Other Languages You've Studied

[gmalivuk]

What other languages have you all studied? I don't care if you followed through and can still say much in those languages (though feel free to mention what languages you're competent in, as well).

I have studied Russian and Sanskrit, and can actually speak a fair amount of Spanish. (The other two I can transliterate and read out loud, but I wouldn't generally have any idea what the words meant.)

What's something useful you can say in a language most of us probably haven't studied?


(I found this when I was looking for handwriting samples.)

I also like to learn "I do not speak [language]" in as many languages as possible. I've written down about 30 and, including the above languages, can actually remember about 20 at any given time.

[Peshmerga]

Spanish.

I learned French, but never studied it :<

[Jesse]

French and Spanish. Can't speak 'em so well but I can usually get the gist of what is being said.

[thedesk]

Spanish several years ago, and Russian now. Russian is much more fun, partly because I really like the alphabet.

[Grincement]

French and German, can't speak much as such but pick up general topics of convos and randomly curse in French as well

[Belial]

Spanish: 7 years of classes, all through elementary and middle school. However, my teacher was kindof stretched thin and also incompetent, so I didn't learn much

French: 6 years of classes, still pretty competent in this, if a tiny bit rusty. I also still accidentally speak it from time to time.

Latin: 3 weeks, intensive course. This was equivelent of about a year of regular latin classes, crammed all-day-every-day into a 3 week summer program. I actually emerged from this somewhat competent, but the exam burned me out pretty hard, and I lost a lot of it in the ensuing months. Can still get the basic gist of most latin statements, but couldn't construct a literate sentence to save my life.

Japanese: 1.5 years, School-sponsored self-teaching. I reached some degree of competence, until they moved my study area to the basement with the comfortable chair, and I kept falling asleep instead of studying. Then I forgot it all.

[Lani]

1 year of Spanish
1 year of Latin
5 years of French

I've forgotten a lot, but if I were in France, I'd probably do decently. I had a fantastic teacher all through high school, and then crappy teachers in college.

[space_raptor]

Spanish: Two years in Colombia.
French: Grade school in Canada.
German: One year in Switzerland.

Funny part is, French is the worst by far. I just don't use it in Alberta, except for cereal boxes.

[fynch]

Spanish - 3 years

Mandarin - once weekly course for 4 months... not very indepth

[Aoeniac]

4 years of Latin.

One summer of Japanese.

One quarter of German.


I'm VERY BAD at learning new languages apparently.

[cathrl]

Latin for 5 years - to O level
German for 1 year (I need to pick it up again, since my new sister-in-law is Austrian and it's likely any nieces and nephews I have in the future will speak German as their first language)
Russian for 1 year
French for...ages. I took A level, and I did my MSc half at Manchester and half at Bordeaux. Numerical analysis exams in a foreign language were, well, terrifying. It's done me well. I have my current programming assignment because the client is multinational with a major French construction site, and they wanted a programmer who spoke French.

I'm not counting Spanish, which I taught myself enough of to be able to survive a week's trip to Barcelona, or Gaelic, which I know enough of to recognise what most terms on maps mean, or Italian, for which I know all the terms used in music. Or Japanese, for which I know a random selection of words picked up from anime.

[Puellus Peregrinus]

Does my own language count?
If it doesn't I have only studied 3. If it does I just lied to the poll.

[cmacis]

French up to GCSE.
Lojban, not enough, term started.

[Spectre]

Francais: Up to University in Canadia
Svensk: Off and on, in little bits and pieces, to the point where I can almost understand what people are saying TO me, buit I still can't respond that well.

I've been exposed to various levels of Hindi, Cantonese, Spanish, and Klingon due to various family members and freinds though.

Wait... there was something wrong with that last bit.

[parkaboy]

2 semesters german in HS two college semesters japanese. i cant say fuck all in either anymore, but when i move my major is going to be ASL translation. possibly double minor in japanese and business. it covers enough ground to be useful SOMEwhere i guess...

[Mother Superior]

English 10 or 11 years (completely fluently)
French 4 years (sucks but fake-able)

[Jack Saladin]

I began to learn Japanese (teaching myself), but I was too lazy to follow through. Hopefully I'll start again... At some point.

Some very vague point. In the far future.

The far future.

[Birdman]

German: 2 years at high school. I can remember a few phrases and numbers, that sort of thing.

Russian: Started reading a "Teach yourself Russian" book. I can say "I am a (feminine) English tourist."

Japanese: 4 years total at school, off and on. Learned fuck all there. Made huge progress when I went there for a week last year. Apparently can speak well enough to get by - including a midnight visit to the hospital. Found my little Oxford Japanese-English/English-Japanese dictionary indispensale for vocabulary. I love the simple grammar.



