Which languages do you speak??

[John Smith]

I am basically writing off in a tongue totally foreign to me, so to speak the English language.

 

Being born and raised in French Canada by a family originate from various African members-states of the Francophonie, I am very fluent in that said spoken language: even every once and again to the spite and bittering anger of a lot of people I've met and indicated signs of inferiority complex, especially those of French-Quebecker descent (whose popular culture often interprets anywhom masters their mother-anguage better than these native-born speakers like either a cue of intellectual or socioeconomical superiority nay pure snobism) who reacts about my fluency with hostility and mockery, let alone sometimes worse. However, I slowly noted that most of the English speakers I've met displays as much enmity when they're hearing my Metropolitan French-ish accent strip apart every pronounced word, simultaneously taunting me arrogantly about my poor spoken English savviness while being nonetheless pissed off by my classical English acumen and random insights. I used to be easily annoyed whenever anybody was taunting me or acting rude while I was trying to reflect on my words and to phrase out my thoughts or about how I needed to sometime ask my interlocutor to slow down a bit, but overtime I'd merely realizes something: if people were so concerned about my spoken English, they would try to reach me out for some help instead consistently trying to humiliate me... also, a fair number of these same people were far from being any better. Everytime I am dealing with such rude character and that it happens to be outside of the workplace, I merely stare at them with an uninviting "f***k off" smirk on my face. "Misery loves company" until the time there has neither such thing like misery.

 

Besides French and English or my past tribulations, I'm dabbling a little in Spanish (even if my understanding of the spoken standard Spanish has dimmed a bit, out of a lack of practising) , spoken Japanese (learning kanjis are however a tough time) then at last in Lingala, Kiswahili and (much poorer in) Kinyarwanda.

 

I earn a few moderable-to-greatly elusive cues within spoken both Classical & Levantine Arabic but not under their written form, in classical Latin, Romanicized Hebrew (their writing system gives me headaches) , in written German whose I attempted a while to learn by recommandation of an old friend in college but unsuccessfully, in Haitian Kreyol, in written Romanicized both Old Persian & Middle Persian / Pahlavi, in Avestan / Zend, Old Greek, Sanskrit, Romanicized Aramaic, Pashtun, standard Mandarin, Xhosa and Amazulu (whose both differs greatly from, but shares a distant kinship with both Lingala and Kiswahili) and tries since a while to fetch a little in Kikuyu (who differs a whit, but shares an intimate kinship within both Kiswahili and their common spoken Cushitic "Azanian" forerunner prior the Bantu-ization of East Africa) . I'd however forgot my cues in Amharaic and some Mayan dialect I attempted to learn a longtime ago.

 

 

During my adolescence, I had my "Tolkien-o-mania" phase and became pretty harcore about reading most everything about the late British author and philologist's lifetime-long High Fantasy Legendarium, its history, books and even fictitious tongues. Yet today, I and my oldest brother (who equally had that phase about the same range of age, years before I had mysrlf) still lasts the two only family members in the room who can grasp what the Elvish and Orcish characters are jibbering when they're speaking either in the Sindalrin or the Black Tongue whilse our family binge-watch LOTR or The Hobbit Trilogies.

Because we used to be hardcore Stargate fans, we can also get what the alien Goa'uld antagonists spoke in the TV show "Stargate SG1" .

 

Fictitious speech systems taken aside, I had also quite a basic understanding of a fewer extinct writing systems from the Near Eastern and the Nile, as well as their different languagues: Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Hurrian but most peculiarily the Old, Middle & Hieratic Egyptian forms of writing. Demotic, Sahidic & Coptic Egyptian sounds a little off to me, though.

I'd tried to fetch a little on that other extinct language native from the Horn of Africa and southwest Arabia, the Gu'ez language.

 

I'd once attempted to learn Hungarian and Korean, but they are quite difficult (especially Hungarian) . I'd quickly forgot everything I had been taught about those, yet Korean might still sound far less alien to me in comparison to the latter.

