How many languages can you speak?

[saliotthomas]

This theard was in another forum and the part Sybarite wrote in world cinema brought it back to me.
(i didn't dare past your bit Sybarite,but i think it be good here)

I speak French and English(but can't write in ether,actualy worst in French if you can fathom)I use to speak Spanish but lost it mixing it up with Italian,i guess it would be back fast with pratice.
I picked a bit of Hindi,and with a patient enough interlocutor,can have a little converstion.After four years in Morocco,i can babble and start to understand enough to get fair prices in the souk.I find very important to get the "music"of a language,rythm,pause,intonation.Specialy if it is completly foreign to you(like arabic).I'm prolific in swear words due to the madness of the traffic here,"your father is a donckey-Amarbouk"been the milder or my panoply.I can also understand portuguese fairly well due to a long trip to Barzil and my love for the music of the country.If there is one language i would love to learn,it would certainly be this one.

[fausto]

French, English and Spanish, in order of proficiency. I know a very little bit of Dutch (no conversation apart from "een pintje, a.u.b." but enough to read a newspaper. Literature is out of reach).

[Sybarite]

Cheers Thomas. I've removed it from there and will post it here, rather than repeat myself.

The English are notoriously dire at languages and I am – well, was – no exception.

I had to start French and Latin when I went to grammar school at 11. I actually liked Latin and wasn't bad in it at all, but had to drop it after a year because of the class that I went into in the next year. That second year, I started German. I was bad at French – I was absolutely dismal at German. I struggled for two years and finished after getting 4% in an exam, but was made to continue French until finishing that school. I hated it and just found it completely confusing and an absolute torture.

In retrospect, I think that it didn't help because I couldn't see any of it having a practical application – I didn't imagine I'd ever visit France or Germany; to be honest, they weren't even near any list of places that I wanted to visit. Neither of my parents spoke any other language and my father's attitude to my having to study another language (other than Latin, which he approved of) was very negative. When I came home and announced over dinner one evening that I was having to do German, he exploded with rage and ranted about not having won the war in order to speak the language of the Krauts.

I do wonder whether such extreme negativity made learning harder – or rather, discouraged genuine engagement: a subconscious attitude that I shouldn't worry about such subjects.

About 10 years ago, I decided that a lack of another language was a pretty poor thing, so I started studying German – partly also with the dream of one day reading Mann and Grass in the original. I can manage Asterix in translation. My conversation is a problem, because I don't get much practice and therefore always worry about it. My French is improving ridiculously – unbelievably – since actually starting to visit France a couple of years ago. It's amazing what I suddenly found myself remembering from those torturous classes of almost 30 years ago, while I've picked up more since.

And I can manage a smattering of Spanish too. For me, it's actually part of the pleasure of holidays to try to do as much as possible in the language of the country I'm in.

With learning German in particular, I also found that it gives you an insight into a culture and a people. The pedantry, if you will, of German, absolutely delights me, as do the colloquialisms that I've picked up partly because of having a German friend.

As I said, the English remain, generally speaking, hopeless at languages. Our teaching of languages is bad (we start too late to begin with), but it is also a general attitude. I cringe when abroad sometimes hearing people who refuse to even make the effort to say 'hello' in the local language. Or as in one case, hearing a man who had arrived with his family at a hotel in France actually refuse to acknowledge the woman at the desk until she stopped saying 'bonjour' and said 'hello'. He boasted about it later.

Still, as an obvious Englishwoman abroad, I win brownie points for making the effort – which frequently translates into free drinks, even from Parisian waiters. ~~LOL~~

I've found that language in general fascinates me – that includes English. I've learnt more about English since starting to try to learn another language. Even in a traditional education such as that which I had, the English haven't taught their own grammar properly for a long time (if ever). So it makes learning another language even harder, since you reach a point where you have to comprehend such things as 'subject' and 'object' in your own language first in order to be able to translate that (so to speak) into an understanding of what it means in the new language.

I doubt if I'll ever be fluent, but it's a real pleasure to be able to speak and understand at least something. And if I can never read more than an Asterix book in another language, then it's 100 times better than anyone else in my family – and probably 100 times better than any of my teachers would have thought possible.

[Irene Wilde]

I'd love to blame the American education systems -- goodness knows it possesses a multitude of sins -- but I think not having the opportunity to speak and listen to a language regularly is what did me in. Had my family not be averse to traveling to "ferrin" countries where people speak "ferrin" languages, I might have been able to practice asking the location of the shoe store or if I might borrow a yellow pencil, and it might have made a difference. I'm hoping to start my child on a second language next year. I know everyone says to learn Spanish if you live in LA, but I hope she takes up French because I love the sound of it. Meanwhile, I toy with the idea of using one of the new computer software programs that supposedly teach languages, or one of the free language programs on iTunes. I think I'm pretty much beyond help, but it never hurts to try.

