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What language(s) do you/ would you like to speak?

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Phoenix

Phoenix

Ideal_Rock
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Zoebartlett''s thread on where we live has made me think about where we''d like to live/ travelling opportunities which in turn has reminded me on my desire to pick up french and italian. My french is only passable and i''d really like to speak it fluently. My family lived in France for six months before we moved to the UK. I have such fond memories of the place and have enjoyed visiting it ever since. Italian is a beautiful language and we''d really love to travel to more places in Italy, notably Tuscany. I also speak Vietnamese cos it''s my mother tongue, though my English is better than my Vietnamese.

Hubby speaks fluent Mandarin and uses it in his work.

So what languages do you/ would you like to speak and why?
 
I speak some Spanish and French, and would love to learn Italian.

I would not mind knowing other languages, but I think that Italian is so beautiful and lyrical, though it might not be the most practical!
 
Well, I really wish I knew more Spanish...I took 4 years in college, but forgot most of it because I never used it. Now my hubby''s job moved us to the Miami area and I am the only one who does not speak Spanish around here. Some of it is coming back, but I wish I would have used it more...like they say, you either use it or lose it!
 
I speak some French and I use the subtitles with DVD''s to learn more while I am on the treadmill! At the moment I am watching '' Les Familles du Collines'' AKA The Waltons!!! ( I think I have the French right....)
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I speak English, ok French and some Spanish. I went to college in Dijon, France 15 years ago, but unfortunately, I have absolutely no use for French where I live so I know I've forgotten a lot. I can still read it pretty well but oral comprehension is nowhere close to what I it was. I now speak mostly in present tense which is fairly funny but at least it gets the point across.

I had less Spanish than French in college so I tend to "frenchize" Spanish words. Some of what I say is actually a French word with a Spanish twist. My son is learning Spanish in school and I'm enjoying helping him.

I love the sound of French but I really should have concentrated more on Spanish in school--it would have been way more useful.

I wish the US started languages earlier in school. I didn't get to take any languages until 9th grade. The school told me I was insane when in 11th grade I wanted to take both French year 3 and pick up Spanish too. I actually had to fight to get to do it. Took both languages all through college. I really loved learning foreign languages and would like to pick up more. I'm really trying to push my son into being an exchange student because I think you don't really learn a language until you live a daily life in it.
 
I am fluent only in English. My French is definitely not fluent, but I would say that it is excellent. I studied it in school; used it while living briefly in France; and used it to communicate with my husband''s Italian family who had spent World War II in France.

I studied Spanish grammar in high school for two years and have had some opportunity to use Spanish, so I can be a danger to myself and others. When I was in Colombia adopting my daughter I found that I could help other even more hapless Americans who were with us procure diapers and so forth. I mix up Italian and Spanish, however. As stated above, I married an Italian and communicated with his family in French. Family conversations naturally reverted to Italian, however, so that I was aurally bombarded by the language. I had never before been exposed to a language in that way. I had always studied a language and its grammar from a book. I found it fascinating to understand spoken Italian so easily, although I hadn''t been taught anything! I did, then, go and take some Italian lessons from a friend with a grammar book. I can speak Italian for a while if I am with Italians, but then if I try to speak Spanish I get mixed up. I just do not know either language well enough to keep them firmly apart. My hostess in Colombia (who spoke many languages fluently) would listen to me piece together sentences partly in Italian and partly in Spanish and let me know when I was speaking Italian.

I studied German because I was once a doctoral candidate in history and had planned to write my dissertation about women in Germany.

I once bought a Rosetta Stone CD-Rom in Portuguese when we had a Brazilian cleaning woman. I was facinated by how different Portuguese and Spanish sounded, but how closely they looked when written!!!

I would love to improve my Spanish, Italian, and French and to learn Portuguese, but my first choice of where to spend my time would be in studying Latin. I am very, very sorry that I never studied it. I once tried to remedy this when I was teaching high school history part-time. I joined the seventh grade learning Latin: I participated in class and did the assigned homework they did. I really enjoyed it. However, the French teacher became ill and I was asked to teach two French classes, which put a period to my career as a Latin scholar!

My husband is perfectly bilingual in Italian and English and is also fluent in French and Spanish. His German is excellent. He is a Greek and Latin scholar and is proficient in Hebrew.

Deborah
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I wish I could remember Spanish, which I spent five years studying, because it would be extremely helpful in my career (I am studying to be a teacher in Southern CA). I wish I knew ASL (American Sign Language) because it's a wonderful tool that can be used with children/people with autism (I intend to return to school, at some point after I finish the program I am, in to earn a credential in special education too).
 
