Language Learning / Bilingual / Polyglot Thread -

[Dark Mirror Hole]

What languages do you know or wish to learn?

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

I'm only fluent in English, my native language. I took three years of Spanish in high school but I've never claimed to be fluent. I also studied Japanese for a semester when I was living in Japan and learned out to read Katakana, but I've forgot most of it now.

I picked up only a few words of Korean when I was stationed there. Yes, please, thank you, one ticket, things like that.

My wife is Filipino and she and I are actively ensuring that the kids will be billingual. This means that I've picked up some words of Tagalog and I'll pepper them in my normal conversation now without thinking about it. Like "Opo!" when I want my two year old to get down from wherever she's climbing, or "balik!" when I want her to come to me, or even "zapatos" or when I want her to bring me her shoes.

(No, I don't know how to really spell those words. Apologies to our Tagalog-speaking members of the forum.)

 

[Pikimon]

I speak the language of LOVE

Me-ow!

 

[The Hunter]

I wanted to make a really big post, but I got logged out and lost FUCKING EVERYTHING, so I'll sum up.

Known:
English (first language)
Spanish (poor)
Russian (poor)
Japanese (very very poor)

Want to learn:
Native American languages (Cherokee, Numic dialects like Shoshone and Comanche, etc.)
Russian
Italian (maybe)

Gave up on learning:
German
Japanese

Also, I sing to myself sometimes in Spanish, Russian, or Japanese. Helps me get a feel for the languages.

 

[Niachu]

I usually understand written German but I can't speak it. I'd like to find a place where I can learn Yupik.

 

[Grand Number of Pounds]

Yay, I freakin' love languages!

Right now I'm trying to learn Spanish and French. I met a Frenchman on meetup.com and I meet with him on the second Thursday of the month (that's this week - yay!). There are supposed to be other people in the group, but the first meetup there was also an 8th grade girl. The last time it was just the Frenchman and me.

I took 3 semesters of Spanish in college for the heck of it.

I would also really like to learn Japanese and Chinese, but especially Japanese, because I took culture courses about China and Japan and really enjoyed them. I took a free Chinese course in college but stopped going halfway through because the Taiwanese teacher was using songs and picture books to teach, which is how she taught her kids.

I also significantly dabbled in Latin and Esperanto (an artificial language with a small but enthusiastic following) but stopped learning because I didn't really know how I could use them. Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese are all used where I live (they all have groups on meetup.com) so I know I have places to use them. I might try Latin and Eo again sometime but I want to learn more useful languages first.

tl;dr

What I plan to learn now:
Spanish
French
Japanese (not so much right now, though) - I suggest this video series for people who want to dabble in nihongo

What I would like to learn someday:
Chinese
Maybe German; I'm German on both my mom and dad's sides of the family
Maybe Italian
I've been thinking recently I might want to try ASL (American Sign Language)

I have several books on various languages that I wanted to study at one time or another.

 

[TastyWoodenBadge]

I used to take French in high school from years 7-9, I used to get pretty good grades as well and could at least string a few sentences together fluently, but like most things I learned in school I've pretty much forgotten it

 

[Great Unclean Chris]

I am fluent in African-American Vernacular English, High-elven, Mandalorian, Shyriiwook, Klingon, Atlantean and Esperanto

 

[Night Terror]

I can only speak English but I can mostly understand simple written French. Can't speak or write it to save my life.
I love languages, though. If I had three wishes, one of them would be to be fluent in every language. It'd make getting lost in a foreign country much less complicated. Plus I could import games from anywhere. :V

 

[pickleniggo]

I took Italian for six years of my life in high school and as college credits, but my high school sucks and the teachers did the bare minimum in order to pass everyone, where classes should have been tiered so I wouldn't have to go through the same thing over and over again.
I would love to learn German because it's my heritage, but I don't know if I have what it takes to teach it myself.

 

[GV 002]

I'm a bit of a sucker for languages, but lack of use has caused me to lose touch with most of what I used to know.

