"How many foreign languages can you read?" Topic

The title is the question. I'm just asking for fluency in reading, not speaking or understanding when spoken to. I mean, in reading, not one or two words, but long discursive passages.

For me, French, German, and Italian, and I'm working on Russian-- I'll die long before I get good enough at it but….Mohatmas Ghandi said we should live like we were going to die tomorrow and learn like we were going to live forever. I'm not a big fan of Ghandi, but even a busted clock is right twice every day.

Of coruse, I did all this in college and grad school and I've gotten rustier, but I can still hack along.

French only for me. My Latin is too rusty, my German too fragmentary for extended passages.

5, taking my time

Fr. Sp. Ger. It. Chinese (pinyin, NOT ideographs – used to
be able to hack along in ideographs, but lost it).

I am hopeless in foreign languages. Can understand English and Russian a little and forgot all about Japanese.
Native language is Estonian.

None with any level of proficiency – I can manage to struggle through captions of images and the odd short bit of text with a dictionary but that is about all. Languages never were my forte and, try as I have done, I find getting any fluency next to impossible. I'm much happier with maths and science, I can deal with those.

This here is Merica, I speak Merican…

English, of course, and Arabic. A bit of French.

French, some German. Latin enough to read a few sentences, but not substantial passages. And I find that French plus Latin means I can sometimes figure out Spanish, Catalan or Italian, but it's hard work.

I can read all languages, I just can't understand what I am reading

Read probably none with my dyslexia (probably not even my native English) without computer help. Speak: Gallic, English, Italian, Friulian and German.

x42

I can read French well enough to read a newspaper; I usually write down any words I don't understand, and look them up after.

Re: Stepman3 – at first, I thought you had written Mercian. That would be an achievement.

Ron

P.S. The Larousse online Dictionnaire de Français is a Godsend to students of French: link

Let's see:

American… Canadian… Australian… Kiwi… ;o)

Only joking Otto, I'm afraid I have to admit I can't read or speak any language other than my own, and even that can be dodgy at times.

French, and German if I have a lot of time and a dictionary

Plus a bit of Latin, but that's not all that common in print any more

Since my native language is Greek I can:
English, German, Italian, Spanish (some Catalan, too), Dutch. I am working on Russian and Swedish, but age and lack of time might not help me.

Dear Frederick

Dictionaries are allowed. Never said one had to be fluent. It's very hard to be expert in a language you don't do your day to day thinking in.

Otto

Spanish (standard), Spanish (Castilian), Italian, some Norge.

Technically speaking I am perfect bilingual (Greek and English) according to a linguist friend.

I can read Italian to a point, and French a bit less.

Technically if you read English, you should be able to read modern Swedish with a dictionary.

I can read American and English.

I studied Latin for 3 years in High School. I was taught by nuns who were more interested in forcing the pluperfect subjunctives of irregular verbs down our throats.
Ditto with French.
Almost the same with German in college, but only for two years. One teacher was more interested in criticizing American culture and insulting our accents.

So, three foreign languages be a bunch of teachers who had not the slightest interest in making them interesting. I got high passing grades in each, but it was with the attitude of an English major taking his mandatory science class.

That's the long answer. I can pick my way through very few. I can make a stab at bad pronunciation.

French only.

Used to be okay in Russian but that was a long time ago…

Mike

I am still fairly capable in Arabic (learned it ~20 years ago), but my vocabulary is skewed towards military terms.

French, Italian and Japanese.

French, Spanish, a smattering of German and Latin (dimly remembered from school, my German is better than my Latin).

French is probably the best of the lot.

A few words of Russian, which actually turned out to be quite handy in Yugoslavia many decades ago when it appeared to be the only language we had in common.

Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian and English here.

1 and I can puzzle out 3 more

French, Japanese, Czech, Slovak (and Polish to a reasonable degree, but I'd be in and out of the dictionary frequently)

I reckon after a bit of practice I'd be ok with Latin again, but I've lost all my Greek for sure, sadly.

OK … French, Italian and a little German.

I did Latin and Greek at School so can usually see what people are getting at when they footnote to passages in ancient texts (though I wouldn't pretend that I can translate them myself) …

That said, I just bought some stuff from Berlinner Zinnfiguren and the (German) T&C on their email … well, it's all Greek to me …

Phil
Ancients on the Move

Danish, English.
I can read Swedish and Norwegian but I do need to look words up once in a while.

