Languages

[Rémy]

Discuss which languages you're studying, which languages you're planning on studying, books and methods you like etc.

Where I'm at now:

Fluent: English, Panjabi
Upper-Intermediate: French, Dari, Pashto, Hindi-Urdu
Lower-Intermediate: Spanish

For 2012 I'm looking to continue to improve my Dari, Pashto and French through contact with native speakers here in AF. Around Spring(ish) I'm also going to start studying Modern Standard Arabic, with an eye to head to Syria for a few months to take private dialect tuition classes in early 2013. Spanish is taking a backseat for the year, hopefully to be picked back up in 2013.

[iamanexit]

I speak English as my first language, but studied both French and Spanish for two years, and speak both rather well, but get them mixed up a lot mid-conversation, because my brain sucks. I also learned a smidgen of Russian a few years back, because two of my cousins were adopted from there. I am also first generation in America on my mother's side; they are all Swedes, so I know a little Swedish (but not as much as I did as a kid, because my sister and I are the only ones still alive on my mother's side, and we have no one else to Swede-yell at/with.)

[icklekitty]

Fluent: English, Mauritian Creole
Pretty much fluent: French
Some knowledge: Italian, Russian, Latin

I'd like to learn Dutch and German in future. There's a fast-track German course at CityLit starting in April which I might enrol in, but in the meantime I'm working my way through Muzzy (http://www.early-advantage.co.uk/)(which I used at school for French and Italian).

When it comes to languages, I'd like to learn as many as humanly possible, but I need to get better at retaining the information so that when I learn a new one old ones don't fade from memory.

[dominik]

I only know German and English because I attended a technical school where a second foreign language isn't taught. At least my English is pretty good and I also did that Cambridge Business English Course. Woooh.

But I plan to learn Portuguese soon because I will most likely do an exchange semester in Lisbon next year. :) I already bought a Langenscheidt course book, but I'd also like to attend a course.

[Rémy]

When it comes to languages, I'd like to learn as many as humanly possible, but I need to get better at retaining the information so that when I learn a new one old ones don't fade from memory.

The best way I've found of doing this is to learn a new language using materials in a language that you've already learnt. For example, try learning Geman using something like Assimil L'Allemand (http://assimil.com/descriptionProduitDetail.do?paramIdProduit=2653&paramIdMethode=2653) (which by the way, is awesome.)

[andreas]

i know english pretty well, but am working on it constantly, e.g. by watching english tv, reading english press or... attending this board, haha

presently learning russian, in a small group (there's only 3 of us plus a teacher, so each of us is getting a lot of attention - not that it is always the most desirable thing...)

but what i would really like to learn is arabic - unfortunately there're no arabic lg teachers where i live.

[aggroculture]

Fluent: English, Italian
Passable: French, Spanish
Barely: German
Bare reading comprehension: Latin, ancient Greek

I really want to improve my German, and learn some basic Japanese so I can start talking about Japanese culture (mainly manga) in an academic setting.

[halloween]

oh yay! i love languages, my sister is basically fluent in five languages and i'm super jealous (she knows English, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and now working on french) As for myself I'm fluent in English and Portuguese, I'm pretty good at understanding and inventing Spanish due to it's similarity to Portuguese. I took French for four years all together (not in a row unfortunately) so I can read it pretty well still but my recall is not as great. I studied German briefly, but barely anymore, a long with Japanese. I used to be pretty good in Japanese when I was actually living in Japan for a month, taking classes everyday and such, but that was four years ago so it's basically all gone...

I've been trying to integrate this idea of language (focusing on English and Portuguese since those are what I'm fluent at) into my senior thesis next year (i go to art school), in relation to how it can change my perspective on ideas and even just my identity. It's a been a bit tricky, but I'm sure if I just sit down and flesh it out, I'll figure it out.

[icklekitty]

I've been trying to integrate this idea of language (focusing on English and Portuguese since those are what I'm fluent at) into my senior thesis next year (i go to art school), in relation to how it can change my perspective on ideas and even just my identity. It's a been a bit tricky, but I'm sure if I just sit down and flesh it out, I'll figure it out.

