Other Languages You've Studied

[Moobly]

Raised with Irish Gaelic and english. Mostly English but my grandda insisted on the gaelic. We were taught a bit in school too, but the language is going away is seems.

Learned spanish from dating a girl from El Salvador for about 5 years and now studying Japanese as a matter of necessity, though I'm rubbish at it.

[Sica]

other than that icelandic conjugates verbs for all persons and numbers while D/N/S doesn't?

Be that as it may, I maintain that a D/N/S person could, with some difficulty, communicate rather effectivly with an Icelandic, all parties using natives tounges only.

I find that hard to believe. I have no real trouble understanding Swedish or Norwegian because both vocabulary and grammar are practically the same. The biggest hurdle for me is usually pronunciation. The Icelandic I have heard however, does not make even the slightest sense to me.

Also, what the hell is Finnish related to anyway? I want to say Russian, but I don't see any apparent similarities.

I know from experience that a Swedish person (me) can understand written Icelandic with no prior knowledge of the langauge. This leads me to believe that I could also understand spoken Icelandic to some extent, if the person speaking it spoke slowly.

I'm Icelandic, so native speaker of that language and I learnt Danish in school as well. Basically the Icelandic pronounciation is so different that there is very little mutual understanding between the languages.

Knowing Icelandic and Danish I can cope with spoken Norwegian and Swedish to an extent but if I try to speak pure Icelandic I mostly just get blank faces when I'm trying to communicate with N/S/D people.

There's the occasional word they'll get if I speak very slowly but really there's not really any proper communication going on (apart through body language really).

The grammar is also quite different but that's not really the main problem since you can usually understand language even when it's not grammatically correct, it's the pronounciation that really stops the mutual understandability between Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages (Finnish is completely different of course)

I lived in Denmark for a bit as a kid and was put into a Danish school and I really couldn't communicate through language at all until I started picking up Danish. It might be easier between some dialects of Norwegian or Swedish and Icelandic but still the languages are pretty fundamentally different when spoken.

Oops forgot to list the languages. I've studied Icelandic, English, Danish and French and as I mentioned because of the Danish and Icelandic I can get by when I run into Swedish and Norwegian people as well.

[Fryie]

Well, I speak:

Swiss German, as my mother tongue (Berne dialect, generally, but with my relatives I speak some kind of mixed thing between Berne and Zürich German, since my mother is from Zürich. Anyway, I understand (almost) every Swiss dialect, and can usually tell which part of the country it's from, just like everyone here does.)
Italian, as my second mother tongue. I learned Italian first, but now my Italian is somewhat weak - I am still fluent, but my vocabulary really sucks. I guess that's mostly because I lack practice and because I hardly ever read stuff in Italian
Then, well, Standard German, if you want to count it as a different language (I'm not doing it in the poll, but as one might remind, the distinction dialect-language is a political one, not a linguistic one). I guess that now I'm almost indistinguishable from any speaker from Germany (usually Swiss speakers have an accent when they speak Standard German, but I've known so many people from Germany that I adopted their way of speech)

Other languages I've studied:
French - well, this was pretty cool, since knowing Italian helped me a lot with some peculiarities, while at the same time, learning about French grammar helped me understand Italian better, especially those parts where I had some kind of vague feeling how it worked, but not the exact details (especially the subjunctive, although there are some differences between the French subjonctif and the Italian condizionale). I guess I lack somehow the practice, but still I think I'm pretty good at it.
Then English, well, as you can see. My passive knowledge is very good, such is the influence of the internet (and of Harry Potter and GRR Martin and the like), I think there are few things I don't understand when I read them. Hearing is somewhat harder, depends much on the accent. Once watched a film with the main characters being from Belfast - didn't understand a thing, at first. Writing is pretty ok, I guess, while as for speaking - well, yeah, let's say, I could need some practice. And an accent - I mean, what I'm currently doing is pronouncing every word just the way I feel like, not even consistently (so let's say, for "duty" once I'd say 'doodie' and once 'djootie', etc.).
Then there's some "dead" languages I did. First of all Latin, well, I guess apart from the obscure declensions (u and e) and some peculiarities with futures and subjunctives (they're too similar), I guess I still know most of the grammar. As for the vocabulary, well I've forgotten much, especially since we always could use the dictionary.
Next, Ancient Greek. Well, I couldn't say I'd still master the verbal system, I mean... with all those contractions and whatnot, there is too much homonymy, etc. Declensions are easy, though. But it's a very, very beautiful language.
Then, those two semesters of Biblical Hebrew... well, I've forgotten much. I can still read a text, albeit slowly, if it has vowel signs, but I never bothered to learn any vocabulary and the morphology and phonology is quite complex, so I wouldn't be able to understand much now.

