Languages

[Kasimir]

Just ran a quick search and I notice that there hasn't been anything much said on this, so: languages. How many do you speak and which are you interested in learning?

 

I'm a native English speaker who grew up learning Mandarin Chinese (I'm way less than fluent in it, unfortunately, but at least I don't regard tones as alien, although I'm told my accent is less than plausible for someone who purportedly grew up with it.) About three years ago, I took up German, mostly because I got tired of finding German-language papers everytime I was doing research for a term paper, and because I fell in love with just how structured German grammar is. This business of cases and all is pretty new to me, and I have to say I find it really cool 

 

There are many languages I would like to learn, and of course I don't have enough time to do so. I did a short stint learning Korean, but had to focus on my German, so there's that. If we leave aside issues of whether it's possible for a single person to learn to speak so many languages, then I'd be interested in languages like: Hindi, Turkish, Greek, Polish, Finnish, Welsh, among others. But of course, that's too many to be possible, so I'm going to have to pick and choose. In any case, I've always figured I should focus on German to get the level of proficiency I want to achieve before casting my sights elsewhere.

 

What about the rest of you?

[Voidus]

Native English speaker with a smattering of Indonesian, Mandarin, Japanese and German (Not even approaching fluency in any of them but I can ask for someone who speaks English )

I'd like to try to practice my German and Japanese some more and hopefully become fluent some day.

[Cracknut]

Georgian is my native language and I know Russian, English and German but I'm not very fluent in any of them. Curious how it would feel watching animes and original dub so I would learn that if I didn't hate learning new languages

[BreathTaker]

English and Spanish (Northern Sonoran) are my two best languages. I'm not as fluent as I used to be in Spanish but it is what 90% of my family down here speaks. Being as fluent in understanding as I am, I can understand a little bit of French and Italian as well as Latin. I can also get the basic concept of what someone is trying to say in German but really only understand words that share roots with English. 

[A Joe in the Bush]

Native English and a smattering of German and Spanish. How do you guys learn Languages if there isn't a Native speaker for you to practice with?

[Kasimir]

Wooohoo! I'm pleasantly surprised to see the number of people who speak German so far, ignoring proficiency levels. I was under the impression it was less popular a language than stuff like Spanish or French, so consider me pleasantly surprised!

 

In answer to the question: for German, I did end up practising with native speakers, so that doesn't count. But I'd supplement my uni classes and chats with my penpals with stuff like listening to podcasts (Deutsche Welle is useful on that front, and it's actually got a decent, if somewhat spotty 'Learn German' series of podcasts that could theoretically help without classes, but I'm not too happy about those because I find them unsystematic. Pinch of salt though--I'm the sort of person who wants all the grammar to be laid out systematically when learning.) Duolinguo is decent too, but it's no good replacement, IMO. I'd normally prefer to start with a mixture of these podcast lessons and by checking out a decent grammar book from the library and making my own notes. I've also heard people sometimes use software like Rosetta Stone, but I haven't really tried those and don't know if I'd swear by them.

 

But when I learned French and Korean, what I did was I mostly just studied using Internet resources, so just looking for decent sites which laid out basics like grammar and vocab and in the case of Korean, the strokes and sounds--and really, there's always the Korean wave stuff on television, so I could at least hear how the sounds are voiced and attempt to mimic them. Of course, I really have infinitesimally small French and Korean skills, so that probably says something about how limited my learning them might've been. Still, I did that mostly for fun and wasn't treating it as seriously/with the motivation I approached German, so I don't know if those are effective ways of substituting for native speaker engagement.

[Queen Elsa Steelheart]

English is my first language, but I can speak fluent Hebrew and broken Russian. I'd like to learn Japanese or French if I had the time.

(Does High Imperial count? )

Edited November 13, 2014 by Queen Elsa Steelheart

[Redbird]

I speak English, with a year and a half of German.

[Voidus]

English is my first language, but I can speak fluent Hebrew and broken Russian. I'd like to learn Japanese or French if I had the time.

(Does High Imperial count? )

I'd love to learn Hebrew, it's such a great language.

[Queen Elsa Steelheart]

I'd love to learn Hebrew, it's such a great language.

