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What languages do you speak, are learning, or want to learn, and why?

I can only speak English and a little bit of spanish..
I want to be able to speak polish fluently.

why?
It's where my family comes from and my grandpa used to always speak it to me when I was a kid. Didn't want to hear it then. I ask him to do it now and he wont. I'd like to be able to have an intelligent polish conversation with him before he dies.
 
i speak english mainly but after spending over 7 years in a house that speaks cantonese, i picked up a fair bit of the language. i can understand more than i can speak but i know enough to get by. i took a few years of spanish in HS and in college but i don't remember much. i also took french when i went to school in scotland but i don't remember anything (with the exception of most things i already knew).

i would love to be fluent in cantonese, mandarin, hindi, farsi and spanish.
 
I speak so many languages...My first language is Arabic, actually Judeo-Arabic as spoken in Syria which is considered a separate language, and not just a dialect of Arabic.

A close second is another Jewish language, Ladino, which is aso known as "Judeo-Spanish." It is based on Castillan as spoken in the 15th Century CE/AD, with alot of Arabic, Hebrew and a smattering of "Romance Langauges."

The rest, and not particularly in any kind of order are: Hebrew, Yiddish, Western Aramiac (very close to Assyrian/Chaldean), Spanish, Italian, French, Rumanian, Russian, German, Arabic, and 3 Bisaya (aka Visayan) Languages, from the Philippines, with my strongest being Cebuano though I am fully fluent in all I just mentioned and that includes reading and writing.

In just reading and writing, I am fully fluent in Latin and Middle Greek.

I can haltingly speak Tagalog, and the modern national language of the Philippines largely based upon it, Filipino.

I am very adept at one more Philippine language. Chavacano which is a Spanish creole spoken in one small area of Mindanao as well but am not sure on my level of fluency, living far from the home region of the language and rarely meeting speakers of it.
 
^ That's a lot of languages ! I'm jealous - language is definitely one of the most valuable skills.
I speak fluent Greek and semi-fluent Italian (parents are Greek and Italian respectively)
I cannot even begin to describe how useful they are to me. I am gonna work my Italian up to what it used to be; it's still pretty good but not as flowing as my Greek.
With Greek it is an automatic thing for me; I don't even have to think of the English translation - but with my Italian I have to think about it for a bit.
 
Most Jews are multi lingual, speaking at the very least 3. Most in my family have several with alot having more than 10.

With the ones I speak, basically 3 families, with cross over amongst all 3, the exception being Russian, which I learned from my mum and her family.

Hebrew, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and W. Aramiac are Semitic.

Ladino, Spanish, Italian, French, and Rumanian are all Romance.

3 Bisaya Language, Tagalog and Filipino are all Austro-Nesian and from the same sub-family, Malay.

Then, Yiddish is heavily based on Hebrew in grammar, conjugational rules, and perhaps 40% of vocabulary, and then perhaps 50% of the vocabulary is Middle German (German spoken 800 years ago) so that modern German is very easy, with a bit of attention.

Chavacano is a perhaps 80% Spanish in vocabulary and unlike other Ausrto-Nesians its grammar, etc is also Spanish so it all segues...

When you list them as I did, without explaining it it seems like a party trick.

As I always say, people say, "Wow! You speak so many languages! You must be really smart! " Thing is, language acquisition does not have anything to do with extra ordinary intelligence.

Take a basic language like Latin, study it very well and you will very easily be able to master 6 ot 7 other languages within 2 or 3 years if you work at it.
 
First language is Danish, i understand both Norwegian and Swedish and i speak Spanish and English also.
 
Lacey: "Lacey likes Bachata...": WOW! I never thought I would ever see someone on BL who would even know what that word means, let alone like it!

I love both types of Bacahata "Regular" and "Nueva York" or as non-Spanish speakers tend to call it, "Urban Bachata."

I just got a load of CDs 2 days ago! Xtreme, Adventura, Marcy Place (from my old hood) and Bachata Heights.

For those that do not know, Bachata is a genre of music that originated in the highly rural highlands of the Dominican Republic, a nation that encompasses half of the island of Hispanola in the Caribbean.

