I speak 2 well and 3 badly, along with smatterings of other bits and pieces that I've picked up when travelling or just out of general interest.

My native language is English, second French, and although I'm pretty near technically fluent in French, I sound like a talking dictionary rather than a woman in her early 20s. I've spent so long learning various grammatical rules so as to speak correctly, but I'm still absolutely useless with slang and colloquialisms. French teen websites are the order of the day, but I fear I may be beginning to sound a little bit like a 13 year old writing to a problem page... Any recommendations from native/more fluent speakers?

The three I currently speak badly (hoping to improve with a bit of effort) are Spanish (Castilian rather than Mexican/South American dialect), German and Welsh. Although I'm not Welsh, I live close to North Wales, and Welsh TV is definitely a big help at picking up nifty phrases! The other two are holiday languages, ie, I speak enough to get from A to B, be polite to waiters and so on, but not really enough to hold a decent conversation yet.

I've also picked up phrases of Greek, Dutch, Danish, Serbian and Italian, mostly from people I've met who've taught me a thing or two, and I'm currently working on a bit of Hindi, mainly for the aesthetic aspect of the script - sad I know :).

If money was no object for me, I would travel the world as a language student, staying in vibrant cities and taking immersion classes long enough to get a decent grasp of the local language before moving on. Travel AND languages at the same time is almost too exciting a concept for me!

So which languages do you speak, which do you wish you spoke, and why did you/would you learn them?

Liz x

Swedish - first language

English - second language, near-fluent

French - very rusty; I learned it for six years in school and at one point I could actually write essays and all...but now that I haven't used it in four years it's mostly gone. :-(

Dutch (or more specifically Flemish) - can understand almost everything but don't speak it very well (lack of practice). I lived in Flanders for a year which is why I learnt it.

Finnish - understand some, speak very little...I grew up near the border and my mother speaks Finnish fluently so I've picked up a bit but I'd like to learn to speak it.

I also understand quite a bit of German, thanks to my knowledge of Dutch. I wouldn't say I _speak_ it though. Oh, and of course I can understand written Norwegian and Danish quite well too, as they're so similar to Swedish (spoken Danish is another question...).

Would like to learn: Irish Gaelic (because it _looks_ so beautiful!), Welsh and Japanese. Those languages have just always appealed to me. (And a lot of other languages as well...I'm a total language nerd.)


***ETA: oh yeah, I also know almost the whole alphabet in Swedish sign language...and some not-really-useful words, like "giraffe".

My first language is English, and I also speak German, although I haven't for a couple of years. I decided to take German in middle school because it was that or Spanish, and I can't roll my r's. So I figured being able to speak Spanish really well would be out the window. I think German is really cool sounding, though. It's so guttural, which I find fun.

I also know a few words here and there of Norwegian, Spanish, and French. I can say "glasses" in Albanian, but that's it.

In a few weeks, I'll hopefully know some Thai, Vietnamese and Khmer, and next year a bit of Chinese (of some dialect) and Japanese.

I think it would be practical for me to learn Spanish, and I'd like to learn Russian, because it also just sounds cool.

2:
english (native)
pig latin (fluently!)
: )
~ixie-pay

I fall into the "Stupid American" category as far as languages are concerned. 'Tis a sad thing. I still don't know why they don't begin teaching foreign languages at an earlier age over here. Stupid public education system (which has served me well in other respects, just not this).

I took four years of Spanish in high school, forgot half of it, and am now taking a class at the local Y. I can read and write it better than I can speak it, but I did okay when my friend and I went to Costa Rica this year.

When I was a toddler (1-4 years old) my family lived in Greece because of my dad's job. I learned to speak Greek from playing with neighborhood kids, but that was 20 years ago and I don't remember a word of it.

What really prompted me to respond to this was that you remind me of a woman my mom was friends with in Greece. She collected languages. Her husband worked for the same company as my father and I guess she had some free time on her hands which she used to study languages. According to my mom, she had quite a knack for them and would become fluent very quickly. I wish I could do that. I love languages, I just don't think I've ever properly studied them.

As for my language saga, I make sure to enter any country I may be visiting with my two essential travel phrases translated: "How much does this cost?" and "Where is the bathroom?" ;o)

Yup, that's me, language collector!

Don't forget 'No thank you' and 'Please leave me alone' - extremely useful phrases to have under your belt if you travel alone at all ;)

I wish I was a kid again, so I could learn new languages without all the effort. I don't understand why we don't teach kid languages from a young age, when their brains are still nice and sponge-like, either. I first started to learn french at 11 in high school, which is probably why I can still speak it well despite not getting to use it for months at a time, but if I'd started just 3 or 4 years earlier, I would probably have become fluent in half the time it took me. It's definitely true that the less you use a language, the more quickly you lose your ability to speak it, but I think it helps to have learned it earlier in life.