[Goni]

'm born and raised in Greece,my Grandpa lived in Turkey,but after the war on the 1920's he came to Greece as a refugee(he was Greek but lived there).My natural language is Greek,i understand and speak English in a decent level and i know a bit of German too.

[John Smith]

1 minute ago, Goni said:

'm born and raised in Greece,my Grandpa lived in Turkey,but after the war on the 1920's he came to Greece as a refugee(he was Greek but lived there).My natural language is Greek,i understand and speak English in a decent level and i know a bit of German too.

So, you might been one of those famous Anatolian Greeks?? Descendants of the Romans, Hellenes and Phyrgo-Lydian speaking natives of old?? 

 

Interesting. How did you learn German?

[Goni]

4 minutes ago, John Smith said:

So, you might been one of those famous Anatolian Greeks?? Descendants of the Romans, Hellenes and Phyrgo-Lydian speaking natives of old?? 

 

Interesting. How did you learn German?

In Greek educational system,you learn English+1 other language(usually French or German).My Grandpa was from Pontus,a wide area that is now in Turkey.So my closest descendants were 75% Greek 25% Pontic Greek,as from my 2grandpas 2grandmothers.Maybe if i go deeper i had some origins and descendants that were Anatolian Greeks but i don't know much about it.

[John Smith]

Fascinating.

[>_< 0_0]

Ich spreche Deutsch, aber nur ein bisschen, weil mein Vocabeln sind sehr klein.

I tried my hand at Brazilian Portuguese, but it's SUPER hard in the same way that French is hard: half the letters don't actually make sounds, so you can't just read a sentence and be like "oh, this is what it would sound like when you speak it" like you can in German. Beautiful language, though; their samba and bossa nova music is absolutely amazing. It's the most romantic music I've ever listened to. I play it to girls I really care about.

German, of course, IS FOR METAL!!!!

 

[Hirsch von Bork]

I love learning new languages.

My 'mother tongues' are Spanish and Galician. The latter is spoken in the north west corner of Spain, which is called Galicia or Galiza, where I live.  It's very similar to Portuguese, as both were supposed to be the same language in the Middle Ages, until Portugal became a departed Kingdom.  I have a good level of Portuguese not only because of that but also due to a 3-month internship I did in Estoril. 

Besides English, I also  studied German for many years  at the Language School but unfortunately I am starting to forget due to lack of practice

On 3/22/2020 at 4:48 AM, >_< 0_0 said:

Ich spreche Deutsch, aber nur ein bisschen, weil mein Vocabeln sind sehr klein.

I tried my hand at Brazilian Portuguese, but it's SUPER hard in the same way that French is hard: half the letters don't actually make sounds, so you can't just read a sentence and be like "oh, this is what it would sound like when you speak it" like you can in German. Beautiful language, though; their samba and bossa nova music is absolutely amazing. It's the most romantic music I've ever listened to. I play it to girls I really care about.

German, of course, IS FOR METAL!!!!

 

Totally agree. Hail Rammstein!

 

I have tried to learn other languages on my own just for fun, including fictional ones like Sindarin, Valyrian or Klingon. I tried Japanese but I finally gave up due to the f*king  kanjis . Now I am learning modern Greek with Duolingo. 

 

[John Smith]

1 hour ago, das Hirschlein said:

 

 

I have tried to learn other languages on my own just for fun, including fictional ones like Sindarin, Valyrian or Klingon. I tried Japanese but I finally gave up due to the f*king  kanjis . Now I am learning modern Greek with Duolingo. 

 

Those damned kanjis... 😑😣 

[>_< 0_0]

56 minutes ago, John Smith said:

Those damned kanjis... 😑😣 

Don’t let him know about the kataganas 🤫

[lathropfreeman]

My girlfriend speaks Spanish at the C1 level (she's bilingual) and I speak it at around the B2 level. I've been ramping up my practice in the last 3 months because I want to hit C1 in 2020. 

[Sajjo]

I speak English and Italian fluently. Plus I can understand French, Spanish and Portuguese. 

[John Smith]

4 hours ago, Sajjo said:

I speak English and Italian fluently. Plus I can understand French, Spanish and Portuguese. 