It is a slow to medium beat, very latin/tropical but with heavy emphasis on lead guitar using very melodic riffs that are finger plucked. Vocals are almost always on a romantic theme (love songs).

The Urban variation keeps the guitar as is, adds a plucked electric bass and uses
R and B arrangements with an admixture of Spanish and English (or sometimes that guinessential dialect, "Spanglish").

Some regular Bachata artists, or "Bachateros," are Juan Luis Guerra with or without the group 440, Zacarias Ferreira, Monchy and Alexandra, Los Toros Band, El Gringo de la Bachata and a million others.

The Urban variation actually began in the S. Bronx, so yet another hone grown genrew, though unlike Hip Hop I do not think kids in Japan will be getting down with it...though...come to think of it, Orquestra de la Luz, a damn good Salsa combo was Japanese! Hey, you never know.

"Lacey ALSO likes Reggaeton...": Well, OK, within the last couple of years Reggaeton has really evolved so that I can also claim to like it as well now. Truth be told, I hated it with a passion. I came back to NYC in May and lo and behold, it has changed so much.

This genre is rooted in Panama. In the late 80s when Jamaican "Toasting" had largely evolved into "Ranking," but before "Dancehall" had really coallesced, Panamanians in and arpund the edges of the Canal Zone began getting into it heavily, only adding Spanish into the mix.

Many black Panamaians are only 2 or 3 generations removed from the English Caribbean, primarily Jamaica and the Caymans. When US contractors began excavating for the Canal in the first heady years of the 20th Century they needed a cheap labour pool that could withstand the clime and so they used Jamaican labour sub-contractors.

The Canal was a long term project and in the end many stayed in the region. Today their descendants continue to retain Anglo names, and speak English in a Jamaican patois that was spoken 100 years ago, as well as a strangely accented Spanish.

So...this variation of Reggae was basically the same as its Jamaican counterpart, and was typified by an artist called "El General."

From the Canal Zone it bounced, up to Florida and Brooklyn, NY where so many Black-Panamanians live, where the Spanish lyrics appealed to small groups of Puerto Ricans. By 92 it was in Puerto Rico. By 96 it had evolved into an entirely new genre, with only the core rythym pattern staying the same.

By the turn of the 21st Century it was wide open in NYC, and began spreading to all Spanish speaking portions of the US...and yet all it did was repeat the same refrains over and over, sexually themed (as in X-Rated), with monotonous precussion (not as in Trance but more like Ambient), and droning monotone voices. No harmonies, no variations, as I said devoid of meolody...

But sometime between 2006 and now it has evolved into a very melodic music, with more variations in lyrical content.

Way off track, I know, but Lacey suprised me in a big way.
 
Star: "Arabic speakers seem to learn Spanish with no accent.": Is it that you have actually know Arabic speakers that you are SURE did not already speak Arabic, who then did so?

I am asking because many Arabs, especially "Palestinians" and Lebanese emograted to Latin America from 1880 onward, in huge numbers. They have served as Presidents in Argentina, Ecuador, Costa Rica and in #2 and #3 slots in many more. Heck, the 4 Corners is a major Israeli Intel (The juncture of Paraguay, Argentina, Bolvia and Brasil). Arabic is just as common as Spanish and Portugese in most towns right on the demarcations, though Iranians are emigrating there in droves (and Venezuela).

Emilio Estefan? Lebanese, Shakira? Lebanese, Selma Hayek? Same.

All Semitic languages roll "R"s but in a slightle different way. Arabic produces a very noticeable accent on Rs, for native Spanis speakers although for non-Spanish speakers it will often be indiscernible.

Myself? Both are my 1st, or 1st and very close 2nd, but I do not know I have know many Arabic speakers who didspoke Spanish without already having a handle on it from family or from earlier travels, etc.

Jam: "Arabic 'Kh' is like Spanish sounds in some variations.": Yes, in Castellano (Castillian) the "J" is pronounced like Arabic "Kh" so that when we say "Akhsa" in Arabic you could write it phonetically, for a Catellano (person who speaks Castellenao is also called by the appelation) you would simply write "Ajsa."

In Caribbean Spanish there is no equivalent sound. "J"s are pronounced as "H," and "ll" is pronounced "J."

