how many languages do you speak?

[memento]

i recently started studying german online so i can potentially study abroad in germany someday. i need a change of pace and i think i want to get a master's degree so i can work in museums or libraries or something similar. i figure if going back to school is going to put me in debt anyway i might as well also use it as an opportunity to move to a part of the world i've always thought i'd enjoy living in. linguistics has always been somewhat of a special interest of mine, but every language i've studied before was just for fun and not for any practical reason so i never retained my fluency in anything for long. in the past i was good at spanish and could speak very basic mandarin too, and i'm sure my skills would come back to me if i started studying them again. i also dabbled in japanese, korean, and arabic but don't remember much other than how to read them

what languages do you speak and why/how did you learn them? :)

[IndigoGolem]

Oh man.

My first language is English.

I know a little Norwegian (lovely country, think i'd like to move there someday), enough to have a simple conversation with a patient native speaker.

I also know a little Latin (i forget why i started learning Latin) and ASL (interesting language), but i'm less good at those. I should practice more.

And then a handful of words and phrases in Spanish (fairly common language here in Kansas), Russian (accidentally picked up a few words online), Japanese (briefly studied for fun), Esperanto (same), Klingon (same), Italian (same), and French (borrowed idioms).

I used to know Ta'agra, i even translated a book into it when i was in high school, but i've since forgotten just about everything i knew about it.

[ffaf]

Spanish, English, Italian, Esperanto.

[knifex]

My native language is french (canadian) and I've been fluent in english since my teens!
I used to be really bad at it, until I started watching youtube & playing video games in english lolol

I have basic basic spanish, just enough to say "Qué pasa" and "me duele la cabeza" when the mood strikes me
(what's up and my head hurts)

[Seance]

What a cool topic!  I think language learning can be really rewarding, but it is hard when you don't get to practice often enough to build real fluency.

My native language is English, and there was a point in my life where I would have considered myself conversationally fluent in Spanish.  It has been years since I've had to use it though, but sometimes I find it's one of those things that I can "switch on" given enough effort - so I think I retain more than I give myself credit for.

I started learning Spanish in high school (I took two years), and then I used it at work quite a bit (over the course of 5 or so years). At one point I was working in customer service and taking calls in Spanish (though at that time, I would say my fluency wasn't all that great, so a lot of thanks to folks who called in for their patience). I think the reason I really got into it was its utility, and because I wanted to use it to sing music I'd heard and started listening to. There are still songs I remember all the lyrics to in Spanish, and sometimes I dream in Spanish.

Later on, in my early 30s, I started to learn Korean. At first I was self-taught, and then I took a couple of remote courses with a local Korean language academy. I progressed through their "intermediate" course, but I wouldn't consider myself an intermediate speaker. As soon as we started learning honorifics, conjugating those into the various formality and politeness levels really kinda broke my brain. I have also had much less opportunity to use it, so while I retain a lot of the basic grammar, pronunciation, and of course reading, I find my vocabulary lacking.  I also got into Korean for the music side of things, and I hope that one day I'll have the opportunity to start using it more.

All-in-all for me I've mostly been motivated by music and the utility of the language.  It's great when those two things align, which I think is why I took Spanish so much further than I have Korean.

[segacds]

personally, i speak, like... two, but if that two consisted of one and two halves, lol. i'm fluent in English since it's my first language, and then i'm just decent at French (i've just lost a lot of it over time due to lack of use but if you plopped me in France or something id probably gain it back) and VERY limited on Romanian. i wish i knew more Romanian since my dad and his whole half of the family speaks it, but my dad forgot to teach me since we live in the US and everyone speaks English anyway so i guess he didn't see a reason to teach me? the second gen immigrant curse...........

[ashParadise]

I grew up with English and American Sign Language! I'm currently learning Spanish and have been for the last couple years, but I don't always dedicate as much time to it as I probably should. I would consider myself conversational (but shy lol.)

