How many languages can you speak (fluently)?

[DarkWater]

Just curious.  I speak English, Greek, and French.

[Maq]

1 - English.  I speak a lot of Spanish, but not enough to be fluent.

[Stooney]

English primarily.  I know enough german for simple communication.  And php?? Does that count?

 

DarkWater, you're quite an ambitious 15 year old.

[.josh]

English primarily.  I know enough german for simple communication.  And php?? Does that count?

 

DarkWater, you're quite an ambitious 15 year old.

 

Nah.  Americans just have really low standards.

 

edit:

 

I can generally point at things and use a word or two without fear of being shot (for the most part...) in Spanish, German, Latin and Japanese.

[Zane]

I speak English and Spanish

I'm sure there's more Spanish for me to learn but I've held my own in non-English speaking environments enough for me to consider myself fluent.

 

I can read Cyrillic(Russian,Bulgarian,etc) but have no clue what I'm saying

[Stooney]

Nah.  Americans just have really low standards.

 

[DarkWater]

English primarily.  I know enough german for simple communication.  And php?? Does that count?

 

DarkWater, you're quite an ambitious 15 year old.

 

Well, I AM Greek, therefore I was raised speaking it (alongside English), and French I take in school.  My grandfather (who is Greek) happens to speak fluently in French though, so we practice pretty often.

[trq]

English and bullshit are the only two languages communicated in my household.

[grim1208]

Nah.  Americans just have really low standards.

That is so true

 

spanish, english, russian <- mas o menos

[Daniel0]

I speak the following languages:

- Danish (native)

- English

- Spanish (more or less - my vocabulary is not particularly large yet, but otherwise I don't have any problems)

- German (I've never found myself good at speaking this language, but I passed my final exam in this language with top grade so I suppose I'm somewhat good :-\)

[JasonLewis]

English and bullshit are the only two languages communicated in my household.

 

Haha! Sounds a lot like my house, sometimes.

[Zane]

damn that's quite a bit of languages.

 

I always hear that English is the hardest language to learn...and I'd say I agree up to a certain point.  I've taught my friends English when they moved here from Mexico (where I learned Spanish) and I felt retarded explaining half the rules.  But is it really that hard of a language?  Now they speak is perfectly and I've met plenty of other people native of different languages that speak it perfectly as well.

 

German has always vexed me pretty good.  I can never figure out which the is the right one or if there even is a word for the.  Die Der Den (Das?).  I believe the hardest thing is going from being native in English to learning another language.  Although Spanish seemed by far the easiest language by far.

 

Then there are those languages that I couldn't imagine learning at all.  Like, it would HAVE to be your native language to even know it..for instance Greek.  Who the hell knows Greek? lol

[Daniel0]

I'd like to learn something like Japanese. Mostly because it's got wicked cool symbols, but also because it has a syntax that is much different from all the languages I already know. I only speak romance and germanic languages after all.

 

I often hear that Danish is pretty difficult to learn, but seeing as I've up with it I don't have any problems. That being said, I probably couldn't explain much of the grammar to foreigners. "Duh, it's obvious that it's supposed to be like that - you can hear it"

[waynewex]

Japanese, believe it or not, is supposed to be pretty easy to learn. I was told that they don't use tenses.

[JasonLewis]

I did Japanese in Year 7/8. Don't remember much, then again I didn't really pay attention. Oh, I can count to 10, don't think it's the correct spelling though.

 

Ichi, Ni, Sun, Yon, Go, Roku, Nana, Hachi, Que, Due

 

[waynewex]

I speak English.

I speak a little bit of Irish (Native) - long story / involves history lessons.

I speak a little bit of Polish from when I used to work in a factory for a month.

[Daniel0]

Japanese, believe it or not, is supposed to be pretty easy to learn.

 

Doesn't matter. If people think it's a complex language then they'll think I'm smart, regardless of its actual complexity, if I learn it on my own.

[waynewex]

I'm thinking about learning it as well. Be pretty cool to shout at somebody in Japanese.

[KevinM1]

Being a typical American, I'm only fluent in English.  I had two years of French in high school, and an 'advanced' semester of it in college, but have since forgotten just about all of it.  I don't mind, though.  I hated French.  Sounds like baby talk to me.

[Maq]

Sounds like baby talk to me.

 

Hehe...

[ober]

Only english here... I can understand a little Spanish since I took 3 years of it, but can't really speak it.

 

I once complained to a few people in the same room from both France and Sweden that I hadn't spent enough time learning other languages.  They all looked at me and laughed.  They all said it was generally pointless to learn something other than English because the other languages are only spoken by a very small % of countries and even there, most people know English.

 

Since then, I gave up on the quest to know more than English.

[Maq]

They all said it was generally pointless to learn something other than English because the other languages are only spoken by a very small % of countries and even there, most people know English.

 

It's true.  My sister recently went on a trip all throughout Europe and said that almost every country she visited spoke pretty much fluent English.

[Daniel0]

Personally I like learning new languages (except German, I hated that language). Also, even though many people speak English there are also a lot of people who speak crap English and would rather prefer to communicate with you in another language they know better. Furthermore, if you're into such things then learning a new language will enable you to read things in that language, watch movies, etc. Personally I prefer to read/watch something in the original language if my proficiency is good enough in that language. You'll also be able to travel in places that aren't just for tourists thus getting the true picture of the country so to speak. In many less developed countries, if you travel outside the tourist zones then you'd probably be hard pressed to find someone who speaks decent English. I certainly do think it's worth learning a new language.

 

I suppose that you, from a somewhat cynical point of view, could say that English is the only language you actually need to know. As an analogy, say for instance I work in a super market. I'd probably only need to know the number system so I can tell people how much they're going to pay when they check out. I can then get my paycheck and thereby buy food, pay rents, etc. Now I don't actually need to know anything more in order to survive. I don't need to know anything about books, movies, politics, history, sports or whatever interests me. That's just redundant information after all. How does that help me survive if I just work in a super market and all I do is tell people a number. My point is of course that just because you don't necessarily have to know something then it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it or wouldn't want to do it. This is kind of what separates humans from the rest of the animals. We don't just rely on whatever we absolutely must need in order to survive and then ignore everything else. A fish for instance just cares about 1) not getting eaten 2) getting something to eat itself and possibly 3) reproduce.

 

This, of course, doesn't mean you're stupid if you're monolingual, but I'm just saying that there may be plenty of reasons why you'd want to learn something despite the fact that you strictly don't need to. This website is evidence of that. I'm quite sure that many of us started doing PHP as hobby and there are probably a large share of our users who still have PHP exclusively as a hobby. Likewise, learning languages can also be a hobby. It doesn't have to be some lame teacher forcing you to memorize verb conjugations or whatever.

[Andy-H]

They all said it was generally pointless to learn something other than English because the other languages are only spoken by a very small % of countries and even there, most people know English.

 

It's true.  My sister recently went on a trip all throughout Europe and said that almost every country she visited spoke pretty much fluent English.

 

Yeh, everywhere you go people are fluent in English, except England.....

I would love to learn Urdu so I could listen to the man in the corner shop call me a f*****g white boy before asking for a mars bar in his language. 

[corbin]

Someone I know went to Italy, and he said people wouldn't talk to him in English in the small villages even if they knew it.  lol

 

 

 

I'm English natively (American >.<).  I'm in Español 3, but I couldn't carry on a verbal conversation with someone who was a native Spanish speaker.  Written I'm decent though.  On a couple other forums I talk in Spanish.  I get made fun of sometimes though .  lol