See if you can find the second episode of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fry's_Planet_Word)online somewhere.

[kitz]

Fluent: Hungarian, English
I need to work on my French, but I think it's still quite good
I started learning Norwegian about 4 months ago (on my own) so now I can understand quite a lot! I can also understand written Danish and a bit of spoken Swedish :)

[RocketScience]

Fluent: Swedish, English
Okay-ish: Urdu
Can comprehend somwhat though not speak properly: Punjabi

I took four years of French in grade school most of which I've forgotten as well as a month's worth of Mandarine. After that, I studied a year of Italian, I got quite okay at it but that was more than two years ago so as with French, 'tis all forgotten.

[sukey]

Half of my degree is French, so on my way to being fluent in that - moving to France in September for a year so I expect I will be by the end.
Then I've got upper intermediate Italian and lower-intermediate Spanish. And I did an intensive Arabic course a while back, but I don't remember much of it at all. I'd love to learn Russian.

[virushopper]

Fluent in Cantonese

Okay in Mandarin

Slightly okay in Japanese.

[henryeatscereal]

Fluent in English and Spanish
I barely know some French, and i would love to learn Japanese...
The best method is just learning songs, but i find that difficult with Japanese, i guess i'll have to use another strategy, the trick about it are the ideograms in a way is more visual than phonetic, anyone knows a good Japanese course?

[hellospaceboy]

My first language is Hungarian, and I'm pretty much fluent in English (I live in the US and my wife is american, so I only use English in my daily life).

I'm SLOWLY picking up Spanish at work (large Cuban community) and I always wanted to learn Tibetan and/or Sanskrit.

[Big Fat Matt]

fluent in english, bare basics of spanish, and a working knowledge of arabic (due to work).

[Jinsai]

Well, I'm fluent in English, and I studied Japanese for four years. I used to be able to speak mediocre Spanish.

[Elke]

I'm jealous of all you guys knowing so many languages! I speak Dutch, I'm fairly okay at most Dutch dialects too (there are MANY of those), I'm fairly okay at English, I have a solid passive knowledge of both German en French but I can't speak it and I have some basic notions of Italian.

[fillow]

Native: Russian

English: I consider myself pretty good at it (upper-intermediate, I guess). Been learning it since kindergarten! Constantly reading and posting stuff online, watching TV shows and movies with no dubbing whenever it's possible (i.e. while not on TV or in cinema), using it at work (correspondence and calls with customers and so on).

Belarusian: it's supposed to be the first language in my country of residence (Belarus), but it's not. Russian is. They both are equal (officially), and the majority of population is still stuck with Russian since the USSR days. Me, I can understand it pretty good, but not so much use it myself.

Japanese: studied it for three years, just for fun. Stopped it two years ago after I reached the point where I had to spend a lot more time than I could afford in order make any further progress. So now I can read kana and limited amount of kanji, and follow not complicated texts or conversations. That's about it.

[Alexandros]

Greek as a mother tongue. I can also understand the gist of an Ancient Greek text if it's not too weird.

Fluent in English, I almost consider it my second native language, since I was watching non-subtitled English-speaking cartoons as a kid and I've been reading all kinds of books in English ever since elementary school (The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings being my first, with a dictionary next to me). Plus I've had many years of language school for it.

I used to know pretty solid German after several years in language school, but disuse and lack of sustained interest in German films, songs or books have brought me down to beginner levels. I'm sure if I do some sort of refresher course it will come back to me up to a level, but it's not a priority.

This year I started learning Spanish and (standard) Arabic, again in a language school. After eight months, I can say that Spanish seems pretty easy overall. If I can motivate myself to study more, I think I'll get relatively fluent easily enough. Arabic is a whole other story. It's been very interesting learning a completely different alphabet and way of writing, but the grammar and syntax dissimilarities with European languages will make it hard to master.