[Mirabell]

German, English and French, in order of proficiency, I can read French very well, but my 'active' French is...not up to snuff. I can speak Russian more fluently, but can hardly read it, I read like a firstgrader. I know bits of Italian and less of Spanish. I think I can still translate Latin texts, but it's been awhile.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by Irene Wilde

... Meanwhile, I toy with the idea of using one of the new computer software programs that supposedly teach languages, or one of the free language programs on iTunes. I think I'm pretty much beyond help, but it never hurts to try.

I was out in Paris at the end of May and, for about six weeks beforehand, used one of the free language podcasts form iTunes, just playing it during my bus journey to work in a morning.

It certainly helped me.

[Eric]

There are basically four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening.

These skills are quite separate. You may be able to speak a language fluently, but can't write it. You may be able to write a language well, but can't understand it when spoken. Or speak it fluently, but not really read it; like Mirabell with Russian. There are several permutations.

So saying you "know" a particular language, is a gross simplification.

My own skills:

I can do a pretty convincing job in all four skills with Dutch and Swedish.

That is where my really fluent all-round knowledge of languages ends. After that, it's mostly a reading knowledge, but if I had to, I could hold a simple conversation in French or German, I could, just about, but the grammar would be inaccurate, the active vocabulary limited.

I can read the following other languages:-

Well: Estonian, Norwegian, Danish, Afrikaans (can read a novel, but need a dictionary on hand);

Not so well: Finnish, Polish (too much dictionary work to be enjoyable);

Pretty badly, really. Spanish, Catalan, Italian (can stagger through a newspaper article and get the gist, but not the detail; lots of dictionary work);

Even worse: Russian (huge gaps in my vocabulary); Yiddish (the alphabet and the vowelless Hebrew loan words are a pain; the basically German grammar and vocabulary are not too bad).

I did Latin at school but still can't read it. It's a mental block, like when I try to understand Danish which, on paper, is similar to Swedish. I have translated a book from Danish, but can't understand it when spoken.

At present, I'm brushing up my Finnish - but only to read things. Most Finns speak English in the pub.

So, I repeat. Four skills, often at different levels.

[Irene Wilde]

So, I repeat. Four skills, often at different levels.

Let me see...doing that math...that means I've failed at four skills in two languages..I've failed to learn languages eight different ways!

[saliotthomas]

Originally Posted by Irene Wilde

Let me see...doing that math...that means I've failed at four skills in two languages..I've failed to learn languages eight different ways!

Very good Irene

Well your welcome in the back of the classroom with the retarded,there a heater,just have to keep an hear open for the change of speaker...

Actualy i can sing in few language in know nothing about(that two more Irene !)

[metin]

I've always been told that I was good at learning languages. Yet I didn't make headway at any of them except English which I still cannot speak so fluently at all. I can read what I want to in English though.

I know Russian at conversational level and am slowly improving (still dreaming of reading the Russian classics in the original).

Seriously studying Italian now. Not ready to start conversations.

I can slowly read in Uzbeki, but can't grasp nothing when spoken.

I can proudly say I know my native tongue (Turkish) well enough to despise and criticize the works of some famous so-called writers.

I am planning of studying Arabic and Farsi after I become forty. I am not sure if I can manage these all in my life time. But I believe it's worth the joy of learning and taking even the smallest step in enthusiasm makes one really joyous.

[Irene Wilde]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Very good Irene

Well your welcome in the back of the classroom with the retarded,there a heater,just have to keep an hear open for the change of speaker...

Actualy i can sing in few language in know nothing about(that two more Irene !)

Back of the class is not unknown to me. In fact, we are old friends.

I can sing (badly) La Vie En Rose and La Bamba, maybe a few others. I'm currently working on These Foolish Things in French, because it captures all the whimsy of the English, only it sounds better in French.

The scent of smouldering leaves, the wail of steamers
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you

And

Le parfum des feuilles de combustion lente, les pleurs des vapeurs deux amoureux sur la rue qui marchent comme des rêveurs
oh, comment le fantôme de vous s'accroche
Ces choses idiots
Rappelez-moi vous*

*These is a quick Babel Fish translation, since the CD with the song is at home.


Do I get points for that?

[iiris]

Pretty much fluent even by Eric's standards in English, French and Finnish. However I do notice that if I've been using one of them dominantly, phrases and even words kind of slip in from that to the other ones.

