Thread: How many languages do you speak?

How many languages do you speak? Is Spanish your best language or no?

Conversationally and reading: 3--English, French and Spanish.
Technical: 2--English and French, w/reading German
Menu puzzling and street signs: Russian, Italian and Portugeuse
Reading only: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin--there's not much of a call for speaking these on a daily basis, so I never bothered to get conversational in these languages. I can, however, say that learning them early gave me a massive boost on the S.A.T.s.
The romance languages are fairly easy to take in all in one fell swoop. They follow similar rules for declension or conguation, vowel positions, and have a lot of cognate vocabulary. Spanish/Italian/Portugeuse are all rather similar, and if you pick up one, the others can follow rapidly.
English is by far my best language, but I will comfortably hang out in Spanish and French.

Cheers.

Originally Posted by Lalaguayaba

Conversationally and reading: 3--English, French and Spanish.
Technical: 2--English and French, w/reading German
Menu puzzling and street signs: Russian, Italian and Portugeuse
Reading only: Hebrew, Greek, and Latin--there's not much of a call for speaking these on a daily basis, so I never bothered to get conversational in these languages. I can, however, say that learning them early gave me a massive boost on the S.A.T.s.
The romance languages are fairly easy to take in all in one fell swoop. They follow similar rules for declension or conguation, vowel positions, and have a lot of cognate vocabulary. Spanish/Italian/Portugeuse are all rather similar, and if you pick up one, the others can follow rapidly.
English is by far my best language, but I will comfortably hang out in Spanish and French.

Cheers.

Did you learn those languages in school or did you pick them up by traveling around?

Originally Posted by coolandhot

Did you learn those languages in school or did you pick them up by traveling around?

French, Hebrew, Russian and Latin=school.
Greek=learned to read it for amateur astronomy @ 12; when I visited Greece several years ago, I was able to read street signs, maps, menus, etc. and if you can sound it out, you can figure out what things are; it was very, very useful in the subways.
Spanish=working in restaurants, a 6-week class and practice.
The other languages are just what I need to understand technical articles, read menus, order food/drinks, travel a bit. Anything is easier with immersion, and I bone up right before a trip so I know what to speak when I get there.

Its nothing special if you like to read, and learn to read new languages.

Cheers.

I do know Greek, but English is based on it, right?

Originally Posted by themark

I do know Greek, but English is based on it, right?

Not to my knowledge, no. English is basically an evolved form of a Middle German dialect called Frisian (it still exists on the Dutch border,) with massive amounts of French. For an experiment, try reading a Dutch website--its a lot easier than you might think; however, the sound of spoken Dutch is really packed with vowels and hard to pick apart.

Lots of scientific and medical terms are more straight-forward Latin or Greek, and that seems to be about it for the use of Greek in English. You can see the influence of Greek in Spanish or French by use of the letters 'y' and 'k,' which don't occur naturally in Latin--so they are traditionally used in loan words (or odd conjugations of 'i'.) In French the name of the letter 'y' is actually 'e greque,' and in Spanish from Spain is 'y grieg'--so that really shows where it comes from.

I think the best thing about English is that is really is a living, mutable language. In the last twenty years, its possible to see the large amount of Spanish that has made it into casual everyday usage just regarding food! There is no common governing body that regulates the use of English, so its allowed to freely pick up words and phrases and make them colloquial.
As per usual, the Wiki has a massive amount on the history of English...
History of the English language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anglo-Norman language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lists of English words of international origin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheers.

Do other languages have a governing body?

French does, German does, a quick search will probably yield more; There is probably an academy in Spain as well--Spanish in Spain is holding to the European tradition of non-change, while American Spanish (North and South) has always been a language of immigrants and travellers, and therefore a mutable, borrowing language.

Cheers.

Do you think English will ever have a governing body? We already see many colleges publishing style guides and such.

