Languages of which you know at least 10 words

[Digital_is_the_new_Analog]

English - native language.
German - studied four years in high school and three semesters in college.
Spanish - I live in South Florida. I can’t speak anything useful, and can’t understand much. But I’m way past the 10 word thing.
Hebrew - Years of Sunday School leading up to my Bar Mitzvah…I remember some of it, mostly from prayers.
Fijian - Just a smattering of words, like “two beers” and the local equivalent of “no worries”. I think I can squeak by the 10 word threshold.
Arabic - Maybe. Just Maybe. I can say thank you, you’re welcome, good morning, good night, happy birthday, yes. Not much else.

I think during my week in China I knew more than 10 words, but I don’t remember much any more.
-D/a

[chizzuk]

English: native speaker

French: Took 5 years in school, but it’s deteriorated so badly that I’m probably at an A2 level now at best. Still know way more than 10 words, though.

Spanish: living in the US and now specifically in SoCal, you have to pick some up eventually. I know maybe 100 words.

Hebrew: took a semester in college, but most of what I know is prayerbook stuff. Maybe 100 words. Oddly, I was in line at Target last week and some guy accidentally bumped into me and said, “Slicha.” I reflexively answered, “No problem” in English. He looked very startled.

German: my mom speaks it, my knowledge is mostly “football German” because I watch the Bundesliga and the German NT. So, maybe 150-200 words, many of which are English cognates.

Mandarin: I went on vacation to China about 7 years ago and I might know 10 words. Maybe. I was constantly with someone who was a native speaker, and there was absolutely no expectation that I do any independent communicating, so I picked up very little.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

Spanish
Quechua (I and II)
Aymara
Portuguese
Italian
French
German (Standard and Swiss)
Dutch
Russian
Bulgarian
Serb
Arabic (Classic)
Finnish
Swedish
Japanese
Chinese

[LawMonkey]

Russian, Spanish (if nothing else, I know how to count to ten!), probably Latin but can’t say for sure.

[silenus]

I can say “Yes, No, I don’t know, I don’t understand, Give me two beers and Where is the Men’s room?” in English, German, French, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Latin, Spanish and Japanese. I probably know 10 words or more in a couple more languages, including Fortran and Basic.

[elfkin477]

@John_Mace

No Native American Languages? Remember, the criterion is only that you know 10 words.

I know lots of native american words, but I don’t know which tribes they arose from beyond many being from woodsland tribes.

English
Spanish
French
Portuguese
Italian
German (largely thanks to The Sims’ sites. I can name life stages, rooms, and furniture)
Latin
Gaelic (mostly folklore-based)
Russian
Yiddish

probably Japanese & Dutch and some Scandinavian languages between The Sims, music blogs and folklore

[John_Mace]

@silenus

I can say “Yes, No, I don’t know, I don’t understand, Give me two beers and Where is the Men’s room?” in English, German, French, Italian, Russian, Portuguese, Latin, Spanish and Japanese. I probably know 10 words or more in a couple more languages, including Fortran and Basic.

Funny, but I originally was going to ask how many languages people know how to order a beer in, but I thought that might be too specific to my own case. At any rate, you hit pretty much the ones I always try and learn first. Others include “Do you speak English?” and learning the numbers. Numbers get you a long way, and I always think it’s polite to be able to ask “Do you speak English” in the native language rather than in English.

[Nava]

@Loach

Depends. Does food count?

And words you know from reading white brand boxes?

Seriously: one of the local supermarkets has labels in Spanish, Portuguese and Greek.

[foolsguinea]

Spanish: Conozco yo más de 10 palabras de todos estes idiomas?
French: Je ne c’est pas. Probablement.
Latin: enough to sing “Adeste Fideles”
German: Ja, ich kann doch–ach, ich habe vergessen, er, the verb order.
Italian: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate. Buon giorno, [del]camalo[/del] signore!

These are close:
**Japanese: **Other than wasei-eigo and Japanese words borrowed by English, maybe 10. Not sure.
Chinese: Maybe 10, counting terms that don’t have a good English translation?

ETA: Oh, of course Greek, but my Greek knowledge is largely a hodgepodge of roots used by Latinate languages, with smidges of Attic, Romaic, and New Testament Koine, all blended together really.
Hebrew, maybe 10.
Arabic, maybe 10 if you count (meanings of) names? I don’t know.

[Nava]

@pseudotriton_ruber_ruber

I have a vocabulary of about 200 or 300 words in my native language, Yiddish (strange but true), several thousand words in French, a hundred or so in Italian, a few dozen in Spanish, maybe a dozen or two dozen in Hebrew, several hundred in Latin probably (though never formally studied Latin even for a minute), and th-th-th-that’s all, folks. (Does Pig Latin count?)

So how the hell did you manage to write in English?

[Sattua]

Hmmm. French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Swahili… and you said Klingon doesn’t count :mad:

[hogarth]

I know more than 10 words in English, French, German, Hebrew and Mandarin. English has enough foreign loan words that I’m sure I could come up with 10 words of Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Latin. I think I could probably name 10 food names in Korean and Greek as well.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

@Nava

So how the hell did you manage to write in English?

English is a given. See OP.

[Maserschmidt]

@Two_Many_Cats

I’m an American, but my descent is half-Latvian. Does that count?

German. My mom is German, so I gleaned a lot from her. I know how to count to ten, so there’s that right there. But I know a few words more than that.

Cousin! Perhaps we can form a club of Americans with Latvian dads and German moms? We may get up to a couple dozen people.
Excluding languages in which I can count 1-10, which seems like something of a cheat to me:
German
French
Spanish
Russian

[John_Mace]

@Sattua

and you said Klingon doesn’t count :mad:

And yet you managed to sneak it in!

@prr

English is a given. See OP.

Thanks.

What’s the point of everyone listing English?

[TriPolar]

For just 10 words I could list Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. But that’s not even close to fluency, or even making myself understood to someone in those languages.

English has been disallowed, but how bout Mercan?

[John_Mace]

@TriPolar

For just 10 words I could list Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. But that’s not even close to fluency, or even making myself understood to someone in those languages.

English has been disallowed, but how bout Mercan?

How about Rhode Islandese? Would you like a cabinet with your quahogs or just a regular coffee?

Cabinet is a milk shake, quahog (KO-hog) is a type of clam, and “regular” coffee means with sugar and cream.

[Lissla_Lissar]

French
Japanese (probably about eleven words total. Not many)
Ojibway (I once spoke it… not fluently, but I could understand a fair bit, and speak it okay back in high school)

[TriPolar]

@John_Mace

How about Rhode Islandese? Would you like a cabinet with your quahogs or just a regular coffee?

Cabinet is a milk shake, quahog (KO-hog) is a type of clam, and “regular” coffee means with sugar and cream.

Row Dialandese is a dialect of Mercan.

I’ll just have a dynamite or a NY Systems and some gray chowder. I don’t drink coffee, I just get water from the bubbla down cellar or a Del’s.

Dynamite is like a Sloppy Joe, NY Systems are really bad hot dogs, gray chowder has no cream or tomatoes, just broth. A bubbla (bubbler) is a water fountain, down cellar is the basement, Del’s is a local lemonade stand franchise.

[elfkin477]

@John_Mace

How about Rhode Islandese? Would you like a cabinet with your quahogs or just a regular coffee?

Cabinet is a milk shake, quahog (KO-hog) is a type of clam, and “regular” coffee means with sugar and cream.

My god, that sounds like the worst possible meal ever, even worse than chourico or linguica paired with something sweet like malasadas. I’d slap someone if they offered me quahogs and a cabinet.