It is somehow easier to understand some cues from other Romance-speaking languages when you are fluent into one or two of those.

[theviviennerose]

10 minutes ago, John Smith said:

It is somehow easier to understand some cues from other Romance-speaking languages when you are fluent into one or two of those.

Very true! I started out with Spanish as my second language, layered in some French, Portuguese, Tagalog, and Hindi. I knew I had accomplished some language skill when I was standing in a train station in Paris, and I understood the conversations around me in 5 languages. Not perfectly, but basically.

[Guest BrewGuy]

Japanese, Spanish, Korean, and a tiny bit of Irish...sadly most are varying degrees of rusty!

[Alexa, Butterball Babe CLIPS]

I hate how much animosity there is in the US towards people speaking languages other than English!! Like in most countries people speak at least two languages if not more! The xenophobia is too real😔

But anyway, to answer the question - English is my first language, perro yo hablo un poquito Espanol, und ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch! Ich habe Deutsch an der Universitat gelernt y por Espanol vivi en Arizona por unos anos! But that's maybe as much as I can remember of either language now! When I was in Arizona I used to sometimes slip up and speak some combo of Spanish/English/German or I'd accidentally slip in a German word when I was speaking Spanish and people would be so confused why I was calling un gato  "eine katze."😅

I'd like to brush up on my Spanish and learn French since so many people speak both of those!

(English translation: English is my first language, but I speak a little Spanish, and I speak a little German! I learned German in university and for Spanish, I lived in Arizona for a few years!)

[Alexa, Butterball Babe CLIPS]

Multilingualism is hot!!

 

[John Smith]

3 minutes ago, theviviennerose said:

Very true! I started out with Spanish as my second language, layered in some French, Portuguese, Tagalog, and Hindi. I knew I had accomplished some language skill when I was standing in a train station in Paris, and I understood the conversations around me in 5 languages. Not perfectly, but basically.

French, Spanish and Portugese are closely akin Romance languages, while Tagalog has borrowed a lot of cognates from Spanish. 

 

But Hindi is quite a difficult language to understand, even in spite some of its cognates been distantly matched to some Greek, Latin-rooted Romance and Germanic cognates (but most closely with Iranic and Armenian cognates) . When I heard some Hindi speakers chatting in public places, my understanding of Kiswahili helps me way much (due to the Swahili language been a vernacular lingua francia having borrowed some loanwords from Sanskrit, Hindi, Avestan and Arabic -which itself heavily borrowed from Old and Middle Persian in spite its Semitic roots- within centuries) .

[John Smith]

12 minutes ago, PizzaGuide said:

Japanese, Spanish, Korean, and a tiny bit of Irish...sadly most are varying degrees of rusty!

I fell onto a comedy video about an Irish-descent British office worker employed by an Irish office and having difficulties to understand most everything his patron and coworkers were saying in spite what his resume make them believe and gosh... you can tell that Gaelic languages are really old in comparison to a majority of the contemporary Indo-European languages of Europe. 😂

[DanteSparda45]

3 minutes ago, Alexa, Butterball Babe said:

I hate how much animosity there is in the US towards people speaking languages other than English!! Like in most countries people speak at least two languages if not more! The xenophobia is too real😔

But anyway, to answer the question - English is my first language, perro yo hablo un poquito Espanol, und ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch! Ich habe Deutsch an der Universitat gelernt y por Espanol vivi en Arizona por unos anos! But that's maybe as much as I can remember of either language now! When I was in Arizona I used to sometimes slip up and speak some combo of Spanish/English/German or I'd accidentally slip in a German word when I was speaking Spanish and people would be so confused why I was calling un gato  "eine katze."😅

I'd like to brush up on my Spanish and learn French since so many people speak both of those!

(English translation: English is my first language, but I speak a little Spanish, and I speak a little German! I learned German in university and for Spanish, I lived in Arizona for a few years!)

I know bits and pieces of German, Spanish, Japanese, a couple of Hebrew words, and for some odd reason, i want to learn Greek.

