Hey everybody,
I'm interested in what languages you all know, what level you would consider yourself, and you came about to know them.
I know the French language, and could function on a professional and personal level if I were to live there, but would not consider myself fluent in the language. It's my favorite language by far, and I love listening to it and reading French literature. Started taking French classes in 7th grade of Middle school and have been there twice.
I also have an elementary understanding of the Russian Language, I took a years worth of Russian classes last year, and would like to learn more about the language should the opportunity arise.
I can speak English. It took a while, but I can speak baseball almost fluently. I used to speak academia, but I've lost it. I have lots and lots of French and might have been fluentish once. Now I can only answer NYT's crossword puzzle questions like "hot days in Nice" and so on. Was stuck in a traffic jam driving into Paris a few years ago. The only words from the French radio traffic report that I could understand was "escargot" and I figured he was talking about the pace of traffic, not dinner. I can read menus pretty well in French restaurants. Two years of university Spanish and all I remember is "A donde es la bibliotecha?" - which did come in handy when I visited Bilbao. I can read Hebrew and understand lots of what I read. I am sad that I will likely be unilingual, and forever be French kissing in a tongue now forgotten (to paraphrase humanodon's poem.
English is my native language. My father is a grammar junkie and so am I, but I've learned to bite my tongue. I am close to functional in French. I can read anything at close to the speed I read English. I can understand spoken French in a couple different dialects, but I'm slower than when I read -- only in the last couple years have I been able to keep up with a random francophone radio station, even the overly pronounced Prèmiere Chaine (Channel One of Radio-Canada) or France Info. I can speak French conversationally, but not well enough to keep up a business conversation. In the DELF, I'm about a B1/B2 borderline. I can also read some Dutch and Russian: I studied each for a year, then went to the Netherlands and Belgium a couple times (oh, and I live in West Hollywood east of Fairfax, where most store signs are in Cyrillic). I can also read Spanish, but I never studied it formally and can barely understand conversations on the bus. I don't flinch at reading Portuguese or Italian, but that doesn't mean I should translate what I just read -- I studied those informally. I lived in Boston for a dozen years, where Brazilians go to earn money and Portuguese is more common than Spanish by a long shot. French is my big tasty, especially Quebecois French. Innovation in the French language only happens with hood rat kids in the burnt-out suburbs of French cities ("un produit des banlieues", as I saw on one kid's tee shirt in 2008) and the marketing linguists in Montreal. The latter gave us "magasiner" (to shop) instead of "faire du shopping" and "pourriel" (poubelle (eponym for a trash can) + courriel (email)) instead of "le spam". Quebecois French wants to kick English's ass back across the Outaouais; French in France gave up the fight. I didn't like French for a long time. I just kept getting stuck in French classes in high school and college. Then I took my first adult trip to Montreal at age 23 and fell in love.
I can speak Spanish, Vietnamese and some Tagalog. I have bits and pieces of some other languages, but not enough to be useful. For example, I can count small amounts in Japanese, Mandarin and Korean. I can order beer in over ten languages. I studied Spanish in school and have used it while traveling and while working in restaurants. Spanish has a whole universe of awesome slang, but each region has its own slang, as well as country, province, etc. etc. It's always great to talk to someone and hear them complain about white people thinking all Latinos are Mexicans and then be addressed as "Chino." :) My Spanish is really rusty at the moment, but if I were in a Spanish speaking country, I'd be able to converse completely in Spanish within a month or so. I speak Vietnamese because I lived in Vietnam. The first company I worked for actually paid us extra because our branch was considered a "hardship post" even though it was in a beach town that had previously been an Australian R&R location during the war. While living there I also took lessons and had several "long-haired dictionaries" as the locals like to call girls that date foreigners (when they are feeling kind). Vietnamese is hard. It's really hard not only because of the tones, but also because there aren't very many individual words in the language, which results in a dizzying array of compound words that aren't intuitive for an English speaker. For example, "trampoline" is rendered as "jump bed". Also, all of the words are one syllable and not organized into the prefix-root-suffix format English speakers are familiar with. Thus, a lot of memorization is required. I can chit-chat about most day-to-day stuff with no problem, but I couldn't conduct business in Vietnamese, especially with all the hierarchical protocols that are in place. I understand Tagalog almost fluently because my parents are from the Philippines. When I was a little kid, childcare gurus were telling parents that raising kids bilingually was detrimental. Basically, I can speak as well as a 5 year old can in pure Tagalog, but almost no one speaks pure Tagalog anymore, except for on the evening news. Since the Americans "liberated" the Philippines from the Spanish, Taglish is the norm. I'd say I can speak Taglish as well as a dumb 10 year old can in the Philippines.
