daniel f aleman
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English, Texan, Spanish, German (father's German, made us learn it).
How Many Languages Can You Speak?
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Homunculus
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english / russian / some french but not enough to vote for 3
dive_lover88
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Fluent in English & mandarin.
I'm also fluent in 1 dialect, hokkien.
Able to converse in another dialect, Cantonese.
Able to cuss in english, mandarin, bahasa, hokkien, cantonese & hainanese.
I'm also fluent in 1 dialect, hokkien.
Able to converse in another dialect, Cantonese.
Able to cuss in english, mandarin, bahasa, hokkien, cantonese & hainanese.
I think I'm pretty fluent in English.
I do pretty well in Spanish, although after all these years, my vocabulary's gotten somewhat limited -- If you want to know how many times somebody's thrown up, I'm your gal.
I have very functional but not always grammatical German. German is a very hard language to speak correctly -- as my German friends point out, a lot of Germans don't get their grammar right!
I do pretty well in Spanish, although after all these years, my vocabulary's gotten somewhat limited -- If you want to know how many times somebody's thrown up, I'm your gal.
I have very functional but not always grammatical German. German is a very hard language to speak correctly -- as my German friends point out, a lot of Germans don't get their grammar right!
Dutch - fluently
English - above average
German - average
French - sufficient for a tourist
English - above average
German - average
French - sufficient for a tourist
sarita75
Guest
Fluent in English and Spanish. Can do a bit in Mayan, Hungarian, French, Greek, Hindi and German. Used to know a bit of Maori.
shakeybrainsurgeon
Contributor
Four years of high school Spanish, four years of college Spanish, most of it forgotten. Minimal tourist French...
It's easy to blame Americans for being mono-lingual, but the situation was put into perspective for me by a tour guide in London last month. While driving out to Stonehenge, I asked the guide about her curious accent and she said she was Hungarian but had been in the UK so long she had a British-Hungarian accent. She also spoke Russian.
I lamented that Americans, unlike Europeans, are poor linguists and she said the problem is not with Americans, but the widespread dominance of English. She pointed out that soon, the whole world will know English and so the pressure for native English speakers to learn, or practice, any other language is low. She noted, for example, that since almost no one speaks Hungarian except Hungarians, the pressure on people from that country to learn another language is enormous.
I tried to speak some French while in France, but it's hopeless, particularly in urban centers. The people there want to practice their English, not let you practice your French. Unless you are fluent, they have little patience for half-***** attempts at their language, since most are better at English than we are at French.
One final point: my mother was raised in a Slovak household and didn't speak much English until going to school. She spoke Slovak to her mother until 1967, when my grandmother passed away. In the last thirty years, since she has no reason to use it, her command of the language has atrophied to the point that she is barely conversant in it any longer. Thus, even with one's NATIVE language, unless it is used regularly, the skill will fade.
Thus, Americans who live in areas where Spanish is endemic, acquiring that language is possible. But for most people who live in America and who don't travel internatonally, the time required to acquire a new language isn't worth the effort, and the practical experience needed to maintain that language just is not available. Europeans can travel thirty miles and hear three new languages, we can't.
Bashing Americans for being mono-lingual isn't fair. It's simple jealousy of our dominance. In fact, as my guide pointed out, her friends who speak five languages, but not English, would gladly trade all five for fluency in English alone.
It's easy to blame Americans for being mono-lingual, but the situation was put into perspective for me by a tour guide in London last month. While driving out to Stonehenge, I asked the guide about her curious accent and she said she was Hungarian but had been in the UK so long she had a British-Hungarian accent. She also spoke Russian.
I lamented that Americans, unlike Europeans, are poor linguists and she said the problem is not with Americans, but the widespread dominance of English. She pointed out that soon, the whole world will know English and so the pressure for native English speakers to learn, or practice, any other language is low. She noted, for example, that since almost no one speaks Hungarian except Hungarians, the pressure on people from that country to learn another language is enormous.
I tried to speak some French while in France, but it's hopeless, particularly in urban centers. The people there want to practice their English, not let you practice your French. Unless you are fluent, they have little patience for half-***** attempts at their language, since most are better at English than we are at French.
One final point: my mother was raised in a Slovak household and didn't speak much English until going to school. She spoke Slovak to her mother until 1967, when my grandmother passed away. In the last thirty years, since she has no reason to use it, her command of the language has atrophied to the point that she is barely conversant in it any longer. Thus, even with one's NATIVE language, unless it is used regularly, the skill will fade.
Thus, Americans who live in areas where Spanish is endemic, acquiring that language is possible. But for most people who live in America and who don't travel internatonally, the time required to acquire a new language isn't worth the effort, and the practical experience needed to maintain that language just is not available. Europeans can travel thirty miles and hear three new languages, we can't.
Bashing Americans for being mono-lingual isn't fair. It's simple jealousy of our dominance. In fact, as my guide pointed out, her friends who speak five languages, but not English, would gladly trade all five for fluency in English alone.
Hank49
Contributor
shakeybrainsurgeon:
One in 5 people in the world is Chinese. Will they learn English? Or will Americans have to learn a dialect there as they become a world power?
One thing different about Chinese immigrants in 5 countries I've lived in or visited a lot,....they retain their language and pass it on for generations. All the kids still speak it well. Germans, Italians, Poles...one or two generations in the USA and the language was gone.
shakeybrainsurgeon
Contributor
Hank49:
My brother in law travels to China frequently on business. He says that English is becoming widespread there and, in fact, may soon be a mandatory course in their public curricula. So the simple answer is yes, they will learn English, in fact, many already have.
There is nothing wrong with preserving one's language and culture. Knowing other languages is a valuable skill and opens whole vistas of literature and art; from a PRACTICAL standpoint however, the time is fast coming when English is the only language anyone needs to know. This isn't jingoism, just fact.
jrc
Guest
Only speak English. Grandparents were from Italy but would not teach my parents Italian because they felt they were Americans.
They were very proud to be here.
They were very proud to be here.
