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How many languages do you speak?

de Darkmaster127, 3 februarie 2011

Contribuții/Mesaje: 86

Limbă: English

samueldora (Arată profil) 3 februarie 2011, 22:23:04

I am native German, learned as well some Low German by my grandparents, at school I learned English, had to attend Latin, and learned some French. In between I discovered that with some extra vocabulary I could understand basic Yiddish (if not written in hebrew letters).

A few years ago I started with Spanish, then switched to Portuguese because of professional contacts in Brazil, and then discovered Esperanto.

I really speak only German and English, but I always like to try out some talk in one the other languages (except Latin).

sudanglo (Arată profil) 3 februarie 2011, 22:24:05

The problem with the question is what does it mean to speak a language.

Even with Esperanto, it would be rare for anybody to have quite the same command as they do with their native tongue. Though I am sure that fluent Esperantists will often speak the language at a higher level than they speak some foreign national language learnt in adulthood.

Miland (Arată profil) 3 februarie 2011, 22:47:07

I've had temporary enthusiasms now and then to learn the basics of French or German (and forgot it all afterwards). Esperanto is the only language that I've persevered with long enough to be able to use with any degree of fluency. Even then, I only studied regularly or diligently when I had an examination or Esperanto event coming up. The UK national congress is in 2 months, so I guess I had better put a little more spare time into it (sigh).

OK, as an exercise (or penance) let me try saying the above in Esperanto...

Fojfoje mi spertis portempan entuziasmon por lerni la francan aŭ la germanan (kaj forgesis ĉion poste). Nur pri Esperanto mi perzistis ĝis mi atingis ian gradon de flueco. Eĉ tiukaze mi studis kutime aŭ diligente nur antaŭ ekzamenoj aŭ aliaj Esperantaj eventoj. Post du monatoj okazos la brita landa kongreso, do eble indas ke mi elspezu iom pli da libertempo pri ĝi (suspiro).

erinja (Arată profil) 4 februarie 2011, 00:33:03

samueldora:In between I discovered that with some extra vocabulary I could understand basic Yiddish (if not written in hebrew letters).
I encourage you to learn the Hebrew writing system for writing Yiddish. The alphabet is not too hard and the spelling system used for writing English Yiddish is much easier than the spelling system used for Hebrew (though Hebrew loanwords maintain their Hebrew spelling, which means you have to make a guess or look up the pronunciation in a dictionary)

Yiddish reading at the "Yiddish Academy" online

Yiddish at Omniglot

RiotNrrd (Arată profil) 4 februarie 2011, 02:26:18

I'm a native English speaker. I took four and a half years of formal (i.e., school) instruction in German, and three years of French. I can neither read, write, nor speak, any of them.

My mother was from the Netherlands, and I am told that I spoke some Dutch at a very young age due to her speaking it to me. I have no memory of it, and certainly cannot speak any of it now.

I have played around with Latin, and Old English (of the tenth-century Beowulf-in-the-original sort). Having done little more than play with these, though, I also cannot read, write, or speak them.

I made a good try at lojban. I spent several weeks learning the basics, then spent about four hours one evening attempting to translate the sentence "I live in a blue house". I failed utterly, and so ended my attempts at lojban, which I (obviously) cannot read, write, or speak.

I did buy the Klingon language book when it first hit store shelves about twenty years ago. I jumped around in the book, but never really even made an attempt to learn it. I always thought of it as more of a literary curiosity than anything else, and not worth any serious effort on my part.

I can write quite fluently in Tolkien's Elvish script, but only as transliterated English. I even kept a journal in it for a while, pre-internet. I don't think this really counts, though.

I learned the basics of Esperanto in about a month, started my Esperanto-language blog six months later, have read several books in Esperanto, and post semi-regularly to the Esperanto language forums. I have only passed the basic Lernu exam, but that's just due to laziness; I consider myself at an intermediate level. I could definitely use some speaking practice, and would probably find the first few days of an Esperanto-only event difficult (but not impossible).