I have a language exchange partner from Chile because apparently I wanted to learn the language on hard mode 

[fablefound]

unfortunately, it's easier to list the languages i used to speak but have since fallen out with 

* i did french immersion as a kid, and stuck with it through my schooling, including doing advanced/ib french in high school. while i can still stumble through very basic conversation, it's a real weird experience finding old essays in my handwriting from high school that i can't quite read anymore 
* i also tried spanish for a couple years in high school, and i was good enough at it to receive an academic award! i've had a couple conversations with native speakers in recent years but it's definitely worse than my french.
* while i can't read it to save my life, i ended up doing most of the talking for my family when we went to japan. that's not saying much though, my vocab is like, toddler-level lol.
* finally, several of my mother's friends work/worked as asl interpreters, and i actually signed before i spoke! i only know a couple of individual signs now though.

i'm half-heartedly trying to relearn french, as it's the one i got the furthest in, it's good for employability where i live, and i've got french heritage on both sides (my surname is actually anglicized french!). i stumbled through a conversation with a 70-year-old french lady and her grandkid last week, and i'm honestly still riding that high. she introduced me to her grandkid by saying "this is alex, they speak french!" 

[pinniewink]

My native language is English because I was born in the states!

I also speak Dutch on a barely intermediate level (I can pass a B1 written and reading test but my speaking level is terrible  ). I live abroad in the Netherlands to study and be with my partner!  A lot of Dutch people speak English, but I want to be fluent some day so I can integrate. Honestly though, it's hard to get practice in the Netherlands as a second language speaker because the Dutch will switch to English to be polite xD.

My biggest accomplishment is speaking to a waiter in Dutch and him never switching to English. I like to think he didn't notice my accent  .

[BlazingCobaltX]

I speak 3 languages fluently and 1 conversationally. That said there are a lot of languages I have rudimentary knowledge of, like German, French, Chinese, and Japanese. Due to my Spanish education I am also able to adapt quickly to other Romance languages such as Italian. For Chinese and Japanese I can mostly figure out loose words these days, definitely not at the level of figuring out sentences, but in Chinese I do have basic grammatical knowledge (and it helps that it's an easy language).

I love figuring out languages like a puzzle and speaking whatever I can to native speakers when abroad... Only to then embarrassingly switch back to English when they mistake that one sentence for total fluency. 

I also speak Dutch on a barely intermediate level (I can pass a B1 written and reading test but my speaking level is terrible  ). I live abroad in the Netherlands to study and be with my partner!  A lot of Dutch people speak English, but I want to be fluent some day so I can integrate. Honestly though, it's hard to get practice in the Netherlands as a second language speaker because the Dutch will switch to English to be polite xD.

Big up for learning Dutch! It's definitely our own fault for switching to English so easily and not putting much value in foreigners speaking Dutch (unless it's for racism purposes yaay). Even if Dutch sounds funny and it's relatively hard to learn, IMO that is still someone's mother tongue and it deserves basic respect for that. If you want to practice online sometime then don't hesitate to shoot me a message!

[Còbra!]

I made a thread like this a long time ago, but any excuse to talk about this again!

I can speak Scots and English natively. As I'm born under an English-ruled Scotland, we were raised to think Scots isn't a language at all, but simply a dialect of English spoken by anti-social troublemakers or generally the lowest in society, and were told to push it out of us.
As soon as I found out it's recognised as a language, I started to dig up from the depths of my brain, and have been trying to build it's presence and start communities for the language.

Other languages I speak include Italian and Scottish Gaelic.
The reasons for Scottish Gaelic might be obvious. As for Italian, I'm half-Italian, and have living relatives in Italy. Our grandmother was for the longest time the only one who knew enough Italian to translate between the 2 sides.
I remember watching a Youtube video about an Australian living in Japan who said after years of living there, it felt like such a relief when someone spoke English to him, and I had wondered if my gran would feel the same way if I learned Italian for her. Sure enough she really appreciated it.
Unfortunately she passed away in 2021, but thankfully my Italian has gotten to the point I can be the translator for the 2 sides of the family. We were there just last week, actually!

I'm also on and off learning Japanese, Ainu, Korean and Neapolitan. Neapolitan is what my family naively speaks, albeit a dialect not taught online, but I figured even learning the "standard" dialect would be good practice!
I'm also a bit of a Weeb and Koreeb, so that's why I'm learning the others, but I do find them really interesting with how modular they are, and also how cool the characters look!