Languages

[Darth_Rob]

I was wondering how many languages some of our members can speak, especially seeing how it is a global community. Though I hate to admit, I got the idea from Tofu (what's come over me...giving kudos to Tofu and raising his ego even more).

 

So as for me, just English. I used to be decent with Spanish, after taking it through high school and college, and working at a restaurant with a spanish-speaking work force. I would love to learn another language. If anything, I think Russian or Japanese, though both require me to learn a whole different alphabet...

[Eagle]

I´ve voted for two, allthough I also had french in school, but because of too much lazieness I´m still unable to speak a whole sentence.

 

Even before I had it in school (from the 5th grade on. Nowadays it´s from the 4th) I was attracted to the english language. Mainly because of music and stuff. One day my sisters girlfriend brought a guy, named Kelly from San Francisco, at about my age to our house and I was able to talk with him with hands and feet, though I just knew some keywords like fe "follow me" aso.

[Peregrinus]

Russian was my first foreign language, and trust me, there is no more satisfying language to cuss in. Then Japanese in high school, which was good because I unexpectedly found myself living there for a couple years. *heh*. Aside from that, a semi-fluency in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Portugese, Spanish, and Klingon. Plus a smattering of phrases in French, Romanian, Arabic, Farsi, German, Gaelic, and I'm developing the Romulan language as a fun aside.

 

Have no interest in learning Hindi, though. I can't pronounce it for crap.

 

--Jonah

[Mad78]

I can speak English and French fluently. I can also speak a little Italian... Therefore i don't know if i should vote for three or two.

[Defender_16]

As somone once said: "I only speak two languages, English and bad english!"

 

Admittedly I know I could benifit from another couple of languages or so. Though I can recognise a few words in French, Dutch, German, Japanese and Chinese.

[Darth_Rob]

I started to learn Italian when I lived on Long Island. They started it in 6th grade. But then in 7th grade I moved upstate, and up here they only offer Spanish and French (as the honors course), which starts in 8th grade. So yeah, I lost my chance to learn Italian, which upset my family (my family is Italian, and everyone speaks it)

[DarthTofu]

I only speak English fluently. I know a small handfull of words in Spanish and Russian (Not even close to a passing fluency, or even a working knowledge in either) and I'm taking Latin in school right now. I'm a second year student, thus I can translate relatively simple sentances at a fair rate, but if we're talking actual Latin from "back in the day" I'm pretty much useless- too many bloody abreviations, plus I keep wanting to treat the letter "V" as a consonant in Latin.

 

As you might imagine, I voted for one.

 

@Rob: Congrats: You have inflated my ego by another fifteen PSI.

[Lord_La_forge]

Russian was my first foreign language, and trust me, there is no more satisfying language to cuss in. Then Japanese in high school, which was good because I unexpectedly found myself living there for a couple years. *heh*. Aside from that, a semi-fluency in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Portugese, Spanish, and Klingon. Plus a smattering of phrases in French, Romanian, Arabic, Farsi, German, Gaelic, and I'm developing the Romulan language as a fun aside.

 

Have no interest in learning Hindi, though. I can't pronounce it for crap.

 

--Jonah

 

That sound interesting! How did you come in contact with all those different languages? (except klingon:) )

 

hungarian,german, english, was learning a bit chinese too.

[Peregrinus]

I'm an engineer. This is more than a vocation, this is a description of a deep desire to understand why things are the way they are and do something with that knowledge. Part of how this has manifested is a fondness for etymology. In digging into word origins I get curious about the languages in question and it goes from there. One school I went to I chose Russian over the more pedestrian French (which I have trouble pronouncing) and Spanish (prefer Castilian over Mexican and Castilian Spanish isn't too common States-side). After that , my other school had Japanese in addition to French and Spanish. Same story there. Portugese I got into thanks to Orson Scott Card's "Speaker for the Dead". Here was a language that was like Spanish, but much more melodious and cool. Gaelic was something I ran into in researching my family tree, and so on and so on...

