Fluent Spanish (but not anywhere near bilingual). Read French, and speak it badly when I brush up on it.
I took a year of German in college, but I haven’t used it in so long that it’s virtually gone.
I picked only Spanish because it’s the only language other than English I can read, write, and speak. However, I can also read a fair amount of Italian and Portuguese too.
My best other language is Polish. I lived there for over 2 years and I only spoke Polish during that time, so I got pretty darn good at it.
My second best language is German. I studied it in college and then we moved there for a while.
My third best language is Spanish. I took it for 6 years in school, but I haven’t used t much so I’ve forgotten a lot. Although I live in Tucson and so I hear it a lot.
Spanish: I’m not saying it’s pretty, but I can function. (8-12 grade, five years living in New Mexico).
French: I can (and enjoy) reading it and listening, with a patient speaker. Bad things happen when I try to speak French. (3 semesters in college, mostly reading it).
Latin: Given plenty of time, I can piece together the general meaning of a text, but I don’t claim to truly know the language. (A couple after-school classes in high school, self-taught on-and-off).
Greek: Ancient only. I still remember a surprising amount of Attic Greek and can even come close to an accurate pronunciation. My Homeric Greek is much rustier, but I can still do more than most non-classicists. And somewhere there’s a trace of Koine Greek rattling around, but it’s in a part of my brain that really hasn’t been on speaking terms since an unfortunate incident with the Book of Job. (three semesters in college with visitation rights throughout the remainder of my studies).
Voted other, for my first language, swedish, and german, though please don’t make me prove I speak it.
Dutch (since I am dutch), German, French (to some extent) and the ‘other’ is Slovenian. I would also be able to survive in Croatian (and thus als Serbian) but saying I ‘know’ or ‘speak’ the language would be a blatant lie.
Auslan (Australian sign language), Dutch and a smattering of French.
I’m full of admiration for Johanna. I;ve alays wanted to be able to speak lots of languages, and I’ve studied, Spanish, Latin and Thai, but never managed to become proficient.
I speak decent French from living in Cameroon for two years. My Mandarin (Sichuan dialect) is okay after two years in China. I speak a small amount of Fulfulde, a west African language.
From the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show (radio)
George) I didn’t know you spoke French
Gracie) I speak it well enough to get by, with people who don’t understand it at all
And now back to your regularly scheduled thread
French and German.
Other: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Sanskrit.
I think it might be just where in the US you’re from. What I understand is that the closer you are to the Mexican border, the more you need to know Spanish. Californian and Texan dopers would need to know it more than Chicagoan and New Englander dopers, and I think we have more of column B than column A here (partly due to the fact that TSD is based in Chicago)
True - as I grew up about 10-15 miles from the Canadian border learning French made a lot more sense to me than learning Spanish. If I had grown up in Texas I’m sure the reverse would be true.
I suspect that the term is used by speakers of other languages in Spain, such as Catalan and Galego (Galician).
I know some French, although it’s pretty rusty. I know a smattering of German and Hebrew; I took a course in each in university, but I’ve forgotten almost all of it since then.
I was expecting more Portuguese speakers…
Hebrew (native) and French (basic, can just get by in Paris.)
In my experience (early 80s, New York), we got the choice in 7th grade of studying French or Spanish in school. The almost universal choice was French for the top students and Spanish for everyone else. Spanish was considered easier and French was considered classier, as in you’d choose it if you were expecting to move in educated circles when you were older. Since then French has lost much of it’s cachet and i’m sure almost all of us wish we had picked Spanish. I’m guessing, the younger people are (at least in the US), the more likely they will have learned Spanish.
English. Conversational-but-not-fully-fluent Spanish. Enough to explain to Iberian Airlines that I wanted to change to an earlier flight to the same destination, clarifying that I only had carry-on bags. Honestly, with the demographics in my area, it would have been irresponsible for me not to learn it.
Not necessarily. My roomate during vet school (mid-20’s, same as I), also had the option of French and Spanish. French was considered the classier, and so she took it. The “French is classier” thing annoys me to no end (it also happens with Spanish speakers learning another language).
Japanese, a tiny bit of Chinese, lots of less widely spoken Indian languages (Kannada, Tamil a bit), and a little bit of Braille.