[Sutekh]

I speak English & French, can get by in German and I know dribs & drabs of Gaelic & Urdu (benefits of growing up in the East End!). I know enough Latin to make etymological deductions here and there, but utter crap compared to my Dad

I'm currently learning Arabic (Egyptian style dialect) & I wouldn't mind learning Cornish as a hobby. Dari/half Persian is supposed to be pretty challenging, good luck with that! (It will open many employment opportunities)

[alg]

Spanish is my mother tongue. English: I taught it as a foreign language and currently I'm in the process of becoming an interpreter and translator in that language. I don't speak it as much as I would like to, but I write in it a lot. French: some basic stuff I learnt in 2008 and I started studying it again this year... I feel frustrated because I understand when someone spaeks in French but I suck at French grammar :mad:

[allegro]

English is my primary language, of course. I had nearly four years of high school Spanish; my Spanish pronunciation is very good but I'm not very good at memorizing vocabulary and it's been a LONG time since high school Spanish. I now have these cool iPhone app games that have been improving my Spanish vocabulary a great deal AND they're fun. And, my husband is really good with languages so he helps me out.

Next, I want to take some beginning French classes either at a local French language school or at the local community college.

I can count in Japanese and say some basic stuff but that's only from taking Judo classes and hanging out in sushi restaurants.

[MrsMeowMeow]

native: german
I would say that I speak english fluent. I had 4 years Latin at school, which helps a lot when you try to learn new languages. That was actually the main reason why I picked latin over french.
I learned 6 months spanish at school, but I don't remember that much of it sadly. Maybe I'll start over with that one day. I really liked spanish a lot and I picked it up pretty fast.

While I was working near the dutch-german border I had a lot of dutch customers, who refused to speak german or english and picked up a few words and phrases, but those 2 languages are very similar anyway.

I would love to learn japanese one day, but I imagine that its very difficult, because its so different from all those european languages. I know a few words thanks to subbed animes, but thats it unfortunatly..

[marodi]

Native language is French (from the great and wonderful province of Québec). Fluent in English (still improving though). Did some Latin and Spanish in school. Can follow a bit in German.

And I would like to learn every other languages out there.


I feel frustrated because I understand when someone spaeks in French but I suck at French grammar :mad:

Don't beat yourself over it sweetie; French grammar is the biggest bitch on the planet. :D

[staleincense]

Native speaker of English, fluent in.... not much else, unfortunately. I can speak some German because I took it a GCSE but I wasn't able to take it at A-Level because I didn't have any space. I also learnt some French when I was wrongly which I've almost completely forgotten (fun fact: my mother learnt to write in French before she could write in English because she went to a French-language primary school) and I've had a handful lessons of Mandarin. It's safe to say I'd like to speak far more languages.

[dominik]

Native speaker of German, fluent in English. The funny thing is that after my exchange semester, speaking English began to feel almost "natural". I don't even really notice it when I switch to talking English.

I can also speak a bit Portuguese.. but it's difficult to learn. I have a few books and took a few courses, but the most motivating thing is Duolingo. If you want to learn English, Portuguese, German, Italian or French, I'd highly recommend it.

[halloween]

Oh man, duolingo is great. I've been using it for spanish and french. I even use it to brush up on portuguese, but I haven't been to the site in a few weeks due to a lot of crazy moving stuff.

[Baphomette]

Fluent in English and Spanish.

Currently learning Dothraki.

[allegro]

Oh man, duolingo is great. I've been using it for spanish and french. I even use it to brush up on portuguese, but I haven't been to the site in a few weeks due to a lot of crazy moving stuff.
I LOVE MY DUOLINGO IPHONE APP!!

I also like Mindsnacks' Spanish

[Ryan]

Does anyone speak Japanese here? I need a translation of this - This is from my dad's dad. It's a Harakiri knife (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku) but want to know what the Japanese words say. Anyone speak Japanese on here that can translate? There is a Dragon on the other side of the blade... does it say that? https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/q84/s720x720/1000949_152913474910200_7409374_n.jpg