TromboneChat

Just curious...
I can speak English, Chinese, and Spanish

Man.  I have enough trouble with English.  My British and Australian friends claim I don't speak it.

I can read French and understand a little Yiddish and German but I'd hesitate to say I speak them.  Although I worked for a week in a French company speaking mostly French with the line workers.

I speak fluent East Texan and American is my second language.

Arabic (Iraqi dialect) - which is my strongest.
English - little bit of struggling with comprehension.
Farsi - know little bit thanks to the loanwords in the Iraqi dialect.
Russian - decent understanding but I read better than speak.

English, 'Strine (fluent!), Kiwi (almost there), a little French and Indonesian, and a very little Chinese (working on this last one now).

English, a little French, some Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic).

English, and I can read French relatively well. Can't speak it for the life of me, though.

English, Spanish ( A Little ), & Texican. 

Nihongo shika wakannai.

Quote from: harrison.t.reed on Jan 04, 2017, 04:05PMNihongo shika wakannai.
Do you mean you know everything except Japanese?

I know everything but Greek, and what Harrison posted is all Greek to me!

[Trigger warning: significant geekiness ahead]

The author Douglas Hofstadter* once remarked that he's "pi-lingual", because if you added the 2 languages he spoke fluently to the fractions of other languages he knew, you got to 3.14159

As for me, hmmmm, if I add 1.0 English to 0.7 French, 0.4 Spanish, 0.3 German, 0.2 Dutch, and 0.15 Russian/Mandarin/Italian/etc, I guess I'm somewhere around "e-lingual" (2.71828)


* whose "Godel, Escher, Bach" ranks right up there with "Infinite Jest" on my list of "Books that are a total slog at first and might require a few attempts at the first 100 pages, but by the time you get to the halfway mark you'll be glad you did"

Quote from: BillO on Jan 04, 2017, 05:30PMDo you mean you know everything except Japanese?

Eigo ni yaku shite, tabun "I only know Japanese" tte iu imi ka mo ne.

Wow, yeah I got that upside down!!!  The grammar just doesn't work word for word the way we are used to.  Japanese is certainly not a 'Romantic' language.

How long did it take to learn?

.New York English and some Hebrew.

English.
German in High school.
Chinese in college, one year.
Internet French.

English unilingual, sadly.
Forgotten all my German, and I know some words in Japanese.

Of course my sister is fluent in Spanish and Chinese, working on Korean. She got all those skills.

Strayan 

Swedish, and I understand Danish and Norwegian well, especially in writing. As for languages I've studied I know English best. It is enough to make myself understood in most all day situations. I've studied German for five years and can handle a simple conversation, but also good enough to be able to read and understand most of the backside of a Deutsce Grammophone Record (vinyl LP).

/Tom

English,
phom poot Thai
jao wao Lao

Quote from: watermailonman on Jan 05, 2017, 04:12AMSwedish and I understand Danish and Norwegian well
Aren't the three more or less mutually intelligible, as long as you speak slowly and don't use slang? (Not discrediting your linguistic skills, just curious). A Norwegian friend once told me that the difference was sort of like having people from Mississippi, Glasgow, and Singapore in one room trying to communicate in English.

This was actually one of the little sub-plots in "The Bridge" (Swedish/Danish TV show - I can highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys dark crime thrillers; the US remake wasn't nearly as good) All the Swedes and Danes speak in their own languages, which occasionally leads to a misunderstanding...

Bulgarian
English
French (a bit rusty)
Russian (sometimes my vocabulary is deficient, but most of the time I'm doing good)

Quote from: BillO on Jan 04, 2017, 10:20PMWow, yeah I got that upside down!!!  The grammar just doesn't work word for word the way we are used to.  Japanese is certainly not a 'Romantic' language.

How long did it take to learn?


Yeah Object + shika + Verb-nai can be literally taken as "don't VERB except for OBJ" it's usually better translated into english as "Subject only VERBs Object"

"Nihongo shika wakarimasen" I only understand Japanese
"Aoi koneko-chan shika taberarenai" I only can eat blue kittens

As far as how long it took for me to learn Japanese? I am still learning and have been since 2006. Even though I read many written materials in Japanese and watch a lot of that country's media, I haven't and will never reach a native level. Most people who claim fluency would have you believe they are native speakers. No way! But it's fun!

My Chinese is very fluent since I've been speaking it since 4 years of age

My Spanish is not so great but understandable

I can also speak a few words in Russian, German, and Japanese, but that doesn't count

-English
-Mostly fluent in French
-I can read and understand (maybe speak?) very basic Italian and Spanish
-Does Klingon count?

I'd love to be able to speak fluently in Latin one day.

Apparently Klingon has gotten a following much like Esperanto did a generation or two ago.  It's spoken mainly by Star Wars Geeks.

I heard Hamlet's soliloquy (at least a part of it) from a translation of the play into Klingon.

Not this Star Trek geek.  'el roj!

Quote from: BGuttman on Jan 05, 2017, 10:38PMI heard Hamlet's soliloquy (at least a part of it) from a translation of the play into Klingon.

That is awesome, I'd love to hear that some day.

Quote from: BillO on Jan 05, 2017, 10:42PMNot this Star Trek geek.  'el roj!

jih je!

Quote from: Rath.of.Conn on Jan 05, 2017, 11:30AMAren't the three more or less mutually intelligible, as long as you speak slowly and don't use slang? (Not discrediting your linguistic skills, just curious). A Norwegian friend once told me that the difference was sort of like having people from Mississippi, Glasgow, and Singapore in one room trying to communicate in English.

This was actually one of the little sub-plots in "The Bridge" (Swedish/Danish TV show - I can highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys dark crime thrillers; the US remake wasn't nearly as good) All the Swedes and Danes speak in their own languages, which occasionally leads to a misunderstanding...

It is true the languages are similar. In writing this is obvious but dialects can be hard when spoken. Danish can be hard if they speak fast. Personally I find Norwegian a lot easier. Often you only need to guess a couple of words in a sentence, but there is a southern swedish dialect called "Skånska" that can be more difficult to understand than norwegian, especially if you are not used to it. I got a new collegue from that region at work and it took about six months before I completely got everything she said. Now I'm used to "skånska" and can not imagine why it was so hard in the beginning to understand her. 

/Tom

I had an uncle whose WWII army duties included translating Norwegian into Danish. 

Native language is English (though it's a southern Scottish variant)

A little schoolboy French (though according to my school exams I'm better at French than English !)

Some very basic German, a few words of Spanish and Japanese (doesn't really count).

My wife is Chinese so I speak some basic Mandarin.  We should realy specify which version of Chinese we speak as there are so many variants.

Ronnie

Quote from: ronnies on Jan 08, 2017, 01:12PMWe should realy specify which version of Chinese we speak as there are so many variants.

Yes, I speak Mandarin too since I'm of Chinese descent

I'm a spanish native speaker and fluent in english.

I'm a spanish native speaker and fluent in english.