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How many languages do you know?

Zombie Acorn

Zombie Acorn

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 2, 2009
1,307
9,132
Toronto, Ontario
I am going to try taking on a foreign language here pretty quick, right now I fit under the "dumb" American group with only one fluent language under my belt. I know enough spanish to get by, but I am not really interested in learning anymore. I have been juggling whether to learn french (my ancestors language) or chinese which I think could be a very good business tool in the future. Obviously chinese would be much more challenging as I don't know anyone who speaks it around here, although i do have a few friends online who I could chat to.

Anyways, what languages do you know?
 
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Vietnamese (north and south): native, French: fluent, English: fluent, Spanish: conversational.

My mother is a talented polyglot, with somewhere around eight fluent and four conversational languages.
 
English and enough Spanish to get me into (and out of) trouble while down in Mexico. I'm also fluent in C, C++, and Java, and conversational in both 68K and MIPS assembly.
 
English, Korean, Japanese native. French, more or less fluently. Enough Swahili and Arabic to work. Enough German, Mandarin and Cantonese to get by.

I guess my language acquisition is a little backwards because I end up learning enough elements to work first, but it's usually not enough to hold up my end of a conversation about anything other than medical or engineering subjects. Casual conversation comes afterwards.
 
English and French fluently, very basic could-order-lunch-and-ask-where-my-hotel-is German and Spanish.
 
English (main)
Spanish (fluent but rusty)
Mandarin (conversational but losing it out of lack of use).

A smattering of words and phrases to varying degrees in German, Japanese, Malay and Thai. Living abroad for 8 years was a godsend for learning new languages.
 
Other than English, I understand Hebrew almost fluently, but have a hard time constructing sentences myself. I can speak enough to get around in Israel, but I can understand pretty much anything anyone says in Hebrew.
 
English and a bit of French. Might try my hand at Polish since it looks like I'll be spending some time in the deepest darkest Tatra mountains.
 
English - I speak OK, read OK, and write OK.

Cantonese - can listen and understand a lot of it, but speak it poorly. Don't ask me how this is possible, but it's actually quite common.

French - bad, and getting worse.

Mandarin - Tried to learn it for 4 months, and quit because I could only do 3 of the 4 tones. That cut out 25% of the vocabulary.

Japanese - listening is decent, but my speaking isn't nearly as good.

Ebonics - I have been working on it since the break'a break'a dawn.
 
Abstract said:
Cantonese - can listen and understand a lot of it, but speak it poorly. Don't ask me how this is possible, but it's actually quite common.

Mandarin - Tried to learn it for 4 months, and quit because I could only do 3 of the 4 tones. That cut out 25% of the vocabulary.
Click to expand...

I don't know what language you grew up speaking mainly but if it was English it explains your difficulties speaking Cantonese. Cantonese intonation seems to require people to speak the language from birth so that tongue/mouth shapes and muscles are set. It is incredibly rare to find a Westerner who can learn to speak Cantonese with perfect intonation - the mouth shape and muscles required to speak good English (for example) would seem to preclude people from speaking perfect Cantonese. That's why native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong always can tell those Cantonese speakers who were born and grew up elsewhere because of their imperfect intonation. It also explains why native Cantonese speakers can't quite nail perfect English (Ingrish) intonation.

In terms of vocabulary, Cantonese (or indeed any Chinese dialect) is a 'binary' language - you either know how to say something or you don't there's no 'sounding' out a word given the lack of an alphabet in Chinese language hence no phoneticism.

Being able to speak Cantonese makes learning Mandarin more difficult, because Mandarin in many regards, sounds like (and very probably is) accented Cantonese. A complete headscrew in other words.
 
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