How Many Languages Do You Speak?

I'm British, so the whole world puts me to shame with their linguistics.  I'm currently in a Skype call with four people of different nationalities, and they're all speaking English...

So how many languages do you have?

I know Black Country, English (yes, Black Country is a dialect of English, but I'm having to big myself up somehow), Welsh, British Sign Language and 1337.   I know a few words in the other Celtic languages.

German is my native tongue.

I speak English fluently, fluenting right over my many grammatical mistakes due to my frequent bi-lingual confusion.

Dialects: Bavarian and Austrian.

Studied Latin for 6 years and French for 2. Most of it forgotten, although my little Latin knowledge helps a lot with figuring out words in (some) other languages.

I speak three languages. Marathi is my mother tongue, which I speak at home and with my local friends. Then I am fluent in Hindi language which is the most popular language of India. It is also official language of India and many of  the Indian states. Further I speak English, but not always. Here in India, for most of the educated people, English is a 'written' language and not a spoken language. 

Beside these three languages, I can understand three more Indian languages.

German (mother tongue), English (nearly native as married into it by now), Spanish (tongue of my heart and my soul) and French (badly) plus I can understand some Italian. SY

Edit: Chef reminded me, some working knowledge of Latin plus some traces of Koine (New testamentarian Greek) me thinks that is all - at least as far as I can remember ...

You are all so putting me to shame.

I 'speak' fluent HTML and PHP too.  >.>

I'm so JEALOUS!

I speak English (American.)

I spoke pretty good Italian when I was 7 but forgot it all.

Thanks to Jo I'm learning Welsh for no apparent reason. I'm up to lesson 6. I just created my own flashcards in Access VB.  I speak pretty good VB but forgot most of what I used to know.

Ragtimelil: 12/17/2012 - 04:20 PM

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Thanks to Jo I'm learning Welsh for no apparent reason.

 There are always good reasons to learn Welsh.   If you can't think of any other, then being able to impress your friends with your fluent pronunciation of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch will suffice.

I speak English but at the age of 42 I decided that I'd love to learn Spanish. I took a course through the OU and gained my Certificate in Spanish, which is roughly the equivalent of GCSE Spanish grades A-C. I'm certainly not fluent, no where near in fact, but I did enjoy the course immensely and would love to immerse myself in the language. And I have an O level in French- but can't remember any of it- I was rubbish anyway.

I lived in North Wales for three years in the eighties and picked up a few words along the way, but that is all. :)

Hey, we should start a Spanish online conversation group!

Tenemos a empezar un grup en linea the lengua espanola!

SY

Ha Ha - Jo!

I'm doing Spanish (Mexican) after I manage to either read or understand Welsh. I don't have anyone to actually speak to except the dogs

Un hen ci ac un ci efanc.

Sí, me encantaría, pero también va a necesitar mi diccionario sapinish / Inglés. lol

significaba españoles

There is no hope for me.

JoHarrington: 12/17/2012 - 04:36 PM

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Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch will suffice.

I listened to that thing. Now it sounds more mangeable.

Here is an actual Bavarian cuss-phrase (Google Translate may break!):

HimmeHerrgottSakramentKruzefixHallelujaMiLeckstAmArschSacklzementNomoinei!

Well, I have to disagree with msanglikar regarding English. English is my first langauage and I'm fluent in Hindi and Can understand two more native languages - Marathi and Kannda.  I can also get along with German provided the person talks slowly :) 

Jo, I'm fluent in HTML and CSS not PHP :P

I'm fluent in English and Hebrew, speak a smattering of Spanish and French and started learning Mundari (one of the tribes) language in South Sudan.  I looked for an online course in Mundari and for some reason there isn't one. I learned some Mandarin online before I went to China for a month in 2005.

When I hitched around Europe 40 ages ago I made sure to learn some key phrases in each new country I got to:  "How much is that?"  "What time is it?" "I don't speak **. Do you speak English or French?" "Please" "Thank-you" "Keep your hands off me", counting to 100 (so I could understand the answer to "How much" and a few more.

I started learning Arabic and hope to get back to that soon.

lobobrandon: 12/17/2012 - 09:23 PM

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Well, I have to disagree with msanglikar regarding English. English is my first langauage and I'm fluent in Hindi and Can understand two more native languages - Marathi and Kannda.  I can also get along with German provided the person talks slowly :) 

Jo, I'm fluent in HTML and CSS not PHP :P

I said "Here in India, for most of the educated people, English is a 'written' language and not a spoken language". For most of the people, not for all.........

English is my mother tongue (with a smattering of Cockney, Estuarine and other dialects).

I have difficulty conversing in other languages (as my hearing and brain capacity have been somewhat impaired) but I can read and write to an average level in...........

fr, de, es, it, pt (note all latin or german based languages) and I find Esperanto helps a lot in converting from one language to another

to a lesser level in ........

nl, da, sv, no, af

and to a low level in...........

el, he, cy, pl, ru ... but these are very rudimentary.

And of course Google translate and other translation software makes life a lot easier these days and I do tend to throw any non-English through those first these days - just because it does things so much quicker and I don't have to look in my dictionaries to find those words that are unfamiliar.

I have been fluent in .....

COBOL, Basic, Pascal, Algol, C, C++, dBase, Fortran (note how old they are!!!)

and can read and debug a few others (probably most computer languages once I understand the syntax) - and I did start out programming in machine code.

With HTML etc. I tend to find what has been written by others, copy it, and change it to what I want - so I suppose I can read and write those as well.

My mothertongue is Austrian and my German is nearly as good as Austrian.

Next to these languages I am average with English.

My Croatian, Serbian, Hungarian and Latin are quite bad to be honest.