Languages? How many can you speak?

[TheSurgeon]

I'm going to guess that a high percentage of us on here have English as our first language.

But, how many of you are fluent in another language?

Have you retained the stuff you learnt at school, or have you decided to go into adult education to learn?

Have you spent time abroad, and picked up another language like that?

With a lot of us stuck inside for a while, it's a good time to pick up new skills, and another language could come in useful.

Edited April 9, 2020 by TheSurgeon

[Keith Houchen]

Carbomb incoming. 

[deathrey]

I can speak four - three of them are similar though. I can speak English, Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu. I have been trying to teach myself to read Punjabi as I currently can't. I'm making slow progress.

[Factotum]

I'm not fluent in any other which annoys me really as I wish I was.

However, I can read German pretty well as I did it for 3 years at school and my job involves dealing with a German client who I visit quite a bit. I struggle to speak it though.

And rather uselessly, Latin. I went to a Jesuit Boys school so Latin was taught. I weirdly kept a lot of it up there. No Centurions about these days though.

[Loki]

I've been learning Mandarin for the last few months, which is chuffing hard.  Duolingo is a really good app to help you learn a language, especially if it's in conjunction with more traditional language classes.

Besides that, I'm fluent in French, can read and converse a bit in German, and have a smattering of Italian.  Like @Factotum I've got the remains of schoolboy Latin as well, and some Ancient Greek.

 

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, Keith Houchen said:

Carbomb incoming. 

kennethwilliams.gif, then miyagi.gif, followed by eastwood.gif, followed by taylorswift.gif, followed by jimmycorkhill.gif.

 

English, French, Japanese, and I also retain a fair bit of Latin and Classical Greek. I argue that Latin isn't useless, as it provides an excellent base from which to learn other Latinate languages. Greek isn't either, but it's probably more useful in terms of science and medicine.

I've been learning several languages via YouTube, then more recently apps, for years now. Not been as committed as I'd like - my first experiences of learning Italian were "this is easy, it's similar to French and Latin, can learn this any time", so I never actually got round to properly doing it. Same with Spanish. Been learning smatterings of Brazilian Portuguese (dated a Brazilian woman for a while, so I'd like to learn a bit more than the "I wanna shag" that she taught me), Russian (my father speaks it fluently, so I'd like to take advantage of that in terms of getting tips and pointers), Lebanese Arabic (wanted to know a bit more than the religious expressions my dad uses when he's annoyed at me), Farsi (beautiful language, ancient culture), Indonesian Malay (I do Indonesian pencak silat, so I'd like to visit the home dojo someday), and Mandarin (world's most spoken language, so worth a shot).

At the moment, though, just focusing on a couple, as mentioned in the Viral Resolutions thread.

[PunkStep]

48 minutes ago, Loki said:

Latin as well, and some Ancient Greek.

@Keith Houchen does your quote apply in this thread too?

[King Coconut]

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

I argue that Latin isn't useless, as it provides an excellent base from which to learn other Latinate languages. 

Any one of those Latinate languages would provide an infinitely more useful base. 

[Tommy!]

2 hours ago, Carbomb said:

. I argue that Latin isn't useless,

Latin has no use in the modern world per se.

[wordsfromlee]

Being good at learning languages seem to be a thing that run in my family a bit. Both my sisters speak fluent Greek. My youngest also started learning Russian when she was about 10 but gave that up after a bit. My cousin is amazing a learning them. He's pretty much fluent in English, French, Spanish and Italian. Studied them all at uni, then after he finished uni he had nothing to do so went to Russia for 6 months to learn that and it pretty competent at it, but not fluent. 

I, on the other hand, can barely speak English and my knowledge of French extends to about three phrases I can remember from school and that bit from Eddie Izzard's Dressed To Kill.

[jazzygeofferz]

I was good at French in high school,, keep meaning to try and refresh it. Did some Spanish then as well. I've tried to learn Japanese because reasons, German, because I have no idea why, Polish as I thought it'd give me a little help communicating with some. Colleagues at work, and Hungarian because I'm a quarter Hungarian and I'd love to go there one day. It's easier when there's somebody else to learn with. 

[SpiritOfTheForest]

I've had 2 different spells of living in Spain, each lasting a few months. I was supposed to here until June but God knows what'll happen with than now with the whole pandemic situation. As such I've been teaching myself Spanish online for the last couple of years. I'm nowhere near good but I've noticed a marked improvement in my abilities in this second spell. I think that''s largely because before I was in the mountains of Andalusia in what is regarded as pretty much the hardest Spanish speaking place in the entire world to pick up the language - very similar to if you got some Spanish speaker over to live in Coatbridge or Dennistoun for his first real exposure to the language. This time, I'm in Extremadura where the Castillano is much more clear and I've found it easier. There is something very pleasing about being able to confidently enough ask somebody something or to overhear passers by in the street conversing in a foreign tongue and being able to understand what they're talking about. Having made friends with some of the locals who are eager to help me has been most useful as well. 

I studied French and German at excelled at both, achieving As without too much bother. However in the 12 years since then I've found I've near enough forgotten all of it although I suspect I could get back again if I put my mind to it. More recently, I've been having a wee go at Italian on account of spending much of this quarentine chatting up a Sardinian lass but I'm very very early days with that and finding it pretty hard to pick up (their use of articles is infuriating).

Would highly recommend Duolingo to anyone reading who fancies using this isolation time to give a foreign language a bash! 

[Carbomb]

2 hours ago, King Coconut said:

Any one of those Latinate languages would provide an infinitely more useful base. 

I respectfully disagree. I've noticed more basic commonalities between Latin and modern Romance languages than between the languages themselves, at least on a geographic basis, partly because of later influences. Romanian's a prime example - despite being Latinate, there's a strong later Slavonic influence that can throw people off. French has a bit of a Germanic influence via Frankish.

That's not to say that Latin is more useful than learning one of the modern Romance languages, just that it's likely to provide a more universal base.

[Frankie Crisp]

7 hours ago, Carbomb said:

kennethwilliams.gif, then miyagi.gif, followed by eastwood.gif, followed by taylorswift.gif, followed by jimmycorkhill.gif.

 

English, French, Japanese, and I also retain a fair bit of Latin and Classical Greek. I argue that Latin isn't useless, as it provides an excellent base from which to learn other Latinate languages. Greek isn't either, but it's probably more useful in terms of science and medicine.

I've been learning several languages via YouTube, then more recently apps, for years now. Not been as committed as I'd like - my first experiences of learning Italian were "this is easy, it's similar to French and Latin, can learn this any time", so I never actually got round to properly doing it. Same with Spanish. Been learning smatterings of Brazilian Portuguese (dated a Brazilian woman for a while, so I'd like to learn a bit more than the "I wanna shag" that she taught me), Russian (my father speaks it fluently, so I'd like to take advantage of that in terms of getting tips and pointers), Lebanese Arabic (wanted to know a bit more than the religious expressions my dad uses when he's annoyed at me), Farsi (beautiful language, ancient culture), Indonesian Malay (I do Indonesian pencak silat, so I'd like to visit the home dojo someday), and Mandarin (world's most spoken language, so worth a shot).

At the moment, though, just focusing on a couple, as mentioned in the Viral Resolutions thread.

[garynysmon]

Welsh (first language), English and some conversational German.