The word "Llamar," "Llano" or "Llama" is pronounced "Yamar," "Yano" and "Yama" to Carribean Spanish speakers.

Most Puerto Ricans and Dominicans can barely conversate with most Castellanos. Cubans who are my age or older usually have no problem because of a unique dynamic.

Argentina, especially in BA and Puetro de la Plata, is the only place in Latin America where the dialect is fully compatible with Castellano. Very little indigenous influences and no African influences whatsoever, only country like that.

On "Spanish being easy for most here because it being a cognate of Spanish." Not so, not at all. Reading wise, absolutely. Spoken though? Uh uh. Spanish as a Romance Language is tied to Latin, which itself DOES heavily influence English NUT English is a 1st cousin of English. GERMANIC....

A Dutch speaker can understand roughly 80% of spoken English, if it is spoken with a minimum opf idioms and with as little regional inflection as possible. However, the same is not true in the converse.

Like Spanish, a Portugese speaker can understand more than 90% of Spanish, but a Spanish speaker can barely function in Portugese. G-D knws I try but I can barely read it hahahah. I speak alll the major Romances, EXCEPT Portugese and that is so often the case.

"Confusing Hebrew and Russian.": Russian of course is a Slavic, nothing to do with Semitic. Its alphabet is Cyrillic, again, no cigar.

Did you spenad alot of time in Jordan? You only went to Israel once, right? I ask because within the last 20 years Russian has, very sadly, now became an unofficial 3rd language in Israel. Bad enough haveing Hebrw and Arabic, and then having our kids study English (for commerce) but Russian? We suffer it because of the influx from the FSU but were I not taught it s alad, I would not endure the language.

I love reading Pushkin, Tolstoy and so on, in the original, but spoken it grates on my nerves.

With all the interesting observations, one I have long wondered about is why do Hebrew speakers (1st language) sound French to Americans, when speaking English...but not so much to Britons, etc?
 
I admire people who can speak different languages.

Already decided that I am going to learn Spanish. It would be a fallacy not too, I encounter it daily. I just have to take some time to decide how, make the commitment.

From there, who knows. I plan on travelling lots, I hope to pick up a little bit of everything, and specialise in the areas I take extended stays in.
 
rachamim said:
Did you spenad alot of time in Jordan? You only went to Israel once, right?
Click to expand...

I spent 15 years in Jordan and have been to Israel at least 12 times, the last being in 2006 :) (although, in 2006 I was not allowed to enter Israel-proper and therefore remained int he West Bank).
 
Jam: Reason I was saying it, as mentioned, was because within the last few years, from say Intifadeh II until now, russian has become almost an official language. Call our equivalent of DMV and you get automated voice systems in hebrew, Arabic and Russian...but not English.

I remember you telling me about not getting in, it was at Allenby I think. For Jews though, if you are even wearing a keepah (skull cap) you cannot get in so it goes both ways. My daughter used to work Allenby, before her transfer.
 
^ I assume this is because more settlers have been coming from Russia? My uncle (who lived in Ramallah until last year) confirms what you say about Russian.

Yes, to my knowledge, I am allowed to pass only through Allenby because I have a palestinian ID (hawiieh). I can theoretically use my Canadian passport to pass through other points but then there is the stamp issue. And as a matter of fact, some people were telling me that even with a Canadian passport, the fact that I have a hawiieh causes me to be treated as a Palestinian, not a Canadian and therefore only allowed through Allenby.

Heh, I may have met your daughter. I tend to say shalom and wish them (the Israeli border-guards that is) a good day... they'd smile and treat me nicely, probably because they're used to having disgruntled people frowning at them the whole time, hehe.

I hope someday the tensions loosen up and return to at least 1996-ish situation, back when people were allowed to pass on both sides (hassle, yes, but at least possible...)... I would still love to visit Hebron and Haifah, both of which I wasn't able to...
 
Yes, with your ID you are considered a de facto PA National for all intensive purposes.

My daughter, I can say it now because I checked and she has already redeployed to a new posting was an NCO at Allenby for a bit. She began in Karakul, the only co-ed Infantry Battalion in the world, under my Brigade (NACHAL), but Karakul was re-delegated out of the Infatry Command Structure.

