How many languages do you speak?

[zuludelta]

I've always been interested in linguistics (I probably have enough linguistics credits to qualify for a degree at this point, although it's not my real field), and languages in general. Anyway, I'm curious, any multilingual FreedomReborners out there?

I speak 4 languages: English, Tagalog (or Filipino, whatever the official language of the Philippines is called now), Ilokano (an Austronesian language spoken in the Northern Philippines), and some French (although I'm pretty rusty, haven't really used it since taking it in university).

Additionally, Because I grew up in a university/tourist-trap town in the Northern Philippines that had a diverse multicultural/ethnic mix (we even had disproportionately large Korean, Japanese, and Chinese populations for such a small town), I have a very limited understanding of (but am unable to speak) more obscure Philippine languages like Ibaloi, Kankana-ey, and Kalinga (literally, "headhunter").

Also picked up some Mandarin from my grandparents and my last girlfriend and Japanese from friends (and spending too much time watching Japanese shows), but it's more like just a familiarity with commonly used terms and phrases than than any real understanding of the languages.

[The Hitman]

I speak 2 languages fluently, not counting "Pig Latin," "Binary Code" (yes, it's a language), and "Hillbillie Gibberish" (from working in retail for years in a primarily redneck town).

English is the main one, but people are usually taken aback by my knowledge of the French language. There's a good reason for that- my mom's a french teacher and had lived in France for a couple of years. You ask "What's that got to do with anything?" Well, after I was born, she only spoke french to me for my first year. I guess it was to see if I developed an accent, or something. Anyways, french has almost always been second nature. Meh.

[JKCarrier]

English is pretty much it for me. I took some German in high school, but I never became fluent, and by now I've forgotten what little I learned.

[YoungHeros]

Well... i can speak Danish, english and a bit latin(just a Hobby ^_^)

[Intensity]

I speak English fluently... lol...

but I am on my way to grasping the Korean language.  I can read Hangul, or Korean text, and have a basic understanding of communication and formalities.  I plan to continue and become bilingual one day, which is why I listed myself as knowing two.

[Cousin]

I speak English and Polish  ^_^ And i'm starting to learn Italian  :cool:

[detourne_me]

I'll mark myself as two. 
the thing is i can understand 3 (french and korean being the other two) in normal conversation and written text, but I can't quite speak very well. In fact I had a copy of a korean movie "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance"  but the only subtitle files were in French.  I was able to watch the movie ok, by combining my listening and reading.  but i know i missed out on a lot of the more subtle jokes and mature discussion.
I also worked for a Linguist one summer, doing technical work for his interactive linguistic atlas of spain and portugal,  so I was able to learn to find differences in regional dialects... but i spent most of my time photoshopping pre-civil war photos.

[GGiant]

I've always been interested in linguistics (I probably have enough linguistics credits to qualify for a degree at this point, although it's not my real field), and languages in general. Anyway, I'm curious, any multilingual FreedomReborners out there?

I speak 4 languages: English, Tagalog (or Filipino, whatever the official language of the Philippines is called now), Ilokano (an Austronesian language spoken in the Northern Philippines), and some French (although I'm pretty rusty, haven't really used it since taking it in university).

Additionally, Because I grew up in a university/tourist-trap town in the Northern Philippines that had a diverse multicultural/ethnic mix (we even had disproportionately large Korean, Japanese, and Chinese populations for such a small town), I have a very limited understanding of (but am unable to speak) more obscure Philippine languages like Ibaloi, Kankana-ey, and Kalinga (literally, "headhunter").

Also picked up some Mandarin from my grandparents and my last girlfriend and Japanese from friends (and spending too much time watching Japanese shows), but it's more like just a familiarity with commonly used terms and phrases than than any real understanding of the languages.

