How many languajes do you speak??
- Thread starter Catto
- Start date
Italian is my first language, while English is my second. I have grammar mistakes here and there when it comes to sentence structures, mainly nouns and verbs. I also speak French thanks to a few relatives who live in France. I plan on studying more.
I am an English speaker that speaks English to a reasonable degree. I studied French for three years and promptly forgot most of it, and German for six years which I still remember some of. It proved reasonably useful last summer when I spent a week in Austria. It was interesting to learn of some of the regional differences between Austrian-German and the German I learned at school. We spent some time in Salzburg and Vienna, home of schnitzel and my, as of that holiday, all-time favourite pudding Mohr im Hemd. It gave me some perspective when I spoke to servers in restaurants and attendants in shops in my German and they responded in kind, instead of realising I was a contemptible tourist. Some of my study must have been worthwhile.
Depends on which language.
Depends on which language.
My native language is American English and I'm familiar with the Southern and Northern dialects. I continue studying the grammar and vocabulary on a college level to improve it further, despite it being a language I was born into fluency in.
I'm not super fluent in Spanish (low intermediate), but know quite enough to chat and understand the general conversations (which has been my goal the whole time when learning it) but I am continuing to study it to improve my Spanish further.
I'm around high beginner stage with German, and have to learn some more advanced stuff, but I can somewhat understand some things.
I'm at a high beginner with Japanese. I'm building a better vocabulary and grammar and I know like maybe 100 kanji I think, but I need to continue studying in order to become fluent. I have been able to understand some basic stuff in anime, video games etc., but not enough.
I know some really basic Arabic, but definitely not enough for even the simplest conversation. I still have to study through Modern Standard Arabic, the dialects as well as Classical Arabic.
I also am familiar with Chinese, but I don't actually speak it. I only really know some basic vocabulary and phrases.
The same goes for French. However, my knowledge of Spanish can sometimes let me understand things because of cognates
I don't know Latin at all, but I'm familiar with Latin roots (as well as again Spanish, which is a romance language) so some vocabulary is not foreign to me.
All of this stuff I learned on my own. The only thing I had any formal education in was Spanish, but I was already studying it on my own to begin with and continued to study independently outside of school.
I mostly used a lot of self-study books, free websites like Duolingo and Memrise as well as YouTube videos and just have stuff like notebooks to take notes, recite things and immerse with videos and such, the usual things that people do for self-study.
I'm not super fluent in Spanish (low intermediate), but know quite enough to chat and understand the general conversations (which has been my goal the whole time when learning it) but I am continuing to study it to improve my Spanish further.
I'm around high beginner stage with German, and have to learn some more advanced stuff, but I can somewhat understand some things.
I'm at a high beginner with Japanese. I'm building a better vocabulary and grammar and I know like maybe 100 kanji I think, but I need to continue studying in order to become fluent. I have been able to understand some basic stuff in anime, video games etc., but not enough.
I know some really basic Arabic, but definitely not enough for even the simplest conversation. I still have to study through Modern Standard Arabic, the dialects as well as Classical Arabic.
I also am familiar with Chinese, but I don't actually speak it. I only really know some basic vocabulary and phrases.
The same goes for French. However, my knowledge of Spanish can sometimes let me understand things because of cognates
I don't know Latin at all, but I'm familiar with Latin roots (as well as again Spanish, which is a romance language) so some vocabulary is not foreign to me.
All of this stuff I learned on my own. The only thing I had any formal education in was Spanish, but I was already studying it on my own to begin with and continued to study independently outside of school.
It was honestly pretty boring, as I already knew the content before we covered it. It got to the point where students were asking ME to tell them how to say certain words in Spanish instead of the teacher XD. In addition, so many students weren't so enthusiastic in the class because they we only taking it for the credit, and because they wanted to "pick an easy language". The stuff we covered in class was worse. Most of it was us just repeating conjugations constantly.
I'm not experienced in pedagogy at all, but from what I know this is effective for some people under the right conditions. I just don't really prefer traditional education in foreign languages or most subjects at all like that to be honest, but especially in foreign languages.
