Foreign languages

[Brian F]

What languages can you speak?

I'm a native English speaker but I'm reasonably fluent in German as my wife is from Berlin and speaks a lot of German to me at home. We also visit her family over there several times a year. I can understand virtually everything and am comfortable sitting among a group of Germans and contributing to the discussion.

I'm not one of those people who were considered to have a "natural talent" for languages at school, in fact I didn't speak any German until I was 32. But you can do it if you have the motivation to learn and people around with whom you can practise. But yeah, English is the global language and I fully understand why English speakers don't prioritise language learning, I was one of them. It is a lot of work to get to even conversational standard.

[Die Young]

Ofcourse my natural Bulgarian which allows me to kinda understand other slavic languages.I also have a good english and 1337. Speak a lil French and know some spanish words from too much GTA.

[Sir Kenneth]

Danish is my native tongue and I consider myself fluent in English as well. They started teaching us English in fourth grade when I was 9 years old, I did A level English in high school, worked and studied in South Australia for 2 years, and I have been working freelance as an interpreter, doing work for several Danish municipalities and the Danish administration of justice since the beginning of 2011. I also speak a little bit of German. I am very rusty and I don't have the greatest vocabulary any more, but I speak enough to make myself understood. Even if I have to gesticulate a little haha! I also studied Spanish in high school, but I readily admit that I don't speak any of it

Currently I am studying Italian on my own using livemocha.com. My girlfriend is Italian and under any circumstances it would be a good language to be able to speak in the field I hope to work in while I am done with school, so that is what I hope will be my 4th language

[nunoni]

I speak Portuguese pretty well and make fluent mistakes in English, French and German. I can make a fool of myself in many languages, Spannish and Dutch I'll understand and make myself understood, then I learned some years of Finnish, Norwegian, and Italian, but I can't really speak.

[Thelemech]

I am fluent in both French and English and can read a little Latin. I use to be able to speak and read Mandarin Chinese when I was younger as I attended a Chinese language school while I was growing up... for some reason I cannot remember any of it.

[Billy Underdog]

I'm pretty good at Norwegian.

[LouiST]

My mother tongue is Cantonese. Not bad at speaking English and Mandarin. My mom and dad can speak Indonesian and Fuqing dialect(a local dialect of Chinese language) fluently but I can only understand little of the vocabularies.

I hope I can learn German language, too but I don't really know where to start. I just know some of the German words mainly from studying history.

[nunoni]

I'm pretty good at Norwegian.

errrr.... nynorsk or bokmal?!

[Billy Underdog]

errrr.... nynorsk or bokmal?!

I write bokmål. As ny-norsk is a derivative of all (or most) Norwegian dialects, i speak nynorsk "in principle" (as i speak trønder-dialect). But the written form is so full of stupid and unlogical rules i gave up on it.
I'm strongly aganst the whole double language-thing, it's only making things worse for kids in school.

[nunoni]

my keyboard has things like ~ ^ ç and even ¨ but no little circle above the a! The only word where it is usefully used is ångstrom anyway

[Billy Underdog]

You made the Å there (guess you copied-&-paisted?), so now you only need to figure out how to make an Ø and an Æ (which Swedes and Danes write as Ö and Ä).
I've seen several Jørn Lande-fans here who need to learn how to write the Ø...

[DiosSword]

Being American I of course speak "Ameringlish," but with a strong Canadian influence as I live just footsteps from the border.

My early childhood was spent living with my grandmother a fair bit and I learnt her dialect of Swiss-German (Schwyzerdeutsch) almost concurrently...sometimes caused a bit of a problem once I entered school. I still speak the language but with more High German (Hochdeutsch) influence as that's what most German written material uses.

I have a very basic working knowledge of the Canadian dialect of French...enough to get my face slapped if I'm in Montreal!

---------- Post added at 02:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:02 PM ----------

Ofcourse my natural Bulgarian which allows me to kinda understand other slavic languages.I also have a good english and 1337. Speak a lil French and know some spanish words from too much GTA.

Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian are fairly close aren't they?

[nunoni]

now you only need to figure out how to make an Ø and an Æ

those are both completely useless!!!

[Billy Underdog]

those are both completely useless!!!

Not if you speak/write Norwegian. :-P

You're just jealous couse we've got three extra letters in our alphabet...

[Sir Kenneth]

You made the Å there (guess you copied-&-paisted?), so now you only need to figure out how to make an Ø and an Æ (which Swedes and Danes write as Ö and Ä).
I've seen several Jørn Lande-fans here who need to learn how to write the Ø...

Det ved gud vi ikke gør!

[Billy Underdog]

Sorry, jeg tok feil der. Men dere bruker Ä istedet for Æ?
Burde egentlig ha vist det, for det såkalte bokmålet er jo egentlig bare en for-danskning av det opprinnelige norske språk (som ny-norsk var ett forsøk på å komme tilbake til)...

Må forøvrig legge til at jeg elsker dansker. Nesten like bra som nordmenn, bare mer frisinnet. Skulle vi ikke bare ekskludere sverige fra skandinavia? Det er jo de som trekker oss ned..

