Languages

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How many languages can you speak?

  • Just the one

    Votes: 14 28.6%
  • Two

    Votes: 20 40.8%
  • Three

    Votes: 11 22.4%
  • Four or more!

    Votes: 4 8.2%

  • Total voters
    49
I've always wondered what (originally) non-English speakers think of English when they learn it.. is it a pretty language like French, or crude? Does it sound harsh, or is it just hard to conjugate due to our different uses/spellings of same words?

Anyone care to comment who has learned English as a second language? :wave:
 
well ive studied greek for 3 years, latin for 5, spanish for a long ass time, french for a few, so it should be 5, but in reality its more like 2, english and spanisho
 
I suppose you can say I speak Japanese too, but I'm feckin' horrible at it. I quit the course two years in without passing a single test.

The one thing I find funny about non-English speakers on the Internet is they'll often write "excuse my English, I'm from a non-English speaking country" and most of the time their English is actually better than what is written by native English speakers.
 
English
Francais
Bahasa Indonesia
and a little Nihongo (Japanese)

but i just put down 3 because the secondary languages are all conversational level only, not really fluency level.

oh and ik wil graag Nederlands leren. :sexywink: for reasons of my own.
 
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Salome said:

how old exactly were you again?

Well...My memory is hazy, this was back in 60 AD...So about 2313 years ago? I was 17 then.

Heiroglyphics - The Most Useless Language (of sorts) one can know.

:up:
 
Does dialect count? If so then i speak 3 languages. I know Cantonese, Mandarine and English. I learnt French for some days, but er... well... :tongue:

Angie, i wish i could learn Heiroglyphics! I don't think i would be useful to me, but hey, it would be lots of fun!:drool:
 
two, but for the past years I've been trying to learn French! :eyebrow: I understand a little and Italian is easy to understand so similar to Spanish.
 
English
German (though I'm forgetting it all)
French (mostly reading and listening....I've forgotten the grammar)
Lemurese
Meggieish
 
Hello,

I speak Dutch (of course) as it is my mother tongue. Furthermore, I speak English quite well (I think). It's much better anyway than my German or Spanish. Hey! That's four languages, didn't think I spoke in so many tongues. :) (Although my German and Spanish is quite bad at the moment, need to study it again, especially Spanish as I really like that language and country).

HelloAngel said:
I've always wondered what (originally) non-English speakers think of English when they learn it.. is it a pretty language like French, or crude? Does it sound harsh, or is it just hard to conjugate due to our different uses/spellings of same words?

Anyone care to comment who has learned English as a second language? :wave:

I don't know... I speak English for so long now, I can't remember back that far. I got my first English lessons at school when I was 10 years young and even then I already spoke/understood it a bit. I wouldn't classify it with the pretty languages like Spanish (sorry, but I have some aversion against French, must be because I understood it when it was a subject at school). But once you hear Dutch you know it does not sound harsh. :p I mean, I challenge everyone to pronounce the Dutch 'G' without throwing up! :tongue:
Gramatically, English is quite difficult though. I always mix up the tenses (present, past, subjective, etc.), but then again, I do the same in Dutch. As for different uses/spellings of the same words, that's the same in every language.

C ya!

Marty

P.S. Excuse my English, I'm from a non-English speaking country... :p
P.P.S. Meggieish, is that one difficult to learn. Any suggestions for good books about this language? :D
 
not fluent in russian, i can't speak it too well, but i can read, write, and understand (when spoken) a bit. i like watching russian movies because i don't always need the subtitles.
 
yertle-the-turtle said:

The one thing I find funny about non-English speakers on the Internet is they'll often write "excuse my English, I'm from a non-English speaking country" and most of the time their English is actually better than what is written by native English speakers.


very true. i need a disclaimer saying "please excuse my english, it's my first language so they didn't teach us this stuff in school" or maybe "please excuse my poor grammer and inability to spell, i'm a product of the current american school system" :)

in truth, i learned all my english grammar from taking russian and latin :huh:

i also need a disclaimer saying that my spelling isn't actually as bad as it seems sometimes, it's just that i never took typingf in school and i'm too lazy to proofread all my posts :p
 
HelloAngel said:
I've always wondered what (originally) non-English speakers think of English when they learn it.. is it a pretty language like French, or crude? Does it sound harsh, or is it just hard to conjugate due to our different uses/spellings of same words?

Anyone care to comment who has learned English as a second language? :wave:

I have always wondered that too! Oddly enough, I find German to sound pretty when a native person is speaking it. :shrug:

I took Spanish and German at various times in school, I'm definitely not fluent in either of them. I could get by reading Spanish, but I have forgotten what little Deutsch I learned.
 
German as native language - of course i'm biased, but i really like that language because you can say exactly what you want - they much more words than most of the other languages,
some English (i didn't learn it because it's pretty, but because you don't find many Americans and British who are willing and able to talk a foreign language)
a little French (same problem with the French people *g* - but i also love to hear that language, well imho French is a beautiful language,
and a few Words Italian, just enough to be able to buy food or something to drink when i'm driving through that country - not really worth mentioning (and because of that i didn't count it)

Klaus
 
I speak Spanish because that's my native tongue. I can also speak Italian because my grandparents were Italian and that's how I learnt it. I speak English (duh!) cus that's my college degree.
And now I'm learning Irish courtesy of my boyfriend Brian! :D Go raibh maith agat! :D
 
Klaus said:
...some English (i didn't learn it because it's pretty, but because you don't find many Americans and British who are willing and able to talk a foreign language)

i am one of those few Americans who is willing to learn and talk a foreign language. i really wish i had more exposure to speaking foreign languages as a kid. it is a shame, because when i was a child there was not a need to speak a foreign language, hearing a different language other than English was rare, but now Atlanta is big international city and it is annoying to me now to not be able to speak different languages. i am too timid at times to attempt to speak a different language because i am worried i will throw in a southern drawl into the pronunciation and sound like a complete fool. :reject: there is a huge demand for adults in the working world to be bi and multi-lingual now and classes for foreign languages are in huge demand and fill up very fast.
 
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