Which language/s do you know, and how did you learn them/it?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I’m fluent in French. I took my first French classes in the ninth grade (roughly age 14) and studied it off and on through college. At age 24 I took a year abroad in Strasbourg, France, where I went from stuttering and stammering to actual fluency. J’ai achevé le Diplôme Approfondi des Études Françaises (DALF), donc selon le gouvernement français, c’est officiel! (Translation: I earned the Diploma of Thorough French Studies, so according to the French government, it’s official!)

While in Strasbourg, I started studying German. Since Germany was a 45-minute walk from where I lived (and faster by city bus,) I had ample opportunity to practice in the small German town of Kehl, just across the river, where French is useless. I’ve studied German off and on since then, but I’ve got a long way to go. Als in Straßburg ich war, ich habe ein bißchen Deutsch gelernt. (Translation: When I was in Strasbourg, I learned a little German.)

I’ve had two Spanish courses, but mostly I’ve picked up on Spanish by walking around New York. I’ve lived in the New York area for five and a half years, so I’ve been able to get some practice in. Knowing French helps a lot. I’m not fluent in this language, either. ¿Porque no son picante, las salsas de Taco Bell? (Translation: Why aren’t Taco Bell’s sauces very spicy?)

I’ve found I can hack through written Portuguese, which I’ve studied a little on my own. I’ve recently been hanging out with a Brazilian, so things might pick up.

When I was a kid, I always assumed that every adult worth his or her salt could speak Latin. That might be true. I figured I would have learned Latin by now. I haven’t. I’ve got books, and one day maybe I’ll make myself.

I can sound out Polish and Russian successfully, but that’s about it. I know maybe six words in each language, and essentially nothing about how to construct a sentence in either.

**Jomo Mojo—**As a lifelong linguaphile and aspiring polyglot of the Nth degree: I say you are a god.

22

little bit of french and spanish in high school, portuguese by living in Brazil for 9 mo. “Mas Antartica, bien gelata!”

Japanese from the sushi bar and college buddies. “Moto Sapporo, Kurosai!”

Gangsta from the kids at work. “I’ll bust a cap in yo’ ass, Bee-atch!”

23

Pretty cool how Jomo has studied all of those. Question is, how many of them does he still actively speak?

As for me:

[ul]
[li]French - four years in high school. Haven’t spoken it actively for quite a while now, but I read Le Monde diplomatique on a regular basis.[/li][li]Russian - originally self-taught starting in high school, but majored in it at Georgetown. Year abroad in St. Petersburg, where I went from the stutter/stammer phase to being able to argue leftist politics in a matter of a couple months. Almost got on TV for it, too. :smiley: Have a bunch of books at home that I bought while in Russia and am slowly working my way through them. Also speak actively with a Russian co-worker here in the office.[/li][li]Swedish - self taught. Got a bunch of books inherited from Mamma O’s side of the family (mostly Albert Engström, for you Swedes on the board) and am working on getting a subscription to Svenska Dagbladet sometime soon.[/li][li]Italian - self-taught. Working on getting a subscription toIl Manifesto as well.[/li][li]Spanish (Latin American) - my second most recent project, still trying to expand my vocabulary. Comes in handy a lot when I’m in DC.[/li][li]Japanese - my current project, one I’ve started and stopped over several years. Definitely going to finish the book this time![/li][li]Esperanto - self-taught. Member of E-o League of North America and the Universala Eo-Asocio, and I subscribe to a couple of magazines.[/li][/ul]Other languages I’ve played with are: Greek, Basque, and Yiddish. Got grammars and dictionaries, just need to sit down and tackle them again when I’m further along with Japanese and Spanish.

24

I don’t speak anything other than english, and I sign both American and British sign languages (I was born in England, then came here when I was 5 or so) I speak spoken english pretty damn good for a deaf, if I don’t say so myself. I also know a lot of Yiddish expressions which I throw in everyday speech moreso to amuse myself than anything else.

I can read :
-French pretty well - my mum and sisters all speak fluently - I can speak a little bit of it, but my pronounciation isn’t good enough to be understood.

-Spanish enough to get by. Spoken, I can count to ten and ask for a beer.