Filipino is the language and Tagalog and Ilokano are dialects.....I think? :unsure:
I am a minor that speaks English and Tagalog. :unsure:

[Alaric]

In addition to English, I speak some Welsh (I have no known Welsh anscestry, just got interested in the language a while back)- enough to carry on a basic conversation, or read at least some books for younger readers without the use of a welsh-english dictionary (it's easier with one, though), picking up words I don't know from the context. I'm somewhat rusty right now, though... haven't really used the language for the past seven years or so...

In the distant past, I've taken some Spanish and German, but I don't consider myself to know either language well enough to include it here.

[zuludelta]

In addition to English, I speak some Welsh (I have no known Welsh anscestry, just got interested in the language a while back)- enough to carry on a basic conversation, or read at least some books for younger readers without the use of a welsh-english dictionary (it's easier with one, though), picking up words I don't know from the context.

Did you take classes for it? It's a very musical language in the instances that I've heard it spoken, but the grammar's a little tough to suss out (it's always a favourite in the linguistics exams I've taken).

I've taken some Spanish and German, but I don't consider myself to know either language well enough to include it here.

I have a passing familiarity with Spanish because there are a lot of Spanish loan-words and phrases in Tagalog/Filipino but not enough to carry on or follow a full conversation. My mum enrolled me in a German class run by a parent-volunteer when I was 7 but I freaked out on my first day and never went back (hey, I was 7!).

[Alaric]

In addition to English, I speak some Welsh (I have no known Welsh anscestry, just got interested in the language a while back)- enough to carry on a basic conversation, or read at least some books for younger readers without the use of a welsh-english dictionary (it's easier with one, though), picking up words I don't know from the context.

Did you take classes for it?

I started teachning myself from a book, then took some classes being offered through the New York St. Daivid's Society. Then, for a number of years, every summer I took a week-long course offered by a group called Cymdeithas Madog, in a different part of North America (US or Canada) every year. In the year 2000, the course was actually in Wales, the only time I've ever been there, and the last time I took that or any other Welsh course. Between courses, I used to practice by reading books I had ordered from a Welsh language mail order catalog.

t's a very musical language in the instances that I've heard it spoken,

Yes. To the Welsh, singing is kind of like breathing for most people. I find that it's actually a lot easier to pronounce the language correctly while singing than while speaking. The northern dialect is generally considered less musical than the southern dialect, though.

but the grammar's a little tough to suss out (it's always a favourite in the linguistics exams I've taken).

Strangely enough, the grammer is exactly what I love most about the language, though it's difficult to explain why. Yes, it seems a little... quirky, with the verb coming first, some unusual uses of the possessive structure, no simple way to say "yes" or "no" (it depends on how the question's phrased), etc., etc., but there's something about the work order that appeals strongly to me. Of course, when I started learning, the spelling, which at the time looked to me like a blindfolded person had been typing, was one of the big draws. It doesn't look that way to me any more...

And, for comic-book readers, Welsh shares an interesting trait with the other Celtic languages; it's got mutations.

I've taken some Spanish and German, but I don't consider myself to know either language well enough to include it here.

I have a passing familiarity with Spanish because there are a lot of Spanish loan-words and phrases in Tagalog/Filipino but not enough to carry on or follow a full conversation. My mum enrolled me in a German class run by a parent-volunteer when I was 7 but I freaked out on my first day and never went back (hey, I was 7!).

I always find it funny that I felt more motivated to learn a failry "useless" language than either of the more "useful" ones I've tried. After all, almost all Welsh speakers also speak English. Well, except in Patagonia, of course... there, the other language tends to be Spanish...

[Reepicheep]

I speak German and English and for later note, I put a third - I'm learning Spanish

[vamp]

Well the two languages I know are English and Spanish, though I am terrible at spelling in both. I know more than a few variations for Spanish (Argentinian, Puerto Rican, Spanish, and Mexican).

I know bits and pieces of other languages too, but just barely enough for a few simply question/answers. I know a little of French,  and a tad of Hebrew(well at least that is what I think its called). I also know a few remarks in Hindi. But I am a bit rusty in these areas so i didn't include them as languages I knew.