It's extremely confusing with the words changing for which ever gender you are speaking too, but it's enjoyable

[RawToast225]

I am an English speaker and grew up with ASL in the home. I really want to learn Japanese! I tried learning Spanish and German, but I don't like how the languages felt in my mouth. Idk.

[Delightful]

It's extremely confusing with the words changing for which ever gender you are speaking too, but it's enjoyable

Its actually a very structured language, (ignoring all the English etc that's crept in ) so once you have the rules down its pretty easy to get the hang of.

So yeah, I speak Hebrew too, though English is my mother tongue. I'd be interested to learn Arabic, French, Mandarin, Spanish....it would be nice to have enough basic languages to be at least somewhat understood worldwide. Maybe thats unrealistic, but it would be awesome .

 

Edit: 

Native English and a smattering of German and Spanish. How do you guys learn Languages if there isn't a Native speaker for you to practice with?

 

For comprehension, I'd try find something on youtube to listen to....I've found Disney songs in translation can help your vocab, although you never really know if its a normal word or its super poetic for a song. But try find like news reports, talk shows, anything in the language you're trying to learn, and just...listen. For speaking - try see if there's some like Skype-type program online that'll let you speak to natives in that language. 

Edited November 14, 2014 by Delightful

[Kasimir]

Its actually a very structured language, (ignoring all the English etc that's crept in ) so once you have the rules down its pretty easy to get the hang of.

So yeah, I speak Hebrew too, though English is my mother tongue. I'd be interested to learn Arabic, French, Mandarin, Spanish....it would be nice to have enough basic languages to be at least somewhat understood worldwide. Maybe thats unrealistic, but it would be awesome .

I'll have to add to the chorus of people who think that's really cool. I had a friend doing Biblical Hebrew, and I'm not sure about the differences to modern Hebrew but the grammar seemed just beautiful.

And also, yes about the sentiment about having enough basic languages to be at least somewhat understood worldwide. The sad thing is that people used to do it, although of course, we can question if they had spoken fluency or just written, and whether they were really at C2-type fluency (for European languages) for all of those languages, but really, at the bottom of it, I do find it a pretty amazing feat. And it'd be brilliant to get there. (I'm thinking of Copernicus who knew five languages, for one.)

[Mailliw73]

I am an English speaker and grew up with ASL in the home. I really want to learn Japanese! I tried learning Spanish and German, but I don't like how the languages felt in my mouth. Idk.

Wow. I also grew up with ASL, as both of my parents are deaf. I'm fluent in both ASL and English, and have been studying german throughout middle school and high school. I've just begun learning French as well. In elementary school, I learned the basic phrases, numbers, and colors in Spanish. I plan to learn others, including Russian, Hebrew,and and African one.

[Surgebound Rainspren]

English is my first language but I've kinda learned Italian and German. I'm learning Mandarin Chinese and hoping to learn Spanish and Japanese. Also Living in New Zealand for about five years as a kid i did learn smatterings of Maori but that's all gone by now! 

[Seonid]

Native English speaker. Took 5 years of German through middle school and high school (but most of it is so rusty from lack of use that I can barely remember anything of it). My wife and my father speak fluent Spanish, and I've spent some time around other Spanish-speaking people, so I can understand quite a bit, although I can't speak much of it (apart from flirting with my wife ).

 

I took a year of Arabic last year, and I'll be taking a second year starting next fall. That was quite fun.

 

My frustration is that I'm not fluent in anything but English. But that's something for another day.

 

I'd like to learn Latin, Greek (preferably koine), Hebrew (biblical), Classical Arabic (rather than modern), and maybe some Sanskrit, in addition to becoming fluent in the languages I already have a start on.

 

And also, yes about the sentiment about having enough basic languages to be at least somewhat understood worldwide. The sad thing is that people used to do it, although of course, we can question if they had spoken fluency or just written, and whether they were really at C2-type fluency (for European languages) for all of those languages, but really, at the bottom of it, I do find it a pretty amazing feat. And it'd be brilliant to get there. (I'm thinking of Copernicus who knew five languages, for one.)