Style guides are just that--to perpetrate a cohesive style that ppl get used to reading for business, sales, etc. Short stories, articles, even recipes (especially) all follow a sort of formula, so that you get all the necessary information.
Style guides like that have been published for decades, they are not going anywhere, and if you never learned to write a solid business intro letter in school, then a guide is indispensible.
I seriously doubt that there will ever be any form of a linguistic governing body for English; I think the closest we get to that is Webster's Dictionary, and they just added 'crunk.' I'll take that as a nod to the mutability and borrowing nature of American English.

Cheers.

How many languages do you speak? Is Spanish your best language or no?

English and Spanish. Spanish is my second-best language but that doesn't mean I'm good at it.

Originally Posted by PanamaPat

English and Spanish. Spanish is my second-best language but that doesn't mean I'm good at it.

Can you understand it when people speak to you in Spanish?

Originally Posted by coolandhot

Can you understand it when people speak to you in Spanish?

Oh yes, I understand almost everything, the problems start when it's my turn to speak.

i know english, italian [this is my main language], german, a bit spanish and.. romanian too

That's awesome! I was just reading that Italian and Spanish share about 60% of the vocabulary--of course with different pronounciation. And that Romanian is 'the forgotton' Romance language--do you have family from that area?

Cheers.

well, i was born there... at 60 km from Dracula's castle... [i like saying that to everyone]... i'm really amused that people know more about transylvannia than they know about romania... and yes, italian and spanish share a lot of words, but different accents, and in my opinion, italian sounds much better.

Is Romanian not spoken that much?

If Spanish and Italian share so many words, does that mean a Spanish speaker might be able to understand Italian without having learned it?

well Romanian is spoken by over 28 million people in the whole world... so it's not a forgotten language. and yes, if you are a good spanish speaker and go to italy, you'll understand much of it... but you must ignore their accent. words sound different, but are almoust the same

Originally Posted by Nosfer

Well, Romanian is spoken by over 28 million people in the whole world... so it's not a forgotten language. And yes, if you are a good Spanish speaker and go to Italy, you'll understand much of it... but you must ignore their accent. Words sound different, but are almost the same

I didn't mean to suggest that is was a lost language--just that most ppl (Americans) don't associate Romanian with the other Romance languages, therefore, Romanian is 'the forgotton' Romance language; that they have forgotten that it IS a Romance language. But with ~28 million speakers, it is by far the least-spoken popular language in the Romantic family.

Romance languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cheers.

I only speak one language which is English. However, i did learn a bit of the Spanish language while i was at school a few years back and i used to be able to speak what i knew very fluently but now i have forgotten most of it. For some reason i always remember this word though; Cerveza = Beer

Unfortunately when i could speak fairly fluent Spanish, we did not go anywhere Spanish speaking once, not once, we went to Egypt and Greece instead.

only English, Portuguese and I can speak some Spanish too

I thought Spanish was fairly similar to Portuguese. Obviously i know there is a slight difference in words and pronunciation but i thought they were pretty much the same. I had the option to learn Portugeuse in school but i chose Spanish because i thought they were exactly the same but i learned different as i grew older and wiser. LOL

I tried to learn Spanish in school, because more people speak it around the world.

I know some word in Portugese like, almari and keju.
It is right?
Are you sure Spanish and Portugese same?

good morning, privit, guten tag y buenas dias

well i speak english(speak, read and write),russian and french(verbal part ,little bit of reading part)

I can speak English, French, Portuguese(not perfectly), Chinese(little bit) , Hindi. Presently learning Spanish...

I know perfectly Bulgarian and English. I can read and write a little German but I can't speak it. I can read and listen in Russian, but I am not really good in writing and speaking in it.

My first language is malay but normally my interaction globally using english. That the only language know. Other than that im learning arabic now.

I speak 3 languages, 2 fluently and the other I'm currently trying to fully grasp.

Luckily I speak both good English & Spanish thus if I ever decide to head over to Panama I won't be struggling too much in terms of communication.