Well, and for the future I plan to learn some more languages. First, I'm taking a Czech course next semester. That's a language I've wanted to study for quite some time, but as of yet I know little more than how to pronounce it and some basic phrases (I even tried to order my food in Czech at the McDonald's in Prague, two years ago, but didn't understand when they asked me whether I wanted ketchup or mayo ). Then, there is also a Tamil class - I guess, I'll just try to see if I like the language and if it works to do two languages at the time (after all, they're completely unrelated).

Then, there's a couple of more languages I'd like to learn although I probably won't be able to learn all of them: Lakhota, Quechua, Basque, Modern Greek, Finnish, Japanese, Tagalog, Mapudungun, etc.
What I don't want to learn is one of these SE Asia languages like Thai, Burmese, etc. This is purely subjective, but I don't like the sound of them, and besides I'm not so much into isolating languages, let alone into tones.

And just as for this "critical age" stuff ("you can't master any language when you're older than 8") - that's a very generativist view, and one I would challenge. Although it becomes certainly harder to learn languages at later age, there hasn't been sufficient proof for the theory that there is one clear cut. Actually, what is much more important is the motivation. Children who learn a new language are motivated to imitate what they hear - that is why they will have no foreign accent and the like. But adults often lack this motivation - after all, if Arnold Schwarzenegger can become governor of California with that Austrian accent of his, why would he want to change it?

[TexasBelle210]

Foreign languages (since that's what I assumed the poll was about): Russian, French, Spanish. Respectively, I failed, I sucked, and I want to become proficient enough to be able to understand the Spanish TV channels we get in Houston, because for some reason I only get CBS, NBC, ABC, and a Spanish speaking channel that has some very interesting looking shows...

Native languages: English, American Sign Language (which is very useful when trying to hold a conversation in church about something not appropriate).

[Mercurius]

French, German, Spanish, Bhasa Indonesia and Arabic (the last two essentially self-taught). I learnt the first three at school, and have forgotten a lot, but I know I tend to pick up languages quickly if I'm in a country where they are being used. I've looked at some Russian, but I couldn't begin to speak it. I also know about, oh, 10 words of Cantonese, because I worked in a Chinese takeaway for several years.

[the_stabbage]

My first language was Romanian, and I still speak it.

Then I learned Afrikaans and English when I moved to South Africa. Around grade 4 or so they tried to teach us Tswana (Bantu language), I don't know anything of it any more, except possibly one swear word.

I learned the Greek alphabet and a bit of the language when we went on vacation to Athens. I know a few words (Evcharisto, parakalo, zacharoplasteion), but I can't form a sentence.

Then I moved to Canada, forgot Afrikaans, and learned French. I found French pretty easy to grasp grammatically, knowing another Romance language, but the pronunciation still gets me.

I learned a bit of Spanish for a trip to Spain, my friend and I had a blast. I could understand pretty much everything the people were saying, and my Brazilian friend got by by speaking Portuguese with a Spanish accent. We had a harder time with faking Catalan

Somewhere in there, I tried learning a bit of German, and that failed. Oh yeah, I'm not sure if it counts for anything, but I did teach myself the Cyrillic alphabet.

[Eugo]

Hány magyar van még itt? Kezdjünk egy beszégetést?

Én szerb vagyok, de dolgoztam Magyarországon kb. 2 év. Tanultam a nyelvet úton, munka melett. A szótaram rövid, és a billentyüzet kiasztás a nagy problém. Sajnos hogy sokat elfelejtem, utolsó tartozkodásam ott 1999-en volt, és az csak négy nap volt.

