I speak English, Mandarin, and Malay. I’m trying to find someone to teach me Kristang and Peranakan - the respective languages of my Portuguese Eurasian and Straits Chinese forefathers. Apparently they’re all going the way of Latin now.
I speak English natively, portuguese fluently and can read french, spanish and italian with about 75% accuracy. I used to be able to read and write latin fairly well, but living in Brazil for a few years seems to have overwritten those neurons.
My native language is Swedish and I dare say that I’m fluent… 
No really, I am good with it and I’ve always been complimented on essays and oral presentations. I have a way with words they tell me.
I’m also fluent in English. I have spent about two and a half years in North America and sometimes I think I speak it better than I write it. Maybe it’s because I have nailed the prosody of it. Give me two days in an English speaking environment and most people mistake me for an American. I like it…
I could have been fluent in French. I took six years in school and I’ve spent 9 months in France, but I was really unhappy when I was there, and I simply didn’t feel like immersing myself. So I speak it, but not very well, and since it’s been a while, I don’t think I’d be too good at it.
I would like to learn Icelandic and Dutch. I don’t know why really, because they’re not very international, but maybe that’s the charm…
I took four years of Spanish in high school and never really got the hang of it. I can recognize words and maybe get the gist of a paragraph, but that’s about it.
I took Russian in college and I loved it. I think it’s a very easy language to get a hold of, reading and speaking it is easy to do because it’s almost always phonetic. If you learn the sound of the letter, you can pronounce any word. I think it sounds sexy, too. I took Russian culture courses at the same time, which was beneficial because I could apply what I was learning in the language course.
And now that I’m out of college and always looking for hobbies, I’m trying to teach myself German.
It’s hard. I’ve got about six different textbooks and a big, thick dictionary (oh baby!), but that crazy language is driving me up the wall. If I had $2,000 I’d just throw it at DePaul or something and take a class, but right now I can’t afford it.
someday, someday…I will speak German.
I promise.
jarbaby
Native language: English.
Studied in classes:
[ul][li]German. Totally forgotten, this was some twenty years ago now.[/li][li]Russian. Four years at Georgetown, a year in St. Petersburg. Got Russian co-workers so I’m keeping up with it; reading novels on the Metro is fun![/li][li]French. Four years in high school. Guess I’ve held onto it, since I gave directions to the World Bank to a tourist a few weeks ago, after not having spoken a word in well over six years.[/li][li]Greek. A year at Georgetown. Can still read some, but haven’t spoken it in a while. Definitely need to brush up on it again.[/li][li]Basque. A semester at Georgetown. Can’t read it too well, but I remember a large part of the vocabulary.[/ul][/li]
Have studied independently:
[ul][li]Russian. Did this in high school and in between there and Georgetown.[/li][li]Italian. A more recent endeavor; I can hold my own briefly but I need more practice.[/li][li]Swedish. Ask Anniz how I’m doing. :D[/li][li]Japanese. Got so far as to buy some children’s kanji guides along with the basic grammars but haven’t gotten anywhere near practical with it. Much more practice needed.[/li]Yiddish. I spent years trying to find a grammar book and located one in a used bookshop. I didn’t care that I’d been fired earlier in the day and had no money to spend on such luxuries; I was damned if I was going to let this opportunity slip. I can still read it but gotta brush up on the grammar some more.[/ul]
English - self-explanatory, I think.
Mandarin - I speak this with my parents and their friends.
French - learned for 6 years in High School. The accent isn’t bad but the grammar is atrocious.
I can swear in German, Italian, Cantonese and Japanese, and say “I love you” in German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Japanese.
Incidentally, while I was in France, I met a woman who spoke 14 languages. Her 20-year old daughter spoke a paltry 10. 
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Olentzero *
**Native language: English.
You’re doing very good,
especially when I’m thinking of that you learned it by yourself.
I’m impressed by that.
Me, native language, Swedish and then I speak English,
not the best, but okay.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Anniz *
**
Um, Anniz?*
Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself.
I’m guessing that I’m one of the few posters who understand Maori. I’m guessing GuanoLad is another. I never got much good at speaking it, but I could read and write pretty well and understand when spoken as long as it wasn’t too fast. The best part of it is that most Polynesian languages (Tahitian, Hawaiian, Samoan, etc.) are pretty closely related and learning one gives you a very good start on the others. That’s how Captain Cook did it. His translator didn’t really know Maori when Cook explored New Zealand but Maori is sufficiently similar to other Polynesian languages that native speakers of each can understand and be understood.