I am learning Polish now because my in-laws all have that as a primary language. My husband and his brother speak it pretty well too.

I want to learn Portugese or Dutch next.

25

hahahaha, Coldfire $ did. :slight_smile:

Smashed Ice Cream that’s so cool! [no pun intended]

If you can teach me to learn sign-language, I’ll teach you Dutch.

26

I’m feeling very, very small here, especially due to Jomo Mojo and his ilk.

My native tongue is American English.

I speak as a second langauge German, almost fluent - completely self-taught, motivated by the discovery of German music, learned with the help of online textbooks and several newspapers. I can at least tell jokes and sing along with the aforementioned bands without difficulty, but I’ll need a long trip to Germany to get comfortable.

I’m currently dabbling lazily in Sanskrit (personal interest) and French (in preparation for a class I’ll be taking when the school year starts up again).

27

That would be: “Mais Antarctica, bem gelada!”

You spelled every word incorrectly! :stuck_out_tongue:

28

British Sign Language is my first language (deaf parents).

English is my other fluent language.

Studied French for five years, can get by in it.

Studied Latin for seven years. Does that count?

29

And…you’re Australian did you say?

30

Native language is English of the central Ohio variety. Example: “No, this shirt dudn’t need washed!”

Have studied French (Parisian) off and on from the age of 12 and am decent at it–but sadly not fluent. J’ai encore besoin d’un dictionnaire pour lire Le Monde.

Studied Russian in high school, minored in it in college. (Major was–surprise!–linguistics.) Spent a summer in St. Petersburg. Since then my skills have atrophied. :frowning:

Studied German for just a couple years in high school, but have retained that limited knowledge pretty well, IIDSSM.

Have just begun studying [Modern Standard] Arabic. 'uHib diraasat al-lugha al-`arabiyya jiddan! (“I like studying Arabic very much!”)

Have dabbled in Turkish, Sanskrit, and some Algonquian languages (Cree, Fox, Menomeni, Ojibwa, Shawnee).

On the wish list are Mandarin, Spanish, and Swahili. One of these days… :slight_smile:

31

Native speaker of US English.

Studied French for two years in Junior High, four years in High School and four years in college where I graduated with a BA in French Literature.

I could passably read and write French in HS, but did not learn to speak conversational French until third year of college. Sadly, the conversational ability is gone but I can still read. Writing French, however is only with great difficulty.

As a grad student, I took an eight-week college summer school Intro to Spanish course after four years of self-study. Nothing quite like consistently volunteering in class with great confidence and making gross grammatical errors in front of sixty or so 19 year olds. I still wonder to this day why that lady kept calling on me. Today I speak Spanish very badly on a daily basis.

32

Australian - Australian (I misspell too often to class it as English).

I also know COBOL which I learnt in 4 days back in 1988. What, you don’t mean a programming language? Sorry.

I can also read music. Unless you know how it’s as confusing as trying to read Russian. What, you don’t mean music either?

Sheesh.
Then all I can offer is Australian.

33

Thanks, Chance. If you like to watch, I like to listen. :slight_smile:

MisterBK, I think Standard Classical Arabic for ‘I love’ would be uHibbu.

34

Natively anglophone of the south-eastern Canada region.

I took french immersion for 6 years and my read, spoken and written french were all good. I have since ruined that education by rarely speaking french (and I have little excuse as 50% of the population here is francophone) I can still read french quite fluently (that is to say, the french of France, not joual or chiac or the quebecois stuff matt_mcl uses, I have no bloody clue what he was talking about up there even with the translation :wink: )

I started teaching myself German when I was 13 or 14 and didn’t stick with it. Only phrase I can remember is: War was Sie gestern? A question I often ask my fiance :smiley:

I’d love to learn Spanish (I understand bits n pieces of it) and Russian. The oriental languages would also be interesting to learn but I’d rather have a few more under my belt first - better get cracking, I’ve only got another 60 years to get this accomplished :slight_smile:

35

I suppose my mother tongue is English, but my mother’s mother tongue is French. She used to speak to me in French all the time when I was little, then I started French immersion in kindergarten. K through 12, I learned textbook French.

