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Languages
59 replies
ally77 said on March 5, 2006 20:58:
Was wondering what languages other people speak here at TDR and would call themselves fluent in?
Jud (moderator) said on March 5, 2006 21:35:
spanish and catalan as mother tongue, english, german, swedish. This is it for me.
roxgirl_germany said on March 6, 2006 06:22:
German (native speaker) and a dialect, English, French, Spanish (which is fading, what a shame), Swedish.
Would like to add more but have no time... :/
FirstGirlOnTheMoon said on March 6, 2006 06:43:
I am a native Afrikaans speaker and then I also obviously speak English.
Would love to learn more languages, but I don’t really have time at the moment.
WorldFalls said on March 6, 2006 08:04:
I’m trying really, really hard to learn Danish. :o) I’ve been trying for about two years, but it’s hard with no formal classes or instruction! Eeek!
Debora said on March 6, 2006 20:32:
I’m from Argentina so I speak Spanish fluently. I speak a bit of English.
ally77 said on March 6, 2006 21:42:
I didn’t answer my own question..... doh!
Basic Swedish
A little bit of German from my school days,
Spanish (very limted having not really used it in a long time)
Tiny bit of French, enough to ask for a coffee and such like!
Majdy said on March 6, 2006 22:21:
Indonesian and english.
Learnt german and arabic at school, but don’t remember anything :)
roxlad said on March 6, 2006 22:37:
Italian and English and then I can make myself understood in French and Swedish.
I have just learned how to read Russian but I don’t understand the words I read, I will probably join a Russian course in the future.
Of course because of the similarity with other languages I understand a bit (very little) Norwegian, Danish (only written!), Spanish and Portuguese (again only written).
I also wouldn’t mind to speak Estonian.
roxlad said on March 6, 2006 22:43:
I though about making this topic even more interesting..... let’s add the reasons why we speak these other languages.... for me.... :
Italian / English First and second mother tongues
French five years at school
Swedish needs no explanation!
Want to learn
Russian because I was always fascinated with it
Estonian because I love the country and I also like Smilers, an Estonian band...
Then if it was for me I’d learn a bit of everything but I’m not sure how much can the brain take in!
harriej said on March 6, 2006 23:06:
I speak Frisian, Dutch and English easy.
German I can manage, French with hand and foot,
and a very few words of Swedish (but reading a Swedish paper, I can understand most of it).
Frisian = First Native Language
Dutch = Second Native Language
English: I learned at school and nowadays I speak English every day at work
German: I learned at School and when I travel through Germany it is handy
French: I learned for some years at school, and when I am in France it can be helpful
Swedish: Never learned it, but Roxette/Gyllene Tider made me curious. Went to Sweden a few times and picked up some Swedish.
Want to learn the language, but didn’t take the time yet to do so.
ally77 said on March 7, 2006 06:49:
I am amazed at how much Swedish I can read (I thought it was just me) but I still lack talking it, I guess it don’t help when you go on holiday there and you all speak bloody good English! But there is nothing more I like than to read the Swedish papers online!
Mari said on March 7, 2006 08:14:
Finnish - mother tongue
Swedish - second language in Finland
English
Russian - I learned it school...12 years! But now I have more or less forgot the language, cos I haven’t need it.
Deutch - well, not very good.
RobS said on March 7, 2006 08:17:
Apart from English, i also speak Macedonian.
I wouldn’t mind learning some swedish, at least then i’d be able to understand some of the swedish lyrics and interviews.
natalee2508 said on March 7, 2006 09:36:
I speak English at home, however I also understand Urdu and French, plus some Japanese and Korean.
denny said on March 7, 2006 23:46:
@RobS Then maybe you can join me in International (ex-YU) speaking....since all others left me there alone :((( Macedonian is a bit similar to Serbian.
So, obviously
Serbian - my native language
and it’s silly but then I have to count those as different languages - Croatian and Bosnian.
