Foreign Languages

[Jonah]

I speak Dutch, English, and German fairly well, and un petit pue French but not enough to get me through an entire conversation.

Dutch, eh? I've always thought Dutch was an interesting language.

I don't know, it's pretty common around here.

I guess if you live in the Netherlands, then it would be common!

[Rev. Rye]

I'm curious: how many of you speak a foreign language? While my native language is English, I can speak, read, and write Spanish fluently and I am currently studying Portuguese as part of a dual-enrollment course at my local university. I absolutely love Latin American culture, and I hope to study abroad at least one semester during my time in university.

Well, when I was younger, I knew a few foreign languages, like French, Spanish, German, and Italian. But, eventually, like most of the events of my childhood, they would get blocked out.

In high school, I did take four years of Latin, but I have to admit that I did not learn as much as I think I could; the first two years were shared with idiotic students who would keep sidetracking the discussions, and take the teacher with them. The second two were doomed from the start due to the teacher not accounting for that, having us take on fecking Cicero (one of the hardest writers in Latin to translate), and going off on bizarre tangents (things like using Monty Python to toilet train his children [don't ask], having a movie filmed in his neighborhood in the winter of 1980, and lamenting how teenagers don't "spoon" anymore [No, he didn't know about the new usage of the term]) on the slightest provocation. By the end, it got to the point where everyone but me ended up cheating.

At the moment, I'm currently taking a German class, to get more in touch with the language of my ancestors, but I've only gone through two semesters of it, and already, I'm having significant "creative differences" with my teacher. One other language I intend to learn is Basque, precisely because almost nobody speaks it, and very few people will be able to guess what I'm saying, since it's not related to any other language on Earth.

[chasm]

I know English and some Spanish and French, and alphabets and little sayings in a few other languages. Yep, that's about it.

[HeyItsZeus]

I speak English, Italian and French. Et tu?

[Jaysyn]

I know enough German to order a beer, find a restroom or get myself in trouble.

[theVOID]

I know php...

[leo-rcc]

I know GW-Basic.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I can get by in French and Malay,get myself into trouble with Italian and Vietnamese ,and know about 100 words of another half a dozen languages. So I'm not bilingual. I only attempt to speak another language if the other person does not speak English. I started studying Vietnamese about 20 years ago,but gave up; it's a tonal language and I don't have the ear.


I think Spanish would be a great language to speak in many parts of the US. Portugese arguably not as practical, but no learning is a waste.Perhaps THE great benefit of being fluent in other languages is being able to think in that language and therefore able to read their literature and enjoy their songs,in the original.

[Cego_Colher]

if we are going into programming languages then I guess I could also say that I know a bit html and css.

[DiRNiS]

Spanish is my native language so I can speak it, understand it, read it and write it. Same goes for English which I learned from a very early age. Also helped that I moved to an English speaking country (Australia).

I am also learning German and can speak it well enough to communicate on a basic level. :-) I am planning to become fluent in German and Italian.