Kezdjünk, akkor!

Also, what the hell is Finnish related to anyway? I want to say Russian, but I don't see any apparent similarities.

Because there are none . Finnish is related to Hungarian and Estonian, and a few less known languages in the area - but knowing one helps only moderately if you're learning another. The principles on which grammar is built may be the same; vocabulary is very different, and if there are any common words, they are either reshaped beyond recognition, or are loanwords from third languages. I've watched "Star wreck - from the pirkinning" in Finnish (with English subtitles), and I recognized only one thing - the accusative suffix -re in "telkare" ("on the telly") which would be -ra in Hungarian.

BTW, the linguists on Wikipedia seem to adhere to the opinion that these languages have 40-some cases. The other opinion was that they have no cases - even most of my Hungarian friends think so.
----
Ah, and the response to the question that I owe... I selected 3, that's the languages I have studied more or less formally: English, 2x7 months of private lessons, about 2 hours a week; Russian, 10 years (5th grade through four semesters at college), Hungarian - by immersion on the job, 4 semesters of Latin in grammar school (gimnasium). Other languages that I picked up or just discovered that I may understand and/or speak if lubricated by alcohol: Slovenian (nearly full understanding, thin on sentence composition), German, Polish, Italian, French, Macedonian, Spanish, Romanian, any other Slavic language, bits of Dutch, Portuguese (written - I love how it sounds, but just like most South American Spanish, have trouble understanding when spoken), Esperanto... for the rest:

Q: can you play piano?
A: maybe, haven't tried yet.

[darktalon]

My first language is English. I studied French at school up to GCSE level, and more recently have been studying Polish. Which, as it's not available on the languages programme at my university, I've been learning through the time-honoured method of reading books and talking with and listening to native speakers when I get the chance. Despite which I'm still probably better than I ever was at French, and certainly better than I am at French now. As I'm reasonably good with languages and enjoy learning them, I'll almost certainly study more in the future.

I make a point of learning some basic vocabulary for the local language whenever I go on holiday, even if it's only "hello", "goodbye", "please", "thank you" and tourist phrases like "where's the hotel/station/town centre?" but I can't exactly count those for the purposes of this thread. It's my experience that even if someone does speak English and replies to you in English they still appreciate the effort, but any book about foreign travel and tourism will tell you this. It's advice that can't be repeated enough considering how many English-speaking tourists still take the "Shouting At Foreigners" approach to communication and give the entire Anglophone world a bad name.

[ZLVT]

Yeah, people always complain about Austrians but in Vienna I at least tried to speak German and I ha no problems whatsoever with locals.

[regua]

darktalon, any particular reason why you picked up Polish? I mean, other than the fact that half of our population migrated to the UK. It's quite a difficult language, and the number of people speaking it compared to e.g. German, Spanish or even French languages is tiny.

[Hayden]

In year seven I studied French, in year eight I studied Japanese. I had a do-it-yourself course on learning Spanish but it didn't get far. For my HCS (year 11 and year 12) I'm studying Italian Beginners.

[ZLVT]

HSC? How'd you do Italian? Our school only had Latin and the main three. You go to a saturday school or something?

[Eugo]

darktalon, any particular reason why you picked up Polish? I mean, other than the fact that half of our population migrated to the UK. It's quite a difficult language, and the number of people speaking it compared to e.g. German, Spanish or even French languages is tiny.

So what? The number of people speaking ancient Greek or Gaelic is even smaller, but people are still interested in learning them. Each language is a repository of the collective wisdom of a people; learning it gives one a chance to multiply that by legal theft.

[TheOrangeMan]

I took Japanese for 3 years in high school (though my teacher probably wasn't the best). I have a decent understanding of the grammar but my vocabulary is pretty pathetic and getting worse since I'm not speaking it daily anymore. My favorite thing about Japanese is how well-defined the phonology is.

A lot of other languages interest me but I've only taken brief glimpses at their grammars and picked up a small set of words from their vocabularies. I'd love to learn Swedish but every time I start to get into it I get overwhelmed by the patterns of inflection. I was never particularly taken by the the romance languages but I've recently found them much more appealing.

