languages

[Fixed]

how many do you speak ?
i am terrible in english
i will get killed if i speak spanish
and my japanese is hopeless
cheers :beer:

[Orrery]

I took Latin through high school and a semester of Anglo-Saxon in college.

I'm thoroughly useless.

[saab2000]

English
German (or more specifically Swiss-German)
French but it is pretty rusty nowadays.

[rbtmcardle]

English
Once knew a fair bit of Italian

Have many friends / business associates in Italy / Spain who speak four or five languages.. one even 7.. I have been traveling to Europe for 18 years for business and always (still) feel ignorant, it seems we Americans seem to expect all others to speak English..

[cuwinbs]

i speak english and some day i hope to speak japanese

[Bruce K]

english
a moderate amount of german
enough spanish to get by with the kids in my class (please sit down, please be wuiet, pull up your pants, etc.)

I used to speak some hebrew

A few words of russian and a few words of chinese (taiwan version)

BK

[Viper]

We speak through more than just words. The most powerful form of language are symbols. Look at the Egyptians, they knew as their symbols still remain embedded in the sands of time. Cavemen and perhaps even more cavewomen did so. Symbols...in Spain if the waiter points at your dinner, just give him/her the thumb's-up sign. Nature does not know words...we speak in sounds and colors and math, universally, Raybans required:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYCBgSRNjk0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7-y8LC50r8&feature=related

Japanese get love:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAMgWL0nLpA&feature=related

:beer:

[AngryScientist]

my wife and i have committed to buying the French version of Rosetta Stone and working on it when the little guy goes to bed at night for a little while per night. hope to be able to be passable at French by next year.

we;ll see...

[tsarpepe]

Italian is the latest (and at this point weakest) of the six languages I speak. The others are mostly East European.

[pedlpwrd]

I am one of the sadly ignorant Americans. I only speak American. I attempt English, but often seem to fall short lol.
I am of Irish decent and would love to be able to learn to speak other languages. Angryscientist- I hear that the Rosetta Stone programs are amazingly efficient! Good luck!

[Mike748]

American, English & Dutch

[gdw]

I took 4 years of french in high school and college, became somewhat proficient at swearing in Spanish in the Army, learned some German and Turkish while travelling, and enough of the local languages in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Egypt to order a beer.

[biker72]

English
Enough German to be able to order food and drink in Germany.
When I was in Germany I found that a lot of Germans speak better english than I do... :)

[Sandy]

English and a little dog language, but no cat language whatsoever.



Bow Wow Sandy

[phcollard]

French is my mother tongue.

I speak English from time to time...

A bit of Dutch and a tiny bit of German (learned at high school and almost all forgotten)!

[witcombusa]

I struggle with Americanized English

My blood is direct from Quebec (10 generations) and much to everyones disapointment (including mine) can not speak Quebecois French :crap:

[Climb01742]

took high school german. ouch.

before i kick, i want to learn at least passable french or italian.

[rain dogs]

My first language is English.

I speak Castellano (Spanish) quite well, and speak it about 40% of the time at home, but certainly can grow frustrated with my limited vocabulary.

I can speak French well enough to discuss most topics, even politics, but the conversation is quite broken grammatically.

If people want to learn new languages their are many great resources free on the web.

For Castellano - check Audiria.com

For Spanish, French and Italian especially (there are more but with less resources)... BBC had a great group of interactive learning guides free online.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/

I think acquiring a new language is one of the most charming and underrated skills to develop, although the tech world is hell bent on making that need obsolete with on-the-go translators in smart phones.... it'll be here in about 2 years.

[Viper]

I struggle with Americanized English

My blood is direct from Quebec (10 generations) and much to everyones disapointment (including mine) can not speak Quebecois French :crap:

So you eh, sound like this eh:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXgDQz6bmiI&feature=related

:beer:

[Delpo]

Spanish and English as native languages

[thwart]

I speak passable English.

Hablo un poco Espanol.

Parlo un po d'italiano.

Took French 101 at the University last fall. At 57, 3 times the age of everyone else in the room but the instructor... :D

Mon Dieu!

[stephenmarklay]

Well I am native English speaking but I have worked pretty hard at learning Canadian over the years and the "True English" in that they speak in the UK (mostly from James Bond and Harry Potter)

I did take about 3 years of German for college. I remember enough of that for biking

Gehen Sie als geradeaus,
Gehen sie rechts

and so on

[Steve in SLO]

English, Spanish and some German.
Oh, and pretty awesome Pig Latin.

