I’m from the US and English is the only language I speak fluently.
Colombian here. I speak Spanish and English. I can read Portuguese, French, Catalan, Italian and little bits of Romanian and Esperanto. I have minimal understanding of Japanese, Dutch and Hindi.
I’m trying to balance learning Spanish and Esperanto. I’ll confess I’m much better at Esperanto. I’m still not anywhere near fluent.
Mexican here:
Spanish & English - Fluent
Japanese - Intermediate-advanced
French - Still learning but it’s so similar to Spanish it feels like cheating 😅
French was more confusing than Spanish was to me. I’m trying to learn Spanish actually. It’s a beautiful language.
日本人です、日本語しか話せないのであえてここも日本語で書きます
※普段は機械翻訳をつかってます
ちなみに、一般的な日本人の殆どは日本語以外を話すことはできません、日本の英語教育はあまり意味をなしていません
South Africa and pretty much just English. Apparently I was fairly fluent in Zulu when I was little kid, before starting school and losing it. And we learnt Afrikaans in school but Afrikaans kids went to Afrikaans schools and I grew up and lived in English speaking areas so it was never used. If I tried to speak Afrikaans now, I would embarrass myself but I can mostly read it and understand someone if they’re talking slow enough and I’m concentrating hard enough.
Honestly something that pisses me off is that despite going through school in the ‘new’ South Africa, the new government never bothered making sure we learnt to communicate with each other. So instead of learning Zulu and being able to freely communicate with the majority of the population, we learnt Afrikaans because they never fucking bothered to change it.
I can also understand very small bits and pieces of written and spoken German from high school but that’s barely worth mentioning. Also, I can kinda sometimes understand a little bit of written Dutch because it’s remotely similar to Afrikaans.
Zulu is an awesome language! I’ve heard it spoken before. It seems difficult to learn from an outsider. Maybe I’m wrong. Afrikaans is interesting to me because it’s a Germanic creole language. I’ve heard it’s the easiest to learn Germanic language in the world.
Yeah, Zulu is a different beast to European languages. I suppose as different to English as certain Asian languages would be. It also borrows from English and Afrikaans though, for certain Western words and concepts that weren’t in the vocabulary before. And there’s still nouns and verbs and tenses and shit, so it follows the same basic rules / concepts as any language.
As for Afrikaans, funnily enough I’m actually living in a part of the country now where some fluency would’ve been useful. Luckily you seem to be able to get by with just English just about anywhere though.
From USA. Fluent in English and Russian (self-taught and lived in St Petersburg and Moscow for a number of years).
India - Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, and English
The second part is easy to answer:
- German
- Polish
- Swedish
- English
- Korean (just started learning.
The first part is a bit more complicated, depending on what you are actually asking, where and who you are.
- If you’re asking where I live then it’s Korea.
- If you’re asking where I came from to Korea then it’s Sweden where I lived for 15 years
- If you’re asking what nationality I feel I belong to with my heart then it’s Germany where all my ancestors are from
- If you’re asking where I was born then it’s Poland
I hope you his answers your question.
Italy: Italian, English and a local language
You can’t just tease us like that, what’s the local language? The less common a language is the more interesting.
That’s true! I love less common languages. Well I can speak Neapolitan, a language spoken in Southern Italy.
Thank you, I had never heard of your language before. How similar is it to Italian? Is your language taught in schools and is it common?
Italy is a fairly a new country (it was born in 1861) and before that each part used to speak a different language which, just like Neapolitan, they are still alive. These languages and dialects are not taught in school so the only way to learn them is by listening to those who passed it on which I think it’s pretty cool.
In my day-to-day life I speak a mix of Italian and Neapolitan (but there are people who speak only the latter) but we try to use only the former when we speak to people from other parts of the country who wouldn’t be able to understand us. Nowadays our local language is getting “italianized” a bit but it’s still different from it, just like Spanish and Italian or other Romance languages.
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to let Lemmers know about it :)
Thank you for teaching us. I love learning about languages.
I’m part Scottish, part English. I speak:
English - idiomatically
French - conversationally
Italian - I just want to reply to people in French all the time
German - I can ask where the station is
Japanaese - I can say ‘I do not understand’I can say “I do not speak French” in six languages!
Me ne parolas la Francan.
Cxu bone parolas vi la Esperanton?
Italy: Italian, English(mostly slang), some Spanish, some Esperanto, and some of my local language(Sardinian)
From Croatia, I’m multilingual!
English
Croatian
Serbian
Bosnian
Serbo-croatian
Montenegrin
Probably missing some.
Mexican American. I speak English, Spanish and some Japanese.
Same here! But I’m Mexican from Mexico.
Last year I’ve gotten to reading full-length Japanese news articles with little to no help with the Kanjis.
It’s funny how many Latinos are naturally drawn to Japanese. I always blame the loads of anime we got throughout the 90s.
That’s so cool man. I’ve been pretty dedicated to studying every day. Hope to visit in a year. But yeh I think word pronunciation makes me think of Spanish.
I’m from Japan and Japanese is my first language. I hate it.
I hate it.
Can you elaborate?
Nope. Too much reasons to hate this country.
Talked to two Japanese students who went to Europe because they hated their home country, like you do. Both were adamant they would have become a number in the suicide statistic if they wouldn’t have gotten out of the country. They didn’t plan on returning, ever.
Just saying there is a way out, I guess that’s what I thought was needed to be said.
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From the UK originally, which is complicated enough. To foreigners I tend to say “England”, which (a) is true and (b) everyone understands. But I consider myself British, not English, and certain not a “UK person” (ugh).
I speak French near-natively from having lived there for a big chunk of my life. Spanish: intermediate, because it’s like French. German: got an A at GCSE decades ago, so not very good. Tried learning Russian a few years ago and, wow, that was hard. I cannot speak Russian. But being able to decipher the Cyrillic script is definitely a cool party trick.
I usually refer to England as Great Brittan? Is that generally preferred? Are there many Spanish speakers in Great Brittan?
I usually refer to England as Great Brittan? Is that generally preferred?
No, because it’s wrong!
- Great Britain = England + Scotland + Wales
- UK = Great Britain + Northern Ireland
- British = citizen of (careful!) UK
You’re welcome.
Are there many Spanish speakers in Great Brittan?
Far fewer than there are English speakers.
