Languages

[Cikali]

I speak: Swedish, Finnish and English.
I would like to learn Spanish.

How about you?

I think many Authors know Latin...

 

[SnoopDog]

I learned Latin in school, but nothing stuck... =(

I speak German and English fluently, also perfectly in writing,
a fair deal of Spanish, reading and writing better than understanding or speaking it,
and very little French.


Snoopy

 

[Kitty_Schrödinger]

I speak, understand, read and write- fluently in English, of course, Polish- my native language, Russian, speak and understand some German and know Latin- but this would require refreshing
Would love to learn Spanish too.

 

[cloudy]

English, pretty much fluent in Spanish, getting there in Ojibwe, can get by in Cherokee and Choctaw, and can ask where the bathroom is, for a glass of wine, and how much something costs in Danish.

 

[elfin_odalisque]

English, pretty much fluent in Spanish, getting there in Ojibwe, can get by in Cherokee and Choctaw, and can ask where the bathroom is, for a glass of wine, and how much something costs in Danish.

When trying to learn a bit of Dutch to meet and greet in Holland, a colleague asked me why, saying that only 22 million people in the world spoke Dutch. Even Dutch (ABN) was only created 60 years ago to overcome regional dialects and move into the global world.

With an English mother-tongue I speak French and some Dutch and can get by in other languages, but why?

I am not denigrating any language in the world but just asking in a global context how fluent Choctaw will help often underprivileged people move on. Wheher it is Madarin Chinese or English, there will be a global lnguage and those who are't fluent will still be getting water from the well.

 

[cloudy]

I am not denigrating any language in the world but just asking in a global context how fluent Choctaw will help often underprivileged people move on.

There are only something like forty fluent speakers of Choctaw left - in the world - thanks to the lovely US policy of assimilation that resulted in residential schools where children where forbidden from speaking their own language, and then later on blood quantum policy. Its dying, and once its gone, its gone (and it's thousands and thousands of years older than Dutch). It was the language of my grandmother, and all those that came before her.

It belongs to me, and I'm damned tired of everything that is uniquely culturally ours being taken from us by force.

That's why I learn it.

 

[LaRocha]

I speak the Language of LOVE, and the only other native speaker of this language is Cloudy.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

I barely speak English most days...

 

[Tio_Narratore]

English is my first and best; not bad in French
Read German and Latin
Tourist level in Italian and Spanish
A smattering of Irish

My kids are all trilingual at post-university level; I find them amazing.

And Cloudy, keep up with the Algonkin and Caddoan languages; we wouldn't want to loose them. You know, the last Wyandot (Huron) speaker passed away in Oklahoma in 1906; it would have enriched our world if someone had learned it from her and kept it going.

 

[Trinique_Fire]

I think it's so important to keep languages alive.

That being said, I speak English, obviously. I took Spanish for 13 years and can eavesdrop on your conversations and read some of your secret notes too. I went to Slovenian school for years, but I felt like a really awkward kid and didn't make friends easily. It didn't help that I was the only kid there who wasn't first gen American born. I was sort of outcast from the beginning. We didn't speak Slovenian at home or do any of the traditional stuff. My daughter (Slovenian name and all) is more than likely going to have a trip to Slovenia when she's three or four so that she can learn what I never did. As for me, I'm planning to re-learn what I can....am hoping my cousin Ziva can send me some kind of language learning program. It's not a common language, and from what I've seen there are no products in this country to assist in learning Slovenian.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

English. My fluency in Spanish is weird. I can roughly communicate it when speaking but have a terrible time understanding it. I'm hopeless when trying to write anything but the most basic of sentences. However, given a piece of Spanish text, whether a comic book or a government document, with my five dictionaries, my phrase book and my 101 Spanish Verbs, I can turn it into conversational English. I can't explain this and it astonishes native speakers but there you are. Some of us just have odd talents. And others are just odd!

 

[OnlyByMoonlight]

Native tongue is English
Second Language is French
Third is Ancient Greek
Plus I've studied some German and Latin too

 

[jacks4u]

I speak English, can order a beer in German, converse in broken Spanglish with co-workers, and Google for translations to or from any of a dozen or so other languages. Of course, my mileage varies with the translations, but still...

 

[oggbashan]

I speak and write British English.

I understand most variants and dialects of British and US English, Australian English, Indian sub-continent English and Gibraltarian English.

I speak French with an Australian accent and 18th or 19th Century grammar. I can read ancient French from the 15th to 19th centuries.

I can get around in German, Italian, I'm rather better in Castilian Spanish and better still in Andalusian workers' Spanish.

I studied Latin for 9 years. I can still read it.

Og

 

[LaRocha]

I speak and write British English.

I understand most variants and dialects of British and US English, Australian English, Indian sub-continent English and Gibraltarian English.

I speak French with an Australian accent and 18th or 19th Century grammar. I can read ancient French from the 15th to 19th centuries.

I can get around in German, Italian, I'm rather better in Castilian Spanish and better still in Andalusian workers' Spanish.

I studied Latin for 9 years. I can still read it.

Og

No Gullah English then? You should be good with the various American creoles if you know your french.