 

--Jonah

[Verdex]

I speak three languages, more or less: German, English and ... Klingon

 

Oh, hey, I just see, I am not the first nerd to send Klingon into the race

[Mad78]

I remember hearing a story where a psychiatric hospital was looking for a kilingon translator due to one of the patients who only spoke that language.

[Darth_Rob]

Is there really a Klingon language? Like did somebody actually sit down, watch a bunch of Star Trek, and pick up the language in bits and pieces and make up the rest???

[Verdex]

Oh no, it was developed for Star Trek by Marc Okrand. You can still buy the Klingon Dictionary It gives you all the grammar you need and about 1.000 (rough guess) words.

 

Personally, I found it interesting and stimulating playing around with this language.

[Peregrinus]

He did it for his Doctoral thesis in linguistics. Took into account what few words and phrases had been tossed about in the TOS and the first three movies, and by the time Star Trek V/2nd-season TNG came along, that's what they've used since.

 

--Jonah

[DarthTofu]

Tolkien made the full-out language of Elvish, I recall. It's in the appendix to The Return of the King, and I meant to teach myself some... Then I realized that I really didn't care for the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a whole enough to try to learn the language- I just translated the bits of elvish throughout the trilogy and in The Hobbit.

[Paul]

I speak English as a native. I used to be able to speak German fluently from taking it in high school and college as well as traveling to East Germany with my Grandfather a couple of times in the 70s and early 80s, now however I can only get the basics across. Time does take its toll. I always wanted to learn Russian but never did get around to it. - Grand Moff Conway

[Darth_Rob]

Tolkien made the full-out language of Elvish, I recall.

 

That he did. I loved his work, but never got around to looking in-depth at the language. I tried to work my way through the first half of the Silmarillion several times, but was unsuccessful. I was able to get through the last half, about the War of the Rings of Power.

[Antonius]

My natal language is the hungarian, and since i live in Romania, i speak romanian too (better than the english) , and english

 

Howewer i think that i speak terrible in english - due to the lack of people with i could speak this language, mostly understand the writing.

 

However i've learned at least 50 metal songs in english, so sometimes i can pronounce in the right way half of the english words that i know.

[JediHunter]

(prefer Castilian over Mexican and Castilian Spanish isn't too common States-side).

 

I'm kinda the same way.. Even though I'm half cuban, I didn't learn most of my Spanish until I lived in Spain. So, then I moved back to the states and heard all these spanish words I didnt understand.. Believe it or not even with my cuban background and learning Castilian, I have a hard time understanding some of the mexican dialect. So, just to put a concrete answer out there, I speak two languages American English, and Cuban/Castilian Spanish.

[Eagle]

My natal language is the hungarian, and since i live in Romania, i speak romanian too

Is there a big difference betwenn the hungarian and the romanian language?

[DarthTex]

As somone once said: "I only speak two languages, English and bad english!".

I also only speak two languages, English and ... Olde English

[Mad78]

As somone once said: "I only speak two languages, English and bad english!".

I also only speak two languages, English and ... Olde English

Do you mean Texan English?

[Peregrinus]

My natal language is the hungarian, and since i live in Romania, i speak romanian too

Is there a big difference betwenn the hungarian and the romanian language?

 

Oh, my goodness, yes. Romanian is probably the closest living language to Latin, but with curious Slavic influences. Hungarian developed from an entirely different language group from other Indo-European languages, and isn't spoken anywhere else except Hungarian communities.

 

I find them both fascinating, but Romanian stays with me better.

 

--Jonah

[Eagle]

Romanian is like Latin? Interesting! Is there also an austrian slang which is spoken in hungary? I´m thinking of the old austrian-hungarian monarchy. Maybe at the boarders? Like the people from Alsace, Lothringen and Flandern, which are in France and Belgium at the boarder to Germany and where still another german slang is spoken. At least by the older people.

[DarthTex]

As somone once said: "I only speak two languages, English and bad english!".

I also only speak two languages, English and ... Olde English

Do you mean Texan English?

I guess that's three then for me!