English - as you can see (went to a high school specialized for languages)
Latin - learnt at school but kinda forgot it
Russian - also learnt at school but forgot it all since I never used it and I had a bad teacher. Such a shame :(
And now I started learning Swedish and I love it but I don’t have much time, since I work at night... :( I hope I’ll make it somehow.
There’s also Hungarian which I like very much (being one, hehe) and I would love to learn. So far I know how to read and speak and some basic words and phrases...
It comes down to English only basically, although I LOVE languages. :(
TinyBubbles said on March 9, 2006 10:49:
Wow!
I can barely speak my own mother tongue :S:( (afrikaans)
tcooh said on March 9, 2006 15:24:
Norwegian
Swedish
Danish
English
German
and a bit French
and a bit Sami
and a bit sign language
RobS said on March 10, 2006 06:27:
denny, although i can speak it, i can only read some macedonian.
I couldn’t make out half of the stuff in that thread. I always thought serb/croation was closer, but i must have been mistaken.
denny said on March 10, 2006 14:01:
RobS
lol, well, no actually, not THAT close but most of the people can understand eachother pretty well... the thing is, Macedonians understand us much more than we do them.
So, me alone in that thread again :((((
ATLTK said on March 11, 2006 22:29:
swedish - mother tounge
english fluent
spanish can speak write and read wiyhout any big problems - quite fluent
german : reeeaaaaaaaaaallly basic
Breathe8 said on March 12, 2006 11:57:
Czech - my mother tounge
Russian - one year at school 1989 - 1990
English - I studied english at school from 1990 to 1998 but I don´t use english for many years so I don´t remember something.
Spanish
Breathe8 said on March 12, 2006 12:02:
Also I studied german at secondary school. One of the most difficult languages for me.
Chaghi said on March 12, 2006 12:32:
Spanish (mother tongue)
English, pretty well, but my pronunciation sucks
Swedish, not so well, and my pronunciation sucks more than in English... lol
Santi said on March 15, 2006 00:47:
I speak Spanish, Catalan and English pretty well, and then just well Swedish and Italian.
I can understand because of the similarities with the languages I speak spoken Galician, Portuguese, basic French, Romansch... I also understand written French (good French, not just basic :D), Norwegian, Sardinian, Occitan, a bit Danish, and Dutch (I studied it). I also speak Esperanto though I need to brush it up.
I spoke Euskera (that’s Basque Language) since I went to an Ikastola (Basque school) when I was a little kid, but I’ve forgotten it, as well as I forgot most of what I learn from other languages I’ve studied briefly: Latin, Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian. I’d love to learn well Basque, and some Slavonic language because they sound soooo beautiful :D
Okok, I’m a language craze, I know...
Santi said on March 15, 2006 01:16:
Oh, the reasons... Let’s see...
SPANISH - My mother tongue, everyone in my family talks it and they talk nothing more than it, so... :D
CATALAN - I moved to Valencia 16 years ago, and it’s compulsory at school here. I’ve studied in it both at high school and university level, and it’s pretty easy speaking Spanish, I was understanding everything within two weeks from when I first contacted the language (Valencian dialect pronunciation, very close to Spanish, makes it even easier).
ENGLISH - You gotta learn it at school, and it’s useful afterwards if you happen to like travelling. And I do. I don’t like the language all that much, but then again, it’s useful...
