164 replies to this topic

[SillyLily]

How many folks here on AVEN are bilingual or multilingual? I guess Esperanto, Lojban, etc. count as languages (if anyone here speaks them) because they have structure.

As far as I'm concerned, if you can communicate effectively to someone in that language, you speak it. For example, English is my native language but I'm making grammar errors and learning new words all of the time.

But yeah, I just want to know how many languages you can speak. I can speak English and Spanish. I can understand German and I'm learning Esperanto.

[Chicken + Centipede =]

I answered 3, but it's more like 3.1, since I am learning Japanese and already speak English, Italian, and Spanish.

[NothingHere]

I speak like 1.5 I guess because I speak English, but am also learning Esperanto and Norwegian. I voted one though, 'cause I'm only fluent in English at this point.

[Jicragg]

Does Klingon count?

[Bero]

By "speak," do you mean fluently, or can hold a decent conversation/say most anything you want to with circumlocution and all that jazz?

[Baroness Peron]

I rounded up to 2, even though I only speak 1.5. My comprehension of German is pretty darn good (particularly reading comprehension) but my speaking is survival level at best.

[ily]

I speak English, a little Spanish (although I'm barely conversational) and a tiny bit of Japanese (sad because I studied it for 3 years). I really want to get up to 2 languages spoken, but I'm not sure how to motivate myself. It would be useful to speak Spanish more fluently, but I don't *need* to, so it always ends up being something that gets pushed to the back burner. I used to be extremely passionate about learning Japanese, but my interest faded. So I'm also not sure which language to choose as my #2; something I've already started with, or something else entirely. Ay dios mio.

[Slavaa]

Being Canadian, I am almost required by law to know French and English. My French isn't amazing, but it's certainly passable.

[The Doctor Who?]

1) English
@) French
3) Latin (well, I don't SPEAK.. )
4) Sign Language
x

[Flying Hazels]

1) English
2)Polish
3)Icelandic

[gbrd143]

English, and some very rusty Spanish. Not fluent, though. (I like the term: "survival level" )

-gb

[Human]

1) English
@) French
3) Latin (well, I don't SPEAK.. )
4) Sign Language
x

What sign language? ASL? BSL? Some other?

EDIT: Might as well post list of languages i can speak.

1) finnish, native language
2) english, fluent
3) swedish, fluent
4) french, at a level where i could propably handle a simple conversation
5) latin, i don't speak it but i understand it
6) scots, if you don't count it as english dialect

And the first ones on my very long list of languages i want to learn are finnish sign language, greenlandic, spanish and nahuatl, both classical and modern (i know some classical nahuatl, but only VERY little).

[Næt.]

I can speak Japanese and Spanish, both at rudimentary levels (though my Spanish is the least rudimentary of the two).

[Ignotus]

well ..
Swedish, English, Arabic, French,Swahilli, German and a little japanese but i can undestand a few words from korean too ^__^

[henrik]

Only Finnish and English in my case. I'd like to know more, but it has not been meant to be so far.

[XxFallenAngelxX]

i only speak english fluently... but i've had a few crappy conversations in spanish too, lol. i know spanish, but i suck at it.

[SillyLily]

By "speak," do you mean fluently, or can hold a decent conversation/say most anything you want to with circumlocution and all that jazz?

Enough to hold a decent conversation.

[Tashishka]

I'm a native English speaker and am (apparently) fluent in French and German. I've been studying them for around 10 years now so should be pretty darned fluent. I seem to have a decent enough grasp of French to survive living in and going to uni in France for six months.

I can also hold my own in Spanish and Italian, though my level of fluency is nowhere near that of my French and German as I have only been studying them for 3 years. Granted they have been 3 very intense years meaning that I am now around a-level standard in them, but still. Give me French and German over those two any day

I also know a little Dutch (i.e. Survival level. My conversational skills are lacking, but my reading and oral comprehension are pretty good) and some Norwegian. I dabble in Scots and Irish Gaelic along with Russian, but those three are a side project for me at the moment. I have no idea when Scots or Irish Gaelic would be all that useful, it just seemed like a good idea. I have a rudimentary grasp of BSL too as one of my best friends siblings is deaf and I figured I should learn, rather than just depending on her ability to lip read.

[Dylan-Michael]

1.5
Native English, and decent Spanish.

[Shockwave]

I'm fluent in English and ASL, to the point that I was a professional interpreter for a year. Other than that I have limited knowledge of Spanish and German. So I voted 2.

[Wedge]

My main language is English, although I do know some German, and a very small amount of Arabic.

[Jockey]

English is my first language.
Hebrew used to be my most comfortable language, enough so that my teachers after my family moved back to the US thought English was my second language.
I'm sort of fascinated by ASL and can hold a conversation in it. Occasionally I even act as unpaid interpreter in informal settings, but I don't think I do justice to what people are saying when I do.
I also know some basic Spanish, Arabic, Aramaic, French, Latin and Chinese. Chinese I can recognize a lot of characters in but really can't speak or understand because my ability to hear and speak tones is awful.

[La Diablesse]

Do dialects count ? Because I can speak Jamaican and Trinidadian dialects.

Other than that I can speak standard English , Spanish and semi fluent in Japanese.
So I chose 5.

[Marco - Proprietor of Doom]

Just English, with a tiny understanding of German and some Irish(as though that is a use to anyone).

[Duva]

I think it's hard to draw any clear lines of when I can speak a language or not, and even of course what a language is... As for me, Swedish is my first language and I dare say I'm fluent in English as well. Spanish I read without big problems, understand it spoken slightly less and speak ok I guess. Latin I read well, write well and could in theory carry on conversations on I'd guess. Ancient Greek (at least Attic, Ionian and Koiné) I read quite well and I can write quite well, if I have some time. I can also read Church Slavonic and a bit of Old French (Langue d'Oïl) quite well.

But I can also carry on conversations with Danes and Norwegians with no problems, I can understand (especially written) parts of German and Dutch (even get some meaning across myself), I can communicate a bit with Italians and I've found that at least written but also a bit spoken I do indeed understand in part all Romance languages (Portuguese, Catalan, Galician, Ligurian, Venetian, Romanian, French, Occitan etc).

So, basically I'm not sure whether I should answer 2 or 6+ in this poll

[LKtheGreat]

I answered three. English: Very fluent. Spanish: Passable reading, acceptable-not-great writing with a dictionary at hand, hopeless speaking/listening. My conlang: Well, I'm fluent in what there is! But I'm working at expanding it, so...

[Blind.Archer]

English, Japanese, and Sindarin. Some Quenya. If you count those last two, that is. Oh, and I can speak a lil bit of spanish..but not enoug to count.

[Vhin]

I'm torn between selecting four or five.

I can speak:
English
Spanish
Chinese
Japanese

However, I do know one other "language" - braille. But I don't know if I should put it because it's just a different representation of English characters.

[ChooseYourBattles]

Well, let's see, fluent in:
- BASIC
- FORTRAN
- Pascal
- Assembly languages - 6502 / 68000 (processors popular before most folks on this board were born)
- C

Some exposure to:
- Matlab
- C++
- Java

No exposure to:
- Cobol

If you meant human-human rather than human-machine languages:
- English
- can read French fairly well, can massacre it with ease while speaking it
- a bit of Swedish and Danish

[Nemisor]

I speak Finnish (my native tongue), English (studied for 8 year), and a little bit of French (studied for five years, not studying anymore) & Swedish (studied for five years). I can understand little bit of Estonian and Spanish too.