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]

[dingman]

I speak American English natively. My French is good enough that I've more than once had Frenchmen ask me what part of the country I was from (made my day every time) though I don't write it nearly so well. I'm also not in practice, so it would probably take me a week or so to get back into the swing of it. Depending on the accent of the person I'm talking with I can get along fairly well in Haitian Creole. I speak a smattering of German, but it's a last resort. Probably the next language I'll take on will be Spanish, since here in the US it would be more useful than anything else I speak except English.

[digitalghost]

Primary is American English, I read and speak Latin, read Greek, (can't speak it, dipthongs kill me), I can read French and Spanish, (Latin helps) and some German but I have those dictionaries on a CD and I refer to them often.

I study Middle English and Old English but only because I want to be Tolkien when I grow up. ;)

[JonB]

slovenian is my mother language.

apart from that i speak (less or better)- english,german,croatian,serbian and even 20+ words or sentences in Vietnamese :)

[Nick_W]

English - Danish (poorly) - Get by in German

Order a beer in Spanish - French

Nick

[troels nybo nielsen]

JonB

I wonder what specific kind of vietnamese words you know. :-)

[troels nybo nielsen]

Skaal, Nick!

[stever]

Essex English ;) - then German (good), French (good), Italian (functional)

[digitalghost]

01000001011011000110110101101111011100110111010000100000011001100110111101110010
01100111011011110111010000101100001000000100100100100000011000110110000101101110
00100000011100000111001001100101011101000111010001111001001000000110110101110101
01100011011010000010000001110010011001010110000101100100001000000110001001101001
01101110011000010111001001111001001011100010000001010100011000010110101101100101
01110011001000000110000101110111011010000110100101101100011001010010110000100000
01100010011101010111010000100000011101000110100001100101001000000111000001100001
01110100011101000110010101110010011011100111001100100000011000010111001001100101
00100000011101000110100001100101011100100110010100101110001000000011101000101001

[JonB]

troels nybo nielsen; all the dirty ones ;) and "BIA".

seriously - nice phrase is "anh yeu em" which is "i love you " (male to female).i stayed in Vietnam for 3 months from june to september 2002.at age 25 i loved it.i will go back next year. i was there for personal trip and doing some research on NGO's for possible work in the future.. i am very interested in humanitarian/volunteer work over there - building hosues, working in asylum ,helping poor children etc.

Vn is difficult langiuage since it istonal language. word said with 6 different accents can have 6 different meanings.for example word "ma" can have meanings like : mother, horse,ghost etc. imagine visiting some gfamilly and greeting the mother with "nice to meet you horse!" :)

and the vietnamese girls/women ARE the most beautiful women in the world.old saying is true! :)

Jon

lol. digitalhost..i can also speak c++,html etc

[curlykarl]

My local English dialect :

[archive.long-eaton.com...]

[Mike_Mackin]

For our member living in the South -
Abbreviated Guide to Proper YankeeTalk [countryhumor.com]

[Onza]

Swiss German - Grüezi mitenand!

and of course ordinary German, English and French.
Some Spanish.

[piskie]

I write, speak and understand English plus I get by when conversing with Americans.

[tbear]

English (like a native), spanish not quite native but working on it, German, like a child :)

[ppg]

its a cause of some embarassment to me that, like most of my countrymen, I'm ignorant when it comes to other languages.

I can however remember this from my GCE french:

poor quality tape recorded voice:

"ecoute et repeter:
Madame Marsaud est dans le jardin".

*beep*

me:

Madam marso est dons le gardin

I've got a pretty broad north of England accent so i'm on to a losing battle when I try to speak french. People laugh. I shut up.

[andreasfriedrich]

I canīt recall any text from my English or French text books but I remember clearly this text from a widely used Latin text book:

Marcus hodie in Colosseo est.
Sed ubi est Cornelia?
Marcus diu expectat.
Subito videt:
Ibi Cornelia stat!
Marcus gaudet et vocet.
Et Cornelia gaudet et salutat.

Andreas

[vibgyor79]

English (international language)
Hindi (national language)
Kannada (local language)

[Mark_A]

1. Habla solo una pocito quando soy in Francia ... y muy mal
2. Parle seulemont un petit peu et tres mauvais en Espanol.
3. Speak some Deutch and write with awful grammar.
4. Aber schriftlich und sprachlich in English bin ich am bestens zu hause :-)

5.6.7.8. Ohrago andragand Schreirebeiberege auregauch "uligu" laraga-naranaguage irigin aaragall ofogof theregem.

I guess that makes 8 plus beer speek :-)

[Woz]

English, although with an Australian flavour.

Chinese in two dialects, Conversational Mandarin, and a smattering of Cantonese.

Onya
Woz

[Eric_Jarvis]

English moderately well

French, Russian and Italian if I'm around people using them for long enough

in addition I currently work in:
Danish
Dutch
German
Spanish
and Portuguese

with only a little help from online translators

and:

Chinese
Japanese
Arabic
Finnish
Hungarian
Swahili
Hindi
and Bengali

all entirely with the aid of online translators

next year I'm hoping to add Serbian, Korean, Xhosa, Hausa, Urdu, Thai and one of the Indonesian languages

my native tongue is Gibberish

[austtr]

English and Strine

I once learned German for "do you have a sister" but as I was living in New Guinea at the time, the opportunity to use it was somewhat limited.

[lorax]

> the opportunity to use it was somewhat limited

Probably a good thing eh? ;)

Well I'm not so well trained as y'all. American English is my 1st language. I am a Vermont Yankee and can speak the dialect quite well. Other than these, I took three years of French - flunked all 3. Abhored Latin - why wear togas if we can't drink beer in school? Thought Spanish would be as bad as French and opted to cut my losses. Am currently dabbling in Italian and would love to learn Irish Gaelic (sorry BOL).

[Quinn]

Spanish - English

I would be interested in knowing the percentages of Americans on this board, and the percentage of those who are responding to this thread...

[Key_Master]

English and Spanish fluently. Tried to learn to speak French but with no success. PS, I love the way French women speak.

Yo soy Americano.

[transistor]

Spanish native (Mexican spanish).
English, well, you be the judge! (I like to think it is pretty good).

I recall I could understand French some time ago, I don't think I can anymore :(

[bird]

Speak swiss dialect as a native (two different varieties, if necessary).
Speak and write german and english fluently.
Might get mistaken as a native french speaker for the length of one sentence, but will run out of vocabulary during the second.
Can decipher some italian and spanish (as a late tribute to all the latin teachers I drove to insanity in school).
And to my own surprise, I didn't need any books to understand andreasfriedrichs citation above either... ;)

[jatar_k]

english and french read/write/speak

can understand/read spanish but my speaking/writing is no great shakes

[Sinner_G]

German, Swiss German, French, Swiss French, Italian, Swiss Italian, English, Swiss English (for that you have to pronounce w as v and v as w :)).

[jeremy goodrich]

English - American variety, though here on the west coast :) it's spoken differently than the New York variety, though I can do that in a pinch.

Spanish - enough studying and living there with it to have people eyeball me funny (and my pasty skin) to have them wondering where I'm from...