ITALIAN - This was the first foreign language I tried on my own... it’s so sweet and sexy, and there’s something about Italian girls... :D
SWEDISH - I studied in Sweden thanks to Erasmus scholarships. I contacted the language first thru Gyllene Tider, and spoken Swedish is so melodic. I love the å character and how weird it all looks when written, and I love to be different because no one else I know (apart from Roxers) dares to learn it :DDD
BASQUE - I was born in the Basque country, and Basque language makes up for about 90% of Basque identity. Besides the first school I went to was a Ikastola, some kind of school where teachers only address kids in Basque. It’s a unique language and songs for kids are just the best :D
FRENCH - I studied it in school and I so hated it then. But after learning Catalan and Italian... it’s just so simple. And when spoken by girls, it sounds sexy... so I’m trying to learn it now. Besides there are very good books in this language and there’s Mylène Farmer singing it! :P
DUTCH - Some of you here may remember Wendy, some may not. But we were more than friends and I tried to learn her language. Sadly enough I also picked up her accent thru watching too much Belgian TV and Dutch people find it too funny (they say I sound like Jambers), so they laughed at me when I tried to speak it living in Amsterdam. So I avoided practising it and that stopped the development of my spoken Dutch, but I’m pretty good at reading it (I used to buy Elsevier and enjoyed it!! :D).
ESPERANTO - It was free election points for the university, and they didn’t make an exam. It’s just simple, and useful if you travel with Pasporta Servo, a kind of hospitality network for esperantist. I’m also the kind of idealist that likes this stuff... Any other “samideanoj” in here???
ROMANIAN, SERBIAN & NEPALESE - I had a library card and much time when I lived in Stockholm, and they had these language course books in the bookshelves... :D Couldn’t avoid it... Why? Well, I studied at school that Romanian was related to Spanish so I wanted to see by myself how much it looked like! :D I could understand it with some patience and lots of imagination, but learning it would block my brains. Serbian I tried because they took me for a Yugoslav several times in Sweden (my looks or my accent, I guess). Then I fell in love with the sounds of Slavonic languages :D Nepalese I liked the writing, but that’s about it... Too much for me.
BULGARIAN - I know some people in there from TDR, and I found it had many things in common with Serbian, which I liked. Also Cyrillic is cool. And Hristo Stoitchkov was I player I liked... And the national colours match the Basque ones... And I like some songs by Irina Florin... And I won’t say the truly real reason... :DDDD
Ok, that’s about it, thanks for your time if anyone happened to read it! ;)
ally77 said on March 15, 2006 13:05:
@ Breathe8
I could have done with you last year to communicate with my Czech neighbours! :)
ally77 said on March 16, 2006 08:11:
It must be great to have so much knowledge in other languages...
Breathe8 said on March 16, 2006 17:22:
@Santi: I think your life is not boring!!! So many languages!!! I admire you!!
@Ally77: I think I remember. What are they doing there?
grisu said on March 17, 2006 11:45:
German
English
My French I learnt at school is still quite okay, I think.
And I speak a little Danish, just enough to get through during the holidays I spend in Denmark.
ally77 said on March 17, 2006 21:59:
@ Breathe8
As far as I know they where Asylum Seekers when they arrive a few years back, and now they are still here on a work permit. They are my parents neighbours, and I live over the road from them.
They are such a nice family.... 2 children and both have learnt English very well. They are the best neighbours my parents have had! :)
I found out I can study Japanese at a local high school here in the evenings!
roxlad said on March 18, 2006 22:25:
@Santi, c’mon tell the truth what was that Italian girl’s name? :-)
Can you notice the difference between Italian accents? My English relatives can’t but to me they are so different from each other that I think it’s quite impossible not to tell!
Santi said on March 19, 2006 11:52:
@TB: Well, it takes an enormous amount of time, if there is something really time consuming is to learn languages. But I do belieeve that once you know 3 or 4, you can relate what you already know and you find everything easier. I found the trick for some languages, and i focused almost exclusively on related European languages (romanic and germanic languages). It’s not that special, i think.
@Roxlad: Euh, the current Italian girl for me is one from Cagliari called Paola :D I met her in Amsterdam. Before I also fell in love with a girl from Vall d’Aosta that I met in Stockholm, she was called Ingrid (yes, she was Italian and looked very much Italian despite such a Nordic name).