I don't know how to explain it, Eric might get it, but for example the word 'unhappy' in English, made of the word 'happy' and the pre-thingy (or whatever, I'm very tired) 'un' to negate the word, is 'onneton' in Finnish. Now, 'happy' in Finnish would be 'onnellinen' (among other translations), so clearly this is not similar add-on task as in English! But if I've used mainly English, and then switch to Finnish, I may build an add-on like 'unhappy' in Finnish too, resulting with something like 'epäonnellinen', where 'epä' is pretty much the same as 'un' in English. Then of course the person I'm talking to just looks at me and goes "huh??" thinking I'm an idiot or soething. Most of my friends get me though.

Other than those three, I can read few words of Swedish, although I claim I don't know a word, and I can do the basic conversations in Norwegian. I also know all te important phrases in Italian (like "do you have these shoes in green?" or "can you send these to my hotel, please?", you know). But that's pretty much it.

[nnyhav]

I fessed up elsewhere here to my monoglottal status but will reprise the essentials:

I have little Latin and less German, but both serve to illuminate the mongrelity of English, accreting steadily after the Norman-AngloSaxon hybridisation [...], both of which were something of catch-alls anyway. So, if I'm stuck with one language, at least it's a gallimaufry. Or a smorgasbord.

But I don't think basic competency would be sufficient for the kind of reading I like to do—so many nuances, so little time ...

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by nnyhav

... gallimaufry ...

What a fabulous word.

I had to look that up. Thank you, nnyhav – I love learning new words like that.

[saliotthomas]

Originally Posted by Sybarite

What a fabulous word.

I had to look that up. Thank you, nnyhav – I love learning new words like that.

Yep ,it seem Nnyhav has a garden full of them and the green figgers to bring them to full bloom.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by saliotthomas

Yep ,it seem Nnyhav has a garden full of them and the green figgers to bring them to full bloom.

A nice way of putting it, Thomas.

[nnyhav]

Glad to be of service. One nice bit, or perhaps naughty bit, is a secondary meaning of gallimaufry per OED, first cite Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor: "a promiscuous assemblage of persons".

The odd thing about all this (or me) is that my single biggest impediment to tackling another language is vocabulary memorisation.

[Sybarite]

Originally Posted by nnyhav

Glad to be of service. One nice bit, or perhaps naughty bit, is a secondary meaning of gallimaufry per OED, first cite Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor: "a promiscuous assemblage of persons".

Naughty and nice, nnyhav.

Originally Posted by nnyhav

The odd thing about all this (or me) is that my single biggest impediment to tackling another language is vocabulary memorisation.

The human mind is an incredible – and downright quirky – thing.

[Eric]

I see Iiris' point in #12. The Lego bricks of suffixes and affixes don't just click onto one another that easily to form words. (Actually, in Hungarian it seems more straightforward.)

When you've got a root like "onne-" in Finnish or, say, "joy" or "happy" in English, you run into all sorts of problems:

You can say "happy" and "unhappy" but it's called "happiness", not "hap".

You can say "joyous", or "joyful" but not "unjoyous" or "unjoyful" or "joyish".

If language were Lego, you could stick "un-" in front of every adjective. But language evolves over centuries, and is full of illogicalities ("unlogicalnesses").

[Eric]

I was browsing here on the WLF. I chanced upon the Andrey Kurkov thread, started by Stewart. So I looked him up on the net.

That's where this thread becomes relevant.

I found an interview with Kurkov entitled "I'm an ethnic Russian and a political Ukrainian".

This may sound slightly vague and boring, but is crucial to the understanding of languages.

The interviewer says:

Interviewer: You speak Ukrainian fluently. Why do you write your works in Russian?

Kurkov: Because, my command of Ukrainian is limited to conversation and journalistic speech. Literary language, in principle, demands a genetic knowledge of the Ukrainian language. (...) ...I grew up in the Russian-speaking part of Kiev. I learnt Ukrainian as a foreign and standard language which did not carry within it the genetic cultural meanings, details, synonyms, homonyms, etc.

This is a vital piece of knowledge which is the same as people in Belgium, Finland, Spain and other bi- or tri-lingual countries experience.

The very fact I can translate this short excerpt of the interview, albeit imperfectly, from the Ukrainian, a language that I have never learnt, shows that languages come in families. With a Ukrainian-English dictionary and my knowledge of Polish and Russian, I can get 95% of the interview. This is not magic, mysticism or genius, it depends on cold facts: linguistically and geographically, Ukrainian is halfway between Russian and Polish and, secondly, dictionaries are available.

I hope this demonstrates the complexity of knowing a language at various levels - but the logical simplicity of translating from them, if the right factors are in place.