I studied Russian in college, one semester, got an A, can’t remember a thing. Except that changing alphabets was much harder for me than changing languages. (I must be a visual learner.) Tried to learn Swedish once (my family heritage) but didn’t try for long. (And I have the temerity to criticize Anniz!)
*It should be, “You’re doing very well”. It’s just one of many irregularities in English, and it’s a mistake made very often by native English speakers. I think you speak English well, Anniz. I’m just teasing you.
Once upon a time, Mrs. G. Was fluent in French and I spoke and read a passible form of German. Our high school foreign language teachers were both Belgian nationals. When we lived overseas, thanks to the American taxpayers, the Germans thought I was French (the green suit confused them ) and the French thought that my wife was Beglian, because of the accent acquired in high school. Now that middle age has crept up (crept past?) on us, we have had a chance to go back to Europe and find that time and non-use has rendered us both nearly inarticulate.
English, my native language.
Japanese, which I don’t speak well enough considering I’ve been living here for 6 years.
French, which I learned as a child and studied in high school, but have now forgotten.
German, which I barely passed one year of in college.
Esperanto, which I try to study every now and then but always seem to get distracted.
Sometime in the future I’d like to try Korean and/or Mandarin
–sublight.
Arabic, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Indonesian, Lithuanian, Malay, Persian, Portuguese, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu.
A bit of Bengali, Chinese, Finnish, Greek, Japanese, Latin, Mongolian, Navajo, Panjabi, Polish, Quechua, Russian, Telugu, Uzbek.
I have been studying Sanskrit for years and have actually made a dent in it!
P.S. I know Esperanto — it’s kind of impossible not to — but I don’t count it.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by pluto *
**
Great, one more except Montfort that whants to learn me English.
Just kidding, I think I improve almost every day here in The US.
Native language: Spanish
Knows well enough: English
Can read or understand part of it: Italian, Portuguese
Can get every other word: French, German, Latin
sigh My school does not offer foreign language courses (English is required here), and the process to take them at the Univerity is a hassle(besides, im leaving here). I hope I could take some of those languages at the university I will go to.sigh
PD. Drastic: "Conozco un poco espanol, pero olvide mucho de la lingua, porque tengo no necesitidad por la usa de el.
In other words, after four years in high school and a couple refresher courses of Spanish in college, I speak it sorta half-assed. Missing accent marks and such above, and I’m pretty sure I made up one word entirely. "
Yea…lingua, necesitidad…but I find it cool that other high schools offer different language courses, and that you people took them.
I’ve been told that for whatever political reason things were a bit sticky. That at the general chase after the American dream thing.
This is true. However many of them spoke their native tongue at home- this was the case with my family. They stopped speaking German bit by bit over the course of the war, and it came to a complete cease by the end of it.
Sorry it wasn’t clear. Didn’t figure that you wanted an in-depth elaboration on my family history.
Parlo soltanto inglese. È triste. Desidero parlare altri linguaggi.
Il serait grand en effet d’apprendre des langues telles que le Français, l’arabe et le latin.
Eines Tages kenne ich alle diese Weisen zu sprechen, und ich jedoch vermutlich bin nicht glücklich. Ich wünsche mehr und mehr wissen.
But I cannot speak any of these things, I only know english, so im stuck with either english or this place
English: 1st language
Spanish: Learned from kindergarden through high school, getting rusty now though.
Ancient Greek and Latin: Learning for my major, clumsy in both, will be fluent before I graduate.
Japanese:I am starting this next semester. I already know a bit, but nothing useful (except the swearing, swear words are always useful :)).
English is my first language.
I took three years of French in college, and enjoyed it immensely.
Mais c’était il y a de deux ans, et maintenant je parle français comme un touriste américain.
First language English, second language French.
As for why/how, it’s courtesy the Canadian educational system, originally. I’ve kept it up because it’s an advantage for me in my area of law - I’ve studied law at anglophone and francophone universities, and have pleaded cases in both languages.
Spanish Have lived most of my life in Mexico. This is my children’s first language and lo que hablamos entre nosotros.
English My native language.
Can read and understand Italian and French.