How many languages are spoken by people here?

.... we must be a rather multilingual community

[troels nybo nielsen]

I myself read, write, speak and understand Danish. And of course the Jutlandish dialect (why isn't there a Jutlandish Google?). Like most danes I understand, but do not speak, Norwegian and Swedish. (Norway and Sweden used to be governed by the danish queen Margrethe. Not the one we have now, though.) You may yourself judge my English. My German is a little worse. I read not too complicated French and Spanish.

[edited by: troels_nybo_nielsen at 7:22 am (utc) on Oct. 27, 2002]

[deltakits]

West coast American English
Some Mexican Spanish...

Wish it was more though :(

[Trisha]

I'm American and live in the Midwest. I took 4 years of Spanish in highschool and know very little. We really didn't have the best teachers.

I'm very jealous of those of you who live in parts of the world where you are exposed to more languages and tend to know more than your native language!

I have been trying to learn more Spanish but have very little time for it. I can read some childrens books, but have to look up lots of words. I even bought the Spanish versions of Harry Potter, but they are too difficult for me.

I have also dabbled a bit in Mandarin, and if at some point I have the time I would like to learn it also.

[Drastic]

Being from a Southern State, I have been blessed with the ability to read, write, and fluently speak English, Redneck, and Jive. This has proven to be a real benefit to me, as you rarely find these languages taught in schools.

[caine]

English, and fluent in many languages when i have had a few beers, though usually no one but me seems to understand them.

Like most, i usually acquire as my first term - one pint of beer please. Una Ceverza Pour Favor

[Quinn]

This is an off topic post, but I have a quick question about use of a German conjunctive. Would anyone be willing to allow me to stickymail them my question?

_{mods feel free to yank this if unnacceptable}

[DrCool]

English mainly. I also picked up a few basic words in Lozi last year in Africa. The area I was in had 60 different languages in a 20 mile radius and some of the people I met could speak most of them. Pretty amazing.

[Rumbas]

Danish mother tonque here as well.
English, scandinavian, german pretty well.

Velkommen til WebmasterWorld Niels ;)

[heini]

Ahh, the german conjunctive... don't expect germans to master the conjunctive ;)
fire away, Quinn

[locke]

English (American)
Spanish (Mexican)

English is my native language; I speak Spanish fluently, but it's starting to get a little rusty from lack of practice.

[marek]

I can speak/read/write Czech (native), English, Russian and read Esperanto and German a little.

[mykel]

Polish(my native language) and American English - pretty good too I must brag, most Americans and English ask me what I, as an American, am doing here in Poland. Like someone else said before - makes my day every time :)
As for my English, I actually never knew there was something like a Chicago accent, until I spoke with an American in Germany who said he instantly knew I had lived in that city, by the way I spoke.
Oh, and some German, too.

[starec]

My mother tongue is Slovak.

Speak some English and Spanish, too.

[Dumpy]

When I was a kid in Colorado...long before TV...I used to walk five miles to the gas station on the highway. Locals would gather there to get a soda from the ice box and listen to the people who stopped for gas TALK FUNNY.

We often thought they were talking a foreign language, because we couldn't understand anything they said. The guy who owned the station said they were talking American, but he couldn't understand a lot of them.

Since then American speech has become almost uniform, except for <certain subcultures>, who seem to be speaking their own language.

I speak American English, fairly well, and some School Spanish...which gets very strange reactions all through Mexico and Central America. Sometimes it gets big laughs.

[edited by: mivox at 7:32 pm (utc) on Oct. 29, 2002]
[edit reason] no need to target specific groups [/edit]

[dingman]

I speak American English, fairly well, and some School Spanish...which gets very strange reactions all through Mexico and Central America. Sometimes it gets big laughs.

In college, I spent a semester in Martinique, which is legally part of France just like the maintland, but has some linguistic and cultural differences - as one might expect from a caribbean island a few thousand miles away from the rest of the country. One of them is that an archaic French word for 'hill' is still in common usage in Martinique, and naturally this word crept into our speech while we were there. In fact, since it's the word everyone uses, we darned near forgot that there was another word.

Two years later, one of my friends who was in Martinique with me decided that she was going to change her major to French and take another semester abroad, this time in mainland France. I wasn't there to see it, but apparently she caused no end of confusion and humor using the word she knew that none of the native speakers around her did, and having a horrible time switching her speech over to the one currently used in mainland France.

[dan_popescu]

My native language is Romanian. I also speak American English. Some French too. I love English, and I hate it that I don't get a chance to use it when talking to people here in Romania.

Dan

[oilman]

There's no doot aboot it - I proudly speak Candian English eh! :)

[mivox]

Well, I speak American English, and a smidgen of Italian... and I got by OK while in England, but I generally had at least one genuine "English" speaker near at all times to translate.

(Why didn't anyone tell me nobody would know what I was talking about when I asked where the "restroom" was?)

[tedster]

I grew up in Pennsylvania German country (commonly called Pennsylvania Dutch) - so I use American English and understand some of that particular hybrid of English/German.

A few years of "real" German in college helped me sort things out. At this point, "Pennsie Deutsch" affects my word order and pronunciation a lot less than it used to.

[zeb]

My native language is Finnish. I have lived eight years in Stockholm and after that for 17 years in the bilingual (Finnish/Swedish) part of Finland. So I guess I'm almost bilingual.

I've also read French and German in high school, but that was 30 years ago, so most of it is "deleted".

Some English too.

[veneerz]

me spika gibberish!
cookies plz?

[saurabh]

I speak Hindi(my native language) and English(not sure of the version :).

[NotNervous]

Suthin', ya'll know what I mean?

[troels nybo nielsen]

It seems that this thread is running to an end. But before completely letting it down I have to thank Rumbas for his welcome. (Although he got confused by my many names and happened to give me that of my two grandfathers'.) It always feels homely to meet another dane when being abroad. :-)

Troels

[BlobFisk]

English (English)
English (American)
German
Irish
Some Italian
Some Spanish
Some French

And a few sentances of:
Swedish
Russian
Nepali

[bill]

...can fight my way out of a sushi bar in Japanese...

[daikon]

...and I might be able to talk them into letting you back in...

[vitaplease]

I can argue in Swiss-German,
and others would argue if Swiss-German is a language..

[Sinner_G]

and others would argue if Swiss-German is a language..

Swiss-German is not a language but a genetical disease. ;)

[vitaplease]

Well at least I can eat Italian fluently

[Tor]

Norwegian (my native language)

English (quite fluently)
German (sufficiant for vacation and reading newspapers)
Spanish (lived in Spain for 2 years)