
I didn’t count languages I’ve studied on my own, per your rules, but my Italian is much better than at least three of the languages I’ve studied formally.
Spanish (2 years, 8th & 9th grades), Russian (4 years’ worth of study including over one summer, 10th-12th grades, plus one college quarter); German (2 college quarters); Japanese (3 years college including one year in Japan).
Sunspace – some fluency in Esperanto – wow! Have you ever dreamed in Esperanto? Was the dream about, say, rainbows and unicorns and world peace?
Despite my lame attempt at humor, I’m actually genuinely curious about this. A language not connected to any particular locale is intriguing. (I guess you could say the same about Hebrew before 1948, or Latin today, but at least those had ties to particular locales in the past, with vestiges in the present.)
Hebrew: Hebrew school teachers managed to beat a bit of it through my skull despite my best attempts to thwart them, but it didn’t stick. Age…I don’t know, 8-14?
Spanish: 5 years, grade 8 through grade 12. Same teacher for four of those years.
Ancient Greek: 3 semesters in college, primarily Attic and Homeric.
French: 3 semesters in college. I can still read it okay. Since it was for literature classes there wasn’t ever much emphasis on speaking skills, and my pronunciation probably makes little French children weep.
Spanish, French, German, and Hungarian. And I grew up speaking Polish alongside English, but never really studied it formally. My proficiency is intermediate, at best, in all but Polish, which is conversationally fluent, but my vocabulary is not literary or advanced. Just day-to-day Polish.
I didn’t see an option for Welsh.
Also, French and Latin. Picked up Italian while stationed there, but it’s all mostly gone now.
Bydd Cymru yn codi i drechu’r Skald drwg!
Clywch, clywch!
Latin and Hebrew: a couple of years in roughly late elementary and middle (our homeschool group was very “classical education” themed for a while, and the Hebrew was intended to help our Biblical understanding. From what I can tell, the Latin (and the Rhetoric) frustrated the parents until they all gave it up, and the Hebrew led to too many pointed questions about dodgy translations, so they gave that up too.
French in high school for 2 semesters, and at college I tested out of one class, took the 201 equivalent required to graduate, and decided not to waste my time beating a dead horse (I am TRAGIC at French).
Japanese in college for fun.
ASL (which wasn’t a poll option, tsk tsk) in college for fun.
French, 2 years HS
Latin, 2 years HS
Gaeilge, umpteen years, here and there, with a few formal classes and several immersion weekends/weeks.
I’m not conversant in any of them.