What language we speak or learn?

[elvain]

It's a normal forum question, so let's answer, maybe we could after all make a list of the most well known languages of teh forum :)

my languages are:
Czech - native speaker, is my 1st language of communication

Slovak - mothertongue - I hear it every day but speak only several times a year, my grammar and writting has to be terrible

English - currently my second language of everyday communication, I can speak it quite fluently (by acident I was even asked to teach it, but it was a mistake :D)

French - studied it 5 years and love the language. Now I can speak French, but often confuse words with English and Hebrew (don't ask me why :D)

Hebrew - learn it for 3 years, if I try harder I can speak and get what I need, I also can state my opinions, but in very simple way. Possibly at the same level as French

Arabic - learn it, but it is still very hard for me to communicate in Arabic

Latin - learned it once, but wouldn't even count it

I can more or less guess something from all other Slavic languages, especially Polish and Russian, little of German, Spanish and Italian

[Mephistopheles]

German - native speaker
English - First foreign language, pretty fluent I'd say
Italian - Studied it for a year. My grammar is okay, but my vocabulary is lacking. I'm trying to improve it with a language-partner (an italian exchange student who I meet with regularly so we both learn something).
Swedish - I started studying it a short while ago. Knowing german and english I can read it rather well, but speaking is a completely different affair. I'm aiming to study in Sweden for a year.

Yes, I also wasted some time on latin. For some reason they told me I'd be able to use it to learn other languages, but that was a lie. I should've learnt french - even though I don't like french.
(Yes, I don't like french. It sounds terrible.)

[Frankoman]

Very nice idea for a thread :D


German - Mother tongue, my Mother is German and I learned the Language from her. I lived in Germany for awhile as well, in Neubrandenburg.

Italian - Ironiqually my second mother Tongue. My father was all Italian and I learned the language from him. After I moved from Germany we all went to Italy to Sicily.

English - While growing up my parents also taught me English, as well as I learned in school. I am quite well in it, and I prefer to speak it as practice. After living in Italy my parents decided to move to America.

Norwegian - I am not fluent, but I have some friends who are teaching it to me, and I now know enough to have a one time conversation. That is an improvement, no?

Spanish - I am absolutly horrible at it but still making a small effort to learn it. It isn't required since I know 3 other languages, but for school they said I should.

French - I studied it for a year, but didn't like it. :P I can understand it a little, and have some friends who can help me along as well.

[Richard]

Spanish: Mother tongue.
English: had to learn it when I moved to the US lol. Pretty fluent for only 6 years.
Italian: 4 years during High school, had an exellent teacher which made learning it pretty easy plus to me it looked like a mix between Spanish and English lol. Can read and speak it pretty well, though I'm starting to get rusty without any practice and sometimes mix it up with Spanish.

I wish the US education system was a bit more like that of Europe. I would like to learn other languages such as Latin, French, Portuguese, German and Arabic.

[NikeBG]

Bulgarian - Native speaker and rather good at it. First place in verbal use.
English - First foreign language, started learning it around 15 years ago and also first place in use of written form (though my verbal English has gotten a "bit" rusty).
German - Second foreign language, studied it for 5 years as primary subject in high school, but I haven't used it much since then, so I wouldn't count on it.
Others - I can understand a bit from most Slavic languages (except the West Slavic ones), but I can't construct anything by myself with them.
Turkish - Currently being taught by a friend, it's still worse than my Latin (and the Latin is mainly from common knowledge, so...). ;)

Edit: I forgot to mention the Macedonian and Shop's dialects, of which I'm not a master, but can speak a bit more than a bit (though it's hard to learn your parent's dialects if they've lived in an urbanistic city most of their lives (I dislike globalisation, yes))...

[IWM]

Bahasa Indonesia : Of course, my first languange.
Minangkabau : My father's tribe. Still not too good.
Boso Jawa : From my mother's. Can speak little,
English : Mainly good enough.
Arabics : Can only little. So little.

[jediguardian]

Bulgarian - native speaker. Parents and all others from the family are Bulgarians
English - second language. I am quite good at it.
French - just started learning it.