 

It can still happen today. The late Hugh Nibley (a professor at BYU) spoke Classical Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian (as much as anyone can speak that), Coptic, Arabic, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English fluently, and had studied Old Bulgarian, Old English, and Old Norse sufficiently to read materials written in those languages. He also studied some Dutch and Russian during WWII.

[Kasimir]

It can still happen today. The late Hugh Nibley (a professor at BYU) spoke Classical Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Egyptian (as much as anyone can speak that), Coptic, Arabic, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English fluently, and had studied Old Bulgarian, Old English, and Old Norse sufficiently to read materials written in those languages. He also studied some Dutch and Russian during WWII.

My new hero! Thanks, Seonid!

[Cracknut]

Native English and a smattering of German and Spanish. How do you guys learn Languages if there isn't a Native speaker for you to practice with?

Studied German in School. I had classes for Russian and English(those two were jokes anyway in school, teachers only came to ask for cigarettes) as well but I got to them before they started from TV and internet. Back in the day 90% of stuff on TV was in Russian and most of older generation knew it so it was easy. English from Manga and subbed Anime because they weren't as popular as they are now and most anime's didn't have dub + i couldn't wait for another episode so I had to read Manga which wasn't being translated in Russian at all. 

[BreathTaker]

My wife and my father speak fluent Spanish, and I've spent some time around other Spanish-speaking people, so I can understand quite a bit, although I can't speak much of it (apart from flirting with my wife ).

 

 

 

My wife is learning piece by piece and she usually only does it to flirt with me or try to talk to my family (most of them speak perfect english but they like to see her try.)

 

One of my... friends.... in High School used to Sign at me when she couldn't talk, either because it was too loud on the bus or other reasons so I picked up some of that and then lost it again.  (Other reasons were things like she lost her voice from a Choir concert the night before or she got a cold)

[Titan Arum]

I'm native in English and took 5 years of Spanish in HS and university. However, I've lost that since I stopped using it. About 10 years ago I tried to learn Twi when I studied abroad in Ghana, and can now only remember a few words.

 

When I lived in Vietnam I tried to pick up Vietnamese, but decided to stop learning it when I offended my female colleague because I got a tone wrong. (Apparently a "boiled duck egg" became a "boiled duck-most-offensive-word-in-Vietnamese-for-female-genitalia". Whoops! 

 

I now want to learn Arabic because a lot of my current work takes me to the Middle East on a regular basis. Man, though, Arabic sounds can be tough to form in my mouth. 

[-Deleted-]

-Born in the English-speaking world speaking English.

-Can read German

-Can partially read Spanish

-Continue to learn German and Spanish

-Need to learn ASL, Spanish, and Arabic for practical reasons

-Want to learn French, Italian, Norwegian and a few others

[Kasimir]

When I lived in Vietnam I tried to pick up Vietnamese, but decided to stop learning it when I offended my female colleague because I got a tone wrong. (Apparently a "boiled duck egg" became a "boiled duck-most-offensive-word-in-Vietnamese-for-female-genitalia". Whoops!

Sorry, man, I feel your pain This thing seems to happen a lot with tonal languages, (*cough* Mandarin *cough*--one anecdote I've been told involves someone trying to ask if another person had ever been on a plane but due to a tonal mistake, ended up asking if she'd ever ridden a flying-bit-of-the-male-anatomy. Ouch!) although I'm told there are other complications that also give rise to this in non-tonal languages >>

[Steel]

I speak fluent Arabic, and I'm a native English speaker. However, despite living in a country where Arabic is the official language, my reading and  writing skills in Arabic are appalling. I am also learning Spanish, although I'm nowhere near proficiency.

[Starspren]

My native language is Swissgerman/German, depending if you count it as one or two languages. I'm quite fluent in English and  I've learned French in School, but I'm not really good at it.

 

For my English, lurking through 17th shard helped a lot 

Edited November 19, 2014 by Starspren

[Botanica]

I come from China and English is my second language as we learn it since childhood. My major in college is Germanistik and that requires me to master the language. The first year was quite horrible because I had never learnt a bit of it. But then I was impressed by the nature of this language. Now I think I can speak German as fluent as English I'm also learning Italian on my own but could hardly speak it.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Botanica