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Which Languages do we speak?

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pwhodges:
I speak only English.  However, I can just about manage shopping and getting a room for the night in French and German.  As I now have a Japanese daughter-in-law I am trying to start a Japanese course - but I doubt, with so little language-fu to build on and the ravages of age on my memory capacity, that I will reach a useful level with it (however interesting I may find what I do learn).

Tlaloc:

--- Quote from: zisraelsen on 29 Aug 2017, 13:39 ---So my last post has a typo in it but I'm leaving it there because I think it's hilarious that there's a typo in a post where I claim I'm fluent in English. Anyway:

I think you're right about travel outside the U.S. being outside the norm for people who live here. I live in southern California, and discounting travel to Mexico (which is less than an hour away by car), I and most people I know have never travelled to another country. I have no stats or anything to support this but I would also assume this holds true for much of the country.

Something interesting to note is that a foreign language was also mandatory for me here stateside, but it was only two years, very few languages were offered, and it didn't happen until grades 9 and 10. It was treated as such an afterthought that what little knowledge stuck from these classes, slid back off pretty quickly. Conversations with spanish-speaking friends and coworkers has proven a much more usable education.


--- End quote ---
I can only add that I do this too...
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 29 Aug 2017, 14:27 ---I speak only English.  However, I can just about manage shopping and getting a room for the night in French and German.  As I now have a Japanese daughter-in-law I am trying to start a Japanese course - but I doubt, with so little language-fu to build on and the ravages of age on my memory capacity, that I will reach a useful level with it (however interesting I may find what I do learn).

--- End quote ---

Best of luck with that!


--- Quote from: zisraelsen on 29 Aug 2017, 10:36 ---Wow, this forum is impressively multilingual! English is the only language I am fluent in, but I am (painstakingly slowly) making noticeable improvements in my Spanish. I'm assuming it's more common to speak multiple language in Europe than it is here in the states?

--- End quote ---

It seems to be. Even as an English native, I have forced myself to try other languages because they are so conveniently close!

Ignominious:
English only.

I can eke out enough French and Italian to be a reasonably self-sufficient tourist. I generally find that I can translate some simple written stuff in most romantic and West Germanic languages using common language roots which is handy and makes me look like I know a bit more than I really do. Perhaps more useful is that I find it really easy to interpret badly spoken English from non-native speakers.

One thing I do pride myself on is being able to understand most of the dialect variations in the UK. The Yupik may have around 50 lexemes for snow but we have about the same for rain, or bread rolls for that matter.

Cornelius:
I'm a native Dutch speaker - well, Flemish, really, but let's not split hairs - and I speak fairly fluent French and English. I can manage fairly well in German, though it's a bit rusty from disuse. It helps that it's fairly close cousins with Dutch (Dutch, Deutsch, Theodisc...). I have some touristy smatterings of Italian and Spanish, and I'm trying to pick up Gaelic. Trying and failing, through unsteady application, but that's entirely my own fault. And then there's a few dead languages I used to read with some ease, but I haven't really practiced that in a while.

In Belgium, we have 3 official languages, codified by law: Dutch, French, and German. German is a minority, compared to the others. As a result, we're taught - with varying effect - the other major language even before high school. Second year of high school, we're taught English, and people can take German from third year onward. Some schools offer other languages - like Spanish - as an extracurricular.

I don't really have a view on what they're doing in the German speaking part of the country, but it's my understanding most go to French speaking high schools, which seem to have a fair number of Dutch students from across the border as well. In that region, you can hear a mix between German, French, and Walloon. As they're very friendly people, they'll often try to use whatever they know of your language as well, which, sadly, often does not help understanding, though kindly meant.

Akima:
I speak Mandarin Chinese, Shanghainese, bad Cantonese picked up since coming to Australia, a smattering of Japanese and Korean, and English, of course.

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