I speak Arabic fluently (and english of course ;) )...i also know some french had studied it thru out high school and in university, but lost it as i didnt practice it much..i can understand it now more than i can speak it.

spanish and italian i would love to learn!
 
I am fluent in English. I wish I knew Spanish better. I understand it when people speak Spanish but even with 4 years of Spanish I can speak to get by but not at all fluent
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. I admire people who know many languages; I see it as a huge advantage. I have a friend who is Italian and speaks Italian and I think Spanish and Italian sound similar since they are romance languages. It is interesting to hear the similarities.
 
I speak fluent English, and restaurant level French and Spanish, and barely passable Setswana. I''m conversational in Bahasa Indonesia but I dont get to practice it much at home so I have convos in my head to try to keep it up. I was learning Vietnamese a couple years back and I have all my teacher''s notes and my flashcards and I love that it isn'' nearly as difficult as I thought a tonal language would be, but I have trouble practicing it at home because all the Vietnamese I know here speak VN with a southern VN accents so they don''t understand even the most basic things I say because the accent and some words are totally different. Since most of the VN folks here were refugees, they''ve never spent any time in the North and they dont know what a Northern VN accent even is, so I just sound like I''m talking VN gibberish to them. It''s rather frustrating because I''d love to improve my skills in that area...And I wish I had tried learning Thai years ago but my friend there is brutal on teaching me so I gave up. Now that I have the basics on another tonal Asian language under my belt, I should really give Thai another try. That''s what I''d really love to learn...

I had a former boss/colleague that''s fluent in so many languages it boggles the mind! I admire people who can keep the different languages separately in their mind. I often am driving around and practicing in my head and then I think of the word I want to use but I cant remember if it''s the Setswana word or the Indo word and I get totally confused! Duh.
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Well, English is my mother tongue. I''m fluent in German since I took it in high school for 4 years, did a 3 month exchange to Germany at age 15, and worked there for 5 years after university. I also took it for two years in uni, and married a German, so we speak it at home.
I started learning French in Canada in Grade 6, and spent Grade 7 in France. I was pretty fluent throughout high school,as I continued in the french first language program and got a bilingual high school diploma. Unfortunately I went to a very anglophone university, and have lost a lot of what I learned. I got to speak a bit while I was working in Europe, and definitely understand more than I can speak. I''d really love to work on it again though - must start watching more French TV and reading more books.
I speak some Spanish after 2 years in university and a 2 week intensive immersion course in Spain a few years ago. It''s pretty rusty though.
Because of the French and Spanish, I can understand some Italian, but couldn''t speak it. I remember a couple words of Finnish (worked there for 2 months after university) - that was a hard language to learn!
I used to know a bit of ASL as a housemate and I took the first level course in university, but I''ve forgotten most of it now. It was a lot of fun to learn, and very interesting to learn more about Deaf culture during the course.
Languages that would come in most useful at work would be Mandarin or Cantonese, Portugese, Italian, and some sort of middle eastern language (?Arabic).
I''d sure love to travel and learn more, and I''m hoping to maybe do a year of medical training in France in the future. In reality, the most useful language in the world is English given the spread of the internet and that so many textbooks etc are in English. I still think it''s important to learn other languages too though!
Kate
 
Well English (or Hiberno-English!) is my mother tongue. I am told I speak it with a broad Irish brogue and pepper it with lots of Irish slang that makes my American friends come over all warm and fuzzy and hug happy!
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I studied German for nine years, lived in Germany for a year, and was fluent at one time. I even dreamed in German and there words I either didn''t know or had forgotten the English for. I learned my German in Bavaria and have been told I sound like the biggest country bumpkin. When I first speak with a native they roar laughing at the ridiculousness of an Irish person speaking like they just came in from the fields! When I lived there I routinely fooled the locals. One hairdresser dropped her scissors in shock when I told her I wasn''t German - I should have had her leave them on the floor, as she gave me the worst haircut of my life!!!
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Sadly I haven''t used my German in about five years and it''s now painfully rusty
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I can manage buying tickets and ordering food in French but nothing more than that. I studied Italian for about three months and can just about make myself understood. Italian is such an easy language to learn and so much fun to speak! My BF used to sit and listen to me practising my numbers he loved how it sounded
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I also speak Irish passably. We all study it for thirteen years of school over here but sadly that rarely results in much fluency. I don''t agree with how it''s taught in the schools here. Anyway since school I''ve needed to use it for one job interview and to obtain my legal qualification - you have to do both written and oral examinations to demonstrate you could represent a client in Irish.
 
