Other Languages You've Studied

[TheTankengine]

Many years of english, 2 years of spanish, 2 years of german, currently learning modern hebrew (still on the alphabet and basic words, though...).

I had my first spanish class in 9th grade. Up until then, I had learned virtually nothing from any of my previous 8 years of english class. Is this similar to anyone else's experience?

[Ketzerei]

I've been studying Japanese since before it was cool, damn it. All these newbies have terrible accents!

Foreign languages I've studied, in descending order of proficiency:

German (Placed into fourth semester college-level; can understand Rammstein)
Japanese (Can understand about 3/4 of the contents of things written for children)
French (Can get the gist of lay writing (instructions and such))
Latin (Barely any actual study, but I know a lot of words from roots and such things)

Languages I'd like to study:

Arabic
Korean
Chinese
Russian

I'm planning to do more Japanese in college (I'm a freshman now, but I didn't have time to continue with it this semester), and maybe pick up one new language. I'm pretty good with German, but I'm kind of bored with it at this point.

[Saru]

I've studied Japanese for 5 years and I love it. Although the alphabets begin difficult, they're easy enough to remember. The language is just so logical, everything has its place.

to do with word mixing up, the Japanese word for carrot is 'ninjin' and human is 'ningen'. Although they are not that similar, in Japanese words, 'jin' is a suffix meaning person. So it can be easy to mix up for a learner. I know of someone who scared off some Japanese people by telling them that "I'm not an animal, I'm a carrot". I forget the situation.

guess you had to be there

[TheTankengine]

Kemetic: Many years of leafing through the book of the dead and memorizing passages when the mood struck me. Nothing terribly useful, but it's not like there are ancient egyptians around to speak it to, anyway.

[simen]

Three years of French, but I can't remember anything useful except for "je mange ton mere". This might have some connection with the fact that we had five different teachers, including one who didn't know a word of French.
Three years of German.
Native speaker of Norwegian.

[Clerria]

You just reminded me of a memory I have as a very small child... probably 4, flipping through the dictionary and searching out the Egyptian alphabet under the title definitions of each letter of the alphabet. And then translating english letters directly.

Looking back, it should have been more obvious...

[zenten]

Damnit, I actually had a year of Danish on top of my 8 years of French, but I voted before I read the part about how you don't have to actually remember any of the language to include it.

[vlad]

[Eschatokyrios]

I have or am studying Spanish, German, Latin and Georgian seriously. The first two in high school, the latter two on my own. I'm proficient in Spanish, know just the very basics of German, and am more behind than I should be on Latin and Georgian.

I've studied grammars of Finnish, Old English, Turkish, Japanese, and probably a lot of other languages I can't remember looking for interesting grammatical tidbits, but I've never tried to learn any of them formally. I've picked up a few Japanese words and phrases from watching subtitled anime, just enough to make me annoying

[__Kit]

:O My deputy principal knows about 15 different languages.

[bbctol]

Have studied:
French
Hebrew
Greek
Qenya
Lojban

Can speak:
English

Meh.

[dagron]

Studied German through highschool and college. Haven't used it in about two years, so my vocab is fading, but I'm still pretty close to fluent.

[Khonsu]

Four years of Spanish in high school, two quarters (20 weeks) of ASL (though I have more competancy in ASL than Spanish, actually).

I love languages. If I had the time to learn them all immersively, I would.

[Ishindri]

I'm just starting my second year of Latin in high school. We're learning third declension nouns on Monday. And after reading through this thread, now I want to learn Kemetic.

Oh, and if you want to know what my sig says, literally translated, it means "I am the god of machines". Because I like computers. And my ego is just that big. Less literally translated, I guess it's the Latin equivalent of I R T3H 1337 H4XX0R.

[armorsmith42]

five years of Russian. however, I haven't been immersed yet, so cannot really carry on a conversation very well, but passably.

two years of latin, which we never actually learned to speak, but just read and write. however, it was enough for me to have the word "curriculums" annoy me.

I took a really quick Chinese course, but can't really say much of anny thing

I have been studying Arabic, specifically trying to get the alphabet down so I can write in russian words with the arabic alphabet so on one can understand my writing.

of course, no one can understand it anyway, as I have handwriting that would make a calligrapher cry.

Если что-то хочет разговаривать по русский с мной или с другой, пожал уста, открой новый тема. If someone wants to converse in russian with me or others, please open a new thread.

I need to practice with actual people

[Jack21222]

Je parle un petit peu de français since I took it in middle and high school for 4 years.

I am currently studying Arabic, though the Arabic 101 class is going far too slowly for my tastes. After 6 hours (4 classes), I've learned only a handful of words and phrases.

[vlad]

Oh, and if you want to know what my sig says, literally translated, it means "I am the god of machines".

