Native/fluent in English; a bit less than fully conversational in Spanish. I was surprised to find I could decipher a fair bit of written Italian from the Spanish I knew, and I can make out a little bit of French too (a few words here and there). I picked up a few Hebrew phrases when I was in Israel but none of them stuck as I haven’t had any exposure to the language since.
I just changed my major to Linguistics, though, and since I’ll have a good excuse to take lots of language classes I’d like to master Spanish and ideally learn French and Catalan, and maybe Italian and Portuguese if I can find any more room up there. I figure if I speak English, Spanish and French I can get around just about anywhere; Catalan, Italian and Portuguese are strictly for soccer purposes.
Johanna, you continue to amaze me. How did you do all that? It seems like there are a few different groups of similar languages in your arsenal (French and Italian; Arabic, Turkish, Persian, etc.). Was there a strategy, or did you just kind of stumble from one onto the other?
Fluent in English, obviously, passable Spanish (enough to have a casual chat, anyway), and so-so Bulgarian. Actually, my Bulgarian is much better than my Spanish but I am constantly reminded of my deficiencies in it, since my 6th and 7th graders think it is hi-larious when the genders of my adjectives and nouns don’t match up.
I used to be conversational in Hebrew, too, but it has totally fallen apart.
I’m here, but the OP asked to write only if you had more languages than the previous posters, I don’t. Defnitely not anywhere near Johanna!
I speak Spanish, Catalan and English correctly. I’ve been exposed to Catalan longer than to English, but I did have formal training in English and not in Catalan.
My German is way too rusty, although I’m recovering it a bit. Last Thursday I felt so proud of myself because I was able to have the usual conversation with the border guards all in German, except at the end when he congratulated me in English (I have to cross the Swiss-German border back and forth 4 days a week; the Swiss-French one about once a week but those don’t stop me).
I can cuss in Italian just fine and do some shopping in French; I couldn’t learn Portuguese during my assignment in Brazil because the Brazilians wanted to practice their Spanish and English (I learned moito obrigada, the days of the week and some basic grammar). Can drive Greek cops nuts (the Greek word for “please” is palakaló, which sounds like Spanish “pá la calor”, for the heat… it’s Traditional for Spanish tourists in Greece to make like we haven’t unnerstood what the guy in blue is fussing about). Can decipher any written Latin or Anglo-germanic language given enough time and a bit of guesswork. Can decipher more Greek than I legitimately ought to be able to. I’ve done professional translations from French, German and Italian into English and Spanish. In many of my jobs I’ve had to write documents that would have to be translated from Spanish to English or viceversa and, unless expressly forbidden by the boss, just did both versions myself.
Some day I’d like to learn to cuss in Russian. Asking for food and for the toilet in Russian would probably be useful too :D, as well as being able to understand “all the way to the back and on the left”.
English native, Japanese at business level (speaking, I read and write at a sixth-grade level, according to my kanji tests), French at conversational level (although I’m sure I butcher my le’s and la’s).
Apparently, I can read Spanish, German and Dutch well enough for basic proofreading. At least, that’s what my co-workers keep calling me over to do.
Native English and fluent Portuguese (the language of choice in our home). I can speak Spanish well enough to do what I need to do, but I can’t follow native Spanish speakers when they are speaking amongst themselves.
Thanks, fetus. Since I was a kid, reading about languages and linguistics was a hobby I did for fun. Seems like enjoying a subject made it easier to learn it. This is a hobby that became a career better than the two careers I went to college for. The only strategy I followed was to learn Arabic first before starting all the other Middle Eastern, Asian, and African languages. Otherwise, my method of selecting languages to study was more like “oo! pretty!”
One time at work the Swahili linguist had to go away, leaving work undone. I got a Swahili grammar and dictionary and started studying. Within a few days I was able to take up the slack on the Swahili work and kept it going for months until he returned, then we were able to work together on it. Hakuna matata. When I moved on from that job they begged me not to go, and chased me for months afterwards trying to hire me back. I usually handle in the range of about 10-15 languages at any job.
I just want to observe, the champion British language learner of the 19th century, Richard Francis Burton, was right when he said Arabic was the key to learning Asian languages.
Semi-passable English, bad French, shopping and night-on-the-town Spanish, which improves greatly with immersion and/or alcohol, and enough written Latin to puzzle out most documents. Lousy grammar in all of them.