I personally don't like it mostly because the quality of education varies too much by school, course and overall language you are taking. Many often don't go into the linguistics of the language you are learning a lot or at all sometimes, but expect you to learn ridiculously complex vocabulary and grammar that this background knowledge would alleviate tremendously.
In addition, some don't really teach you what is neccesarily relevant for conversation or fluency and try to compare the languages too much to English. Good examples of this are formal education with languages like Japanese and Arabic which are not only linguistically aren't like English at all, but they have contexts and vocabulary that can't necessarily be translated word for word to English like a machine (the main reason why Google Translate sometimes spits out garbage with certain languages or pops up multiple translations for a word)
Some also somewhat or altogether dismiss dialects/regional forms and only teach the "Standard". Although the fact that "you will be understood by everyone" and that "the standard is the basis for all the versions" is true, the dialects/regional form are still relevant to fluency in the aspect of at least being familiar with them. Some often have differing vocabulary preferences that aren't usually used in the formal/standard version and even pronunciation differences that can become a culture shock if you never have been exposed to them.
Now. over time this has been improving, but again this varies and you are at risk of taking a class with crappy-to-subpar quality content. In self-study, you can create your own curriculum, research and find out about several books and courses. You can also find information about the language you are learning and many other things. If you need help, you can seek out help online through google searches or ask native speakers (although the quality, truthfulness and trustworthiness of whatever they say to you should be taken with a grain of salt)
The obvious con to this is the amount of work and effort that it takes to do this that I am fully aware and will say that it is definitely not suited for everybody, but I personally prefer it. I end up actually learning more, understanding more and overall enjoy it more.
I'm not experienced in pedagogy at all, but from what I know this is effective for some people under the right conditions. I just don't really prefer traditional education in foreign languages or most subjects at all like that to be honest, but especially in foreign languages.
I personally don't like it mostly because the quality of education varies too much by school, course and overall language you are taking. Many often don't go into the linguistics of the language you are learning a lot or at all sometimes, but expect you to learn ridiculously complex vocabulary and grammar that this background knowledge would alleviate tremendously.
In addition, some don't really teach you what is neccesarily relevant for conversation or fluency and try to compare the languages too much to English. Good examples of this are formal education with languages like Japanese and Arabic which are not only linguistically aren't like English at all, but they have contexts and vocabulary that can't necessarily be translated word for word to English like a machine (the main reason why Google Translate sometimes spits out garbage with certain languages or pops up multiple translations for a word)
Some also somewhat or altogether dismiss dialects/regional forms and only teach the "Standard". Although the fact that "you will be understood by everyone" and that "the standard is the basis for all the versions" is true, the dialects/regional form are still relevant to fluency in the aspect of at least being familiar with them. Some often have differing vocabulary preferences that aren't usually used in the formal/standard version and even pronunciation differences that can become a culture shock if you never have been exposed to them.
Now. over time this has been improving, but again this varies and you are at risk of taking a class with crappy-to-subpar quality content. In self-study, you can create your own curriculum, research and find out about several books and courses. You can also find information about the language you are learning and many other things. If you need help, you can seek out help online through google searches or ask native speakers (although the quality, truthfulness and trustworthiness of whatever they say to you should be taken with a grain of salt)
The obvious con to this is the amount of work and effort that it takes to do this that I am fully aware and will say that it is definitely not suited for everybody, but I personally prefer it. I end up actually learning more, understanding more and overall enjoy it more.
I mostly used a lot of self-study books, free websites like Duolingo and Memrise as well as YouTube videos and just have stuff like notebooks to take notes, recite things and immerse with videos and such, the usual things that people do for self-study.
I'm fluent in Korean and English but I understand bits and pieces of bahasa Malaysia and Cambodian. I also can somewhat understand and read French for taking it for years in school but I never used it outside of class so I'm quite slow.
I know English and French, but I'm not fluent in French. 
onionpudding
♡laziest plant mom♡
I can speak English, Spanish, and Japanese!
Polymorphous Rex
Member
English is my first language, but I'm also fairly fluent in French, and I've been teaching myself Spanish for the last year and a half! I enjoy learning languages, it's something I'd like to pursue further in my life.
B e t h a n y
I hate pears
English and Gibberish