[theviviennerose]

7 minutes ago, Alexa, Butterball Babe said:

I hate how much animosity there is in the US towards people speaking languages other than English!! Like in most countries people speak at least two languages if not more! The xenophobia is too real😔

But anyway, to answer the question - English is my first language, perro yo hablo un poquito Espanol, und ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch! Ich habe Deutsch an der Universitat gelernt y por Espanol vivi en Arizona por unos anos! But that's maybe as much as I can remember of either language now! When I was in Arizona I used to sometimes slip up and speak some combo of Spanish/English/German or I'd accidentally slip in a German word when I was speaking Spanish and people would be so confused why I was calling un gato  "eine katze."😅

I'd like to brush up on my Spanish and learn French since so many people speak both of those!

(English translation: English is my first language, but I speak a little Spanish, and I speak a little German! I learned German in university and for Spanish, I lived in Arizona for a few years!)

I feel your pain. My first few visits to Paris, I had only studied Spanish. I started picking up French through immersion and tried to speak in sentences. I found myself filling in the holes where I didn't know the French word with Spanish. The first time I took the metro, I knew I was supposed to be speaking in a language other than English, so I ended up saying English words, but with an accent. Lol Your brain gets confused! I have friends who speak 11 - 17 languages fluently, and I'm just in awe!

[John Smith]

5 minutes ago, Alexa, Butterball Babe said:

I hate how much animosity there is in the US towards people speaking languages other than English!! Like in most countries people speak at least two languages if not more! The xenophobia is too real😔

 

I vaguely heard about the intolerance that some Americans may expresses toward non-English speakers, but I ignored that was so frequently occuring.

 

We have the same trouble in Quebec. A lot of native-born French-Canadians here would react angrily while hearing anything but French spoken in public places - even in metropolitian areas - while a quite fair number of English speakers of any origin at Metropolitan Montreal jeers at anyone who cannot speak English proper.

[theviviennerose]

9 minutes ago, John Smith said:

French, Spanish and Portugese are closely akin Romance languages, while Tagalog has borrowed a lot of cognates from Spanish. 

 

But Hindi is quite a difficult language to understand, even in spite some of its cognates been distantly matched to some Greek, Latin-rooted Romance and Germanic cognates (but most closely with Iranic and Armenian cognates) . When I heard some Hindi speakers chatting in public places, my understanding of Kiswahili helps me way much (due to the Swahili language been a vernacular lingua francia having borrowed some loanwords from Sanskrit, Hindi, Avestan and Arabic -which itself heavily borrowed from Old and Middle Persian in spite its Semitic roots- within centuries) .

My fascination with linguistics has much to do with the similarities across regions, especially where a particular group or person tries to be so nationalistic. Any knowledge or study of the movement of people explains the similarities and influences within any dialect. In my travels, I've managed to pick up at least pleasantries, if not conversational abilities in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, German, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telegu, Slovenian, Hungarian, Polish, etc... 

[DanteSparda45]

48 minutes ago, PizzaGuide said:

Japanese, Spanish, Korean, and a tiny bit of Irish...sadly most are varying degrees of rusty!

What tiny bit of Irish do you know?

[John Smith]

23 minutes ago, theviviennerose said:

My fascination with linguistics has much to do with the similarities across regions, especially where a particular group or person tries to be so nationalistic. Any knowledge or study of the movement of people explains the similarities and influences within any dialect. In my travels, I've managed to pick up at least pleasantries, if not conversational abilities in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, German, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telegu, Slovenian, Hungarian, Polish, etc... 

Linguistics tells a lot about population History... way much geniunely than what biased academic wings and political ideologies want to teach us.

[Guest BrewGuy]

4 minutes ago, DanteSparda45 said:

What tiny bit of Irish do you know?

Ehh, mostly stock phrases, greetings, the meanings of some Irish Gaelic place names, some basic grammar. Really not that much (probably wouldn’t be able to hold an Irish convo in a bar anywhere in the Gaeltacht) but it’s a neat language.