---------- Post added at 06:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:16 PM ----------

Translated so i don't get any hassle for posting something most of the members won't understand:

Sir K: ( in danish) God knows we don't. (using the letter i thought Danes wrote in a different way).

Me: Sorry, i was wrong there. But you do use Ä instead of Æ?
Should've known, couse the socalled "bokmål" (the written Norwegian language) is really just a "Danification" of the original Norwegian language (which "new-Norwegian" was an attempt to revive).

I have to add i love Danes. They're almost as good as Norwegians, only more free-minded. Should'nt we just exlude Sweden from Scandinavia? They are the ones pulling us down..

[Ochlocracy]

I can speak English and a little (Well, next to nothing) Macedonian.

[Die Young]

Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian are fairly close aren't they?

Not only them slavic languages are mostly all heavily conected. And no macedonian is not a real language.

[Ochlocracy]

Not only them slavic languages are mostly all heavily conected. And no macedonian is not a real language.

Pretty much. Macedonian is very derivative, as it is a slavic language.

[Die Young]

Pretty much. Macedonian is very derivative, as it is a slavic language.

Nah its just a really bad bulgarian accent in a forged "nation". (its a long story...)

[-E5150 StarWanderer-]

Haluaisin nähdä teidän englantia äidinkielenään puhuvien opettelevan suomen kieltä (Translation: I'd like to see you native english speakers try to learn some Finnish )

I myself speak English, some Swedish and of course Finnish. It has been my intention to learn Spanish at some point, but it remains to be seen if I ever get started on that task

[nunoni]

en puhu suomea, mutta, ymmärrän vähän. Olen opiskelut suomea kaksikymmentä vuotas siten, ja olen kaiki uhnostanut (I didn't use google translate for that, it was directly me writing, so I hope it more or less said that I do not speak Finnish, but I understand a little. I learned it about 20 years ago, and forgot everything since.)

Very funny language. I rembemer in one mf my books (I have loads of them, including Nykysuomen sanakirja, all 6 volumes of it) one example was this sentence, a single word:

rahatonmuudestammekinko?

if I can still remember it, it meant "Is that also due to our lack of money?", where
raha - money
ton - lack thereof
muude - can't remember what it was for!!!
sta - due to ("from", literally)
mme - our
kin - also
ko - makes it a question

Anyway, I don't know about English native speakers, but Portuguese/French native speakers (I grew up bilingual) certainly can learn Finnish!

[Sir Kenneth]

Sorry, jeg tok feil der. Men dere bruker Ä istedet for Æ?
Burde egentlig ha vist det, for det såkalte bokmålet er jo egentlig bare en for-danskning av det opprinnelige norske språk (som ny-norsk var ett forsøk på å komme tilbake til)...

Må forøvrig legge til at jeg elsker dansker. Nesten like bra som nordmenn, bare mer frisinnet. Skulle vi ikke bare ekskludere sverige fra skandinavia? Det er jo de som trekker oss ned..

---------- Post added at 06:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:16 PM ----------

Translated so i don't get any hassle for posting something most of the members won't understand:

Sir K: ( in danish) God knows we don't. (using the letter i thought Danes wrote in a different way).

Me: Sorry, i was wrong there. But you do use Ä instead of Æ?
Should've known, couse the socalled "bokmål" (the written Norwegian language) is really just a "Danification" of the original Norwegian language (which "new-Norwegian" was an attempt to revive).

I have to add i love Danes. They're almost as good as Norwegians, only more free-minded. Should'nt we just exlude Sweden from Scandinavia? They are the ones pulling us down..

Vi skrev engang dobbelt A istedetfor Å, men vi har aldrig brugt Ä istedetfor Æ

Og selvom vi engang imellem kalder jer fjeldaber, er vi også generelt vældig glade for jer hehe og angående svenskerne, er jeg helt enig!

(We used to write double A rather than Å, but we have never written Ä instead of Æ. And even though we some times call you "fjeldaber" we also generally like you a lot. And regarding the Swedes, I agree completely!)

[Billy Underdog]

Vi skrev engang dobbelt A istedetfor Å, men vi har aldrig brugt Ä istedetfor Æ

Jeg skjemmes over min kunnskapsløshet... Vi brukte også dobbel A før, men det var jo på den tiden Norge og Danmark omtrent var det samme landet.

Kall oss gjerne fjellaper, vi har iallefall i det minste fjell ;-)

(I'm ashamed over my lack of knowledge... We used to use the double A too, but that was the time Norway and Denmark was practically the same country.
I don't mind you calling us mountain-monkeys, atleast we've got mountains)

[zxzxzx]

Foreign languages are funnu languages.

[sn0wb1ind0zzy]

Being American I of course speak "Ameringlish," but with a strong Canadian influence as I live just footsteps from the border.

I live in Minnesota so I'm sure I have some Canadian influence within my accent, though where I live the accents are not nearly as thick as portrayed in films such as "Fargo"