English is my first language. And for that I am eternally grateful. I feel so badly for people trying to learn a language that makes very little grammatical and structural sense sometimes. Not to mention the whole too, to, two, bear, bare,beer thing. :-)

I know enough Korean to get by. I understand it almost fluently but have a hard time speaking it. Probably because my husband barely knows any (he''s Korean. I''m not).

I studied Latin extensively and am grateful for that as well. It makes games like scrabble (and sometimes Jeoprady) so much easier. Also, it helps when you are in a romance-language country. You will see familiar roots.

I am conversational in French. Well. . maybe more than conversational. It comes out fluently when it needs to (like when I was stuck in Barcelona and they only language was Catalan but I found someone who knew French. it came flowing out). And about the same in Italian.

I know biblical Hebrew. ( I can read the tanakh and get the gist but have to cross reference the english often )

I know Maori as much as is possible. Stories, songs, that type of thing. But I can''t "speak" it.

My next endeavor is Russian. I want to know an asian language (korean. done.), a romance language (french. done), a polynesian language (maori. as done as possibly needed). english. and a slavic language. So, Russian it is. i can read it, but don''t know what it means.

I have a knack for foreign languages. I tend to start to learn one when I feel bored. Can you tell how often I get bored? hahahaha.
 
Native language is English, but I speak German, and I can read Latin.
 
I speak only English fluently. Cantonese was my first language, and I can still catch the gist of conversations, but I can''t speak it to save my life.

I''ve learned both Mandarin and Spanish, but I haven''t used either of them in a little while, so I''m rusty on both.

I''d like to become more proficient in both Mandarin and Spanish. In terms of other languages, I''d love to learn Italian. If I ever uprooted and moved to another country, it would be Italy.
 
I speak English (southern variant
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) and German. I can read French pretty well and speak it a little. Plus a smattering of Spanish and Italian.

Although my husband is Vietnamese, I only know a very little (he doesn''t speak it very well himself; like Lien, his English is much better).

Surfgirl wrote:
Since most of the VN folks here were refugees, they''ve never spent any time in the North and they dont know what a Northern VN accent even is, so I just sound like I''m talking VN gibberish to them.

We ran into this when our daughters were taking a Vietnamese class last year. My husband''s family is from the North and they still use the northern dialect (even though they moved to Saigon in 1954). So we definitely had to correct the girls'' pronunciation in a few places. I wish they were taking the class again this year, but it wasn''t terribly fun for them (esp. since it is designed to teach children in Vietnamese speaking households how to read the language)and my husband doesn''t feel it''s very important.
 
I speak English (Americanized English, anyway). I wouldn''t consider myself fluent in Spanish, but I can hold my own. Same for Mexican. (I know that''s not PC, but in Mexico, the population doesn''t speak "Spanish" per se. I don''t mean to offend.) I know a bit of Swedish. My Grandpa used to teach us Swedish prayers in addition to a few basic phrases. I understand some Italian but, I can''t speak more than "please, thankyou".

I would like to become fluent in Spanish, Italian, Swedish and French. Then I think I could go everywhere I''d like.
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I forgot to add the languages I'd like to learn! I wish I spoke French properly, I've never studied it but it just sounds soooo romantic to me. I'd love to improve my Italian. Spanish sounds like so much FUN to speak, I'd love to give that a try too! My long time wish has been to learn a Slavic language - Russian, Czech, Croation, Polish. One day!

Hmmm, just remembered now that knowing German also means I can read Dutch and catch the gist of it. I can't speak it at all and can't really follow conversations in it. Had forgotten that.

Hey SDL and somethingshiny I read once (I think it was in a Bill Bryson book) that modern American English is actually closer in pronunciation to the English spoken in Shakespeare's day than Received Pronunciation is. I found that really interesting, since it's often implied (over here, anyway!) that American English is somehow inferior and so many dramatisations of Shakespeare use RP as if that's the 'ideal' in English pronunciation. So don't knock American English too much!
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Hey clio! Glad to hear it's not just me! But please let your husband know that from the perspective of someone who isn't a native VN speaker, it IS actually much easier to learn to speak VN while at the same time learning to read/write it. The reason is that all the markers tell you exactly how to pronounce that word correctly so if you don't SEE the word with its markers, the way's to pronounce it are extremely varied! My teacher told a story about how the word for grapefruit and penis (IIRC, the word is "buoi") was exactly the same and the tone/pronunciation told you which way you were using the word. Imagine how her student felt when she went to the marketplace and asked the old ladies for a kilo of penis! They were all laughing at her and she was so embarrassed...The way to avoid such incidences is to learn to read/write/speak at the same time. I found it quite easy to learn that way...
 
