What other languages do we speak

[trien27]

Hi,

I speak English & Chinese (studied Mandarin a long time ago, & I speak Cantonese), studied some Spanish, studied a little Modern Greek (I can say "I have no money"), Latin[find Latin boring, too many endings & the introduction of the useless letter "c", where in most languages you could substitute "k" or "s" with the exception of "ch" as in the word kitchen, most non-English words(words where ch is pronounced with "kh" sound, the Russians used the same letter as the Greeks for this sound. They also have a similar sound in German & Hebrew)], French(most words are easy to pronounce, but plurals are similar to singular nouns in most cases; ch in French is pronounced "sh", (see Norwegian entry below), Russian(Govorite po-Russky? Do you speak Russian?), German, Tagalog, Japanese, Korean, etc... Currently trying to learn Norwegian(the French "sh" sound spelt with ch or sometimes ti(as part of -tion-) is transliterated as sj in Norwegian: example: international in French; Internasjonal in Norwegian). Lunch in English ~= "Lunsj" in Norwegian. ~= means "appromately equal to". There are 3 letters in Norwegian which has no equivalent in English, A with ring on top, ae together as a dipthong/ligature? and the o with a slash over it. Visited Norway. Love it, but didn't stay too long. While in Norway I found something in Greek language (Guava juice/KOYABA[at first I thought it was Norwegian, but then something told me it's Greek]? Kuava is the approximate pronounciation) that I could read. Here at home, I've found something from a European market that has Russian, but the word I learnt is Norwegian for orange (the fruit), but when I read the Russian, it's pronounciation is very similar to the Norwegian!

I didn't know I could learn Russian & Greek in Norway!

Serbo-Croatian is similar to Russian. Serbs & Croats, well, one uses the Cyrillic alphabet, the other uses the Roman/Latin/English alphabet.

PS I know some words in a West African language called Akan (Country of Ghana). Afishiya pa for the New Year!

Thank you

Takk(Norsk),"Cbasibo"(Russky), xie-xie(Pinyin/Zhongwen), merci(Francais), arigato-u(Nihongo), kamsa-hamnida(Hankuk-mal/romanized Hangul), etc...

Norsk/Norwegian

Russky/Russian

Zhongwen/Chinese

Francais/French

Nihongo/Japanese

Hankuk-mal/Hangul/Korean

BTW I'm of Chinese descent, born in Vietnam, living in New York for the past 26 years.

Bryan

[kkoma]

English (Native language)

Korean

Chinese (some Mandarin & some Cantonese)

some Japanese

French

German

Dutch

Spanish

[zarathustra]

French and very little German. I began German self-study but never really continued. Hope to get around to Latin and Greek in a few years. This is all mainly for study and reading.

[loopline]

I speak fluent english and some spanish.

[madizi]

English, Chinese, some German, Serbo-Croatian, few Japanese sentences and few Italian words.

Oh, and learned Latin one year. But the only thing that I remember at this moment is: "Pecunia non olet." (Money doesn't stink.)

[mmarketing]

Fluent-native level English

Fluent-native level Italian

Conversational Chinese

5 years French

[tiffsmith]

English (native, UK#1, USA#2)

Some French (learned at school)

Some Spanish (learned at home and still studying)

Latin (currently studying)

Chinese (currently studying)

I can say a few things in Greek and a few in German and can also understand a little Punjabi.

Looking at that list makes me sad because I could know all of those languages quite proficiently if I had been taking a little more time and effort. Ahh well, hindsight is 20/20.

[CheukMo]

English - native language

Spanish- almost natively fluent

Some (小小) Cantonese

卓武

[CheukMo]

Looking at that list makes me sad because I could know all of those languages quite proficiently if I had been taking a little more time and effort. Ahh well, hindsight is 20/20

So true in my case. I could have been natively fluent in Spanish a long time ago if I had studied more. I could probably be close in Cantonese as well if I had kept studying all those times that I practiced and stopped after a little while.

卓武

[Alvinho]

Well, in adittion to my mother language portuguese, I do speak English and Spanish even though I'm still studying them hard in order to enhance them....moreover, I'm thinking of beginning to study two more languages next year.....and Chinese Mandarin may be one of them....the another probable language is french or italian....

