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20 years old & fluent in 11 languages, I'm jealous.

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Sofo

Member
3 languages for me. I'll learn Norwegian during 2013 (as I'll be living there) and I have some notions left over from German when I studied it in school (gibberish now, for sure). I really like learning languages but it is a lot more time-consuming when you start your working career.
 

Sarcasm

Member
My personal issue with Chinese is I do english grammar lol.

I am picking up the written more than I am speaking.
 
7 languages here. My father knows about 10 though. Its an odd talent we share in our family, easierly adapting foreign languages.
 

Sober

Member
My personal issue with Chinese is I do english grammar lol.

I am picking up the written more than I am speaking.
Same, and I am a native Chinese speaker. Writing it, I definitely abandoned it.

Same goes for French. Trying to learn it/pick it back up but I definitely remember using English grammar rules, except I wasn't aware of it at the time.
 

amrihua

Member
2.5 languages here. Arabic and English fluently and Japanese at mid-level. I just want to be able to speak 2.5 languages more. Master Japanese, learn Spanish and one more language, haven't decided on it yet. Learning Chinese is unnecessary unless it is something you want to do as most Chinese people can speak English. But even if you decided to learn Chinese, there isn't a language called Chinese, there is Mandarin and Cantonese and then there are like half a dozen smaller local languages.

Lord Ghirahim said:
I read a piece by a Japanese author a few days ago, he wished death on a hypothetical fully anglophonised mankind.

English is a universal language and I believe it is wonderful that everyone speaks it or feels that they have to, except Japanese people for some reason. I guess he, like a lot of Japanese, just hates the fact that he can't speak it.
 

KuroNeeko

Member

In terms of number of native speakers, Chinese is the best choice. If you're looking at number of countries in which said language is spoken, Spanish may be a wiser choice.

I'd recommend that you choose whatever language you're interested since passion and fun are going to be what keep you motivated if you're a casual learner. :D
 

Kabouter

Member
Would the difference between Dutch and Afrikaans be similar to the differences between old world French and that spoken in, say, Montreal? I've always been curious about the distinctions and similarities. What say you, Kab?
I'm not really familiar with how big those differences are. The difference between Dutch and Afrikaans anyway is relatively minor, I mean, it's significant enough to justify it being a separate language, but that's about it. It might be more similar to Dutch than West-Frisian (which is a small language spoken in one part of the North of the Netherlands) even. Most Dutchmen should be able to follow what someone is saying Afrikaans no problem.

Yeah, because they're totally the same. I'm Dutch and I find it pretty much impossible to follow half of what is being said in Afrikaans.

Really? They are mutually intelligible for the most part. I never have any problem understanding the language, just speaking it is difficult.
 

amrihua

Member
In terms of number of native speakers, Chinese is the best choice. If you're looking at number of countries in which said language is spoken, Spanish may be a wiser choice.

I'd recommend that you choose whatever language you're interested since passion and fun are going to be what keep you motivated if you're a casual learner. :D

Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin (about 850 million), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese (Yue) (70 million) and Min (50 million). Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and the Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms and some degree of intelligibility.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language
 

Vagabundo

Member
11 eh.. bah..

?New Zealander Harold Williams was listed by the Guinness Book of
Records as the world?s greatest linguist. He is said to have spoken
over 58 languages fluently as well as some of their dialects ?
Swahili, Hausa and Zulu among them. This amazing polygot was said to
"read grammars as others read detective stories". He was the foreign
editor of The Times; described as the "the most brilliant foreign
correspondent" his generation had known, he "knew everyone and
everything ? and was always at the point of greatest interest and
risk."



lol pretty impressive.

I can speak Hiberno-English, English, Gaeilge and French. I'm really stretching here. I can barely speak any of them..
 

Jokab

Member
I can speak Swedish, English and Spanish. Stretching it I can also speak Norwegian and Danish, but that's kind of cheating.
 

Xyber

Member
Why not cheat and say you speak norwegian, and possibly danish, too?

I could do that, but it would be a lie. Understanding Norwegian is pretty easy, but I can't actually speak it myself. And Danish just sounds like someone talking Swedish with a bun in their mouth and I barely understand anything.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I remember one time I was in South Africa and I was buying a can of soda at a small grocery and the girl at the checkout asked if I wanted a "stroo" as I understood it. After a few repetitions it took the intervention of my SA-native friend to explain to me she was talking about a straw.
And then make some joke about me in Afrikaans to lighten her mood. >_<
I don't know if that's indicative of some crazy accent that would make it difficult for one who speaks dutch to understand them, but it certainly confused me, even aside from being offered a straw for a can of soda at the grocery.
 

Neo C.

Member
11 languages is pretty good, fluent in all is talent though. I'm not even 100% fluent in my native language. :(

The best you can do is to start early: I know some kids who speaks 3 languages right from the start (dad: Swiss German, mom: Mandarin, family language: English). Kids like these can easily achieve 7 or 8 languages in twenty years.
 
I've been thinking about picking it up but, to be honest, I'm just not into the government over there. Maybe too much Red Corner, but if I'd be afraid that if I went over there they wouldn't let me come home.

I've heard the intonation is a real pain in the ass from a western standpoint. Is that true?

