Forums » Smalltalk » How many Languages do You Speak?

I speak English and enough Farsi to hold a meager conversation. I've also taken Castilian Spanish (thanks, Barcelona) and German, but I'm incredibly out of practice with both of them.

English is my native language and the only one I speak fluently. Unfortunately. I took Spanish for most of my school career, which I utterly hated, and I never retained any of it. I've always had an interest in German and French, but I never got around to learning either-- the latter because I didn't get into it in college, and the former because my parents refused to let me take the classes back in High School. Spanish was required in our household because 1) I lived in Texas and 2) I would actually have people to practice with.

Ironically, I never had actual people to practice with and never had any characters who spoke the language. No native speakers of Spanish. On the fictional side, I have characters who can speak German and/or French, but no skills in the language to properly apply in writing. :x

I'm also incredibly lazy, so that doesn't help with any desire I'd have to learn a second language and possibly retain it. Homework? Bah!

Does Latin count? I took five years of that, so it's the only language of the 5 I've taken that I'm relatively comfortable with.

I took Spanish, German, French, and Latin in school. I didn't really retain much outside of the Latin, and what I've retained of Latin has mainly been applied toward basic understanding for other languages re: puzzling what is being said.

I've self-taught to read Cyrillic, which I can still read very well, and very poorly can speak Russian, also self taught.

As for my own native language, English, I didn't actually learn to read or write it until I was around eleven, twelve-ish, due to massive amounts of moving through my childhood. My first book was The Lord of the Rings - took me a month to get through the first chapter (with a VERY basic understanding of phonetics at that point) and then I just ZOOMED from there. A year later and I was in the top 99th percentile in English/Reading in the USA for my grade level, and considered to read at a college level or above. I didn't learn to properly write until around 2005, though.

Sorry for being slightly off topic, but I'm fairly proud of myself for my ability in English itself, after growing up like that.

I am a native Spanish speaker, along with English. I am fluent in both. I am a first generation Mexican-American, so I was raised with both. Whoever used "Mexican" as it's own language, you are wrong. The Spanish that is spoken in Latin American countries are dialects of European Spanish, and contain their own slang words; similarly how different areas of the United States have terms and phrases yet they all speak English.

I know mild conversational French, a few prayers in Latin, and a few words in Arabic as one of my good friends is Mexican and Arab, and my boyfriend is Arab.

English is my main language, but I also can sign when need be. Though I'm not the best at it just yet.