Languages you know/are interested in

[Subotai]

I'm just curious about how many languages you know.

My native language is dutch,
the languages i know best besides my native language are english and french.
I can understand german and i know a bit of the grammar and lastly i had latin for two years.

At the moment i'm interested in Japanese.

 

[Adymus]

I speak intermediate German, I'd like to learn more but lack the motivation to put more time into it. I'd rather just move there and pick it up that way.

 

[Subotai]

German, dutch and french are the official languages of belgium so we learn them at school.

 

[Decaf]

Native English, rudimentary Spanish and Vietnamese. I'm pretty fascinated by the tonal languages so I hope to get into a Vietnamese class at some point.

 

[Agent Intellect]

Is ebonics considered a language?

I have always thought that I should learn spanish (particularly since there are a lot of spanish speaking people where I live) but in my normal fashion, it's merely only gotten to the "something I should do sometime" stage. I'm thinking about getting Rosetta Stone, can anyone attest to it's effectiveness?

 

[ckm]

It took me a while to realise I don't like foreign languages. That is, I don't like learning them. All that vocabulary. The grammar parts were fine for me though. However, I loved the idea of speaking foreign languages.

I studied French for three years.
I'm in my fifth year of German (that's not to say it's not terrible).
I studied Japanese for about a year and a half but lost interest. Technically I'm still supposed to be going to the classes.
I've been doing Irish since I was about six.

 

[Subotai]

How did you study Japanese?

 

[ckm]

First with [free] online resources. That was during my animé phase too, so hearing Japanese for hours on end certainly helped, even if I only recognised a word every other sentence. It gave me a feel for the language at least.

Eventually I emailed the Japanese embassy in Dublin asking about teachers in my area. They forwarded on my details, and my current Japanese teacher was the only one to get back to me. However, I was very lucky: Japanese is considered a secondary school (that's high school if you're from America) subject and lessons are therefore free. It's treated as a Leaving Cert subject, like the ones I study in school. So I started the two-year course that September, and here I am almost a year and a half later.

 

[Kuu]

My native language is spanish though I've know english since as far back as I have memory. Even though everybody speaks spanish, my introverted existance is mostly in english (music, tv, books, the internet...) My thoughts are bilingual and when I'm alone I speak to myself in english...

I tried to study french for about a year but abandoned it because I despised how it felt when I spoke it. Too nasal. I've forgotten most of it by now :/

Then I studied german for about the same time, but it just didn't hold my interest... and now I've forgotten most of it as well...

Currently I've just finished a year on Japanese, and I'm not bored about it yet... I hope I can finally get to really learn a third language... Its not a common language to learn around here, so I'm not really sure how I'm gonna practice and thus not forget it all...

 

[nemo]

How not to forget? Get some otaku friends.

My native language is either English or Cantonese. Probably English. I can understand and speak Mandarin Chinese, not fluently but well enough. There's also a Chinese dialect I can understand and speak; 柳州话. I learnt Italian for 6 years, can only remember the numbers and how to say 'My name is...'. I also learnt French for 2 years, and quite liked it. I'd like to pick it up again sometime in the future.

List of languages I'd like to learn: fluent Japanese, conversational Korean, conversational Polish, Russian and French, a bit of Gaelic, 潮州话, and that's all for now.

ckm, emailing a Japanese embassy is a brilliant idea! I've been looking for places that teach Japanese, but they either only teach adults, or are too far away. Maybe one day soon I'll get the initiative to do something. =]

 

[Fleur]

Fleur 1992 language set: Latvian (default), English, Russian, German (under construction).

 

[Chimera]

I took two years of Spanish in school. I have a basic understanding of it.
I decided to take a semester of Latin this year, and my teacher has strangled almost all the passion for the language I entered her class with. She is a terrible teacher, and is more interested in telling us about all the places she has visited in her life or in making terrible jokes.
I want to learn German someday, possibly French as well, though I won't be attempting to learn them through any school courses. I've concluded that the educational system is designed to squeeze any interest I have out of any subject.

I'm fairly intuitive about languages...grammar comes easily to me, the only real issue I have is with remembering vocabulary. ><​

 

[nemo]

^I'm the opposite, Chimera. Vocab is fine and good, but grammar? Nuh-uh. Learning languages at school does take the 'spark' out of it, unless you have an awesome teacher.

What is Latin like? (I know it sounds like a stupid question, but...)

 

[Subotai]

^I'm the opposite, Chimera. Vocab is fine and good, but grammar? Nuh-uh. Learning languages at school does take the 'spark' out of it, unless you have an awesome teacher.

What is Latin like? (I know it sounds like a stupid question, but...)

We learned only to translate it to dutch.
If you can learn the vocabulary good i suppose it's pretty easy.

 

[Minuend]

I had 3 years of German in school. I wouldn't say I was paying attention, so I don't know any today. I also took some Spanish classes, but I barely remember a thing. I know a little English, tho....

Also, I can understand a lot of Swedish and Danish, those languages are very similar to my own. But I can't write or talk it.

 

[Latro]

English obviously.

I took the equivalent of 4 years of high school Latin or 2 years of college Latin in high school. I got pretty good, but never good enough to be able to speak or write effectively. I could translate pretty well, though vocabulary was still somewhat limited relative to the material being translated (i.e. a given sentence would more often than not have a word or two I did not know).

I took the equivalent of 3 years of high school Spanish as well, which is about a year of college Spanish.

I'd like to learn Chinese and/or Japanese and/or Korean, depending on circumstances etc. Chinese has the benefit of a large audience; Japanese has the benefit of getting JRPGs early; Korean has the benefit of a Starcraft-crazed culture. (Among other things ofc.)

 

[CocoaHeyday]

Everybody in my family speaks oji-cree except me and my sister.
My mom never bothered to teach us because she thinks its a dead language.
I wish I could learn how to speak it, but the only way for that to happen is if I go to school in Kas.

 

[phantome]

i speak russian and english. currently in the process of learning french and german

 

[del]

English and German, and Hindi and Nepali conversationally. Also really broken Nepal Bhasa, but it's way hard.

I'd really like to learn Chinese because at some point in my life I'd like to live there.

 

[Ghost1986]

Is ebonics considered a language?

I have always thought that I should learn spanish (particularly since there are a lot of spanish speaking people where I live) but in my normal fashion, it's merely only gotten to the "something I should do sometime" stage. I'm thinking about getting Rosetta Stone, can anyone attest to it's effectiveness?

Rosetta stone is great if you've never taken a tradition language class. even if you have though it can still be use full. also take in to account that spanish is one of the easyer languages, if you have interest anyway.

 

[nemo]

I'd really like to learn Chinese because at some point in my life I'd like to live there.

If you ever start learning, I might be able to help, somewhat. We could have Chinese conversations!

Does anyone have advice on how to learn Japanese grammar, or just foreign grammar in general? I've been teaching myself and now know a lot of random words and phrases, but don't know how to put them together.

 

[Madoness]

Estonian, English, mediocre Russian, a little Swedish, a little Finnish....