I have been intrigued by Vietnamese for a long time. I grew up in a city (Utica, NY) that took in a lot of Vietnamese immigrants, so I've seen the language a lot of my life. It was in Roman characters but it was still elusive.
WOAH. pseydtonne, I'm from Utica as well!!!!!!!!
another ex-Utican! Proctor class of '92, was in the last class to attend UFA before it turned into a nursing home. I'm Dante, by the way. You?
Yeah, the letter system that's in use was introduced by Jesuit missionaries. You can read more about it here. It's nice because it shows the reader which tones to use. Prior to the current alphabet, Vietnam used a script derived from Chinese characters, which shouldn't be surprising, given its proximity to China and the fact that Vietnam was the last Mandarin culture. Unfortunately, because it is so clearly laid out and so few foreigners speak Vietnamese, speakers tend to be unused to hearing mispronunciations. Furthermore, there is very little difference in tones to a non-native speaker (it gets better with time) so it's easy to make mistakes. Check out this video to see what I mean. That video isn't the best, but I think it conveys my point. I consider myself pretty good at dealing with new pronunciations, as well as tongue twisters, but Vietnamese tongue twisters are so, so hard.
Dutch is my native language but I'm fluent in english and german. My french and spanish are not that good. I can understand french pretty good but I'm lacking in vocabulary. Spanish is the other way around. Speeaking is no problem but understanding spanish people in a heated discussion is beyond me. Then there are also the rudiments of two years of latin. And some norwegian and swedish I learned while on vacation there. I would love to learn japanese one day.
A leading consortium of language experts held a forum in Brussels last year and concluded that my sloppy, hastily constructed mixture of cultural references, esoteric slang, and miscellaneous gibberish will, by the year 2019, split off from the English language and form a distinct, yet vaguely familiar, tongue.
Latvian is my native language - oldest living indo-european language, very archaic, yet modern, makes much more sense than English and very easy to read/listen. I understand Latgalian and Lithuanian a bit because of it. Russian - my second native language, as my mother is Russian. Understand everything, but talking has to be practiced, since I haven't used it for 8 years very much. Because of knowing the language very well many other Slavic languages seems very familiar and easy to understand, especially Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, but it keeps getting harder with Polish and Czech, where I understand around 40%; English - is not a native, but I have been learning it since 2nd grade and not many media is translated into Latvian, so I understand everything very well, am able to write, hold conversations, see the differences between American-English, British-English and use semicolons. My verbal communication was better before volunteering in place where everybody understand only simple, few word sentences; German - Currently learning, just for fun, since I do not go to University. I can not hold a meaningful conversation, but know enough words and rules to tell very basic things and to understand by context what parents are saying to their children; Arabic - only the alphabet, was very interested and still am in a language, but haven't found as good source to learn it as duolingo for German. Since I discovered duolingo, I have stopped learning Arabic. Nothing more than Hello, goodbye, God is great, thank you. EDIT: I keep forgetting that - Romanian, since I volunteer in Romania for 8 months and this is the last week. I know basic phrases, less than in German, but understand the same level as German language. Just enough Romanian to be kind, ask for price, directions, understand the reply on "How are you/Whats up?" talk about work, strawberries, UK, differences of the countries with drivers who take hitchhikers
My mother language is Persian. I know English, but I am not professional in English. I know a little Arabic also.
My native language is English, and I certainly would say I have a decent vocabulary, even if my grammar suffers every so often. I have taken 2 trimesters of German and I plan on continuing this fall when I return from summer break. My understanding of the language is decent, if not my grammar or vocabulary. It is at least good enough to make the exchange students giggle, not grimace and cringe.