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

In My Humble Opinion
41

Mother tongue: French

Picked up English at age 4 or so, thanks to the neighbours. My parents realized one day that I was fluent and chatting away with the kids in the neighbourhood.

Studied German for two years at one point. I have all but forgotten it, although I do remember a few things, one of them being “Mein Wagen ist kaput” (which isn’t really helpful since I don’t have a car). :smiley:

Studied Spanish for about 3½ years and took a refresher course a few years ago. I can read and understand it well enough, though (provided people don’t talk too quickly) and didn’t have any problems understanding people when I was in Spain. A friend of mine just moved here from Mexico, so I get to practice my Spanish. Unfortunately, she is also fluent in English and in French so I don’t always speak Spanish with her.

I’m thinking of learning something new. Any suggestions?

42

My first language. and the only one I am totally fluent in is English (US variety).

I took Spanish all the way through high school, and was really very good at it. I impressed the hell out of my parents on a trip to Mexico when I was nineteen by having long conversations with the housekeepers of the cottage we had rented. Unfortunately, the very next week I left to spend my junior year of college in Israel. 25 hours of Hebrew a week for two months will drive any other language out of your mind, I promise. During the school year, I had six hours of the language a week, plus, you know, living, and although I never achieved total fluency, I could communicate pretty readily with anyone. My reading ability is much worse, though, I really need to think and sound out the letters. It’s getting worse and worse, though, I don’t know many people in my every day life I can chat with.

Last semester I took a beginning Arabic course at Berkeley. I am still about a zillion years from being able to have a simple conversation in the language, though! (I was studying written Arabic, which isn’t really the same as the way people actually speak.)

43

Thanks, Mojo. I totally should have had a shadda on 'uHibb(u). (I included the apostrophe just to be pedantic and represent the glottal stop.) I think the final is usually dropped in speech, though–even in high-register Modern Standard. Or at least, that’s what my teacher led me to believe. Regardless, my transliteration is pretty tortured. :o

I feel your pain, Kyla. I, too, am a looooooong way from the remotest glimmer of conversational fluency. One of these days…

44

My first language was California English, but it’s been mostly lost to Canadian English, eh? I also can, if pressed, speak a sub-Arctic pidgen, which is a mix of simple English and Tutshone/Tlingit/Han words, with French grammar. Can’t do it for long, though - my parents used to yell at me for it when I was a kid. :slight_smile:

Moi, je peux parler un petit peu de quebecois, aussi. Si tu parle tres lentement, et utilise les mots tres facile, je peux te comprendre. I am able to speak a little quebecois, as well. If you speak very slowly, and use very easy words, I am able understand you. Courtesy of the Canadian educational system, and well, I like languages. And don’t give me any crap about the accents - my keyboard’s US English and I’m too lazy to look them up.

I can say several extremely rude phrases in Spanish and German, though. Does that make them count? As this is not the Pit, I won’t demonstrate.

I’m sort of learning Southern Tutshone, as my kids are learning it in school, and I need to keep my Parental Eavesdropping Skillz sharp. Still at the single word level, though. Massi cho, thank you.

Jomo Mojo, I also bow in your general direction. With a genuflection in Collounsbury’s general direction too, even though he hasn’t posted here yet.

Would you guys teach me to swear in Arabic? If I asked really really nicely? I always wanted to learn, just for the elegance in constructing truly vile insults. Besides, then I could swear at work and nobody would understand me. Except possibly Mo, and he works in a different office.

45

First language - American English, New England

Second language is Spanish. I know plenty of grammar, but my vocabularly can be limited at times, and the language hasn’t really “clicked” with me, due to a lack of an immersion experience. I’ve been studying it for the last four years though. I can read it pretty well, too. “Yo tengo diez y siete anos.” - “I have 17 anuses.” (Spanish speakers get the joke).

I can also understand/read a little bit of Italian, and even less French (of which I know a snippet or two. “Je ne parlez vous Francais,” is pretty much it, and I think that it’s wrong). Mostly, this is from my knowledge of Spanish. Italian is very similar. French is more divergent. I don’t really relish the idea, but I should probably study some French, just in case I actually do end up going to college in Quebec.

I know one phrase in German: Du bist das schonste madchen das isch kenne. Sorry about the missing punctuation. As to how I know it, it’s a long story.

46

Languages SUCK. Everyone should communicate telepathically, or at least through the use of a complex device that reads what you’re thinking and sends it out to other people, and in turn can recieve and interpret messages from other peoples’ thought devices.

47

We get to list the ones we’re not fluent in, this time? Dead languages too? Woo hoo!

English – native language

Spanish – four years high school, three years college. Didn’t really click until I studied abroad. Good enough for most business / academic situations, but nobody will ever mistake me for a native speaker.