[Remo]

Spanish - native speaker!
English - mothertongue , i hear it everyday. Also, i love talking in english, and my grammar and vocabulary is very wide i think
French - 6 years of french and i still don't like it...who knows why?

[Mircoslavux]

wow Elvain , I did not know that your mothertongue is Slovak:eek:

Slovak - mothertongue
Czech - oki
English - I can survive
German - I can survive
Russian - I can basically survive

I would like to learn French, Spanish, Latin and Hungarisch...

[elvain]

wow Elvain , I did not know that your mothertongue is Slovak:eek:
my mother is Slovakian :)

[Carbon]

English - 1st language I learned, fluent.
Arabic - Can speak and understand almost perfectly, but cannot read or write.
French - Learned it in school, pretty good, I guess.
German - Not very good, I understand the grammer more than the language itself.
Latin - Same as above, I can manage to read.

[IWM]

Arabic - Can speak and understand almost perfectly, but cannot read or write.
LOL, I can only read and write Arabic

[Xuca]

Serbian - mother tongue
Croatian, Bosnian - the three come in one package
English - learning it for 9 years now... we keep going in circles, I can't remember the last time we did something new from grammar
French - learned it for 4 years. Didn't bother with learning the words much, but my grammar is okay... I think
Spanish - my mother keeps watching telenovelas, so I picked something up along the way :P

[mammix]

Polish- A1
English- no problem with communication, I think it's now A1 too ;)
Espanol- Not so well but I am still learning it and I think I can communicate
Deutch- I can communicate, nothing else
Francais- Very, very bad. I had been learning it 2 years but I don't remember almost anything
+
Slavonic languages (Czech, Slovakian and so on) because of peoples living in region :D

[Dobber]

English - mother tongue

Can read a little bit of Latin

[Liiwo]

Estonian - It's my mother tongue and the only language except English that I use daily.
English - I can say most of the things I want to.
Russian - I have been learning it for 5 years, but it still doesn't make any sense at all for me.
German - I'm currently learning it, but can't speak it yet.
French - This is what I'm also learning at the moment, but can't really speak.
Latin - I learned it a bit. I can only understand some words and phrases, but not speak in it.

[Gilth]

Dutch - Native.
English - You just have to know it these days. Have to learn it at school
French - Half the country speaks French here, so its a must learn at school. Didn't have enough practice to actually use it, but I can understand almost everything if it goes slow enough
German - Last of the 3 languages used here. Easy enough to understand and my dialect looks alot like it, though I don't know anything about the grammar.
Latin - Liked it alot. Learned it as a dead language, so no speaking or writing. I don't know if there is anything left of it in my head though.

(yay, my first post)

[elvain]

so thoe most welll known languages are:
15 - surprisingly English
9 - French :eek:
8 - German
6 - Latin :D
5 - Spanish
3 - Czech
Slovak
Arabic
2 - Bulgarian
Russian
1 - Hebrew
Swedish
Norwegean
Turkish
Bahasa Indonesia
Minangakabau
Boso Jawa
Serbian
Croatian
Bosnian
Polish
Estonian
Dutch

[Mircoslavux]

Slovaks - 2 you Elvain and me:go:

[maks]

I speak Russian as native and relatively decent English as second language. Since I don't actively learn any other, I don't think I should count those in which I can compose a sentence or two.

[RobinBanks]

English-- fluent
Spanish-- learning
Spanglish-- decent

[chalicek]

czech - native
slovak - very good
english - good
french - lower intermediate

[Goethicus]

English - fluent in American and Canadian varieties, coming up to speed on the British dialect

French - near native, as lived in France and continue to read it and listen/watch media

German - again near native as have CLOSE relations with Germans ;)

Polish - am studying for my AS levels, so am around the Intermediate level

Russian - also around the Intermediate level, but I'd probably get slapped by a girl if I asked her for the time of day

Turkish - Around the High Basic level, but am continuing to take classes and I hope to be fluent enough to read Pamuk in the original soon...