[lmalonsof]

I was born in Spain... so spanish is my mother language. Here in Spain we used to study latin and greek at highschool as part of our formation in literature. I want to think I can also speak english and I'm studying chinese (pinyin). There's a big market there, you know...

[Doom]

DOOM knows all languages. None shall challenge DOOM's knowledge!!

-DOOM!
:doom2:

[XPTO]

I am Portuguese, so this one is hard for most of you heeh, i also know Spanish, English, a bit of Latin and French.

[Cardmaster]

Well, English is my primary..

And then I took 6 years of french but can't speak a word..

and now for the sake of communicating with my girlfriend's family I'm learning Cantonese... (a spoken dialect of Chinese)

buuuut that's not going so well. Heh.

-CM

[zuludelta]

and now for the sake of communicating with my girlfriend's family I'm learning Cantonese... (a spoken dialect of Chinese)

buuuut that's not going so well. Heh.

-CM

I imagine learning Cantonese would be pretty tough... aren't there like nine tones in that language, compared to Mandarin's four? Oh, and by the way, Cantonese isn't just a Chinese dialect, it's a separate language, although most native Cantonese speakers who've grown in mainland China and Taiwan had to learn Standard Mandarin in school (this is where most of the confusion about whether it's a dialect or a separate language comes from).

I tried learning Mandarin when I was still with my previous girlfriend, and the biggest stumbling block (besides wondering if I was actually mangling the language and saying something offensive to her mother) was distinguishing tones on the fly.

When I was a kid, my grandfather would sometimes talk to us in Hokkien/Fujian (he spoke the Philippine dialect variant called Lan-nang), but I never did take the time to learn from him.

Filipino is the language and Tagalog and Ilokano are dialects.....I think? :unsure:
I am a minor that speaks English and Tagalog. :unsure:

Not really. "Filipino" is basically the standardized version of Tagalog, sort of like how what most people refer to as "Chinese" is standardized Mandarin. Ilokano is a distinct language from Tagalog, the same way that Cantonese is distinct from Mandarin, in that they are not cross-intelligible (Just because you can speak/understand the one language doesn't mean you can automatically speak/understand the other).

A good rule of thumb when distinguishing a dialect from a "true" language is that speakers of a dialect can generally converse with other dialect speakers in the same language. For example, people who speak "British/Imperial English" can, for the most part, be understood by people who speak "American English" and "Australian English" or even a far more removed dialect like "Singapore English (Singlish)." On the other hand, a person who speaks only Ilokano wouldn't be able to understand a conversation held in Tagalog.

Ilokano vocabulary retains many innate similarities with the other Outer Hesperonesian languages (particularly those spoken in Borneo), while Tagalog vocabulary is much more liberally sprinkled with Chinese and Spanish loanwords... many of the Tagalog terms for cooking, food, plants and especially familial relations, for example, are "Malay"-ized versions of Fujian and/or Mandarin words: até ("eldest sister") is derived from the Fujian a-chi while kuya ("eldest brother") is derived from the Mandarin keh-ya.

[bat1987]

I marked two. I speak serbian (mother language) and English, although I studied french for six years, I can only understand simple conversations (french talk too fast :D).

[the_ultimate_evil]

english and belfast

[Doom]

DOOM speaks 3+ languages.

[catastrophe]

I speak Norwegian and English fluently, and danish pretty well :)

i love danish.

[Sgt. Friday]

you could say I speak two: English and Polish, I never did learn Polish very well, (I could understand it all right, just I couldn't speak it well) and haven't used it in over 2 years so I've lost what little I had.

[jocke32]

I speak English ,swedish ,norske,danske,deutch,finish (soumi) and a bit russian

[Thor]

The Odinson doth speak only Norse; thine ears heareth whatever thou expecteth to propagate from mine lips.

[BWPS]

English and a little Ebonics.