I learned Québecois French when I moved to Montreal. I still curse in jouale on occasion. It’s just more fun to string together a whole bunch of religious terms. :slight_smile:

I learned Italian in an intensive year-long course at university when I was 22, then proceeded to do a minor in Italian language & literature. I can still speak it quite well, understand it when it’s spoken (but not in dialect), and still read and write it very well.

I can read written Spanish rather well considering I’ve never studied it.

  • s.e.
36

I have a brain the size of a peanut.
I am seriously considering the possibility that I can only remember one extra language at any time.

My first language is English, but my native language is Irish, if you follow me. I have spoken Irish fluently up to the point where I started secondary school and encountered the bitch who was to destroy my Irish skills and completely destroy my chances of ever being good with Latin. I will leave it at that since she deserves a pit rant all of her own, in fact I am heading there next…
So,

Irish, spoke fluently until age 14, cannot now even ask for directions.
Latin, studied for 5 years in secondary, couldn’t conjugate my way out of a paper bag.
French, high school french, became fluent during 2 months in france, havent spoken it in 7 years, could now not introduce myself in french. Am hoping and praying its in a zip file somewhere in my brain.
Swedish, 6 month course on arrival to Sweden, got my “university level” test directly after that (boast boast :D) and get accused now of coming from Gotland (island of odd people in Sweden).

Off to the pit to bitch and moan about awful teacher.

Oooh… next on list is either attempt to rekindle my french using the book+dictionary routine, OR, arabic or spanish depending on how ambitious I am feeling. Spanish feels easy-peasy… Arabic doesn’t…

37

I have a brain the size of a peanut.
I am seriously considering the possibility that I can only remember one extra language at any time.

My first language is English, but my native language is Irish, if you follow me. I have spoken Irish fluently up to the point where I started secondary school and encountered the bitch who was to destroy my Irish skills and completely destroy my chances of ever being good with Latin. I will leave it at that since she deserves a pit rant all of her own, in fact I am heading there next…
So,

Irish, spoke fluently until age 14, cannot now even ask for directions.
Latin, studied for 5 years in secondary, couldn’t conjugate my way out of a paper bag.
French, high school french, became fluent during 2 months in france, havent spoken it in 7 years, could now not introduce myself in french. Am hoping and praying its in a zip file somewhere in my brain.
Swedish, 6 month course on arrival to Sweden, got my “university level” test directly after that (boast boast :D) and get accused now of coming from Gotland (island of odd people in Sweden).

Off to the pit to bitch and moan about awful teacher.

Oooh… next on list is either attempt to rekindle my french using the book+dictionary routine, OR, arabic or spanish depending on how ambitious I am feeling. Spanish feels easy-peasy… Arabic doesn’t…

38

First language: American English (Southern dialect :p)

Spanish - three years in high school, then forgot much of it. When I began working at my current job, I began traveling to Central America, and it came back. I’ve not crossed into fluency, but I can converse well.

German - three years in college, with it as my minor briefly, until I realized that I didn’t have time left to go abroad for a semester and couldn’t complete the minor without it. What do I remember?

Tag Michael. Tag Karin! Wie ist die Suppe hoy? Sie ist ganz gut. Ubrigens, arbeitest du fiel im moment?.

It’s one of those dialogues we had to memorize for each class.

Gaelic (not Irish Gaelic) - began learning it on my own when I was driving 1000-1500 miles a week for work. Have a few phrases I learned from the tape, but I couldn’t spell any of them or realistically use them in any situation.

39

English: Well, I come from Kenilworth, Warwickshire.

French and Spanish: Learnt at school. Never used since and hence have forgotten more or less everything.

Swedish: Been trying to learn since I move here in late '99, but I have to accept that I am shit at languages. I am slowly getting there, with my Swedish “sambo” being a sweetie, but I just get too embarressed when I speak Swedish with my friends.

40

Oooh! Thats what I am doing here too amanset, let me know if you want to Swedebash some time :smiley:

Hmmm… I would love if there were some way we could have a thread per language where we could ask eachother stuff and have the various fluent people as resources. What do the mods think of such an idea? Where would it go then? While you are at it can you remove my double post above? I am starting to look like a total eejit due to the timeouts on the server.