Actually it's ungrammatical. Sum is not a transitive verb, but a copula, which does not take an object, but a complement. You've got it in the accusative case as if it was an object, but it should be in the nominative. Also Latin generally prefers to put the verb at the end, though that's not a strict rule.

So, "Deus machinarum sum" would be better.

[Ishindri]

Actually it's ungrammatical. Sum is not a transitive verb, but a copula, which does not take an object, but a complement. You've got it in the accusative case as if it was an object, but it should be in the nominative. Also Latin generally prefers to put the verb at the end, though that's not a strict rule.

So, "Deus machinarum sum" would be better.

Fixt. I submit to your apparent greater knowledge of Latin

[Rusty]

In the past I've begun to study a few languages in preparation for trips/holidays, but never followed up with serious learning. The main thing I'd always try to get down was pronunciation, even before learning any phrases that would be useful. The languages I've studied in this way are Finnish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Icelandic. For personal fun I've done similarly small amounts of study in Old English and Latin. If you include artificial languages, a few years ago I stumbled across downloadable courses in Quenya and Sindarin, so I learnt those before promptly forgetting nearly everything within a year. The only long term language learning I've done is 3 years of French and Spanish in school, with French being the only one out of all those mentioned that I could have a simple conversation in, slowly and clumsily.

[Phenriz]

3 years of japanese

2 years of spanish

1 year of latin

[killerstar]

English for 7 years at primary school and a couple years afterwards and German for 4 years and counting (does music count as a language?). If I had more time, I would go for Latin. I speak Spanish too, like most Argentineans.

[jacqueline]

3 years high school Spanish - I remember enough to decipher the signs explaining the subway system in Portugal (just think how easy it would have been if it had in Spanish!).

1 year as an exchange student in Japan - and let me tell you, outside of Tokyo, there is not much English to be found. I'm afraid I probably didn't learn much of the "polite" forms though, since I mostly learned high school girl Japanese!

1 year Koine Greek. I can do some translations... excruciatingly slowly. Still pretty nifty though, the grammar is pretty complex to where translating a sentence has a similar concentration feel as, say, solving a calc problem.

[Meraki]

I grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese at home, but I can't read or write much more than the basics. Was sent to a community-sponsored "Chinese School" when I was a kid, and had to copy out line after line of vocabularly words every week. It didn't help much. Can still carry on a conversation perfectly well, though, and have been praised for my standard Beijing dialect (which is funny because I've never been there more than a day or two).

Have studied French for about... six years now. My speech is a bit halting, and I never quite got the hang of the subjunctive or passe simple. But if you give me a dictionary and a few days I could pound out some pretty impressive essays.

I taught myself some Latin for a year, then took a year of Latin II in high school. It was enough so that I know now where and how to look things up in my Latin dictionary.

Now I'm taking my first year of Russian. Oddly enough, when I can't remember little words like "and", "my", or "it is", I find myself automatically speaking French.

[mabufo]

I took two years of Latin in High School... of course, I was quite awful with it, but it did help to improve my vocabulary.

I tried to teach myself Irish, but have completely stopped because of school. I'll pick it up again sometime if I can ever bother to get the pronunciation correct.

[Taejo]

http://people.cs.uct.ac.za/~rbkmax001/ says I know 20 languages (and lists them).

Ek het Afrikaans geleer tot graad 9 (I learnt Afrikaans until grade 9) at which point I decided I knew enough, ndifune ukufunda isiXhosa (and I wanted to learn Xhosa -- which I'd studied as a third language in grade 8 and 9). That plan never really worked out. I know how to fake it enough to do a comprehension and summary exam, and speak to children. Adults speak too fast, induce more embarrassment, and talk about things other than ballgames, colours and school.

Mi lernigis min esperanto dum unu-du jaroj, kaj gajnis elementa diplomo (I taught myself Esperanto for a year or two, and got the Elementary Certificate).

I studied Italian for a few hours (phrase books and newspaper on the plane, and an hour or so of tapes before leaving), and found myself well-prepared, at least for written Italian.

[Spudgun]

English and Welsh here.

[Delalyra]

I am currently studying Arabic, though the Arabic 101 class is going far too slowly for my tastes. After 6 hours (4 classes), I've learned only a handful of words and phrases.

Yeah, isn't it annoying to be in a class with mere mortals when you already know so much more about the language than they do? I hear you; I'm in Arabic 101 myself.

[Locoluis]

Hi.

Spanish is my native language. I'm literate in English but still can't speak it properly.

I'm currently learning Mapudungun, an indigenous language from my country. I've also been having sporadic encounters with Mandarin, Japanese and even Basque, but not enough to build enough useful knowledge from them.