Spanish - actually a hell of a lot better than my Turkish, but am not doing anything actively to improve it, so it's pretty much wasted except at parties where I imitate a drunk vato...

Illocano and Tagalog (both Filipino dialects), but although I can understand 99% of what's said to me, I can't respond!!!

Modern Greek and Farsi are the languages which I have in my sights next...

[Bullwaih]

hiho @ all

German -- i come from Fürstenwalde
English -- a little bit
Italian & Spanish --- i like the eat ^^ - no speak

[fmwyso]

English - Only Language :p.

[skycycle]

Bulgarian as native, fluent in both written and spoken English, decent Serbian + a little German and Russian :)

[Doux]

Nederlands (Dutch) - moedertaal (mother tongue).
English - Fairly good proficiency, I think. Have to use it on the internet, to write reports, to read scientific material.. world language, essential.
Español (Spanish) - Now learning, one because it is an interesting language and two because it is a world language as well. Nivel básico.
Francais (French) / Deutsch (German) - High school taught in reading and a little bit of speaking and writing. Basic. German is pretty close to Dutch, which helps in understanding and speaking. My French is terrible right now, also because I'm now getting used to speaking and thinking in Spanish.
Frysk (Frisian) - I can understand it when spoken not too rapidly since my mother is Frisian.
Afrikaans - Readable since it resembles Dutch so much (mutually intelligible).
Lingua latīna (Latin) - High school taught translating proficiency - but what is it worth when one does not use it any more? It was and is useful in the sense that many meanings are derived from latin words in modern Romanic languages.

I would like to learn Japanese, Arabic and Russian some time. Partly because they're more or less important languages, but rather because they all have their own interesting quirks such as sets of characters/alphabet. And because it is great fun to be able to communicate with different cultures.

[Mathyas Rex]

Hungarian - mother tongue - native speaker, can also imitate sekler (szekely) dialect.
Romanian - second language - native speaker.
English - second language (yes, second, it was a tie between romanian and english) - very fluent, with little imperfections in grammar.
They tried to teach me french, so I can actually read very well, withouth understanding most of the words. Can`t comunicate.
Eager to learn german.

[Kuno]

native language: Swiss German (I know it's considered to be just a dialect (or better several dilects) of German but for most people here it is more and hardly any native German understands a word when he hears it the first time ;)And among the younger folks it is used in a written form as well)

Then Standard German of course as this is the official language in which everything is written. And in school and university everything is told in Standard German as well of course.

French: Had it for 8 years in school and is the first foreign language I learned. (We must learn it in school just as the French speaking inhabitants of western Switzerland (Romandie) have to learn German in school) I do not use it often anymore it was diffrent one year ago when I was in military where I talked often with some guys from western Switzerland. But since I got out at the beginning of this year I have hardly ever spoken or read in French again.

English: Learned it 6 years in school and i use it much more often than French. One reason is that I prefer to look TV series or movies in English. German synchronisation is sometimes quite bad I think.


EDIT: I found a vid on youtube where you can see the difference between Swiss Germen and Standard German very well: the first guy is Hans Eichel, a former German minister, the second you don't have to care about he speaks German with French accent, but the third one is a member of Swiss parliament called Ulrich Giezendanner and he speaks a Swiss dialect. And the woman at the end speaks Swiss German as well, but with a diffrent dialect:

http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=Prew3Zi-qIQ&feature=related

[Bulgaroktonos]

German - mothertongue

English - learned it for five years but still unfamiliar with this mix of german and latin.

Latin - my most beloved language, I guess I can speak it more fluent than English. :)

Ancient Greek - I have been learning it since two years and like it too but Latin is cooler, that's why I will change the official language of the byzantine empire back to latin when I have conquered it.

Dutch - I have close relatives there so I know enough to have a conversation.

[domagoj]

LOL,when do you plan to conquer Constantinople?

[GogoT]

Bulgarian
Macedonian \as it's 100% bulgarian with some understandable dialects\
English
German \verry bad, but...\

[Bulgaroktonos]

In about one two years ... it depends on the date I finished my studies and invented the super-atomar bomb. :D