As a side note, I don't like how Hungarian sounds xD I truly apologize to any Hungarians or other speakers of Hungarian out there; I don't mean to offend you, the language just doesn't sound appealing to me.

EDIT: I probably should have mentioned that my first language is English, though I'm sure it was probably apparent .

[ZLVT]

I've heard it described as the language learner's everest. A lot of people go for it for the presige, not because they like the language.

[Hayden]

HSC? How'd you do Italian? Our school only had Latin and the main three. You go to a saturday school or something?

My school offers Italian Beginners; French; and Indonesian.

[ZLVT]

In NSW? wow, most places only did Jap, F, and D

[Hayden]

<contents removed>

[Eugo]

As a side note, I don't like how Hungarian sounds xD I truly apologize to any Hungarians or other speakers of Hungarian out there; I don't mean to offend you, the language just doesn't sound appealing to me.

Probably the same distaste I had with some musical genres: the quality is not where you're looking, but it's there.

Hungarian, with its uniform accentuation (always the first syllable) and the need to keep the lengths - long vowels, and long consonants too - presents an obstacle to having a melody of a sentence. I've heard that obstacle successfully overcome, in street/bar talk, or turned into a virtue, on Kossuth Rádio, where one would speak so flatly, that when they take a pause, I would have no clue whether that was end of sentence, end of a paragraph, just a comma, a dramatic (smoke ) break, is the guy taking air for the rest of the sentence or maybe he's completely finished and we're waiting for the next guy to start. The next words would usually come as a surprise. My guess was mostly wrong, that is.

In any other language I know, you simply have to flex your tone at least a bit before a break, to give some hint of what kind of a break it is. Only in Hungarian I heard it can be so perfectly flat - but then that may have been the fashion in Budapest at the time, haven't revisited it since.

As for tastes, I'm surprised how much I more like Portuguese over Spanish; Catalan comes in the middle. You actually got me thinking here... and I seem to like the sound of almost any language. Maybe just the accentuation in Czech and Slovakian can get on my nerves, or it did in their movies once upon a time. I remember I once pretended to be asleep on a train so I could listen to the sound of a Slovakian couple talking.

[DarkKnightJared]

I've studied Spanish for three years. I know how to do put sentences together, but I can memorize any of the words worth a shit, so I don't really speak it it that well.

[stolid]

I'm fairly fluent in Spanish (still learning). Self taught myself a little German, but I'm not sure if I really want to continue learning. I want to learn a North Germanic language instead.

[Monika]

Languages I have studied:

German, since birth

English, starting in fifth grade, up to and including 13th grade, i.e. 9 years. It was one of my two "main subjects" (more advanced than the other classes, more lessons per week, one has exactly two of these). I also spent a year in the US. English is the only foreign language I have mastered to the level of being able to talk about stuff .

French, starting in seventh grade, up to and including 10th grade, i.e. 4 years, then I dropped it. One had to choose between French and Latin in 7th grade and had to do it four years (later I would have preferred Latin). I was surprised that I actually speak enough French to communicate with some administration there. I can't have much of a meaningful conversation in French, I lack the vocabulary.

Italian, 11th to 13th, i.e. 3 years. Even worse than French. I used to be able to e.g. order food or ask for the way, but I think I can't do that anymore.

While I was in the US between 11th and 12th grade for one year, I had Chinese as a foreign language there. Didn't learn too much, half the time was spent on folding paper, watching videos and stuff like that. I took some more Chinese as an evening class the next year in Germany. And now, ten years later, I am starting again. I cannot say anything beyond "Hello how are you what's your name" and count and family members and the like. I hope to reach at least the ability to order my food in Chinese .

In 9th and 10th grade I had Russian as a club, once a week. Just enough to learn reading/writing. I took it up again in uni, once a week for two semesters. This was just enough to learn to count - I never learn vocabulary

In 10th grade I learned some Spanish with a book and tapes. I stopped doing that when I started Italian in school, because I mixed the two up. I have started again with Spanish 1 a few months ago. It works pretty well, probably because of having learned French and Italian. But of course I am still only in Spanish 1.

In the first semester in uni I took Turkish. Fascinating language, highly regular. But still not easy. I can't say much beyond "my name is". In the following semesters there were not enough students who signed up, I think Turkish 2 was in my sixth semester or so.