Was nearly fluent in German when I was in college majoring in the literature and linguistics of it, and spent a year living there. I can still read it well, and understand it if I have a chance to pick up the rhythm and idiosyncracies of the speaker. I can also read French and Dutch somewhat, but not nearly as well as German.
Living in L.A. one does pick up a surprising amount of Spanish just from bus ads and billboards. Recently I saw one for some reality TV show about reposessors, and the slogan was “Si no puedes pagar, no lo debes comprar!” I had no trouble figuring out that it means “if you can’t pay, then don’t buy it!”
You could probably understand a lot of written Portuguese too, given that I know I’m not alone in being able to read some of it and Italian since they’re both similar to Spanish. Hearing it spoken, though is a whole different story… somehow I ended up being part of one of the few Portuguese families in southern MA who never spoke it at home(I don’t think even my grandfather was taught it, and my mom, aunt and uncle certainly weren’t) and hearing others speak it leaves me utterly clueless.
Interestingly, even practically next door to Mexico we also get some grocery store French. I often buy couers de romaine and pommes de terre which are produits des Etats-Unis. Another place where we often see French side-by-side with English is on cars, in the little instruction card on the driver’s visor that warns you to always place your enfants moins de 4 ans in the banquette arriere lest they be killed by the sac gonflable. I can understand that the U.S. and Canada probably form one market for the most part, and cars can be sold interchangeably, which may not be true of Mexico. Still, with all the Spanish speakers we have here, you’d think they would put the warnings in Spanish also.
English - first language
Polska - second language don’t keep up anymore - since grandma passed…Christmas mainly.
French - Un peu
Latin - what I can remmeber from highschool
English, natch. Though it was my first language, my Spanish could only be regarded as “functional” (barely). My French is even more marginal, but if I’m somewhere where I need it, enough of it kicks in to help (often to my great surprise, since I tried to forget most of it post-college).
Well, this thread should have ended with Johanna (I mean, who can top that many languages?). But I came in to brag anyway about the number of languages the Dutch speak, on average. Dutch kids are taught three foreign languages in highschool: English, German and French. Kids at the Gymnasium are taught passive use of Greek and Latin too. Add to that that many streetwise kids pick up the Dutch-Morroccan-Arabic street slang brought to us by the angry young second generation of Moroccan immigrants…anyway, learning one foreign language just seems to make it easier to learn another one.
Anyway, Dutch is my native language, English I know pretty well, I can get by in French and German, I can understand Limburgs, the unwritten dialect of the southern part of Holland where I live, and I can read a smidgen of Latin. So I guess that makes 5,5.
My fiance Arwin knows everything I know, (although he studied English, so he has a far cooler accent) AND he knows Swedish. So, 6,5 for him.
At one point in my life I could honestly say four but I’m not down to about 2 total. English, 1/2 point for French, quarter point for both German and Latin. If I took a lengthy trip to Europe (which is in the works) I’m confident I could get French and German back - provided, of course, I spent time in the right countries…
I’m a passive bilingual. I am a native speaker of English, and, when I was young (before the age of 10), I was a native speaker of Icelandic. However, due to not using Icelandic, I can understand a lot of it and read a good bit of it passably, but I have a hard time speaking it or constructing grammatically correct sentences. I took German for a while, and that messed up my ability to understand Icelandic even further, as they seem to fight with each other for which words come more naturally. I can speak German like a small child who is still learning the rhythms and rules within German.
ETA: Oh, and someone had mentioned knowing Norwegian and being able to speak with Swedes as a side effect. Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic are close enough that I can understand a Swedish conversation reasonably well, depending upon what they are talking about. It just sounds like really guttural, garbled Icelandic to me.
Yep – and Catalan too, which I often confuse with Portuguese at first (generally until I see double letters or realize that I’m reading about FC Barcelona).
Also, keep in mind that French was the “world language” immediately before English, and that French was the official language of England for a hundred years.
Since I was a kid, reading about languages and linguistics was a hobby I did for fun. Seems like enjoying a subject made it easier to learn it. This is a hobby that became a career better than the two careers I went to college for. The only strategy I followed was to learn Arabic first before starting all the other Middle Eastern, Asian, and African languages. Otherwise, my method of selecting languages to study was more like “oo! pretty!”