She mostly worked further down the border but is working her way up the foodchain, seems to be my 2nd child turning professional, my eldest opted out a year ago when his time was up. My second son is a lifer.

Last week we removed the major Jericho Check Point on Ramallah-Jericho meaning it is now without a single Israeli Check Point, but as you would know PA Check Points are whole other ball game.

I hope that you will be able to go back easily as you once did. Ramallah was very pretty for a short while, 96 was a good year there. Still OK, and getting better but nothing like the first Oslo years.

Hebron? Well you already know my feelings there. My family's home is now an IDF post, and the courts refuse to rule on ownership, while still blocking occupancy so it exists in a nether world. At this point, I cannot even get a permit to visit Hebron.

I would imagine you would, if you gained entry. H2 is under total control of the PA, H1 being the smaller sector, Tel Rumeida to Kiryat Arba.
 
animal_cookie said:
i speak english fluently. i am pretty decent at french, but i use it less and less and am forgetting more as time goes on. i also have studied ASL, but again, i don't use it enough to be good at it,

i am currently learning danish because i made a bet with a friend of mine. its going slowly, i can talk like two year old.

i am also learning some arabic and farsi from my roommate. mostly because i am nosy and he thinks its amusing.

and i know some very basic hungarian. its on the long list of things i want to improve on.
Click to expand...

a year later, i still only know some basic danish. and how to say very dirty things in farsi.

i would say my language learning was unsuccessful :\
 
rachamim said:
Lacey: "Lacey likes Bachata...": WOW! I never thought I would ever see someone on BL who would even know what that word means, let alone like it!

I love both types of Bacahata "Regular" and "Nueva York" or as non-Spanish speakers tend to call it, "Urban Bachata."

I just got a load of CDs 2 days ago! Xtreme, Adventura, Marcy Place (from my old hood) and Bachata Heights.

For those that do not know, Bachata is a genre of music that originated in the highly rural highlands of the Dominican Republic, a nation that encompasses half of the island of Hispanola in the Caribbean.

It is a slow to medium beat, very latin/tropical but with heavy emphasis on lead guitar using very melodic riffs that are finger plucked. Vocals are almost always on a romantic theme (love songs).

The Urban variation keeps the guitar as is, adds a plucked electric bass and uses
R and B arrangements with an admixture of Spanish and English (or sometimes that guinessential dialect, "Spanglish").

Some regular Bachata artists, or "Bachateros," are Juan Luis Guerra with or without the group 440, Zacarias Ferreira, Monchy and Alexandra, Los Toros Band, El Gringo de la Bachata and a million others.

The Urban variation actually began in the S. Bronx, so yet another hone grown genrew, though unlike Hip Hop I do not think kids in Japan will be getting down with it...though...come to think of it, Orquestra de la Luz, a damn good Salsa combo was Japanese! Hey, you never know.

"Lacey ALSO likes Reggaeton...": Well, OK, within the last couple of years Reggaeton has really evolved so that I can also claim to like it as well now. Truth be told, I hated it with a passion. I came back to NYC in May and lo and behold, it has changed so much.

This genre is rooted in Panama. In the late 80s when Jamaican "Toasting" had largely evolved into "Ranking," but before "Dancehall" had really coallesced, Panamanians in and arpund the edges of the Canal Zone began getting into it heavily, only adding Spanish into the mix.

Many black Panamaians are only 2 or 3 generations removed from the English Caribbean, primarily Jamaica and the Caymans. When US contractors began excavating for the Canal in the first heady years of the 20th Century they needed a cheap labour pool that could withstand the clime and so they used Jamaican labour sub-contractors.

The Canal was a long term project and in the end many stayed in the region. Today their descendants continue to retain Anglo names, and speak English in a Jamaican patois that was spoken 100 years ago, as well as a strangely accented Spanish.

So...this variation of Reggae was basically the same as its Jamaican counterpart, and was typified by an artist called "El General."

From the Canal Zone it bounced, up to Florida and Brooklyn, NY where so many Black-Panamanians live, where the Spanish lyrics appealed to small groups of Puerto Ricans. By 92 it was in Puerto Rico. By 96 it had evolved into an entirely new genre, with only the core rythym pattern staying the same.