So... I'd say two languages. One really well, and the other fairly well.

erinja (Arată profil) 4 februarie 2011, 03:19:28

RiotNrrd, you should try to participate in NASK this year. It only lasts a little more than a week (it includes the 4th of July weekend) and it's in San Diego, so still on the West Coast.

I bet you'd improve your speaking ability rapidly, and have a great time as well.

JulietAwesome (Arată profil) 4 februarie 2011, 03:34:45

Darkmaster127:I'm just curious how many languages people here speak, what order you learnt them in, how long it took you to learn them, etc.
I've used lots of languages, but I only really know a handful of them well enough write something useful with them:

Fluent in F# (started 2007)
- similar enough to OCaml, SML, and Haskell that I find them mutually intelligible.
- broad experience in functional dialects allows me to read most Lisp code.

Fluent in C# (started 2003)
- similar to VB.NET without the verbosity
- similar to Java without the verbosity

Beginning Erlang (late 2010)

Fluent in several domain specific languages:
- Fluent in several dialects of SQL
- Fluent in several dialects of regex
- Reasonably good with XSL
- I've written my own DSLs with Lex/Yacc and variants

Due to several years of experience in professional web development:
- Fluent in XHTML+CSS
- Fluent in ASP.NET Webforms, experienced with ASP.NET MVC
- Fluent in classic ASP, even though I haven't used it since 2003
- Reasonably ok with Javascript

I'd like to learn:
- C/C++
- PostScript
- Just for funsies, a stack-based language like Forth
- I'd like to improve my knowledge of data structures and algorithms

Once you learn your first language, learning all the others is effortless.

Somehow I don't think this was the answer you were looking for okulumo.gif

DuckFiasco (Arată profil) 4 februarie 2011, 03:39:01

I'm a native English speaker.

I was very interested in Spanish as a kid and went to a Spanish immersion school from the age of 10 to 12 or so. Then when I got to high school, I switched to French.

Since then, I've forgotten nearly all of my Spanish, but I can read/write very fluently in French (after nearly 12 years, I'd hope so!). I never get to practice speaking though, so that's pretty rusty malgajo.gif I can understand 95% of what I hear, but I have a problem retaining what was said past a sentence or two. It's very strange to understand everything but not remember any of it.

I started Esperanto probably 7 years ago but have only dabbled, so I practically live in a dictionary when writing and can't imagine I'd be able to have a complex conversation in it. I can read it all right. I'd love to change this but I'm terribly shy so I've never gotten on Skype to practice.

I would someday like to become conversational in my own conlang, but it's very hard to become proficient in a language only one person speaks. That and it's hard to resist conlanger's boredom and arbitrarily change or tweak things. It's something Zamenhof was very familiar with, since I remember reading he had to force himself to spend a year just using Eo with no more changes.

RiotNrrd (Arată profil) 4 februarie 2011, 07:18:40

erinja:RiotNrrd, you should try to participate in NASK this year. It only lasts a little more than a week (it includes the 4th of July weekend) and it's in San Diego, so still on the West Coast.

I bet you'd improve your speaking ability rapidly, and have a great time as well.
I've been actually considering it. The announcement that was sent out a while back is still sitting in my inbox, and not many emails get to sit there very long.

LyzTyphone (Arată profil) 4 februarie 2011, 07:32:54

Fluent tier:
Mandarin Chinese (native status)

And so a 新年快樂～恭喜發財！ to dear @biguglydave

Semi fluent = Can study Uni subjects in this tier:
English, Esperanto (written form)

Can read/listen/watch material with no difficulty tier:
Japanese

Can understand paragraphs with a dictionary tier:
Deutsch

Have learnt but never good at tier:
Spanish, Chinese - Hokkien Dialect

Interested in but never started tier
Russian, Romanian, Folkspraak

That's about it~

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