I am a native English speaker and recently started learning Esperanto a few weeks ago. I was inspired by a TED Talk that explained how Esperanto is an excellent first choice for those interested in acquiring multiple languages.
Due to its relative simplicity, learning Esperanto effectively prepares your brain for learning additional languages, making the process quicker and smoother.
So how many here speak different languages and what are they?
I speak English. It’s my favorite language; and I’m learning Spanish and Japanese
My native language is romanian, but I also know english
I technically know moldovan too, but i dont think it counts
Native German, fluent English. I struggled, however, with French, Italian, Spanish, as I just can’t wrap my head around it. Languages are super hard for me.
Programming languages, though? I can write about 20 of those. Easy… 🙄
I am jealous fo your programming knowledge. I’d have a lot more money today if I had that skillset!
Yes, that wasn’t the worst decision for my career. My family wanted me to concentrate on languages because they are easy for them, but I always struggled, and struggled hard. It took me a long time to realize I was more of a logical thinker than one of the emotional communicators like the rest of them.
English natively and Spanish as a second language. Those I use every day. I can read and write Latin which I use a few times a week, and know a few words and phrases in Japanese, Lakota, French, German, and Italian.
If I were to learn a fourth language I’d prefer Lakota or Gaelic, but French would be the most useful to me and Italian or Romanian the best combination of use and ease.
Arabic and English. I’m learning esperanto, Ukrainian and Latin all at the same time (Latin is most important and Esperanto is least)
I’m also learning a very little amount of Hebrew since it’s similar to Arabic in a lot of ways. Like Scottish and English.
Dankon, amiko!
English, Spanish, Basque, French, some Russian, currently learning German.
日文，Chinese，英語 この三個言語を話すのは有用，but 有時我的brainがバラバラに使いがち。
French and English natively. I did learn Russian at school for 7 years (but I forgot most of it now), and I am currently learning Japanese.
May i ask how you are learning japanese? School, self-taught or online videos?
Arabic, English, some German, and can read / write Syriac Aramaic (Mostly use it to write Garshuni).
I can very vaguely understand the Syriac script. How similar is it to Arabic? I assume Aramaic and Hebrew are pairs and so are Arabic and Syriac.
You can read some words or full sentences sometimes, but some letters like taw (taa’) ت ܬ, ‘ayn ع ܥ, het (haa’) ح ܚ, and shin (sheen) ش ܫ are impossible to guess without checking out the alphabet first. The madnhaya script is closer to Arabic than the Estrangela script (which you’re probably seeing on your device).
Instead of the Arabic way of distinguishing similar letters by using dots, Syriac adds fangs or lines to change the “rasm” of the letter except for dal and raa’ which use a dot below and one above, respectively. I used to confuse waw ܘ, qaf ܩ, and mim ܡ a lot at first.
It’s a very interesting script, i’ve always wanted to learn it. thanks for the info :D
Especially since i recognize a lot (maybe not always exactly tho) of the characters, like how Tau looks like ط or how waw vaguely looks like و
NP. It’s really interesting beyond it’s similarities to Arabic too; the dots in Syriac are used to make letters hard or soft, which makes a lot more sense than using the same rasm with a different number of dots to make a completely different sound.
The language also often explains the little weird differences between levantine Arabic and MSA or other dialects, like the word “طاقة” which refers to small round windows and “بوبو” which is used to refer to an infant.
The equivalent to Arabic ط is “tet”: ܛ, but in some fonts of Syriac “taw” ܬ looks like a mirrored ܛ.
French is my native tongue, I learned English, Spanish, Italian at school (in that order), few words of German later on my own, learned some Swedish vocabulary on Duolingo, Icelandic basics for when I visited, I can only read Cyrillic.
I’m interested in Korean lately, but haven’t even started
French native, Esperanto and English conversational. Good notions of Italian. Notions of German (the language I’m trying to learn), Luxembourgish and Norwegian. I learnt but forgot Latin, Ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew (I still can read them if I have a lot of time and a good dictionary).
Dankon, amiko!
Nedankinde :-)
I’m English (distinction from British as there isnt any programme for or impetus to learn celtic languages like the other countries) and for a long time the only other language I spoke was French to a very, very poor and sub-conversational level (from school).
Since 2016 or so (on and off) I’ve been learning Dutch. When you tell people that, the first question you get (from both english native speakers and the Dutch) is ‘why’?
So whilst I work and live in the UK, my company has a bunch of EU offices and I have worked closely with our large Belgian office for almost 10 years now and as of last year I now work for that EU branch of the company and my current project is with a Dutch client which has spurred me on a lot recently to learn again.
I also have two Dutch friends (from other ends of the country) who help and encourage me.
So I’m currently at a basic/low conversational level, I can deal with every day basic interactions.
Sure, Spanish, French or even German makes a lot more sense to most people but I have so many strong links with the Netherlands that Dutch is the only one that makes sense to learn for me and is the one I use the most by miles.
Russian at a Native level, because my parents speak it (so I can barely read)
German at a Native level, because I’ve been living in Germany the past 20 years.
English at a C2 level, just from school and because all my online activity and all my entertainment is in english.
And some French and Latin back from school, but learning those was horrible and I’d like to forget as much as I can.
I absolutely hate learning languages and hope that I will never have to do it again. But the reality of living in Europe is just that you never know whether you’ll wake up one day and decide to move to the Netherlands or Denmark because there are great jobs there 🤷
I wish I could speak multiple languages. I’m envious of people who have this skill. I’ve tried repeatedly to learn other languages and I still struggle. The education system in the US has failed so many of us on this front
Yep, I’m with you in this misery, friend!
Czech (native speaker) and English, but as I am now in Spain I wish I learned some Spanish, nobody here speaks any English. Yesterday some guy told me that only phrase that he knows is “Beer, very cold.” So that’s that.