I speak English, being it is my mother tongue. I would love to learn German and French. I tried to learn German once, but gave up. That was many many years ago in my younger days. It was so hard. Wish I would have stuck to it.

Linda
 
I''m bilingual in English and Italian (lived there for 8 years).

I used to speak fluent French and bad German, but the French is a bit rusty these days as I never use it. I can also understand but not speak Spanish.
 
Spanish is my native language, I''m fluent in English and can hold my own if left to my own devices in France. I''m currently learning German, DH is German and MIL speaks almost no English, so I''m learning to be able to communicate with her. German has given me the most difficulty of all the languages, but talking to my MIL in her own language is priceless.
 
I speak some German. It's pretty pathetic, my German, considering I spent 13 years in Munich.
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I wish I spoke fluent German, both because it's a great language, and so I had something to show for all that time! Also I wish I spoke Italian, which is beautiful.
 
I speak english fluently and I also remember most of the Irish that I learnt in school. I also speak some french and I''ve studied spanish for 8 years but would still like to be able to converse more in spanish.
 
My first language is French (I''m thrilled to see that so many people here know a bit of it!
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) and I am fluent in English as well. I used to know some Spanish, but never got to use it, so I lost it.
 
In addition to my native tongue (English), I am fluent in German, Italian, passable in Spanish and know enough French to sound stupid when I attempt to speak. We''re traveling to Russia in July so I''ll probably buy the Pimsler CDs and give a go at learning some Russian too.
 
La mia lingua madre e l''italiano [native language], English [language I learned in school after moving to the US], francais [in school - 9 years], espanol [university]. I had to take speech lessons when I was small to get rid of my Italian accent - so no regional talk here. LOL!

I seem to need to learn Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Thai, and Turkish [to say nothing of Serbo-Croatian!]. Sigh . . .

DB
 
Date: 11/19/2007 6:54:08 PM
Author: Matata
In addition to my native tongue (English), I am fluent in German, Italian, passable in Spanish and know enough French to sound stupid when I attempt to speak. We''re traveling to Russia in July so I''ll probably buy the Pimsler CDs and give a go at learning some Russian too.
Click to expand...


I read some of these blurbs and just feel teased. I want to know more! Matata, how did you become fluent in German and Italian, for example? I want to know not only what languages people know (and have studied), but how they came to learn them. There is a story behind every language learned and every one attempted!

Please, everybody, share more when you tell about your language experiences!

Deb
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Date: 11/19/2007 8:13:15 PM
Author: AGBF
I read some of these blurbs and just feel teased. I want to know more! Matata, how did you become fluent in German and Italian, for example? I want to know not only what languages people know (and have studied), but how they came to learn them. There is a story behind every language learned and every one attempted!
Please, everybody, share more when you tell about your language experiences!

Deb
Click to expand...

I grew up in an Italian household and although I didn''t learn to speak it as a child, I could understand everything. Before hubby and I took our first trip to Italy, I bought the Pimsleur CDs and then started talking with friends who were fluent and viola....I studied German in college and had a number of friends from Germany so it was easy to become fluent. Studied Spanish in high school and then learned the rest from living in the ''hood and have plenty of daily practice where I live. I like learning languages probably because of growing up in a bilingual household. Now that we travel so much, I just decided that I would try to become conversant in the language of the countries we visit. I''m hoping I''m successful with the Russian; I don''t know anyone here who speaks it so I won''t be able to practice with a native speaker as I''ve been so fortunate to do with other languages.
 
My DH and I are both asian, but we speak English at home as both of us are from two completely different countries and we both came to America when we were fairly young ( i was 3 1/2 and he was 13 or 14), so we can''t speak our native tongue too well.

I am filipino, so I can also speak Tagalog, but not as well as I understand it. My husband is Cambodian, so he speaks Cambodian, but like me, not that well either.

I took Spanish in Jr. HS and college (but only two semesters) and German in HS. I can speak Spanish enough to get by if I go to a spanish speaking country, but I completely forgot how to speak German.

I would love to take French and a bit more Spanish so I can talk fluently.

I think when people speak in French it is so beautiful sounding. Even when they are cursing.
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