My Latin, French & Spanish are…okay (so probably Italian as well). I've studied (but since lost any facility in) Ancient Greek & Old English, and dabbled in Gaelic and Welsh, but never to any great extent.

Dutch, English, French and a little German

Spanish, German, and French

Show me the pictures and I'm good :)

I perfectly read books in italian, french, spanish, english and Portuguese.

Like John, I have three years of latin and two of german, but I almost forget all of them.

Last attempt were Zulu and Afrikaner, but failed.

Glad to see how many people knows spanish here.

Amicalement
Armand

German, Russian and am learning Coeur d'Alene, a Native American language.

Dear List

What is interesting is, even at the rudimentary level, the amount of language skills on TMP, when compared with the frequent posters is rather large and much better than that held by the general population. You will note I was careful not to set the bar too high, but that's ok. It doesn't matter that you are not speaking fluent, but that you all have a knowledge and awareness of foreign languages and how they work.

NOW A SECOND QUESION!

How many of you would like to either learn another, or become more expert in ONE of the ones you do.

Please, no wafflings, or excuses, or explanations, I am not grilling you, just examining general attitudes.

I realize that for most of us with our busy lives this is a pious hope and languages were always my worst field of endeavor.

Second WHY DO YOU WANT TO DO THIS IF Y9OU DO.

My own reason is that I know enough to know that words in translation always lose something. Knowing what the words mean in context from the culture they come from mean so much more.

Dutch is native, English I read fluently, German and French I can understand. In my schoolyears (about 50 years ago) four languages – Dutch, English, French, German – was standard, now you have to choose one or two (Dutch of course is mandatory).
I really would love to be able to read Latin and/or Spanish. Unfortunately I am not able to learn large "things" like a language any more. And I am green with envy of my wife who learned also Greek and Latin at school but forgot everything about it… She probably had teachers like those of John – she also went to a Catholic school ;-)).

A bit late to this, but Portuguese and Spanish. As to becoming an expert, Portuguese due to the fact that I plan to retire to Brasil in about 20 years. As to learning another Polish is one I'm interested in.

French, Dutch, English, Spanish, Portuguese, that makes 5, still have severe problems with German and Italian.

I am English and have lived in Switzerland since 2001, so also use German and French.

I can read menus in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Dutch.

I can read other documents in English, Spanish, and in a limited fashion, Dutch.

I know that I can't learn languages, I've tried too often and failed (OK, given up frustrated). I get it all while I'm reading the lessons or being taught and then instantly forget it the moment I try and use it a week later. Just don't seem to be able to retain it.

Strange as I could read science & maths texts and reproduce proofs, apply methods etc. years later, even when I had not used them in between times.

I'd love to learn Welsh to read and understand the poetry. I got about as far as translating and pronouncing place names correctly and greeting people in their own language when we holiday there but no further.

I'd like to learn to read Japanese (nihon-go), as I speak a fair amount. I worked with Nintendo for many years and in my industry it would be handy to be able to read it as well.

Read: A tiny bit of Hangul.

Speak: A slightly larger amount of Korean than I can read.

Otherwise, I retain little or none of the German and French
that I learned in high school. Only the most scattered and inane bits will return to me occasionally.

I'm still learning English, my "native" language.

I can read American, English Canadian and Australian. So 4.

I can read a little German.

I usedtocould Finnish and had 2 years of Russian 1 in college

My native language is Catalan. Can also fluently read Spanish and English, not so fluently French, Occitan and Italian (no lessons taken but similar enough).

French, Spanish, Russian (newspaper = middle school reading level), German (at a Hellboy comics and Harry Potter books competency) a bit slowly, Koine Greek even slower and Masoretic Hebrew if you're not in a particular hurry. I am also fluent in West Virginian, but we don't have a written language.

English, Italian (newspapers, mostly) & working on Gaelic: especially poetry.
The problem with the Gael is I don't have anyone to speak to anymore.

French. Spanish. English. A bit of German. Would like to learn Latin. Tried Arabic--too hard!

OSchmidt had a couple of questions:

How many of you would like to either learn another, or become more expert in ONE of the ones you do?

I recently studied a lot of information about the original meanings of the Phoenician/Hebrew/Greek/Roman/Cyrillic letters from when they were pictograms, which I found fascinating.

Second WHY?

I found it useful in other studies. The individual letters can encode great meaning.