Do You Speak Any Foreign Languages?

[thongd4me 69]

I can get by in Spanish, French & Japanese, have studied Farsi, Russian and spoke Amhariña while in Ethiopia (2 years). My Thai is a "work in progress."

I know some colorful cursewords in Arabic and can say hello in about dozen languages.

Someone who speaks only one language (American) is monolingual...also known as "bigfoot" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_Grande

[familyguy 2]

American

[Nik+Heather 121]

I took Spanish in high school. I retained enough to speak what I call "billboard Spanish" meaning that in context (with the picture) I can understand a billboard. I can conjugate in the simple tenses, but when you get to present perfect conditional (or whatever), that's when I decided I'd had quite enough, thank you.

I also took a few years of German in college because I had run out of other required electives and needed a break from the math-y engineering. I probably would have been much better served doing more Spanish (esp. considering that I live in Phoenix!), but was afraid that they would put me in classes where I would have to read books (gasp) and write long essays, and that was my least favorite part about school, so I decided to start a new language which would be more flash cards and vocabulary memorization than anything else.

Edited April 1, 2010 by Nik+Heather

[redglasses 1]

Just native tongues of my husband and myself.

I am feeling the need for Spanish these days though.

[TheBears 9]

In order of fluency.

Husby: Thai (native language) and English (studied in Australia for a year and is married to an American)

Wifey: English (native language), Thai (thanks to Husby and ex), Spanish (step-father is Puerto Rican), Lao (ex's family was from the Thai/Lao border) currently working on Mandarin (as in, I'm just now learning how to count to 10).

We met through a language exchange service. We speak to each other in Thai. My son speaks Thai at home with me and English with my family and when at school. We want to continue that for all of our children.

[Dr. Obvious 49]

In order from most proficient to least:

Me: English, German (High), Tie: Dutch/German (Low), Spanish, French, Lithuanian, Latvian.

Husband: German (High/Low), English, Dutch, French.

[Imua 0]

Me: studied Latin, French, German, Spanish and Italian in HS and college, lived in Italy for 2 years - can speak some basic Nepali and a smattering of expressions in other languages (Japanese, Hawaiian, Hindi, modern Greek). I also speak Hawaiian pidgin FWIW - grew up in da 'aina li'dat.

Govi: Native Nepali. Studied English in school, also knows Hindi (since we are going to India in 2 months, glad one of us does!)

[Caitlin2009 1]

i dont speak any other languages, but she can speak Spanish fluently

[payxibka 10,045]

in addition to Russian & English: Ukrainian, Polish & Romanian

Edited April 8, 2010 by payxibka

[Nikita2Charles 32]

Me: Enghlish, French, Creole, Russian, Tagalo. Studied Latin back in school, old catholic school days.

Can manage a little bit of spanish, a few phrases in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam.

Wife: English, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada,

[nane1104 146]

I learned english and french in highschool, took a short turkish course for a job and now I am learning ASL (American Sign Language) with my son.

[LT.Nora 7]

It's not enough languages to choose from

I speak Lithuanian (mother tongue), English, German and Russian. I can understand Spanish too if I really try

[Radkova 11]

i speak french,creole and english fluently and i've been studying korean for the past 6 years. hubby speaks somewhat of spanish lol

[thongd4me 69]

I took German from Grade 2 to Grade 9... I tried to take German by correspondence in Grade 10 but I didn't get very far because it is kind of hard to learn a language without a teacher....

my grandparents all spoke German, one set spoke Low German and the other set spoke High German (they all knew and spoke English too though)...

my parents spoke German too but they only spoke German at home when they were trying to hide their conversation from us, like when they were discussing Christmas Presents etc... they stopped that though when they realized that I could basically understand what they were saying ...

when my grandparents or whomever spoke German I could make out a word here and there but I couldn't hold a conversation in German even if my life depended on it

oops didn't read the 3rd question carefully....

my hubby can speak some Spanish and he understands a lot of it but he is not fluent in Spanish....

My family is solidly German-American, but there are no ties to Germany of any kind.

In HS I studied Spanish, then Russian in college and French while in the Peace Corps (Ethiopia).

I went to France for a French course during the rainy season break in Ethiopia.

Later on French became my strongest foreign language, with Japanese as a close

#4 after Spanish.

With 20-20 hindsight, I would have loved to learn German, but was just a casualty

of Germans in the US committing linguistic hara-kiri by virtue of laying low during

two world wars and not emphasizing their ethnicity. I don't drink beer, nor do I know

of any family ties in Germany. My friends growing up were mostly Jewish & Italian.

My brother's daughters are both studying German.

Now German will have to wait until I'm better at Thai.

[SunShineFL 0]

me: Filipino, English, Spanish, Arabic a smattering of Italian and French

Hubby: English, Korean, Thai and Japanese. I'm teaching him Spanish and Filipino now