After there were not enough students for Turkish and Russian, I did Arabic ... surprisingly there were enough students for this, it went on until Arabic 5 or 6, I am not sure. Because, once more, I never studied any vocabulary, I can't speak it. I am not even very good at reading all the letters. But it was nevertheless very interesting to learn about the different kind of writing system and grammar.

Then I took Dutch at the community evening school. That was easy because it's closely related to German. Two semesters and more fluent than in most of the others.

At the same time I started learning German sign language at the same school. Two semesters. I cannot say much beyond "the bird sits on the tree" and "the cat sits under the car". It's extremely hard to learn.

I young friend recently gave me his used Latin book and I have done the first lessons, but one can't really count that yet as having learned Latin.

Hey, why do the options stop at 9?

And can I include Java, Pascal, Python, ... <runs>

[stolid]

English is my native language. I've learned Spanish (in Spanish 3 in high school, might take Spanish 4 next year) which I speak pretty decent, German (very basic, decided I didn't want to go further with it), and now Swedish (very basic, but I think I like it a lot more than German and I'll keep going). I hope to learn Swedish to a usable degree and might later morph my knowledge into being able to speak Norwegian. Scandinavia is cool.

I wouldn't mind learning French, Italian, Japanese, or maybe a constructed language.

[TheOrangeMan]

...or maybe a constructed language.

I'm not quite sure it qualifies as studying, but I actually created a constructed language. It's by no means as in depth as Tolkien's languages (and I am by no means an expert linguist), but it's something.

Fun translated quotes =D

"Yue lomana feia damae gi senudae in cake? Nue?"
"Who is going to make the cake when I am gone? You?"

"In naaec fel In ship letae ka baebae iya dei brick sira."
"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

[cossackaudio]

I really love language study. I'm currently working on my 15th: Hungarian. It's kicking my butt. Odd, that. Anyhow, the 15 sounds more impressive than it actually is. Once one learns Russian, Ukrainian and Serbo-Croatian, then all the other Slavic ones simply fall into line. Add Romanian, German, Spanish and a smattering of Old Norse/Icelandic and that sums up my experience. Granted, I've lived in Eastern Europe for many years and therefore have a base for needing those languages.

I'm not really a math or science guy, but this XKCD site is amazing. Man, have I been missing out...

[ZLVT]

/wipe tear

it's how we roll. What country you in btw?

[inktvis]

a linguistics forum! I thought I couldn't like XKCD more, but there you go

My native tongue is Dutch, I studied French from primary school. In high school, I studied English, German, Latin and Greek (I'm really sad the last two are slowly slipping away, so I've stocked up on some grammar and exercise books for my next holiday). At university I studied Swedish (which gave me access to Norwegian and Danish) and one year of Finnish. I had a very brief obsession with Welsh but never got further than buying a Teach Yourself Welsh book and tripping over my own tongue.

[darktalon]

darktalon, any particular reason why you picked up Polish? I mean, other than the fact that half of our population migrated to the UK. It's quite a difficult language, and the number of people speaking it compared to e.g. German, Spanish or even French languages is tiny.

This isn't the first time a Polish person has asked me that question. I spent a lot of time in Poland during my gap year and started learning then. Partly for purely practical reasons of course - I learn some basic vocabulary as I do for any country I visit, and it grows from there. We (my friends and I) chose Poland as a destination partly because as you say there are and were a lot of Polish guest workers in the UK, and as not many British people know much about Poland I grew curious from talking to some of my co-workers and decided to see their country for myself. (By this point I'd already got the hang of Polish pronunciation despite knowing little of the language itself, because 50% of the workforce were Polish and I was in charge of the tannoy system.) Liked it enough the first time that I kept going back - helped that we had a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable local guide - and at some point decided to make a serious effort to learn the language properly.

I'm possibly moving over there to live when I finish at uni, so it won't be useless for me. It is indeed difficult (some of my Polish friends say it's one of the 5 hardest languages to learn, but I couldn't find the official source for this), more so as I had no prior experience with Slavic languages, but I like a challenge.