On the other hand, I do find very strong differences between the Italian dialects. By far the most difficult are from Veneto, from Venezia and Verona for me to understand. The easiest, Milanese :D Mainly cuz when you learn Italian they tend to teach you that pronunciation, though they always tell you that the standard is from Tuscany. I had a difficult time understanding Romans before, but now I don’t find it that hard, and southern Italian in general is pronounced very much like Spanish, in my opinion (with more intonation, of course).
I am not talking about the regional dialects like Friulano or Sicilian or Lombardian, which are almost different languages, but standard Italian talked by those people. I think regional dialects are harder and require more imagination. However of those I understand written Sardinian, at least what I’ve seen written so far :D
denny said on March 20, 2006 04:35:
Santi, Cyrilic is definitely not that cool. I think it’s ugly and I don’t like it. :) Funny, but I don’t see such similarity to Bulgarian or Romanian... More with Russian I guess... I’m good with languages but I don’t think I could understand Bulgarian or Romanian. Hm... maybe I should visit Bulgarian thread to verify that theory...
roxcyn said on March 20, 2006 06:01:
English (native language)
Spanish (1st foreign language): started at about 14 years old until unviersity level. I want to be Spanish teacher (that’s what I am going to school)
Italian (I took a year of it in uni): I just know the basics of it though, like asking directions. Nothing great, it is very similar to Spanish :D
Santi said on March 21, 2006 18:14:
@denny: Well, first, I don’t think I said there were any similarities between Serbian and Romanian. I said there are (some...) between Romanian and Spanish, and then between Bulgarian and Serbian.
As far as I know from my lessons in linguistics at school, and what I’ve experienced as well, Serbian is most closely related to Croatian and Bosnian (well, I can’t even see there’s a difference but for the way you call the days of the week and a few things more, like the ekavian-ijekavian stuff and so...), Slovene, Makedonian and Bulgarian. You should give it a try to any of those languages, I’m nearly sure you’d understand in any of them 80% of what you read.
I’d say Russian is more apart than the ones I said. You could take into account that maybe there are also Russian words in your language not only because is closely related but because not long ago Russia was part of the Soviet Union which was a political power and therefore a lot of new words could have invaded Eastern European languages. This has happened all thru history: with French in the 1800’s, with Latin in the 1600’s and 1700’s, with English in the 1900’s and 2000’s...
Anyway there’s something interesting and that you may find weird about Bulgarian: If I’m not mistaken it’s the only Slavonic language that got rid of declinations and they substituted nearly all cases by prepositions. Now that’s a cool feature when you tackle a language! :D
About cyrillic, I think it’s cool. Of course Greek is best, but I can’t speak Greek. I know the alphabet though. It’s just, I find that most languages make it hard with latin alphabet, cuz obviously there are not enough characters for every sound, and when you read and write differently that makes it difficult, with all the diacritic marks (a lot in Croatian, btw) and digraphs... It’s nearly like learning two different languages (like written and spoken French, or written and spoken English...). And with cyrillic there’s seldom that problem. Somehow different languages made up their own cyrillic sings “a la carte” and normally there’s one different for every sound :D
All in all it’s looks bit archaic, so to speak, but if you use the right font, there’s no problem. Bulgarian written in latin characters looks like Martian, if such a language exists :D
ally77 said on March 21, 2006 19:29:
I finally got myself a Linguaphone Swedish set.... something I’ve wanted for ages!
Queen_Marie said on March 22, 2006 08:59:
Well, I only speak English myself but I find it, and its history incredibly fascinating!
For example; Harriej’s mother tongue is Frisian. Apparently, modern day Frisian is what old English would have sounded the closest to more than a thousand years ago. The Danish are responsible for word order, and since the Norman invasion in 1066, hundreds of French words have been absorbed into English along with countless words from many other languages.
I don’t know of any other language that has developed in such a way, not to mention so rapidly!