German – two years high school, plus my parents sometimes spoke it at home. Sadly, I’ve lost most of the grammar now, although I still remember a lot of words and phrases.

Hungarian – Eight-week adult ed crash course, ten years ago. Can still count to ten and say thank you, but that’s about it.

Latin – self-taught at first, then three and a half years in college and grad school. Passable reading ability for prose, not much good at poetry.

Old English – one year, grad school, then had to self-teach again before exams. Decent reading ability, ditto for most dialects of Middle English.

French – one semester. Can get a croissant and a hotel room, which is all I really wanted it for anyway.

Czech – one year. Utterly and completely hopeless, mostly because we just learned declensions and conjugations, with no conversational practice and very little sense of how to use the language. Stupid professor.

The next one is going to be Thai; I’m hoping to go there this winter, and I’ve already got some language tapes, but I do not understand this tonal thing at all. Also, it’s one of those travelers’ courses where they give you a bunch of set phrases and not much grammar, so I’ll probably be walking around Bangkok saying things like “My name is Peter. I am from England. I am a businessman.” After Czech, however, this should be a refreshing change.

I like languages. :slight_smile:

48

American English (East Texas dialect). Native language.

Very basic Mexican-Spanish, mostly forgotten. Growing up in Texas, 1 semester at college, and a 1 month homestay, also while a college. Una cereveza, por favor.

Japanese: Hyojun-go (“standard” dialect). Learned on 1 year exchange program in Nagasaki from '88-89.

Osaka-Ben (Osaka dialect). Learned from 8 years of daily life in Osaka.

49

Arabic oaths are very elegant and florid, as you know. “Swearing” in Arabic isn’t the same as in English with all the vulgarity. I’m reminded of how Lenny Bruce insisted “There are no dirty words in Yiddish!” Likewise, Arabic—Classical Arabic at any rate—is not a language of vulgarity. Peter Theroux totally mistranslated an Arabic phrase in his book Sandstorms (even though he’s an accomplished translator of Arabic). He was in Saudi Arabia and heard guys saying “Ayrî fîk, yâ qahbah.” He translated this as “Fuck you, bitch!” That was not quite right. By making it a low English vulgarity, he totally misrepresented the nature of Arabic. Actually, literally, it means ‘My penis in thee, O harlot’.

My Arabic focus is literary anyway. I’ll leave it to Collounsbury to come up with the real slang zingers in Colloquial Arabic dialects, of which he knows several.

50

American-- Learned it at home. Local NY dialect.
Jeetyet? 'Cuz I’mnot standinin-nat line for freakin eva.

Spanglish-- Learned at home. Puerto Rican dialect.
Voy a cojer la gua-gua al building. Tu bajastes 'pa bajo?

51

Transcribed (not translated) in more standard French:

Bien là, je sais que je suis pas mal tête carrée, mais ferme ta gueule là-dessus, hostie, puis on s’en ira pour de la poutine, qu’est-ce que tu penses?

52

American English speaker here. I studied French for 5 years. I had wanted to take spanish in the 7th grade to be in the same class with a friend of mine, but mom said “no, if you want to be a scientist, you should learn french!”

Terrible advice! As a physician in the US, I have never had a patient who speaks only french!! I’ve had thousands who speak only spanish! And I’m reduced to mumbling "dolor? No habla espanol? Como frijole? (Pain? I don’t speak spanish. How have you been?)

53

Well Classical/Formal Arabic is an artificial language in many ways, lots of the perfectly fine words in Formal are quite vulgar in actual usage or how people understand them if they are spoken.

That being said, curses vary so much that an insult in one area is simply puzzling in another.

That aside, typically one does not swear casually as one might in New York, or even elsewhere. More typical cursing is fairly indirect (perhaps florid, but only in books, not in real life). “On your head,” with Is suppose the implication that God’s Wrath is On Your Head is a curse, for example. I hesitate to pretend to teach anyone any as (a) without in person assistance you’re simply going to mispronounce so you might as well speak in gibberish (b) should you get it right, you may end up saying them in the wrong circumstances.

For example, a long time ago when I was first learning Arabic I got all excited about knowing certain curses. Used them a bit too freely I would say. One evening, while getting into a cab in New York I yelled at my friend, who spoke Arabic –and had taught me the phrase—‘yellah ya hayawane, ya himaar, ya kelb’ Translating in spirit and not by exact meaning ‘Hurry up you filthy stupid asshole.’ I meant for my amigo to stop gawking at some chicky. All in good fun, I may add. Unfortunately the cabdriver was Arab. He did not take kindly to this, and began yelling at me in Arabic. I am sadly cursed with excellent mimicry such that I sound more proficient than I am in any given language, such that he took me for an Arab. It got ugly. Very ugly.