Fluent -
English

Passable/conversational -
French
Spanish
Japanese

Poor -
Mandarin
Cantonese
Latin
Russian
Italian

Currently learning -
Dutch (Belgian dialect)

Would love to learn -
Swedish
Finnish
Danish
Swedish Chef
Icelandic

I learned French and Spanish in school up to GCSE, then took Japanese as a WJEC for two years during 6th form for a challenge. The rest I either taught myself, or picked up from friends who happened to speak the language in question. My boyfriend is teaching me Dutch as he's half Belgian and would like to take me to see his homeland at some point, so it's a perfect excuse to learn a new language!

 

[TheIncredibleLioness]

I'm only fluent in English, but I know a little bit of French, thanks to grade school, and later, a few classes in university. I never really put in the extra effort to become conversational in it, mostly because all the other Feench speakers I knew were the teacher and my classmates. I could get the gist of what was being said in class, but couldn't really hold an I depth conversation or anything. It's been about a year or so since that class so my grasp on the language has probably gotten worse.

I'd like to really learn the language, since where I'm from bilingualism is an asset. I'm also interested in Esperanto, but there's little practical use for that.

 

[shutupman]

First language is english, so I'd hope I'm fluent in it. I know quite a bit of french and german, with spatterings of spanish, italian, danish, swedish, norwegian, finnish, faroese, and gaelic.
I've got Rosetta Stone packs for russian, portuguese, brazilian portuguese, spanish, south american spanish, arabic, hebrew, mandarin, and a few others, but haven't even tried using it yet.

 

[c-no]

I'm fluent in American English due to being born in America. I learned Spanish during middle school and high school though my grasp of the language isn't great due to not speaking the language, which I could of spoke to friends who are native Spanish speakers. I'd love to learn Tagalog, the language of the Philippines, since I visited the country a few times and I like to grow more connected to my Filipino heritage.

 

[Something Vague]

I'm gonna learn the dragon language!

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

I'm fluent in American English due to being born in America. I learned Spanish during middle school and high school though my grasp of the language isn't great due to not speaking the language, which I could of spoke to friends who are native Spanish speakers. I'd love to learn Tagalog, the language of the Philippines, since I visited the country a few times and I like to grow more connected to my Filipino heritage.

What part did you visit? My wife is from Mindanao, near General Santos City. I've never been to the Philippines myself but we're thinking about taking a trip to Manila.

 

[Trombonista]

English is my first language. I started studying Italian in middle school and Japanese in college. I also know a little Spanish and Hebrew. I'd like to learn Czech, Mandarin, Arabic, and Finnish.

 

[Lady Houligan]

I took French all four years of high school, but I haven't practiced speaking it in years so it's gone down the shitter. I'd like to learn German since my father was born there, or Russian just because.

 

[The Hunter]

Well, Russian's definitely a lot of fun for me. It's kind of a thrill to be able to read and speak something with an entirely new alphabet. Actually, you could probably get started on the alphabet now. There's a good amount of letters that are the exact same as their Latin script counterparts.

The chart's a good start, but it'd help to visit some websites or talk to some people to get to know how to properly pronounce some of those. For example, you'll notice J isn't there, but "zeh" (whatever the hell that is) is. The ZH you see there is the only letter that resembles J. Although if you're a Spanish speaker and your J's sound like H's in English, that sound is the X (kh) sound on the chart. Remember, Russian has a lot of grammar rules just like how I always comes before E except after C in English. Certain letters can't follow other letters like that. I think (and don't quote me on this) T can't come after G in Russian. But there's a fair amount, and I'm always forgetting the rules because I speak based on my vocabulary.

Or if you guys are just immature shits and want to hear a few curse words, I can say those too.

 

[Grand Number of Pounds]

If you want a good method to learn the Russian alphabet try Uncle Davey's Russian course

I don't want to hijack this thread, but there are a lot of great language learners on YouTube if you want to check them out.

I'm glad that a lot of American and British users are interested in learning languages. Our countries are far too monolingual.