Kathrin said on March 22, 2006 20:45:
German(Motherlanguage)
English(Fatherlanguage)
Swedish(still learning)
Dutch(reading only)
A little bit of Spanish like:
Yo Juro Fidelidad,
a la bandera de los estados unidos de America.
Y ala Republica.
Que estra representa.
Una nacion,Bajos Dios
Indevesibile,con libertad.
Y justicia para dodos!(I hope I did it right!)
Majdy said on March 22, 2006 20:52:
I wonder if anyone knows that Indonesia has SSSOOO many languages, even different in almost every areas. Unfortunately, I understand english better than my traditional language.
Secretkeeper81 said on June 6, 2006 13:02:
Italian - native speaker
English - learnt it at school and took private lessons & now I’mpretty fluent both speaking and writing
Spanish, French and Portuguese - they are similar to Italian so I can understand most things when I’m reading but I can’t talk or understand it when they’re spoken.
Swedish - I started to learn it with Gyllene Tider songs and I can understand a few things when reading, but I can’t talk or understand it when it’s spoken.
biggestfan said on June 11, 2006 10:16:
German ( mother tongue)
English ( learn it in school for 5 years now) —> because I’m going to do a high school year in america
French ( learn it in school for 3 years until now) —> I think it sounds very nice and is getting important for future
Latin ( only 1 year, but understand texts) –> shows where some other languages come from
Swedish ( learning it forever) —> I’ll make a Au Pair year there after school, will be studying and living there forever ( ’cause it is much better - I really mean better not only nicer- than germany)
miss-misery said on June 11, 2006 12:12:
Ok, let’s see:
-Spanish, obviously, since I was born in a lovely Spanish city called Zaragoza (come in 2008 to the International Exposition!!!) and I’ve been living here almost all my life.
-English, since I’ve been studying it almost all my life, I lived in England for almost a year (my Erasmus year) and now I’m trying to teach it to my students. I should be more fluent than I am, I lost so much English in the last years, so I’ll have to go back to UK to re-learn it.
-French: I used to be quite fluent in my high school years, but I quit and re-took it once and again, so I’m also losing it little by little. C’est domage!!
-German: I tried to learn it several times, but I’ve realised that it’s just too hard!! A friend of mine who spend two years in Austria told me that in spite of having studied German for a long time, when he first went there, he found difficult speaking it in a fluent way...So I guess that if I go to Austria, Germany or Swtizerland, I just won’t be able to survive!!
-Italian: I tried to learn it, but had to give it up due to my multiple occupations... I’ll retake one day.
P.S. @Santi: you are a most peculiar individual. It’s not very common for a Spanish person speaking soooooooo many languages. It seems that Spanish brains have something that just doesn’t enable us to learn any foreign language LOL.
just_like_that said on June 12, 2006 07:12:
Goodness, I wish I knew as many languages as you guys!!! In UK we’re not taught as many languages in high school!! I obviously know english, Got taught a little German - vaguely remember some - & welsh. Which is where I’m living - so I guess I need 2 know that.
arnie said on June 12, 2006 11:58:
spanish (mother tongue)
english (school & university)
portuguese (at work)
Invisible_man said on June 12, 2006 16:36:
Most people in US can’t even speak proper English. And looks like in UK most can only speak one language.
But it’s amazing to me how well many people from Sweden, Germany and other Western European countries can speak English. Great for them!
I can speak Russian fluently (my 1st language). Also some German that I took at school and university, but not good at all.
HBrox said on June 16, 2006 18:27:
me... well spanish is my mother lenguage. I speak english (that I learned mostly on my own!) but not with a good pronuntiation. Also french.. which it could be very helpfull .. people thinks it’s sexy!
natasha1 said on March 5, 2006 21:32:
would love to learn afrikaans (south african) but my wife wont teach me it...*sigh*
I can say in french “i live on the 2nd floor” but thats the most i remember from school - feel guilty that i have been to quite a few countries yet cant speak any other language than my own!