Liz x

My native language is English (American English LOL). I am fluent in American Sign Language, and I know some LSM (mexican sign language, or Linguage de Signos Mexicanos to be absolutely correct) as well as some JSL (japanese sign lang), and a smattering of other words in other sign systems (mostly the F word).

I took Spanish last year for fun, and made my teacher cry with my accent. I can still pick out bits and phrases, but my pronunciation sucks. In fact, my French teacher 15+ years ago told me, "Monstergirl, never go to France. They laugh at you kick you out of country." LOL Apparently I sound VERY american when I talk. But when I sign, I've been told I look "Deaf". (yay!)

I also know some Japanese slang and a little bit of Russian; those are the two languages I'd like to be fluent in.

peace
monstergirl

english - native
french - out of practice (learnt for 6 years at school) but could probably pick it up again without too much difficulty
russian(!) - i'm just starting......but hoping to travel there and i'm determined to get better at it!
portuguese - spent time in brasil but never had formal language lessons; picked up a few phrases and can pretty much understand/make myself understood in daily situations.

i love languages and am determined to be fluent in at least one other language. also i really want to learn sign language. yes.

I was quadrilingual. But then I turned six.

Seriously, you're right about language aquisition skills in kids. I'm a naitive English speaker, but was in Belgium when I learned to speak. I spoke French to the mailman and Flemish to the milkman. When I was 3 we moved to Brasil, where I picked up Brasilian Portuguese in no time. When I was 5 we moved back to the States and I lost it all, despite going to a school that started teaching French in 1st grade.

So now I can get by in French (the 10 years of learning the same shit over and over and over again every time I changed schools didn't help) I know what people are saying and can read signs, menus, directions, etc and even help an old man with the Paris metro, but I couldnt have a conversation anymore.

I understand Spanish well enough due to knowing French and watching Telemundo. I also took a january term of college spanish 1 that basically taught me everything telemundo did.

I can understand Italian in the same way I understand spanish. And my method of speaking Italian is speaking Spanish with an Italian accent. I swear it works!!

I know a bit of German here and there using common sense.

Right now I'm taking Japanese lessons that are wicked hard- my first foray into a non-romance language!

Sadly I no longer know Portuguese- which is really sad cause Im now in a city that has a lot of Portuguese and Brasilians. I could say "Oi, como vai?" but thats it.

I wish I knew more of the languages I once knew, but I am happy that my brain is programmed to learn language still (because I did so early)

oh yeah, and I can speak Northern England english, pet. thanks to me dad and my anthropological study of pub culture (errr. .. study abroad)

I can understand spanish pretty well. I've taken a couple of semesters. plus in NM, there are many spanish speakers. I'm especially good at coffee drinks and counting change in spanish. I watch the novelas to learn spanish also (they're more fun than US soap operas) and i can read it ok.
I can sort of read french.
However, with both i still have to translate in my head. i haven't reached a point where i just understand it.
I took a semsester of Japanese. I remember a bit.
I can say "I ate breakfast at home" and i can remember some of my katakana and kanji.
Katherine
my maternal grandparents were both Finnish. Sadly, there were ashamed of this as young people. so they never taught their children. I've heard Finnish is a difficult language, i wish i had been able to learn.

I speak 2 fluently (Gujarati & English) and enough Spanish just to get around.

english and greek.
i'm american so english is my native language. both my parents are greek.

I'm a language freak, unfortuneatly, being an american, I pick up what I can.

English is my 1st language, I know German quite well, I'm learning Russian, and next year I'm starting French. I hope to learn czech and/or finnish at some point. I want to be one of those people who are fluent in 10 languages.

I can read french ok, I can understand almost enough spanish to get by, and I can read Danish and some italian.

Modforpretend: My Spanish teacher in high school used to tell us that to speak Italian, you just needed to sing Spanish. It's a pretty valid statement most of the time. To that end, I can usually catch the gist of conversations that my Italian coworkers have.

I also have to say that I absolutely agree with your brain at least being able to retain the program for learning languages if you learn them when you are young. I think my experience with Greek definitely opened up that part of my brain so I could learn other languages.

Oh and Ms Monkey, my grandparents were the same way about their Italian. When they came over to the States and had kids, they refused to teach them Italian "because the kids were American!". It's so sad that immigrants were made to feel ashamed of their national idendtities when they came here. My father says the only time Italian was spoken in the house was when they didn't wan him and his brother to know what was being said. Consequently, my father knows all the curse words and that's about it! ;o)

English is my first

A dialect of Cantonese is my second -

French is my third - I used to be fairly fluent in high school because I was in an immersion program (graduated with a bilingual certificate). When I went to university I couldn't keep up with it so I've sort of forgotten some of it, I now live in Montreal with my bf so he's been helping me to practice.

Cantonese is my fourth - however I understand it better than I can speak it because I often get it mixed up with my dialect.