So, in the interest of sparing you an ugly incident, I defer.

BTW I would disagree that Theroux mistranslated the phrase at all. To actually say that phrase, even if one used formal Arabic is really the equivalent of saying ‘Fuck you, bitch.’ Nothing nice about that phrase.

54

Native language: Hindi and Sindhi (dialect of the region my family is from in India)

Learned the Queen’s English at home from parents

Learned American English in school–still have some confusion with it and the Queen’s English :smiley:

Chamorro : indigenous language of the island I was raised on-can speak a few words and phrases. Hafa adai, todo mauleg? (Hello, how is everything?)

Studied Japanese for 2 years and French for 2 years–not quite at conversational level, but can identify words

Spanish: have picked up it up living in California for so long

55

Yes, one rarely adds this in, if ever outside of (a) hyper-correct newsreaders on TV and radio (b) religious contexts.

Frankly, when one speaks like this, one sounds like a bloody idiot. Uriidou an athhebou ila al-funduqi will cause laughter in the real world. However, it is good to learn it if only to understand high level usage and to understand certain frozen usages which capture nunation and the like. Normally spoken Fusha is with sikoun, excepting certain phrases.

3-5 years, depending on amount of concentration on the language and amount of time spent in region. As well as talent. After 5, forget it, you’re just not cut out for it.

Arabic is a real pain in the ass, but do recall that you do need both formal and dialect to be able to truly use it. It is also helpful to have more than one dialect, but much as it pains me, if you can only get one, go for Egyptian. It’s ugly but most widely understood. On the other hand, Shami sounds better and its pretty widely understood also. If you’ve got guts, do North African, but you’ll have to learn an eastern dialect as well, hata laou mabghritsh l-mashreq bzef.

56

Standard Midwestern American English is my native language. Actually, I guess standard NJ dialect is my native (my parents are from there), but learned Midwestern at age 2 when we moved to Chicago.

Learned Spanish: 8th-12th grade in school, majored in college, spent a semester in Spain, and basically spoke natively in the dorm as most of my friends and roommate were native speakers. Spent 3+ years as a court interpreter and am fluent, if a bit rusty here and there.

French: 2 years in high school, semester intensive in college. Functional, but not pretty.

Russian: 3 years in college (minored in Russian). Semester in St. Petersburg (Leningrad at the time), summer in Novosibirsk, 2 more years academic study in grad school, M.A. in Russian & East European Studies, many native-speaking friends and acquaintances. I’m pretty fluent, but have vocabulary gaps here and there.

“Nyet khuliganov v Sovetskom Soyuze.” (There are no hooligans in the Soviet Union.) A real phrase from my first-year textbook.

57

sob Ok, you got me, I LIED. Are you happy now?

Strine is my native tongue. English I learned in school. But my English has gotten progressively better since I came to Japan. My Strine, however, is deteriorating.

I think I need a crash course. Anyone got some Steve Irwin videos they can send me?

(The Panel would be appreciated too!)

58

I lived in a mixed neighborhood of chinese mexican and anglo. and when I was young, before school age, I cound speak al three rather well. But then I used only english for many years and have only began speaking chinese (cantoonese) lately and find I am not as good as I thought I was. I can shop or order in a restaurant, but would be hard pressed to discuss politics.

59

My native language is German (I speak both ‘Hochdeutsch’ and the Hessian dialect which has a great line that goes like this when written more or less phonetically:"
‘Steck der aa ao oo’ which means ‘light one up too’)

I speak Dutch fluently but with a slight German accent (lived in the Netherlands from age 3 to 7 and for the last two years).
‘En die kuttreinen rijden zeker morgen ook niet.’

I am a native speaker of American English (of the east coast, specifically D.C. variety) since I lived there from age 7 to 19.
Translation of the Dutch sentence: “And the damn trains probably won’t run tomorrow either.”

I am fluent in Brazilian Portuguese (actually the dialect from Northern Brazil, specifically Belém do Pará):
'De verdade, eu prefiro uma Brahma, mais lorinha é lorinha, entao ….
Translation: ‘Actually I’d prefer a Brahma, but brewski is brewski, so …’

I had two years of French in High School (which is just enough for me to find out where the restroom is in an emergency) and three years of Latin in High School (if anyone spoke Latin, I would probably have to wet my pants. The only thing I remember is “Omnia Gallia est in partes tres …” from ‘De Bello Gallico’ and I probably got that wrong).

60

That should be “mas” and not “mais”. The word “mas” is pronounced the same as “mais”, but one means “but” and the other means “more”