My favourite part of new languages is learning the writing systems. I've forgotten a fair bit of the Cyrillic (so-called because it was introduced to the area by Cyril. No shit) I once knew, I'm all over hiragana and katakana, but most kanji makes my ears bleed.

[damienthebloody]

german - 4 years in high school. can kind of follow conversations, can read it, and speak it very badly.

french - 1 year in uni. can read it, understand a fair bit, speak it dreadfullly.

i also know one or two useful phrases in finnish - i can introduce myself, say i'm australian, say i don't speak finnish, ask for beer, ask for more beer, and say "it was already broken", which i think will cover most eventualities if i go to finland ever.

[Phi]

They don't offer German at our school. If they did, I would have taken it.

Currently in my 3rd year of Spanish, and can't wait to quit (I'm mediocre with it at best)

[warriorness]

Just Spanish here. I've had it every year since first grade - I'm in 12th now. So a bit of advanced math (I won't get into proofs) shows that I've been doing Spanish for 12 years.

I know a few phrases in various languages, such as "I will crush you like a grape" in French. Picked that one up at a chess tournament.

Now, for fun, I'm going to translate my post into spanish with no dictionary/etc.

Solo espanol aqui. Lo he estudiado desde el primer grado, y ahora estoy en el doce. Entonces, un poco de matematicas (no voy a probarlo) muestra que he estado estudiando el espanol por doce anos. (Note: "ano" means "anus". I don't have the tilde-n character.)

Yo se algunas frases de varias lenguas; por ejemplo, "Te aplastare como una uva" en frances. Consegui esto en un torneo de ajedrez.

Wow, that went pretty well.

[Phi]

http://tlt.psu.edu/suggestions/internat ... dealt.html

Get all the symbols down so there are more "years" and less "ani"

[Traisenau]

I've studied 1 1/2 languages, I have been studying Japanese for the past two years, and I studied Italian for a bout a week 5 years ago when I went there.

Edit: watashi wa 3/2 no ranguresu(this part in Katakana) wo benkyoshi mashita. Kara Ni... years...ni nihongo wo benkyoshi mashita. Soshite... no idea how to say the Italian part...

[SpitValve]

Not counting 3rd form French, I did Latin, Ancient Greek and I'm learning Thai at the moment, because it's good to learn a language that people actually speak...

[Pau!]

I grew up in a French area and went to French schools my whole life (although I am now taking my University courses in English.) I'm really much more English than French due to the all the books I read when I was younger, although I am fluent in both.
I've also studied Spanish for a semester and practiced it enough that I can survive if thrown into a situation and people speak slooowly... Spanish is actually quite easy once you know French.

[SpitValve]

Latin: 3 weeks, intensive course. ...Can still get the basic gist of most latin statements, but couldn't construct a literate sentence to save my life.

It's always way easier to write Latin than to read it - when reading you can sorta guess half the grammar, but when writing you need to know exactly when you should use an ablative or a dative or a bloody great subjunctive clause.

With a suprressed esse. There's always a suppressed esse.


supresse...

[electoralfraud]

French, German and Latin. About the only one I can still use with any competency is french. I might do an intensive french course soon(-ish) so I don't forget too much, although I'm always surprised how much I remember when I'm in france and forced to not be lazy. Still, I'd like to be fluent.

I'm considering learning either Mandarin so I can get cozy with our new global overlords, or signing just because I think it'd be pretty cool.

[wilkeson]

I know enough Spanish to buy a beer and get myself stabbed. Which, in reality, is all you really need anyway.

I tried to teach myself Mandarin, but that's been put on the far back burner for the time being. The different tones are a mite bit tricky for my western tongue.

[aisling]

I do french immersion at school.. Pretty much the best class evar.

It's gotten to the point, though, that I add extra "e"'s on the end of my words in english sometimes because of the intenseness of my french classes.

I'm pretty crappy at it though. Like, I can probably outfrench most (not all) of the people on these fora (is that it? I'm never sure) but a real frenchie would laugh in my face.

[lanicita]

I did Spanish for 11 (no, that's not a typo) years. And I'm STILL not fluent. I know a fair bit when I'm listening but I'm terrible at speaking it unless I'm drunk. True story.

I did one year of Latin, and approximately two weeks of French so I can say "Je m'appelle Lauren, je suis americaine, j'ai vingt ans."