By the turn of the 21st Century it was wide open in NYC, and began spreading to all Spanish speaking portions of the US...and yet all it did was repeat the same refrains over and over, sexually themed (as in X-Rated), with monotonous precussion (not as in Trance but more like Ambient), and droning monotone voices. No harmonies, no variations, as I said devoid of meolody...

But sometime between 2006 and now it has evolved into a very melodic music, with more variations in lyrical content.

Way off track, I know, but Lacey suprised me in a big way.
Click to expand...


Ah yes, I got to say we seem to find common ground on some strange things rach but I always do enjoy that.

You might like "El chaval - Donde estan esos amigos" its a perfect example, a sad romantic love song (im sure you know from the title, the idea of the song) and the signature guitar style. If you aint already heard this track of course but its one of my favorites.

I dont want to take this thread off topic but i had to write back, A nice suprise to see my old post respond to.
 
I used to speak fluent german. when I was a kid, 6 years old, my father was in the military and stationed in germany. we lived there for 3 years. those are the years that a kid learns to talk. My little playmates were german kids, so I learned to speak german. I can barely remember any now. I was told that I could probably recall what I learned through hypnosis.
 
I'm learning some Spanish because foreign language classes were a graduation requirement for me, and I like being somewhat bilingual.
 
I love this thread. Possibly the best thread ever.

My one regret in terms of my birth and upbringing is not being raised multilingual. I'm insanely jealous of anyone who speaks 3+ languages at a native level.

I always loved words and languages. I took all three languages my hicktown high school offered: Spanish, French, and Latin. I speak none of them fluently today. I still understand a lot of Spanish and French, though, when I hear it. I know I could pick up Italian without any difficulty. I'm pretty sure I could regain fluency in Spanish or French if I was forced to, and made a concerted effort. All of these languages are pretty close to English.

I'm a fluent, non-native Mandarin Chinese speaker. I majored in Chinese in college, went to China as an exchange student, and then lived in Taiwan for 2.5 years, which is where I really became fluent. It's really not a hard language to learn, at least without the written part! It's a very practical language with simple grammar, and native speakers are more than happy to speak it with you. I have absolutely no Chinese ancestry, nor any special personal connection to China, which makes my knowledge of this language... odd. I haven't had a chance to use it much recently, but I know I could get it back with little trouble.

I also studied Japanese extensively, but I've lost most of my ability to speak it. Not sure that I could get this back -- I find it a frustratingly hard language to 'be myself' in, and I've found native speakers reluctant to speak it with me or help me practice. In all my years of learning it, I can't say I can recall even one really rich, lengthy, enjoyable conversation entirely in Japanese. Frankly, I don't recommend it as a first choice for people who want to learn a challenging but rewarding second language. Learning Russian, Arabic, or Mandarin would be much more fruitful pursuits, IMHO.

I'd love to learn Portuguese -- the sun never sets on a part of the world where Portuguese is understood and useful. Russian is also high on my list of languages to learn, but I don't know that I'll have the time or the patience to master the highly inflected grammar.

I will take great pains to learn the local language of any place I end up spending a lot of time, that's for sure, and any kids I raise in a foreign country will speak the local language like natives, if I have anything to say about it.

Funny, I've met many more Arabic speakers who understand FRENCH than Spanish. I really feel that Arabic shares a historical relationship with French that it doesn't share quite so closely with any other Western language.

I also find that most native Greek speakers I've met can speak at least some Italian, even though they're kind of distantly related. I get the sense that modern conversational Greek is a lot more Italian-like than ancient literary Greek. Was there a lot of Italian influence on modern Greek?

I only recently gained an appreciation for how many dialects of Spanish there are, and how mutually unintelligible many of them are. I still find Caribbean dialects of "Epañol" impossible to make any sense of. Argentinians pretty much speak Italian. I find people from southern Mexico the easiest to understand, probably because that's the dialect that's taught in US schools. I've heard stories of exchange students to Spain, who have been placed with rural families who speak little local dialects, and even after years of studying Spanish, can't understand a word they say.
 
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