Let's have a Language thread!

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Originally Posted by Chris

Also, I hate the Danish language. :D

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:(


Anyway, Danish is my first language being from Denmark n all. I'm also fluent in English. Other than that I used to be really good at German, but these days I'm rusty. I also took Spanish in High School, but've forgotten most of it. I also know very basic words in French (like, I can understand menu cards if I try). Other than that I've picked up very random words in Chinese, Nepalese, Hindi, Japanese and Thai. Y'know, just cause. But really, I think it's common for Europeans to have knowledge of other European languages - just because everybody is in such close proximity over here.

Oh, and I understand Swedish and Norwegian. But everybody in Scandinavia pretty much understands each other.. so that doesn't count.

Good pronunciation with: French (But I hardly know what any of the words I say mean)
Proficient in: Spanish (Although I purposely pretend I don't know this to rebel against people thinking I'm Hispanic)
Only know some words of: German, Japanese, and Italian
Sung in: Spanish and Hebrew (For chorus -__-)

If I tried harder a could probably learn Italian too since it's so close to Spanish, but I just dgaf right now. When I can afford to go to Greece, Rome, and Venice then I will care.

I'm obviously fluent in Swedish, but I consider myself almost as fluent in English thanks to the fact that we are taught English from like first grade in Sweden and then are constantly bombarded by it in various media. :p
In fact I frequently find myself actually forgetting that I'm even listening to a foreign language.

I have a few random skills in lots of other languages, well enough to at least be able to understand easier sentences;
Spanish and German are manageable, although I do have to look up words quite frequently.
I have also done amateur studies on Russian, and know enough Japanese to be able to follow game scripts with a 30% literacy or so.

Next up is most likely Greek, since I was on Crete last week and impressed the Greeks with my reading skillz (largely thanks to my interest in math and physics, subjects which tend to use Greek letters to represent all kinds of things).

on topic: I'm only bilingual :(

My dad speaks 4 languages. En Fr 粵語 (i think?) 官话

My French is still serviceable enough for me to communicate with the two people in Quebec who can't speak English very well.

My nipponese improves every week
私の上手の日本語が上がる。

German (kinda rusty though), some Spanish, some Japanese.

Spanish, though my vocabulary's limited.
Some French,
A spattering of words in Japanese and Chinese.
I read Greek and Hebrew, but I can't speak them.
I want to learn Russian pretty bad. I've started in on it a few times then gotten distracted, but someday I'll conquer it. Though I should probably concentrate on perfecting my Spanish first.

I speak English (that's a given) French (fairly fluently, more on that later) and German (with obvious signs of rust) and can more or less read the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, but can't speak any of the languages that use them. That in mind though, I usually have fun pointing out things like that one film being called The Cherpobyl Diaries (the used the upper-case Pi instead of an N, so it says Cherpobyl, not Chernobyl) as it's always gotten on my nerves when people use Greek/Cyrillic letters that look similar to Roman ones that are pronounced entirely differently. I dunno, I just find it stupid.

I've had some on-and-off efforts to learn Japanese, but due to a major crippling weakness I've always had in my language learning, I'm determined not to learn to read it until I've gotten plenty of experience hearing it and speaking it. See the problem I have with French and German is that I cannot understand them being spoken out loud; I even struggled with spoken English until I was about seven years old. Despite speaking them with varying degrees of fluency, and despite being able to understand and translate them perfectly well when they're written, the foreign languages I CAN speak become complete gibberish when spoken to me. I have absolutely no idea why this is, and as such have never been able to get over that wall :/ My approach to Japanese may not necessarily fix that, but still...

That said, I'm told I can hide my English accent very well when I speak French, so that's a plus.

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Originally Posted by *Laurelindo*

I'm obviously fluent in Swedish, but I consider myself almost as fluent in English thanks to the fact that we are taught English from like first grade in Sweden and then are constantly bombarded by it in various media. :p
In fact I frequently find myself actually forgetting that I'm even listening to a foreign language.

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Ooh, jealous of you! I would love to be able to have that level of familiarity with a foreign language! I get it somewhat when reading French (like where I understand the words in front of me to the point of not needing to translate in my head) but that's as far as it goes.

There is a rather distinct typ of speech in my village that is extremely similar to Icelandic, and I believe it is even considered a separate language.
So I guess I could say that I have some indirect skills in Icelandic, although nowhere near enough to read it fluently or anything.

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Originally Posted by ReloadPsi

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Originally Posted by *Laurelindo*

I'm obviously fluent in Swedish, but I consider myself almost as fluent in English thanks to the fact that we are taught English from like first grade in Sweden and then are constantly bombarded by it in various media. :p
In fact I frequently find myself actually forgetting that I'm even listening to a foreign language.

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Ooh, jealous of you! I would love to be able to have that level of familiarity with a foreign language! I get it somewhat when reading French (like where I understand the words in front of me to the point of not needing to translate in my head) but that's as far as it goes.

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One great way to learn another language, at least in the beginning, is to read relatively simple phrases as much as possible and learn the words that are used there by heart.
In fact I think this is the best way to learn new vocabulary, because it gives a clear context.
Also try to listen to French speech whenever you can (it might be a good idea to use French subtitles along with it until you feel comfortable with the speech itself, though).
And whenever you aren't 100% sure of why a sentence is written in a certain way, make sure to look it up and get a deeper understanding for the grammar structure before you continue.

And also, do not feel intimidated by the language.
It's very important that you have a confident attitude to anything you want to learn, and if you treat French as something that's simply something that you are ready to learn and that you have decided to become good at then it will become much easier.
You are the master of the language and of your motivation to learn it.

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Originally Posted by Breine

Oh, and I understand Swedish and Norwegian. But everybody in Scandinavia pretty much understands each other.. so that doesn't count.

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Depends on how you define "understand...".
Swedish, Norweigan and Danish are very similar in many ways (pretty much like Spanish and Italian, I guess) but I would say that spoken Danish is probably quite unintelligible, at least in Sweden. :D
Norweigan is super-easy to understand though, it's almost exactly like Swedish.

But then again, there's arguably a big difference between understanding a language and actually being able to speak it yourself.

I only speak one language but would love to learn more.

Saying that, when I spent time in Mexico I very quickly picked up a lot of Spanish as it just came naturally to speak it with the group I traveled with, when I returned home though I sort of lost it because I wasn't speaking/hearing it frequently.

French is my first language, English is my second and I would like to learn Spanish.

English, French, German and Macedonian.

A few years of french and I'm in the process of learning svenska :love:

Shakespearean English.

On the subject, wherefore does nobody else in the universe ever use thee and thou correctly?

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Originally Posted by Shorty

A few years of french and I'm in the process of learning svenska :love:

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Vilken bra idé. :D