One of my favorite words in Mapudungun is witrañpürampiwkeniemutuaiñ. It's composed of:

witrañpüram(ün): to erect, to raise.
piwke: heart
nie(n): to have
mu: second person transition. together with the 'iñ' it means "the action is made by a second person towards a first person plural"
tu: iterative
a: future tense
iñ: first-person-plural

[@trophy]

I speak English and (some) Spanish. Which reminds me, I need to get my Spanish skills back up to snuff for the next time I go to Mexico.

[Razzle Storm]

I am currently studying Arabic, though the Arabic 101 class is going far too slowly for my tastes. After 6 hours (4 classes), I've learned only a handful of words and phrases.

Yeah, isn't it annoying to be in a class with mere mortals when you already know so much more about the language than they do? I hear you; I'm in Arabic 101 myself.

At my University in the States, our Chinese teacher demanded perfection. Now that I'm in China, with people from all over the States, I've learned that about 6 out of 7 students learning Chinese either slacked off a lot, or had crappy teachers.

[gmalivuk]

Hi.

Spanish is my native language. I'm literate in English but still can't speak it properly.

Are you connected in any way to Memo, who's also from Chile? If not, I think it's interesting that we would randomly have two Chileans but not, apparently, many people from anywhere else in Latin America.

[Infornographer]

I can fluently understand English, Turkish, and Spanish. I can read and write in Latin. I used to study Korean, but I've forgotten most of it. I'd imagine I don't perform so well with Latin anymore, either.

[SpitValve]

I'd imagine I don't perform so well with Latin anymore, either.

eheu!

[jackimurphy]

My native language is English, and I speak Spanish almost fluently (a month or so in any Spanish-speaking country would definitely solidify it.) I can read French - I read French newspapers online a lot, but I have trouble understanding it spoken and even more speaking. But I'm working on it.

I also speak mediocre Mandarin Chinese, but I'll be here in China until the end of next summer so it dang well better be spectacular by the end of that time.

I took Arabic 101 once but it was hard. The class was very poorly structured and the teachers had no problems saying they didn't like us. But I did keep the textbook and will go back and try again someday.

I have a TON of Teach Yourself ______ language books, and I'd love to actually have time to try. I can sound out/pronounce most common languages at this point.

[Will]

Fluent Japanese.

Fun fact: I have met a lot of (non-Japanese) people who have studied Japanese and very few who can actually speak it.

Edit: I apparently also speak English. I must have picked that up somewhere along the way.

[reishka]

I took a few years of American Sign Language in high school, but I'd been teaching myself that since about fourth grade. I'm decently fluent, albeit slow. The last job I was at in Maryland gave me plenty of contact with Deaf and Hard of Hearing people and kept my skills from rotting.

I can understand a decent amount of German, although I've never formally studied the language. I can't speak it, though, and the closest I've ever come to informally studying it was borrowing some language tapes from the library in third grade.

Same thing goes for Spanish. I lived ~10 years in Texas and I tried to memorize the Spanish - English dictionary in sixth grade. That failed, but working with Spanish-speaking coworkers for a few years gave me a decent foundation and grasp of the language. I can't speak it, but I can understand a good deal.

I've taken a year of Japanese in college, and studied some on my own. I can understand a little bit and respond, and my American accent is almost nonexistent. And forget kanji. I can't recognize them to save my life. Not enough of them, anyways.

[Milami]

4 years of French

about a month of Japanese, still taking it (just started the class this semester)

And, haven't studied it, but apparently I use sign language when drunk (actual sign language, not just inappropriate gestures to try to get my point accross.)

[someguy]

Only English so far. I've been putting off starting French and/or Catalán forever.

Quite a few estudiantes de español in here.

[Flying Betty]

I've taken a fair amount of French- I minored in it in college. Now I've forgotten a lot of it since I'm out of practice and that makes me sad.

[cyan]

4 languages:

German (4 years in high school)
Japanese (3.5 years in high school and college + one semester abroad)
Russian (1 year in college)
Mandarin Chinese (1 month)

They also tried to force-feed us Spanish in elementary school, but not hard enough ... about the only thing I can remember is 'anaranjado' (sp?) and how to count 1-40 or 50 or so ...

Chinese I was taking this semester before I dropped to preserve my sanity for the other classes I'm taking ... it was really interesting, though; I'd like to pick it back up once I have the time (maybe next semester?)

Japanese is the only language of the four that I'm at all reasonable at -- I firmly believe in my ability to say essentially anything I need to given a dictionary (denshijisho rock my world) and patience on the part of the person I'm talking to.

Another (somewhat related) question: favorite part of studying a language?

For me it's always been about the grammar; if I'm not actively using a word, studying vocabulary bores me to tears. Learning different methods of writing can be fun, too ...