"How Lingual Are You?" Topic

English as my primary and Thai as I've had a home there since '85.

Due to my work at various times I've had a good grasp of Gulf Arabic, Cantonese, Italian and now Russian. The problems with language all come down to 'use it or lose it'. I can still count to a hundred in these and another half dozen languages; order beer, pizza and hookers plus rabidly swear in about 15 languages.

Ahh my youth.

I would love to be able to speak other languages but, try as I might, I fail miserably each time. I just don't retain the grammar and everyday phrases that other seem to be able to pick up quickly.

I can manage translating some simple texts from French & German using a dictionary – though on-line translation is quicker, if a little hit and miss.

I sometimes practice and read up before going abroad but it just falls apart when I try it in practice. With large numbers of others having English it makes it embarrassing not be able to reciprocate.

With three 'official' Flemish/Dutch, French and German (ie taught in school) languages in Belgium, that's an unfair head-start. English because of my mother (Irish) and my interests.
Spanish because I simply love the language. Swedish is surprisingly similar to Flemish ( written)so I can read most Swedish texts. Very helpful with my GNW interest
Tried to learn Russian but failed miserably. But as Narratio said, use it or lose it. I lived in Germany for more than seven years and my German has become decidedly rusty. A once a year trip to Tactica simply isn't enough.

English is my schooled language, Scots Gaelic my first home language,Friulian from the POWs I called uncle and some German from work.

All but the English may have died due to lack of use. All were spoken only as being Dyslexic I only learned to read English.

x42

I wish I were fluent in Quenya and Sindarin. Among others.

I speak English, though I sometimes spell words with the "English" manner, IE: Colour, Armour, Honour, etc. That's because my mother, from whom I learned to speak, was Australian. So technically, when I was little, I spoke 'Strine, though living in Iowa at the time made for a problematical childhood. Dad was away with the Navy, or Business, so Mom was the big influence there.

Interestingly, I lost that accent as I grew older, mostly from being around other American kids, especially after we moved to Utah when I was 6. I should say that the accent was repressed, because as soon as I get around Aussies, it starts coming back into my speech.

Anyway, I learned what I thought was Spanish all through school, until I actually got stationed in Spain with the US Navy. Then I learned what I had actually been taught was Mexican. Basically similar, but with differences here and there. Sort of like ordering "Biscuits & Gravy" in Great Britain.

Because of my various deployments (Navy Aircrew) throughout Europe and the med, I also learned what I refer to as survival German and Survival French. Enough to get around, feed myself, find shelter, and not get arrested.

My daughter is having a similar experience to my Mexican/Spanish with her French. She's taken it all through school, and now into college, but when she & I toured Quebec, we found similar dialectic differences.

Sorry for the long post, but I wish I was more fluent in other languages. I have tried. Currently hoping to start Russian this fall. That may well devolve into learning Latin, depending on how I can master Cryllic.

I am English but have lived in Switzerland since 2001. I speak English, "high" German and Swiss German every day at work. I can also get by in French. I voted 3 because Swiss German is a dialect rather than a true seperate language.

I had to qualify on written translation French-English and German-English in the doctoral program. I have had just enough Spanish to hold simple conversations with monolngual immigrants, and with three years in Germany, my conversational German used to be passable.
But given the poll uses the present tense, I picked "1'"

Needs a "one and a bit and a smattering of phrases in a few others but not what you'd really call fluent"

Does Klingon count?

When I was younger I spoke Portuguese and English as my mother was born in Portugal and came here at a very early age. I was quite fluent with my grandmother and still got by when my wife and I went to Portugal in the 1970s but since both my grandmother and mother are deceased I have lost most of it. I also remember my grandmother telling her friends "speak English, your in America now".

I have studied, at different points in my life, French, German, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese. I pick up languages very quickly (family trait) but, unfortunately, I forget them just as quickly if I can't use them at least a few times a week.

Thus, 1 on the poll.

LT

How about the language of love?

I am only fluent in one, however I still remember bits and pieces of the three/four other languages where I have been deployed to. not enough to speak but a few polite words and a few impolite ones- just enough to get into trouble.

Definitely a use it or lose it thing for me.

One, though I did study Latin, French and German and know a few phrases in Arabic from a summer in Israel. I still use those, my favorite being (excuse my phonetic spelling and divisions, as I'm not even certain which sounds are distinct words) "Ya salaam ya'hepti ya wada di," which roughly means "oh my goodness, oh boy, I've never had a problem like this before," (probably not an exact translation). A nurse who had worked at the Baptist hospital in Gaza taught me the phrase, and said it's what the pregnant ladies in Gaza often cried out when giving birth. I use it in the same way the characters on Firefly use Chinese swear words. Assuming, of course, that this Alabama boy pronounces it correctly, which is doubtful.

I get by in 3
Fluent in 1

Here in America they need to start teaching languages earlier. Younger children pick up on speaking other languages so much faster than even teenagers. Also the way languages are taught here needs to change. A more immersive method is always better than pure memorization of rules and vocabulary with no ability to use it.

I ditto VicCina. I tried Spanish, French and German and got
nowhere since I have no natural facility for languages. Immersion and starting young should work wonders and will be more important in the World of the Future!

English and enough German and Spanish to get by. I can sort of puzzle out written Russian, and I've all but lost my Swedish, Lakota, and Anishinabe. So maybe 3.

Native English.

I was once fluent in German, but it would take about a month in Germany (or better – Austria) to get it back.

I could get by in Turkish at one point but that has withered away to a list of foods and some bad language (it's amazing what sticks with you)

I am about 60% in Spanish. I can read perfectly well, but I listens slower that the average hispanohablante speaks. More work to be done there before my next trip to Uruguay.

I speak American and a little bit of English.

American-English, Mexican-Spanish, and still have my Parisian-French from 12 yrs of schooling. Quebecois was a real eye-opener, though, when I visited back in the 70's.

English and French for me – when you do things with the Federal government in Canada it helps to know French so I have kept it up – and further to Kevin's point the way French is spoken in Quebec can be a little challenging (not all of the syllables are pronounced)

I can get by in German (order meals, buy train tickets, but would not want to discuss Gothe) and picked up medical Spanish for my work in the ER (our fastest growing population in central southwestern Ontario are Spanish speakers, mostly Columbian and from El Salvador); the Latin that I learned in school is great for quotes but not much else

English, Strine, Scottish (yes it is a separate language, not a dialect), pidgin, from time in the isalnds, a bit of Afrikaans,some German and broken French. Mostly I speak rubbish. Oh and fluent in bureaucratese (which is a pidgin Mandarin of course.. :-)

How fluent is necessary for a language to count as spoken?