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

i only speak english and a bit of spanish. spending a few months in south america, i picked up quite a bit. i would like to learn more, but i get bored easily, so if i did it would have to be immersion, not from any sort of academic instruction. i would love to learn french, it sounds so beautiful. like, no matter what i was saying, it would still be poetic and lovely.

but the real why? to wanting to learn other languages...not really sure. i just enjoy communicating with people who i otherwise wouldn't have been able to.
 
I speak Polish, a bit English, and I can ask for directions how to get somewhere in German.
I've been learning English because it's todays international language. There are much more aspects of that internationality than I can think of. It's also required by many employers.
As I live not-so-far from Germany, I had to learn this language in shool.
I find Russian very interesting and I'd like to learn it just for fun. It simply sounds cool :)

pzdr
 
I speak English and was also once fluent in German as I took 4 years of it in high school and spent 5 weeks in Germany right after I graduated. I decided to learn German because all my ancestors were German and I wanted to learn more about the language and the culture of where I came from. If I went back there today I'm fairly sure the language would come back, it just might take a couple days.

I want to learn Spanish next because it's becoming so common in the U.S. So many jobs require the applicants to be able to speak Spanish and that's only going to become a requirement to more jobs.

I think it would be fun to learn a lot of different languages!
 
Cool, thanks for the replies so far :)

I can speak Arabic and English equally-fluently - my parents' first language is Arabic and I grew up speaking and learning in both Arabic and English. I also understand and speak bits of Japanese and Thai due to living in those countries. I have a good foundation in French but this is one of those languages that take way too much learning before they ever become useful.

I am currently self-learning, on-and-off: Latin (because it is beautiful), Hebrew (because it is so easy), and Spanish (because it is both easy and widely-spoken).

I want to learn: Russian (because it opens up several countries that I want to visit), Sanskrit (because I love Latin's mechanics), and any Altaic language just to get the gist of this family.

A bit ambitious, I realize, but I've always enjoyed studying language :). The most interesting thing about this, besides communication, is the ability to perceive the world from a completely different point of view. In this matter, I feel blessed for being truly bilingual.
 
I speak finnish and english. Little bit of swedish, spanish, german, french.. Couple sentences chinese, because my sister-in-law is from China. I want to learn spanish more because I'm dreaming of travelling in South-America. Latin would be really cool for the same reasons as spork's.
 
I speak English and Spanish fluently (I was born in Mexico)

I took 6 years of French and LOVED it, but have been out of practice. When I hear French being spoken I can usually roughly understand about 75% but when I try to say something, maybe I'm 10%-15% accurate lol But I KNOW if I were immersed in the culture for a week or maybe even less I would pick it up rapidly

I am currently learning Hawaiian because I recently relocated out here. All my friends tell me they're surprised I'm learning so quickly and easily, but I definately dont feel that confident about it just yet.

The next language I will learn is Japanese, or possible Cantonese. Why? Well, Asia is right next door :) I've heard Cantonese is the base for most asian languages, so thats why I would choose that first. On the other hand Japan is most likely where I will be traveling to next....

I am also always learning Latin and always will be :)
 
English, Dutch, French all fluent, rustic German speaking but I still understand most of it as I never get to practice it anymore apart from watching a movie like Manta manta.
 
Spanish, although I've forgotten most of it. I'm going to start brushing up on it again, because after I graduate in May I plan to take a long (6 month) trip to South America traveling down the coast of Chile to Patagonia (for their summer).

I also speak a bit of german (my mother is german).
 
"The Number of Languages you know is the Number of Times you are Human"
I've always thought that to ring true.

Jamshyd, our known languages are quite similar.Are you serious about Hebrew being easy? I guess it would be compared to Arabic.

I can speak English, French, Thai & Hebrew fluently.

I would like to learn:
Japanese because I plan on living there.
Spanish because it sounds cool.

But the one I would really love to learn is Xhosa. It's spoken by 18% of the South African population and contains tones & clicks. (The "X" in Xhosa is a click sound). I thought it would be easy, but it's not like clicking your tongue, there are 5 different clicks and some come from deep in the throat. I don't know how useful Xhosa would be, more for my amusement than anything.

And for some reason I still can't roll my R's properly.
 
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.
 
English and bad English

Currently learning Cambodian for my trip, I figure that I'll spend the most time on the path less taken in that country and Cambodians certainly speak less English than those in Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

I've been half-heartedly learning Latin and Ancient Greek online for the past year, going to get into it seriously after my trip as I'll be studying them at university as part of my ancient history degree.
 
Xhosa sounds fun. I like the idea of learning a language that's so wildly different from any language I know, and that requires a whole different set of pronunciation techniques.

I speak English, Spanish, French fluently, and I can get along in German and Italian, once I'm surrounded by native speakers. I, too, am always working on my Latin. (I'm reading Horace right now and it's blowing my mind.) I'm saving Ancient Greek for my dotage.

Right now I'm working on learning spoken Arabic. There are a couple of guys in my neighborhood who are patient enough to listen to me butcher their language while I'm trying to learn. I'm so grateful for their help.

I love studying languages. I love being able to communicate with people from other cultures. Every time I learn another language, my overall understanding of human expression becomes richer.

Plus, I love to read, and every time I earn how to read a language it opens up a world of new books to read. My next reading language will probably be Russian because there are a lot of Russian works I'd like to read in the original. On the same note, I am so glad that I learned to read French because it's such a enjoyable language to read in.
 
I understand Russian well. Speaking and writing is a little a rusty.

I'd like to pick-up Latin but that's not in the cards anytime soon. From what I hear it's useful to know if you want to intuitively pickup the meaning of words.
 
I want to learn Russian because I want to visit Russia someday or perhaps even live there. Maybe I'll just settle for moving to Brighton Beach in the city lol.
 
i speak infant level croatian, as that is where my folks are from, and i'm gradualy learning mandarin, cuz i like little oranges.

that and the wifey is chinese and i've already visited the place twice and will probably go there many, MANY more times to come, not excluding possibilities to spend extended periods over there.
 
Jamshyd said:

A bit ambitious, I realize, but I've always enjoyed studying language :). The most interesting thing about this, besides communication, is the ability to perceive the world from a completely different point of view. In this matter, I feel blessed for being truly bilingual.
Click to expand...

Don't sell yourself short dude. I've known several people who learned over 10 languages (not necessarily fluent in all mind you) throughout their lives. Granted these people were possibly 30x smarter than myself but it's possible. If anyone on here can learn that many languages and keep them fresh, it's a smart cookie like you Jam. :)
 
I wouldn't mind learning a little Hopi. Their language is so drastically different from english, the use of tense and subjects is just so different I think it would be trippy to learn.
 
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