And now I'm minoring in Italian... I'm in intensive intermediate now (third and fourth semesters combined) so I have a ways to go, but I can speak it better than I could ever speak Spanish

[SpitValve]

I tried to teach myself Mandarin, but that's been put on the far back burner for the time being. The different tones are a mite bit tricky for my western tongue.

Tones aren't as bad as people think. I think Mandarin's only got 5? Once I memorised the 5 in Thai (mid,low,falling,high+rising a little, down-up), it's been fine - not as hard as pronouncing a non-aspirated b for instance.

What I dread about Chinese is that it doesn't have an alphabet... that's a lot of characters to learn...

[Traisenau]

Hell, you just try learning Japanese, there are not 1, not 2, but 3 different alphabets(and a 4th, but it is just the english spellings of the sounds of the characters) all of which can be used in one sentence. They have a different grammer form for every single goddamn type of sentence that you could think of, different form for liking a book and like reading a book, etc. And the pronounciations can be a bitch too, because extending a sound sounds the same as just adding a new character... but they sound the same... shii (shi i) is different from shii (shi -)

[CorranH]

Ho studato Italiano per due anni, ma mi ricordo di pochissimo adesso.

I studied Italian for two years, but I remember very little now.

I took Italian in my freshman and sophmore years in high school, which was, let's see, five years ago now. I hardly remember any of it, though I'd like to learn again. I like the language, probably mostly because I had an awesome Italian teacher in high school. I'm pretty proud that I remembered enough to say, "I studied Italian for two years, but I remember very little now."

lol, a quick trip to babelfish revealed that I didn't remember quite as much as I'd thought. I fixed it up a little bit. Still, I'm pleased with how close I came after five years of non-use.

[Anmorata]

French, Spanish (neither of which I am fluent in), and I'm picking up Sign Language this summer.

If I had any 1 wish in the world, I'd be multilingual.. hell, I'd go for omnilingual. Ultimate understanding.

[Alisto]

I did Spanish for 3 years in high school and a semester at college, but still can't speak a bit. (And I'm half Puerto Rican)

I started teaching myself Japanese years ago, but lost interest. I love the language, though, and someday I'll try again.

I took two semesters of Mandarin at college (because Japanese wasn't available) and that's the one I put the most effort into. Hanging out with a lot of Asians helps, too.

In fact, I rarely say, "What?" Instead, I say, "shen me?" I even think in Chinese pretty frequently. If I try to say something in Spanish, I constantly think of Chinese words instead. Yo becomes wo, tu becomes ni, etc.

[WhiteRabbit]

Latin - 3 years
German - 1 semester
Japanese - 1 semester
Esperanto - The complete basic course

[lanicita]

Ho studato Italiano per due anni, ma mi ricordo di pochissimo adesso.

Yay! Sono felice che io non sia la sola persona che parla un po' d'italiano.

Yay! I am happy that I am not the only person that speaks a little Italian.

[Phi]

Ho studato Italiano per due anni, ma mi ricordo di pochissimo adesso.

Yay! Sono felice che io non sia la sola persona che parla un po' d'italiano.

Yay! I am happy that I am not the only person that speaks a little Italian.

Ever since I saw Life is Beautiful I've wanted to learn Italian.

I think it was the "Princapecha!"(my spelling) that got to me. And the fact that Italian is such a nice language to listen to.

[MurdocRocks]

Hell, you just try learning Japanese, there are not 1, not 2, but 3 different alphabets(and a 4th, but it is just the english spellings of the sounds of the characters) all of which can be used in one sentence. They have a different grammer form for every single goddamn type of sentence that you could think of, different form for liking a book and like reading a book, etc. And the pronounciations can be a bitch too, because extending a sound sounds the same as just adding a new character... but they sound the same... shii (shi i) is different from shii (shi -)

couldn't you say:

Hon ga suki desu.

and

Hon (w)o yomukoto ga suki desu.

I think both of those are correct...

[CorranH]

Ho studato Italiano per due anni, ma mi ricordo di pochissimo adesso.

Yay! Sono felice che io non sia la sola persona che parla un po' d'italiano.

Yay! I am happy that I am not the only person that speaks a little Italian.

Ever since I saw Life is Beautiful I've wanted to learn Italian.

I think it was the "Princapecha!"(my spelling) that got to me. And the fact that Italian is such a nice language to listen to.

Pricepessa, I believe it's spelled. I'm just guessing at that, though. Phonetically, I think that would be right. But yes, that was an awesome movie. I watched it subtitled in English in my Italian class, then watched it with a friend, who insisted on watching it in English. I was so glad they left in 'Princepessa!" "Princess!" just wouldn't have been the same.

EDIT: It's actually Principessa. I was close.