Languages of Daniweb

[<M/>]

What languages do you guys speak?

I speak: English, Farsi, Arabic, Pashto, and I am learning Spanish in school (I am in Spanish II as a freshman).

What do you guys speak?

[deceptikon]

English and a bit of Japanese.

[<M/>]

@deceptikon, I want to learn Japanese/Chinese one day... maybe in the future I will consider doing it...

[deceptikon]

Your Spanish experience will come in handy when/if you decide to tackle Japanese.

[<M/>]

How similar are they? I was learning Spanish so that I can converse with people in more ways and so it would look better in my applications. Plus, where I live (California), there are plenty of Spanish speakers throughout.

[deceptikon]

How similar are they?

They share general sentence structure. I haven't delved too far into Spanish grammar, but it seems similar enough that I'd probably have far fewer issues making the jump than from English.

[veedeoo]

English, but I am trying to learn conversational Spanish. Took two Spanish in High School and got excellent grades on both of them, but I am still having difficulty understanding when I am around with the Spanish speaking people. My parents are in California.. I also have Spanish lesson in my ipod that I listen all the time :)..

I am very much interested in learning Mandarin and Japanese also.

I know a little of French, Italian, Irish, and Filipino, because I am a mixed of all these fine wine drinking people... :) :) I am a coffee drinker though and have no affinity to alcohol whatsoever...

I speak: English, Farsi, Arabic, Pashto, and I am learning Spanish in school (I am in Spanish II as a freshman).

I only speak English fluently. I took Spanish & Italian in high school that was a long time ago. But I learn to speak Tagalog when I was in San Diego. Spanish and Tagalog sound the same but there's not. My ex was Japanese so I have learn how to speak it. I also learn Mandarin/Spanish when I was a stockbroker because the client list mostly Hispanic/Chinese. So I had to cold call alot and learn to talk and sell a pitch.

[mike_2000_17]

My native languages are French (born in Québec, French-speaking part of Canada) and Swedish (from my father, I also spent part of my childhood there). I speak English just as if it was my native language too. I'm functional / conversational in German because I've lived there for about a year (and also had some classes), and knowing Swedish and with a bit of effort, I picked it up pretty quickly. I learned Spanish in high-school, and given its similarity with French, I'm still good enough to function on a basic level if I'm thrown in a hispanic environment (I tested that in Spain a few years back, didn't have any trouble getting around). I learned some Finnish while I was living there, but it's literally one of the most complicated language in the world, so, not much of it stuck with me, besides a few phrases and swear words. Then, I can sort of understand many of the languages (written or spoken) that are similar to those that I already know, e.g., Italian, Dutch, Danish, etc. And then there are the others that are so close to languages that I know that you could say I speak those as well, e.g., Norwegian, Acadien / Cajun or any other forms of French (technically, that's all French, but some are wildly different from French-Canadian), etc..

I would love to step out of the European languages a bit, and I've considered learning some Arabic and/or Mandarin, but I haven't gotten around to it, don't know if I ever will either.

Being raised bilingual is a huge advantage in this department, i.e., being able to assimilate a new language quickly, being able to speak different sounds very well (also lose the "foreign" accent very quickly, e.g., I have no obvious accent in English or German, and I can easily immitate or switch accents too), etc.. So, people out there, if you have children and have a chance to raise them bilingual, don't hesitate to do so.

[JorgeM]

I speak Spanglish... many do in South FL.

[cereal]

Italian, then English, Spanish, French and I can understand a bit of German and Portuguese, both written. As soon as I can I would like to study Farsi, Russian and Hebrew.

[ddanbe]

My native language is Flemish, which is a Dutch dialect. Further I can speak and write English and French rather fluently. Some German, Spanish and Italian.
@decepticon : I doubt if some knowledge of Spanish would be handy in learning Japanese :)

[mattster]

English, German, French, and good spanish.

Get this, one of the guys at uni speaks 16 languages!!! He's a languages student though...

[<M/>]

@mattster, that student must be a genius then. I bet he just started attending the university and he is already in his final year in the PhD program lol...

[salimpuzza]

I can speak English, Filipino and Korean.

[<M/>]

@salimpuzza, by any chance are Korean, Japanese, and Chinese similar?

[Lardmeister]

I speak 16 languages, but in most of them only just a few words.

[eyeda]

I speak malay and english

[<M/>]

@Lardmeister, sounds like me then lol....

@eyeda, malay seems interesting.

[eyeda]

yes, it used to be a lingua franca (communication language) once upon a time :)

[Dani]

I can barely speak English. I took a few years of Spanish in school, but forgot 99% of it. Honestly, I wish that I had the opportunity to have been raised to be bilingual.

[BitBlt]

VB, SQL, COBOL, C, C++, Java, Adabas/Natural, IDEAL, FORTRAN, Smalltalk, Actor, ObjectVision, 360 Assembler...

Oh, wait...HUMAN languages? <dang>

Maybe that's been my problem all these years...it's really hard to pick up chicks in COBOL...

[Dani]

That's your problem, BitBit. You're not using the appropriate language for the situation.

Next time, try picking up chicks with Smalltalk.

[BigPaw]

English completely, and enough Russian, Polish, Slovak, Farsi to embarrass myself with. They're self taught and not perfect. As imperfect as I am with them I'm getting to know some wonderful people because of trying.

Hungarian, I've been told, is impossible to learn. You have to grow up with it, but thankfully my friend's English is good enough for it not to be an issue. :-)

[<M/>]

@Dani, if you can barely speak English and forgotten most of Spanish, what language do you mostly go by with?

@BitBit, at least you are not calling girls Ruby...

@BigPaw, I can relate to you :D.

[G_Waddell]

English, Some Scots dialectics (not Gaelic), some French and currently learning Irish (Irish Gaelic,) from my wife and child (I'm from Scotland but I live in Ireland and my kid goes to Gaelscoil) also my dog only responds to Irish commands (We got her as a rescue and noticed one day after much frustrated attempts to train her)

[clouds_n_things]

Japanese, Italian and Englis :D

[mattster]

@<MICHAEL> the student is now finishing his masters, and has a place reserved on our DPhil course, which is exactly the same as a PhD but y'know, Oxford have to be different -.- its embarrasing really

[Nutster]

As an Ontarion (the most populus English speaking province of Canada) I speak pretty much just English, with really rusty French. So I guess I am generally unilingual. Now as far a programming languages....

I do have the ability/habit of picking up the accents of people I am listen to though. After listening to a recorded lecture by Albert Eisnstein, I started speaking with his particular accent (mostly Swiss-German, with some Italian and something else, maybe Yiddish?) for a while later without realizing it. This ability is so strong that sometimes after talking to I start talking to people in their accent, they figure I am from where they are and start speaking to me in their native language, which I generally have no hope with. I really have to pay attention after watching a Doctor Who marathon. :)

I do have the ability/habit of picking up the accents of people I am listen to though.

It's bit hard to pick-up the accents of a person unless you have visual of what race (background) of how that person look like.