riggerrob 558 #1 Posted July 7, 2022 My mother tongue is English. I learned to speak French at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier ... hint: it's near Quebec City. I learned to speak the basics of German while serving at CFB Baden-Solingen, West Germany ... enough to take German-only tandem students. I learned the basics of Spanish while working in Perris Valley, California. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kallend 1,623 #2 July 7, 2022 (edited) French (unless you count Fortran). I was quite fluent in French when I was younger, but lack of use has made me forget much of the vocabulary. Edited July 7, 2022 by kallend 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
wmw999 2,121 #3 July 8, 2022 I’m relatively close to fluent in Portuguese (I’ve been native fluent in the past). I can converse back and forth in Spanish as long as they don’t talk too fast, and I can make myself fairly laboriously understood in French. Wendy P. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stumpy 256 #4 July 8, 2022 French A-level (highest UK school exams taken at 18 years old) - can function socially in french, spanish, italian given a couple of weeks in the various countries. Regret not doing more languages at school because I really enjoy it now. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kallend 1,623 #5 July 8, 2022 (edited) 12 hours ago, Stumpy said: French A-level (highest UK school exams taken at 18 years old) - can function socially in french, spanish, italian given a couple of weeks in the various countries. Regret not doing more languages at school because I really enjoy it now. . . . . duplicate Edited July 8, 2022 by kallend Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kallend 1,623 #6 July 8, 2022 Just now, kallend said: Yes, it takes me a couple of weeks before my ear gets tuned to French. In restrospect I wish I had taken Spanish instead of Latin in school. However, Latin was a requirement for admission to Oxford or Cambridge back then, regardless of what your intended major was. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
winsor 186 #7 July 8, 2022 Reasonable English, can work in German, am comfortable in French, and can get around in Spanish. It helps to be in a country for a week or so to get attuned to what people are saying. The flow of English is a bit different between, say, Birmingham, AL and Birmingham, UK, and the German spoken in Berlin is not the same as Zürich. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Coreece 190 #8 July 8, 2022 14 hours ago, Stumpy said: can function socially in french, spanish, italian given a couple of weeks in the various countries. I can't even function socially in english - been here for decades and still don't know wtf anyone's talking about. 1 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
airdvr 197 #9 July 8, 2022 French. I was part of a program called the Experiment in International Living. Lived in Guadeloupe for a time as part of my high school classes. I was fairly fluent. Now it's only the most rudimentary of sentences. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ryoder 1,384 #10 July 8, 2022 (edited) In college, I took a couple semesters of Spanish, and a couple semesters of Russian. Spanish, because I planned to eventually move to the SW portion of the country. That part of the plan worked out. Russian, because the Berlin Wall fell while I was in school, and I thought there might be business opportunities opening up with the former parts of the Soviet Union. I didn't expect Russia to go back to having a czar a few years later. Edited July 8, 2022 by ryoder Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Baksteen 84 #11 July 11, 2022 Fluent in English or nearly so. I can make myself understood in German, though reading/listening is a lot easier for me. I know the bare essentials in French (Donnay mwoh beer sil voos play, Carson) and can say at least "thank you" in Polish and Rumanian :-) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JoeWeber 2,299 #12 July 12, 2022 (edited) Tôi nói một chút tiếng việt I speak and write some Vietnamese. It's been too long to be able to understand it spoken. Edited July 12, 2022 by JoeWeber Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SkyDekker 1,122 #14 July 12, 2022 Grew up speaking Dutch, English is really my second language. High School was Dutch, English, French, German and the two classical languages: Latin and Greek. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
TriGirl 268 #15 July 15, 2022 Studied Russian in college, which was buried under Japanese during two years in Okinawa. My Arabic education was too short (2 classes), and immersion was only a year, so I even have trouble sounding out pronunciations anymore. Finally studied Turkish for a year before working in Turkey for three years. I then picked up a little Tok Pisin while in Papua New Guinea the past two years, but really only a few words. These days, if I try to reference even pleasantries in Japanese, Russian or Turkish, I can usually count on the wrong language coming out. On a few select occasions I have even started a sentence in one language and finished it in another! Thinking of using some of my education benefits to go back to formal university study of Turkish and Russian. I have always wanted to add French, so perhaps I will consider a second Baccalaureate in linguistics once I retire. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Stumpy 256 #16 July 15, 2022 1 hour ago, TriGirl said: Studied Russian in college, which was buried under Japanese during two years in Okinawa. My Arabic education was too short (2 classes), and immersion was only a year, so I even have trouble sounding out pronunciations anymore. Finally studied Turkish for a year before working in Turkey for three years. I then picked up a little Tok Pisin while in Papua New Guinea the past two years, but really only a few words. These days, if I try to reference even pleasantries in Japanese, Russian or Turkish, I can usually count on the wrong language coming out. On a few select occasions I have even started a sentence in one language and finished it in another! Thinking of using some of my education benefits to go back to formal university study of Turkish and Russian. I have always wanted to add French, so perhaps I will consider a second Baccalaureate in linguistics once I retire. Respect. I'm not terribly familiar with Russian or Turkish but I know Japanese is HARD. At least french, spanish and italian are all kind of related! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
riggerrob 558 #17 July 16, 2022 12 hours ago, Stumpy said: Respect. I'm not terribly familiar with Russian or Turkish but I know Japanese is HARD. At least french, spanish and italian are all kind of related! Correct! French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, Romanian and Rato-Romansh (sp?) are all based upon Classical Latin. Romansh is only spoken in a few valleys in Eastern Switzerland. In other news: modern German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Afrikans (South Africa) are all based on Old German. But it gets confusing when a language includes two or more roots. For example, modern English many be based upon the dialects imported by Germanic-speaking invaders from Jutland (Denmark), Anglia (Germany), Saxony (Germany) and plenty of Vikings (Scandinavia), the language adopted almost half its words from the French invaders who arrive in 1066. While William the Conqueror may have spoken French when he landed in 1066, he was the 5 th generation grandson of "Rollo the Viking" so English nobility spoke French for many centuries. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bigfalls 110 #18 July 17, 2022 Many years ago, I studied French in high school but it mostly geared to writing and reading and very little spoken. I can still read French and get most of the meaning but spoken, nothing. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites