How many languages do you know?

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-04-20 09:45pm

I've never gotten why people ask stuff to others in languages they say they know. Some kind of test? Don't believe them?

Hm...

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2004-04-20 09:47pm

I know English and took 12 years of French (mostly at a private school), to where I could hear a conversation and understand, but I couldn't speak it nearly so fast, although I could form and speak very complex sentences. I haven't spoken any french for 6 years, but I did get to eaves-drop on a dirty conversation in French at a party recently, so that's good.

In college i took enough Japanese to be able to read a children's book and understand somewhat complex conversations, but I could only speak stilted, very formal sentences. I learned more than 1000 kanji characters (I never counted exactly how many) and followed Dragonball in Japanese (not that tough). I had to quit the class shortly after my friend and I did a "presentation," where as a joke I called Genji Monogatari a hentai. (Kono Sensai did NOT appreciate that.)

I also took a Biblical Hebrew course, and could read senteces right out of the Bible and understand them. But I can't compose sentences in that language due to the very irregular sentence structure and conjugation. As for speaking it--no one speaks it.

Bob the Gunslinger · Post by **Bob the Gunslinger** » 2004-04-20 09:50pm

Zaia wrote:English and Spanish, although I know basic French, Polish and Hebrew as well. Only voted for 2 though (didn't cheat), because I'd have a hard time holding a conversation in the last three.

Otchah omeret ivrit?

I thought I was the only one...

Post by **Zaia** » 2004-04-20 09:56pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I've never gotten why people ask stuff to others in languages they say they know. Some kind of test? Don't believe them?

Hm...

When I was little, I used to speak conversational Polish with my grandfather. However, I can only remember a smattering of words, none of which can be used together (in any logical way, anyway).

Anyway, I said I sucked at it, so it's whatev.

And Bob, I took Hebrew in college because my best friend's Jewish. It was SO GODDAMN HARD!!! One alphabet for writing, another for reading--what the hell! That sucked, dude, with only a semester to catch up with the other people in my class, all but one of whom had been reading/writing Hebrew for as long as they could remember. Bah. Bah, I say!

SecondStorm · Post by **SecondStorm** » 2004-04-20 10:14pm

Danish and English.
I would consider my written English almost fluent. Ive been reading and writing English since I was 12. My spoken English is good after Ive talked it for a while. It needs "warming up" so to speak.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Isn't that because Norwegian and Swedish are technically the same language?

Not really.

Norway have 2 sets of official language.
Bokmål(Book-Language) and Nynorsk(New-Norwegian). Bokmål is spoken by the majority.
There are IIRC a few others but they dont really matter tbh.

Bokmål is very similar to Danish. Norway used to be a part of Denmark in the middle-ages and renaissance. It got stolen from us by the filthy Swedes in the 19th century

.
The composition is abit different but when written most Danes would be able to understand it and vice versa.

Ive heard it said that Danish is very fast compared to Norwegian. Norwegians use more words in a sentence than Danes for instance.

DeadM wrote:English and Norwegian, but I can understand Swedish and Danish(since they are extremely similar to Norwegian, except spoken Danish, which, IMO sounds very different from spoken Swedish and Norwegian) and most Swedish and Danish people would probably understand Norwegian.

Most Danes have a few difficulties with spoken Norwegian. And *alot* of problems with spoken Swedish.

Many Norwegian words sounds "cute" when heard by Danes. Only children use those words

.

Swedish is simply impossible to understand for most Danes. They "sing" too much.

Danish is simply flat. Just like Denmark

.

Ive been in Sweden a couple of times and Norway once. They had no problems with me talking Danish to them but when they talked back I had to ask them to talk English.
Quite embarrassing really

.

Robert Treder · Post by **Robert Treder** » 2004-04-20 10:23pm

I speak English fluently, and French conversationally. I have a big vocabulary in French, but my grammar is out of practice. I can read it well, and can understand it when spoken.

Lord Sander · Post by **Lord Sander** » 2004-04-20 10:24pm

Batman wrote:I know dozens of languages.
Chinese,Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, several varaitions of English, Tagalog, Esperanto, Japanese, Dutch, Belgian,

<snip>

.... Belgian

Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi · Post by **Asst. Asst. Lt. Cmdr. Smi** » 2004-04-20 10:33pm

I only speak English fluently, although I am studying Spanish, and I know it and French well enough to say "I do not speak Spanish" in Spanish, or "I do not speak French" in French.

Post by **haas mark** » 2004-04-20 10:33pm

Given the requirements, two. I can speak SPanish on a conversational level, but no further. I know a couple of basic questions and answers in Russian. -shrugs- I know many tidbits of a lot of other languages, though.

SecondStorm · Post by **SecondStorm** » 2004-04-20 10:37pm

Lord Sander wrote:
Batman wrote:I know dozens of languages.
Chinese,Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, several varaitions of English, Tagalog, Esperanto, Japanese, Dutch, Belgian,
<snip>

.... Belgian

He must have forgotten that he spoke german as well. Then he would indeed speak all three official languages of Belgium

.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2004-04-20 10:37pm

You forgot English there, Ver.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-04-20 10:42pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:I've never gotten why people ask stuff to others in languages they say they know. Some kind of test? Don't believe them?

Hm...

To show that they speak it too?

darthdavid wrote:Parce-que tu te touches a soir.

No, I sleep at night, since I'm tired from touching myself during the day.

I'm also reasonably sure that sentence is nowhere near correct.

YT300000 wrote:
Alle rozumiesz je dobrze?

Russian is similar enough to Polish for me to understand a lot of it. So, yes, I can understand you quite well.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Post by **haas mark** » 2004-04-20 10:48pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:You forgot English there, Ver.

Implied.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-04-20 10:53pm

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:You forgot English there, Ver.

Ему не надо знать английский. Знание даже пары слов великого, могучего и богатого русского языка (кто это сказал?

) намного важнее знания всяких там тарабарских наречий.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Post by **haas mark** » 2004-04-20 11:01pm

fgalkin wrote:
Spanky The Dolphin wrote:You forgot English there, Ver.
??? ?? ???? ????? ??????????. ?????? ???? ???? ???? ????????, ???????? ? ???????? ???????? ????? (??? ??? ??????? ) ??????? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??? ??????????? ???????.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

"= = = = English. = = = =, = and = Russian = (what is =?

) = = = = = = =.

"

Gawds, I'm pitiful. And I *did* know about six more of those words.. but I lost my Russian books (which I'm highly pissed off about, btw).

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2004-04-20 11:08pm

English is my native tounge and can also speak French, Spanish, Italian, German, some Provençal, and Portuguese. I'm quite the romantic guy

.

Alferd Packer · Post by **Alferd Packer** » 2004-04-20 11:13pm

English first, and I can speak some pidgin German. But I can understand German perfectly, and my written German is decent.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2004-04-20 11:30pm

I speak English and enough Klingon to get by.

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2004-04-21 12:38am

Batman wrote:Okay, I'm officially depressed.

Is there anybody here who doesn't know more than 1 foreign language?

Yep. Personally the older I get the less I think I understand English as well.

I can recognize some Spanish words and a understand a few phrases but I'm chalking that up more to vocabulary than actually being able to speak the language.

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2004-04-21 01:14am

Sign language... smattering of Latin and Hausa... English... and a nice assortment of cuss words in Klingon, Russian, French, Black Speech, among others. Call it 2 and (if you count Latin, Hausa, and the cuss words) about three-fourths...

Faram · Post by **Faram** » 2004-04-21 02:59am

SecondStorm wrote:Most Danes have a few difficulties with spoken Norwegian. And *alot* of problems with spoken Swedish.

Many Norwegian words sounds "cute" when heard by Danes. Only children use those words .

Swedish is simply impossible to understand for most Danes. They "sing" too much.

Danish is simply flat. Just like Denmark .

Ive been in Sweden a couple of times and Norway once. They had no problems with me talking Danish to them but when they talked back I had to ask them to talk English.
Quite embarrassing really .

Danes are having trouble with Swedish? I didn’t know that.

Anyways I understand Danish put answer in Swedish the only thing I don’t get is your crazy way to number stuff.

I checked the three languages but if I count Dane and Norwegian it would make five and guess I can throw in Icelandic also, that would make it six languages.

Sir Sirius · Post by **Sir Sirius** » 2004-04-21 03:18am

Finnish as native language, good English, tolerable Swedish and crappy German. I also know a little Estonian, Finnish and Estonian are somewhat similar and I had a friend from Estonia as a kid, so picked up a few things, but I don't know the language by any measure.

I think I'm going to put my self down as knowing three languages, my German is so poor that it has little practicable use.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2004-04-21 05:38am

German as native language, and fluent English (according to a teahcer with an East-Anglia accent...), and know some bits of Italian (I'm good at cursing...).

salm · Post by **salm** » 2004-04-21 06:05am

german & english

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-04-21 06:59am

English and Spanish. although i can swear in 6 languages.

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How many languages do you know?

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