I’m sort of surprised there hasn’t been a thread on this before. Anyway, what languages can you speak/read/understand?
English is my first language, and I can speak, read and understand French fairly well (although don’t ask me to write it. My grammar is pretty terrible.) I also read Latin and ancient Greek (with a dictionary and grammar) and will be learning Italian this summer and, most likely, German the summer after that.
German. I don’t do well applying the gender to verbs and nouns. For you that don’t know what I’m refering to, nouns are masculine, feminine, or neutral. I found that using the structure of German sentances, had affected how I wrote for years. Ass backwards it was. 
I’m a native English speaker, and I’ve been studying Spanish for eight years and French for almost two. Most of the eight years of Spanish were painfully slow public school classes full of stupid people, so I’m really not that much better at it than I am at French. I can read and understand both pretty well, and my speaking and writing are all right.
I’m fluent in both English and Korean, although my Korean is definitely not as good as my English. I suppose I could read Chinese and French with the help of dictionary, and maybe even a bit of Ancient Greek. I don’t really enjoy learning langauges, though.
I speak English (native) and Spanish, as well as a smattering of German and Russian.
Once upon a time, I actually spoke Russian very well, but due to more than a decade of non-use, most of my Russian skills have, sadly, atrophied.
I speak English and Esperanto. Next month I resume learning French (I hope to get to the DELF basic competency test in 2006).
Native English speaker. I speak German, but I’m far from fluent.
I can get by well enough in German and Italian; nowhere near fluent in either language, but I think I could work it up to that level given sufficient immersion.
I’d like to learn to speak a lot more languages, but I’m not disciplined enough to learn them on my own, and I can’t (yet) afford to take classes.
You said you “read” Latin and Greek. But your OP is asking which languages we “speak.” Can you hold a conversation in Ancient Greek?
I put twelve on my résumé. That doesn’t take into account the fact that I can read Ancient Greek well enough to, for example, post poems by Sappho online in the original Archaic Ionian Greek dialect, as I’ve done here on the SDMB from time to time. I claimed knowledge of:
Arabic, Finnish, French, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Malay, Persian, Tamil, Turkish, Uyghur, Urdu, and Uzbek.
But in both my library career and translation career, I’ve used more than those. I can understand Spanish fairly well, though I don’t put it on my résumé because there are lots of fluent Spanish speakers. Whereas Americans who know Uyghur are rare. Additionally, I’ve been learning Kazakh lately. I’m a Central Asia hound. I could also inflate my résumé with Dari and Tajik, because those are both the same as Persian. I used that trick with Malay and Indonesian, which I call “two for the price of one.”
I’ve also done German, Hungarian, Swahili, and a bit of Bengali, Hebrew, and Russian. I’ve been teaching myself languages like Kyrgyz, Lithuanian, and Telugu.
At a place where I used to work, the Swahili guy left. There was still undone Swahili work, so I took a Swahili grammar and dictionary, and set to work teaching myself. I made notes on the essential points of noun and verb grammar, and kept this paper next to me as I worked. Within a few days I was translating Swahili.
But the all-time champion of learning lots and lots of languages, literally overnight, was Cardinal Mezzofanti.
I’m a native English speaker, and I can also speak Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Esperanto , all at a fairly advanced level.
And at one point or another, I’ve studied Cantonese, French, Italian and Sanskrit.
Among langauges that I’ve set out to learn but didn’t necessarily last more than a few weeks are German, Swedish, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, Arabic, Swahili, and probably a few I’m forgetting. I can hardly speak these languages, but because I’m pretty good at imitating foreign accents, I still pride myself on being able to rattle off a few phrases in each one that make me appear (if only for a moment) to be fluent.
English is my native language (though one could feasibly argue that I don’t speak it all that well). I’m fairly fluent in Spanish, having studied it for five years in middle/high school (and, living in NM, get to practice pretty much whenever I’m in town). I also know ancient Greek, but that’s a pretty much one-way thing (I can read Greek and translate it, but don’t ask me to write anything for you).
In my spare time (hah) I’m currently teaching myself Hebrew, and trying to pick up a bit of Italian. Next year, I’m going to be taking a French class. I wish I knew more languages/had more time to teach myself, but alas, I don’t.
Native English speaker. I speak Hindi as a consequence of living in India. I used to be fluent in German, but I haven’t spoken it much in the past 3 years. I can read and write it just fine though…
For those of you who speak so many languages: how did you do it? Did you go to school for it, live abroad, or did you teach yourself? If you taught yourself, what method do you recommend?
English is my native language and I’m also pretty decent at French from taking it in school from Grade 4 until OAC (Grade 13). But I feel I’ve slipped since I haven’t been immersed in it. I feel if I were to go live in Quebec for 6 months, I’d be right back up to speed with it.
Also, if I’m forced I could probably have a simple conversation in Macedonian. I can understand 90% of what’s spoken to me but it hasn’t translated to an ability to speak it. Both my parents and all my grandparent speak it; all of them speak good English too so it isn’t essential that I’m fluent.
Native English speaker, brought up till the age of 12 in Germany, so I can understand a certain amount still but nothing comes out when I try to speak. Same with French which I studied enough to be quite good in my teenage years, but never used again - what a stupid waste.
I am however fluent in Japanese - 14 years of speaking it, but only a few years of semi-serious study of the writing leads me to read at about 4th grade elementary level, and write at a lower level still.
This thread has definitely been done before, but it’s been a while.
English, Fluent Afrikaans.
German…I am American and just happened to go to Germany and learned it there. But to be honest, I am surprised so many non-native Germans (responding to this thread) also speak it!
Is there some new trend in learning German that I have missed?
I speak English fluently, French reasonably, and Spanish, Hindi, and Esperanto at a diligent but novice level. I once was conversationally familiar with Irish but little remains.
I absolutely cannot. But you may notice that although the title of the thread only mentions speaking, the OP mentions speaking, reading and understanding. I’m interested in all three.