[Keith A]

Does Southern drawl count as a language :D

[Jaq]

http://www.thewashingmachinepost.net/cover_images_35/campy_spoken_here.jpg

[tuxbailey]

Chinese - Mandarin + 2 dialects
English
Spanish - learned when I lived in Venezuela for 6 years when I was a teenager. Kind of rusty now but can still hold a basic conversation.

If I have learn another language, it would be either French or Japanese.

[rounder]

English and French.

My French is minimalist...i know how to walk into a class room and look for the window. Never went there, but if i ever did, i would want to get better to actually meet the people and talk to them. Same for any other place i would ever go to.

[velotel]

American, french, franglais

[uno-speedo]

I speak English, Aussie and Kiwi. My Texan work colleagues were most impressed that I spoke three languages...

[jblande]

English
German
French
Ancient Greek
Latin

and, yes, I am an academic

[zap]

I struggle with English (my writing is horrid and my canadian/american gets muddled from time to time), my German (mother tongue) is horrible and Quebecois (despite Quebec's orwellian efforts) is so far gone that I might as well start over learning proper french.

[Elefantino]

Parents are from Peru, so I get English and Spanish.

A bit of French, enough to be conversant while on holiday.

Enough Italian to be able to watch RAI and understand the Giro.

[William]

Studied German in HS & College. Probably remember enough to order a Bier and get my self into trouble. ;)





William

[Polyglot]

my wife and i have committed to buying the French version of Rosetta Stone and working on it when the little guy goes to bed at night for a little while per night. hope to be able to be passable at French by next year.

we;ll see...

I guess my ID speaks for itself. I did some work for Rosetta Stone as a multilingual spokesman in some of their marketing. I'm impressed by the company.

My brother and I had a party at our place in Brussels back in 1986 where 14 languages were being spoken concurrently. That was cool.

I generally work as a translator/interpreter, dealing with business, legal, engineering, pharmaceutical and other complex matters (was in federal court earlier this week for a pharmaceutical patent infringement case! Fun stuff - NOT!). For the interpreting I readily mix 6 different languages (meaning being able to express ideas thoroughly in both languages involved). For translation, I limit myself to translating into 3 target languages from 6 source languages. I can furthermore get by in another 6 languages if truly necessary.

[twangston73]

English, pretty passable but not fluent Spanish (enough to get into and out of trouble of various types), and tourist levels of French and German. English will get you through most types of international travel but i can think of at least one occassion for each language that it was essential to dealing with something. Not always predictable, either, German helped with a pinch in Bulgaria, and French made Tunisia much more approachable.

[gomango]

I married a Bavarian, so I have been immersed into the world of the "Bayerisch" dialect.

They usually speak Bavarian with family, neighbors, and town folk.

They are professionals and of course use "Hoch Deutsch" at work.

This quickly switches to the Queens English when they are visiting here in Minnesota.

So, at this point I have some familiarity with Bavarian, Stryrian, and high German.

We use German and English at home with little fall off at this point.

My kids?

They roll a German r like a native speaker, as they are fluent. They speak German interchangeably at home with our family.

[Johnny P]

English and some dutch.

[echelon_john]

English, decent French, enough Italian to feed and shelter myself.

Oh, and I speak Jive.

[d_douglas]

I have had the adventure of living in Geneva for the past 6 years. Some here may disagree, but I think my French has gotten 'passable'. I was working in French at one point, and people nodded in agreement ( or agony ) when i spoke! I am Canadian, so I studied in school but never practiced.

The cool thing is that my 28 month old is probably more fluent in Fr than En - she is in daycare for 8 hrs per day! We are moving back to Canada in 10 weeks and I am motivated to continue Fr for her as well as for me. My wife is pretty hopeless - she has advanced tourist French and not much more. Her work team is made up of anglophones.....

[flydhest]

French major in college. Continued speaking, so when I go back to France, after a week, people get surprised when I tell them I'm American. One semester in college, M-W-F schedule was 8:00: Chinese (Mandarin) 9:00: French, 10:00 Spanish. The Spanish came very easily, after already speaking French, and then spent the better part of the summer after college in Spain. In grad school, my friends from Latin America made fun of my accent, but I did feel some vindication when someone asked if I was from Valencia--the city I stayed in in Spain. Three years college Chinese and then spent a summer in grad school in Taiwan. I got to be able to have conversations in Chinese then, but that was 1994 and I haven't practiced since, and it is almost all gone.

Italian . . . well, I can fake it, between my knowledge of French and Spanish and lots of hand gestures :D

[jmoore]

English
ASL - passable
Spanish - passable
German - enough to order food and drink and get to the restroom
HTML

[DRZRM]

English

Portuguese is good (lived in Rio for 2 years and research in the language)

Spanish fair, studied in HS and college, and travel in Spanish speaking countries without too much trouble.