My bf and I are going to learn Japanese for our trip that we are planning and I would like to learn Spanish.

English is my first language, and (Puerto Rican-style, mostly) Spanish is my second. I really want to learn how to speak Russian, and since I'm only 16, I have quite a while to learn it.

-J

I am SO impressed with everyone and so NOT with myself! (especially the sign language for different languages!)

I speak only English fluently (well, if you want to count "Southern U.S. English" as it's own dialect, I speak that too).

Growing up in Texas, I've picked up enough Spanish to get by at an incredibly bare minimum.

I had three years of French in high school and remember only about as much as the Spanish I know. Although, due to studying Louisiana vernacular architecture, I know quite a few French building terms--not that I get much use out of that.

I wish I knew more, I only speak English, I took about 6 years of spanish and still can't understand it when people speak too quickly. I took one semester of Mandarin and gave up, but that's typical me, I also dropped out of chinese school when I was 6 b/c I couldn't be bothered to learn more than 1-10 and 'da koh' or big mouth (something I put together on my own). The best part is that there is a 'big mouth' pin on http://www.meomi.com that makes that i laugh at b/c I thought it was just a silly childhood phrase :)

I also learned a few phrases of swahili when I was in Kenya and Tanzania, that was alot of fun, I can say
Jambo (hello)
Asante Sana (thank you very much)
Caribou Sana (You are very welcome)
Caribou also means Welcome as in welcome to my home which I think is cool b/c it's similar just like in english.
Kwaheri (good bye)

and several animal names like simba (lion) tembo(elephant) twiga (giraffe).

It's a very cool language, too bad I didn't have time to learn more :)

jt

I speak about 5 languages: English, an uncommon dialect of Chinese, Cambodian, some Spanish, and some Latin.

My parents speak 8 languages each: English, 3 dialects of Chinese, Cambodian, Thai, Laotion, Vietnamese, and some Spanish.

They always switched to a language that we [us kids] didn't know when they were fighting so we couldn't understand. I always thought that it was funny when I went to a friend's house and their parents fought in English. I thought that everyone's parents argued in a foriegn language!

It's nice knowing a bunch of languages so that you can talk to your friends covertly, or understand when other people are talking about you.

miss e
[who wishes she spoke French]

I'm also in the Stupid American category. I speak English (duh). I know quite a lot of German as I took it in HS and college, but I'm not even close to fluent. I can generally understand what's being said, or written, but that's starting to fade. I also know a bit of Russian, Spanish and French through friends, reading and some schooling.

I'd love to spend some time in other countries learning languages properly. I guess if you count programming languages (my college did!), I'm very multi-lingual. I know tons of those.

I think it would be really great to have a pen pal who was interested in learning English and who spoke German and we could help each other get to be fluent in each others' languages.

English- first language

French- fluent, nearly bilingual

Spanish- conversational

Italian- can understand it fairly well, but can't speak it

Japanese- I know how to say "I love you" and "Shut up"

Swiss/Dutch- I know how to say "Get your ass moving shithead!"

Swedish- Can say "I don't speak Swedish so well, but I speak Swedish better than you."

I am also fairly conversant in fanboy, film geek speak.

i speak english as my first language, and a bit of french which is rusting over. i have an independent study in french 5 next semester, though, so it'll hopefully improve.

maybe i'm a huge dork but when i read the title i heard jabba's droid in Return of the Jedi tinnily ask C-3PO "how many languages do you speak?" :oP

Bizarrely, I was watching Return of the Jedi a couple of nights ago! So *that's* where this random inquiry came from - been wondering why it just popped into my head... :)

I forgot to add about my brief brush with Friesian as a teenager. Our school had a European exchange program with three other schools - one in Germany (Fritzlar), one in Denmark (Randers), and one in Holland (Drachten). Drachten is in a region called Friesland, where people speak Friesian (yes, like the cows). I went to Germany for a week in March, having hosted a Turkish-German girl in the previous November. We travelled overnight by coach from Amsterdam with the Dutch students, and all being teenage girls, talked our coach driver into playing our tapes of the latest boybands for comparison. We didn't realise the dutch band was singing in friesian until the girls told us. It sounds almost exactly like English with bad grammar (which you tend to expect from boybands singing in non-native languages). Written, however, it is entirely different, with extraneous J's all over the place. I learnt some very educational phrases on that school trip, let me tell you...

Liz x

SS: Please please PLEASE teach us how to say 'get moving shithead' in Dutch. That's not in my limited repertoire and I'd love to be able to yell it at people in the street..

I know English very good, but I try and speak as incorrectly as possible. I also know a bit of Japanese and French, and Actionscript.

SS: is that Swiss German, or Dutch?

(by the way: jag talar bättre svenska än du! :-) hee hee)

Speaking of random phrases; the only full sentence I can say in Japanese is "blockade the base now!" (as in nuclear weapons base - don't ask...) Very useful...not.