Anyway, I intend to study languages until I become an older, older guy perhaps by turning 80 I'll have learnt at least 5 more languages....

[文言訓開班]

In order of fluency, I speak English, Cantonese, Mandarin, French, and Russian. My Russian shouldn't count; I studied it for a year in college, and picked up a good bit of it at the time, but since has become pathetic. Essentially I can read it, understand some of it, and say ya govoryu po russkiy ochen plohoiy.

I studied French forever, but it is in rusty order while Chinese is my current obsession. But because of it, I can grasp most written Latin, a lot of written and spoken Spanish, and the occasional Italian word or two. Portugese always sounds like Russian to me, only more alien. Let's just say it's Greek to me. I always get thrown by accents.

I can also understand some Vietnamese - because of the Cantonese words. It sounds like gibberish, then 一杯, 食完, etc. Also, some Hokkien, Hakka, and Chaozhou. I wouldn't know how to speak any of it, though....maybe except for a few choice 醜口.

[md1101]

In order of profiency (get ready for this): English, Chinese

Damn I know two languages yet all of a sudden I sound pathetic!

Actually I'm going to learn another language next year and I'm trying to decide between Arabic and French. Any comments?

[md1101]

oh and you know who i hate... Chinese Malaysians and Singaporeans. They all speak fluent Canto, English, Mandarin and Malay. It's not fair!!

[文言訓開班]

Arabic, if only for the challenge.

[renzhe]

Croatian / Bosnian / Serbian

English

German

Spanish

Chinese (Mandarin)

Latin

In that order. I'm not really counting Latin, though I've studied it for 6 years. I've also studied bits and pieces of Turkish, Arabic and ancient Greek, but none of it stuck.

[Loriquero]

reading this forum I've realized there's people here with fluency in russian, arabic, portuguese, spanish... some of the most spoken languages in the world, except for Hindi...

Well, my turn, in order:

-colombian spanish, Bogota accent (native)

-colombian spanish, caribbean accent ( 15 years living there)

-english?? well, I've realized I speak basic english here with all my classmates, I don't know how xD not very good but improving, I think.

-currently learning chinese, trying to reach survival level ....

-a few words in japanese, product of long sessions watching manga cartoons

[NewDominion]

I'm learning Uyghur right now. It's a fantastic language.

Men hazir Uyghurcheni ogenwetimen. Bu til nahayiti chirayliq.

[LiYuanXi]

oh and you know who i hate... Chinese Malaysians and Singaporeans. They all speak fluent Canto, English, Mandarin and Malay. It's not fair!!

Boo hoo~ MD1101 hates me!

We were forced to learn both english and mandarin, there wasn't any choice really. For dialects, we just pick them up from the elders.

[md1101]

LiYuanXi... lol i know! Actually I lived in Malaysia from 5 to 11 years old. But I went to an international school. they tried to teach us malay once... but they hired teachers who couldn't speak english. so from day 1 the teacher was speaking in malay! i had no hope... after a while they cancelled the classes.

[LiYuanXi]

In Singapore, we have this strange situation, I don't know about Malaysia but I think they have it too. Alot of s'reans like me prefer to read and write in english but prefer to speak and listen in mandarin. I don't know why is that so and many peopl are this.

Our government has been pushing us to learn English as our first language for years and if we don't do English well, the future of our education will be badly obstructed. For example, if you do not pass english, you don't have much choice but to go to training schools which trains you for jobs like nursing, mechanics, technicians etc. If you pass english then you can go to schools with more professional training like doctors, lawyers, designers etc, but it doesn't matter if you fail mandarin. If you fail mandarin and pass english, you can still go to better schools but not the other way round.

So basically our schools teach lesson like maths, science and history in english and students started to hate chinese because it's hard and they found it useless.

Now, our government realise the imbalance and tried to balance it by promoting chinese speaking campaigns.

Our government also hates Singlish(mixture of chinese, english, malay and dialects). They said that it reflects badly on us like we are not competent in this global trading business whatsoever. So they are also launching campaigns to make us speak GOOD english. Too bad we don't care, we still speak singlish everyday!