Sorry for the delay in replying

[Mavketl]

I'm Dutch, and I took all languages available in high school: Dutch, English, German, French, Latin, and Greek.

I'm fluent in Dutch, and near-fluent in English (I don't make many blatant mistakes, but sometimes what I'm saying/typing doesn't have a natural flow to it, one can tell I'm not a native speaker - and then there's the hated accent).

I used to be okay in German, but most of that has been lost over time. I can read it very well, understand spoken text quite well, but I'm not very good at speaking/writing.

I'm horrible at French. I only took the mandatory part, and I got through it thanks to my knowledge of English and Latin more than any French.

Latin and (old) Greek are different, because we only learnt to translate it to Dutch and not the other way around (which makes sense, for dead languages). I've found them very useful for my general understanding of language, both my native language and foreign ones. It is now much easier to get the gist of something in a language I have had no training in, provided said language is Indo-European.

Well, that was a whole lot of "I" right there.

[SaraBara92]

For freshmen and sophomore year of high school I studied French. Then after my sophomore year, a five week intensive Arabic class was offered at the college in my town. Now, I'm in my junior year and taking Japanese 1. I find Japanese much easier to learn then Arabic, to both speak and read. Arabic as some sounds that are...difficult to pronounce. French was the easiest out of the three, but I still have a hard time speaking it. I'm more comfortable reading it.

[Rilian]

I tell people I speak four languages. It's simpler than explaining to them how good I am at each one.

I'm also working on a couple other languages besides those four.

English
Spanish
German
French
Romanian
Japanese/Dutch/Hindi/Russian/Italian/whatever I feel like.

[ntietz]

Latin for four years and German for two; after that Latin, the German grammar is really simple... there's nothing to it!

I'm also hoping to pick up Italian and possibly Spanish or French in college.

[sparks]

I have studied Portuguese, French, Spanish and German. I'm studying Chinese at the moment, and soon hopefully I'll also start Arabic and Italian. I have the chance of taking Hindi but the professor does not get along with me (and I've only been there once, to see what the classes were like!) and I don't want to start Japanese and mix it up with Chinese since I'm starting out with both (anyone who has studied them -- is there this danger at all?).

[Rilian]

I like that the numbers are written the same in Chinese and Japanese, but pronounced completely differently.

Based on my small experience with both, I think that chinese and japanese grammar are nothing alike. Neither is the pronunciation similar.

[sparks]

I like that the numbers are written the same in Chinese and Japanese, but pronounced completely differently.

Based on my small experience with both, I think that chinese and japanese grammar are nothing alike. Neither is the pronunciation similar.

So there is no way of mixing them up, right? Because I want to switch English for Japanese (at least we don't have to over-analyse short stories) in my course.

[Kizyr]

I like that the numbers are written the same in Chinese and Japanese, but pronounced completely differently.
Based on my small experience with both, I think that chinese and japanese grammar are nothing alike. Neither is the pronunciation similar.

So there is no way of mixing them up, right? Because I want to switch English for Japanese (at least we don't have to over-analyse short stories) in my course

There's very little way of mixing them up. I've occasionally thought of the Chinese pronunciation for Japanese characters, or vice-versa, but considering how different the two languages are, there's little room for confusion.

Also, a large number of languages use the same numbers as in English and still pronounce them differently. I'm not so sure why that's an interesting feature of Chinese and Japanese. KF

[HareichiSan]

I've been self-teaching German and Spanish

[Rilian]

I've been self-teaching German and Spanish

Yum. I do those, too. Earlier today I said, "Das ist die Tur des Gebäude von Mathe." Then I said, "No tengo ningun dinero."

I'm missing some diacritical marks. w/e.

[Bassoon]

I selected six. Russian, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, and Latin. I am in no way fluent in any of them, but I'm trying. It's mostly verb tenses and forms that stops me. Past that hurdle, I suspect it's a downhill slope to literacy.

[Rilian]

I selected six. Russian, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, and Latin. I am in no way fluent in any of them, but I'm trying. It's mostly verb tenses and forms that stops me. Past that hurdle, I suspect it's a downhill slope to literacy.

I find the greatest hurdle to be vocabulary in Spanish and German.