Foreign Languages

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Does anyone else here have an interest in foreign languages?

What foreign languages can you speak, read, write or understand?

Are any of you bilingual, i.e. your parents speak different languages?

Foreign languages are one of my special interests, even if I'm nowhere near as proficient in them as I used to be. Maybe due to lack of practice, due in turn to lack of socialisation. I learned French and German at school, and they were my favourite subjects.

At university I took Spanish and Portuguese, not as majors, but 'outside' subjects during my course. Despite no previous knowledge of them, I took them because I knew I would pass them easily.

If I was to take up any more languages in future, then I'd be most interested to learn Latin, and the Biblical languages (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic).

I also have a special interest in languages like Esperanto, which are 'international auxiliary languages' designed to help people of different native languages to communicate and which are supposed to be easier to learn. There are others, for example anyone ever heard of Ido, Interlingua or Volapuk?

I am learning French, but I don't like it very much. I'd much rather be taking an extra math or science course.

Parlez-vous francais?

Oui, ca va?

I've always been fascinated by languages and alphabets, but due to self-consciousness it isn't easy for me to use the languages in their spoken form.

Je parle français (je suis née à Montréal), mi parolas Esperanton (ed Ido anke), ta Gaeilge agam, Ich spreche Deutsches, entiendo un poco español, ég er að læra íslensku. Bits and pieces of everything but not a whole lot of anything. Enough to, say, distinguish Portuguese from Italian or sound out a phrase in the Greek or Russian alphabet.

If anyone wants to chat with me in something other than English, I'll give it my best shot.

I love trying to learn languages but I haven't gotten anywhere with any of them.
I like French and German the best because I like Europe and they both have some similarities to English.

I can just about hold a conversation in French, but it does depend on how long it's been since I was last there.
I do seem to pick up languages very quickly though when I am there, I've got bits of Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Flemish, German and Russian. I've never got a chance to try to learn any of the Scandinavian languages as their english is always perfect and they seem to like to use it.
I think I'd like to live in southern europe, it's much easier to interpret their moods and reactions as they are so much more expressive than the english... has anyone else found the same?

I'm trying to learn Japanese. I haven't been doing it for long. The only really useful thing
I can do is order something to eat in a resturant or say about the weather or talk about the time.

Kyó wa samui desu...

I would love to learn Japanese. In fact I wanna visit Japan someday. Where are you learning Japanese from?

I baught 2 books from Amazon.co.uk.

One of them is: Oxford; Take off in Japanese.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 47-6697209
It comes with 4 CDs and a book. I'm about 2 units into it and I really enjoy it. It's very clear and easy to understand.

The second is: Let's learn Hirigana.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASI ... 47-6697209
This introduces the symbols for Japanese writing. I haven't even done a page of this yet. I decided I need to learn how to speak and listen first.

I can already understand SOME stuff of what is said in some films if I put them in Japanese. Like if someone is asking a question, if someone is saying "Cheers!" or saying about the weather. I'm REALLY not far into it and I am very pleased from what I know already.

If it's a hot say (Atsui) then go into a coffeee shop and ask for some Orange Juice (Orenji júso o kodasai).

I learned French and German in school. I preferred German, and enjoyed learning the grammatical rules, especially the really complicated ones. It's 6 years now since I've used any German, and I have forgotten a lot of it. I hate speaking it though, as I can detect a really strong English accent in my speech and it embarrasses me.

Ima janai! Kyou wa atsui desu yo! ^_^ Ii tenki! Ureshii yo!! !

I'm being a geek hehehehe I know Japanese almost fluently (I taught it to myself in a month, I've been speaking it since I was 10 and I'm 18 now). I know a little Russian and I am fluent in ASL (American Sign Language) because it was my language in high school!

Ja mata ne! ^^

I did french at GCSE, A level and in the first year of my degree (4 years ago) and havent spoken it since then. So my french is a bit rubbish at the moment but it, along with biology was one of my best subjests at school.

I took French for many years (and can't speak much of it but have some receptive skills left) and now I'm in my third semester of German. I wouldn't say I'm obsessed with languages but I do really enjoy them. This unfortunately will have to be my final semester in German because the rest of my Psychology schedule won't allow it. But next spring I'll hopefully be doing an independent study with one of my German professors on translating Rilke. I really love translating Rilke and I asked my German professor if she'd consider doing an independent study with me, since she's been helping to edit my work as she's a native German from Köln and can make me aware of more of the subtleties of the language which mostly only a native can know.

I'm looking forward to it.

Almost did'nt gradute from college for being so bad in spainish ended up with a D. the talking part wasn't so bad but I am a very bad speller in any language .

well, my english is almost readable by now , and years ago I decided to concentrate on english because there is really not much use to other languages and it takes forever to really really dominate one. My native language is spanish, by the way.

I'm tri-lingual. Finnish, Swedish, and English. And I understand Norwegian and Danish since I speak Swedish, it's an added bonus. I know some German--it used to be enough so I could manage but I wouldn't want to try it now--and a little Spanish. Also, I used to have an obsession on Middle Egyptian, but it's mostly consonants in search of meaning.