What languages do you speak? read? write?

[Shoe]

I am fluent in 3 languages: English, Spanish, and Klingon.

Although I have never tried, I understand that Spanish is close enough to Portuguese, and maybe even Italian that I could hold a basic conversation with people in either of those languages, although obviously not as well as if we both knew the same language.

[asofel]

English (native) - fluent

Ancient Greek - Took 7 years from high school into college. Could translate fairly quickly with a lexicon when doing 2 hours a night. You never really learn to speak it conversationally...never understood that...

Latin - Similarly, about 5 years from high school into college. Not as fun as Greek; also, don't speak it much these days. Romans are fairly reclusive.

Spanish, French, Italian - I can often pick out various words and general meaning from the Latin background; Spanish and Italian definitely being easier.

[Banks2334]

English, Lithuanian, Spanish. Fluent in all three.
Parents Lithuanian, born and raised in US, took 6 years of spanish in school.

[talentdeficit]

native english speaker.

i am probably fluent in french, but i hardly ever use it anymore so i am not 100% on that. i understand everything i read with no problem, but i have to think about what i'm writing. conversationally i'm pretty good i think. i took seven years of it in school and also lived in paris for a short while.

my spanish is alright. i can have simple conversations with most spanish speakers and can understand most of what i read. writing is a different matter. i learned this mostly from books and from living with a girl from puerto rico and dating a girl from mexico.

i speak a little russian thanks to a russian ex-girlfriend who indulged me when i'd ask her to teach me words. reading/writing is hopeless.

i speak a little gaelige thanks to a grandfather who never learned english.

i know enough cantonese to know when cantonese speakers are talking [censored] about me and to buy/sell things. this is mostly from living in vancouver and eating at a ton of restaurants where no english is spoken.

[OrigamiSensei]

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English: Native language
Spanish: Three years of high school classes, can speak, read and write some but far from fluent
French: One semester of community college, can speak read and write some but far from fluent
Finnish: From some books and audio learning programs, can speak and read a little

Living in SoCal gives my Spanish some practice, and regular business trips to Europe do the same for French and Finnish.

I'd like to learn Italian and German and then I'd be done except for attempting to increase fluency.

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I would consider this not knowing anything but English. You might be able to say you are a Spanish beginner unless you were some super high school student that learned a ton and practiced a lot.

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It's far, far from fluent but in all three cases it's more than just phrasebook. I think you're greatly underestimating the utility of even minimal levels of education and communication. I also think you're underestimating what can be learned via independent study and some practical usage in-country.

I have numerous colleagues who can't communicate at all in any foreign language and rely completely on English. If we're traveling together they regularly look to me for guidance at airports, hotels, and restaurants and dealing with people like taxi drivers. So can I hold a significant conversation? In general, no. Can I use what I do know to ease my way through a lot of very practical situations? Absolutely.

[nickg1532]

used to be decent in german, as my mom is german and i, therefore, grew up with it being spoken almost as much as english. i also took it for a couple of years in highschool. alas, a few years of not using it and i feel like i lost a lot.

i understand a tiny bit of macedonian too

[lippy]

4 years of HS Spanish. I just finished up 6 weeks of intense Spanish classes in Mexico (2 semesters worth). My oral skills got to the point that I would converse with people semi-confidently (don't confuse this with conversational ability...).

It was a nice step on my road to fluency.

[BTirish]

English: native speaker.

Spanish: I read well; write so-so; not fluent, but I wasn't far about 6 years ago. I took it in high school for 4 years.

Latin: I read well, but need a dictionary for most classical texts. I've never done much composition, and never spoken it, but I wish there were more opportunity to do so. Just should have been born 70 years ago, I guess. I'm also learning to do Latin paleography pretty well, where one reads the Latin in the original manuscript. Those can look like this: Latin manuscript. I study Latin because I'm a philosophy grad student, studying medieval philosophy.

Greek, French, German: I've done elementary work in these languages, and will need to have passed reading exams in them some time in the next four years before I finish my dissertation.

[haakee]

English: fluent

Norwegian: speak/read/write very well, can maintain a conversation, read newspaper, etc. (lived there for 5 years -- this also means I can understand Swedish and Danish to some extent)

French: speak/read/write moderately well, can converse accomplish what I need to accomplish in French-speaking countries (took 4 years of French, have spent a total of 5 weeks in French-speaking countries)

Spanish: speak/read/write a bit, understand quite a bit (one semester + several years living in highly Latino areas of California)

Vietnamese: speak/read/write very basic (one semester + playing in California casinos + 10 days vacation in Viet Nam)

Indonesian: very basic vocabulary/read/write (self-taught + Indonesian girlfriend + 3 weeks vacation in Indonesia and 10 days in Malaysia (very similar language))

Russian: I can read the Cyrillic alphabet, but only understand very basic things + things that are similar to words in English or Germanic languages

[haakee]

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am learning Vietnamese now. depending on whether you are talking to an older man, an older woman, a younger woman, or a younger man, you have to change the word for 'you'. i am hoping that there is actually a word for 'you' and they just want me to learn this way first.

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Haha, unfortunately no. But if you're white then they expect you to be stupid. At least you don't have to conjugate anything.