What about Taiwan, Singapore and all the other places that speak Chinese? You can always go there.
 

Munin

Member
I've been thinking about picking it up but, to be honest, I'm just not into the government over there. Maybe too much Red Corner, but if I'd be afraid that if I went over there they wouldn't let me come home.

I've heard the intonation is a real pain in the ass from a western standpoint. Is that true?

You read too much GAF.
 

Meadows

Banned
Why bother learning weird shit like Hebrew or Catalan?

He hasn't bothered with Mandarin?

I praise him for his ability, but I'd say he probably could have invested his time a little better by learning different languages than the ones he did. I'd say that these are some really good ones:

English
Mandarin
Spanish
Russian
Arabic
Portugese
Japanese
Sign Language
 
Which Sign language though? I know a little Auslan (Australian Sign language) having gone to high school with a large deaf centre, but US sign language is completely different.

Competent is very vague. Then again, so is fluent.

Ugh. I hate that word. Everytime I tell people my majors (Japanese and Korean) that is their first question. "So are you fluent?" erm... I don't know..? What does "fluency" actually involve?


Wtf is the point. He is wasting his time, all that work and talent should be invested in STEM instead.

Its funny because some people really think this.
 

Munin

Member
Why bother learning weird shit like Hebrew or Catalan?

He hasn't bothered with Mandarin?

I praise him for his ability, but I'd say he probably could have invested his time a little better by learning different languages than the ones he did. I'd say that these are some really good ones:

English
Mandarin
Spanish
Russian
Arabic
Portugese
Japanese
Sign Language

Who are you to dictate to him what he should consider important or what he should learn? Maybe he just finds those languages interesting. I can speak Cantonese but have zero intention to learn Mandarin because I hate it. And I get patronizing responses when I tell that to people every day. Where's the joy in learning something that is more "useful" if you simply don't like it?
 
Who are you to dictate to him what he should consider important or what he should learn? Maybe he just finds those languages interesting. I can speak Cantonese but have zero intention to learn Mandarin because I hate it. And I get patronizing responses when I tell that to people every day. Where's the joy in learning something that is more "useful" if you simply don't like it?

You won't learn well either. These things require a certain passion. If its not there it won't stick.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
I'm not really familiar with how big those differences are. The difference between Dutch and Afrikaans anyway is relatively minor, I mean, it's significant enough to justify it being a separate language, but that's about it. It might be more similar to Dutch than West-Frisian (which is a small language spoken in one part of the North of the Netherlands) even. Most Dutchmen should be able to follow what someone is saying Afrikaans no problem.

Afrikaans is written as Dutch is spoken more or less. The grammar is simplified, the only real difference is the vocabulary and spelling, but if you're a Dutch speaker from the Netherlands or Flanders you should be able to understand texts in Afrikaans even if you've never seen written Afrikaans before. On the other hand, I find spoken Afrikaans difficult to understand. There's still mutual intelligibility if an Afrikaans and Dutch speak clearly and slower.

Here's an example: a Flemish tv reporter interviewing Charlize Theron in Dutch, she responds in Afrikaans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fYB9s0Nyzk

Oh, and Afrikaans is cool because it has so many neologisms that don't exist in Dutch.
 

BGBW

Maturity, bitches.
101 |-|3 |)035|\|'7 3\/3|\| |<|\|0\/\/ 1337. |=|_||=|_||=|_||=|_||=|_| \/\/|-|47 4 |\|08!!!111

I really should brush up on my Swedish. I can basically follow any conversation though a few words may stump me, but considering it is my second language I should really be fluent in it. Maybe I should live there for a year like my family suggests. Read and writing skills are terrible.

I've basically forgotten my French and German from my school days. If I bothered I'm sure I could pick up the basics of German fairly quickly. Or at least describe my home town and what I did last weekend.
 
I wish I could speak that many languages. I would say that I only speak Finnish fluently. I can manage with English in basic conversations but there is still so much to learn....I can also speak little Swedish, German and Japanese. You Americans and Brits have it easy as you don't have to learn other languages.. =/
 

sphinx

the piano man
I can speak fluently in 4 languages: Spanish, German, English and Italian.

I learned a bit of French and Bulgarian, but not enough to survive in lands where there are spoken.

somehow, it gives you an incredible boost in your social status to speak several languages, I am not sure how or why but whenever I've dated someone, the languages thing is sometimes even intimidating, like " woah, you are a class above me" and friends and random people think of it like " woah, he's represents the superiority of our species".

I really don't understand that..
 

cvxfreak

Member
Only able to speak English natively. Tagalog and Japanese come after that, with varying levels of success. For Tagalog, I can understand 90% of it as a result of heritage, but I can't speak it like a native because I never get the chance to. I can speak Japanese easier than Tagalog, but my overall comprehension of Japanese is not at native level. One day, I hope to be able to use all 3 instantaneously and at near-native levels.

11 languages though... impressive. I've wanted to learn Spanish and Mandarin due to my knowledge of Japanese and Tagalog, but time is so little. :(
 
Speaks 11 languages and goes to Oxford University.....he will be getting the tap on the shoulder from a certain employer in the UK, foreign travel guaranteed.
 

sphinx

the piano man
11 languages though... impressive. I've wanted to learn Spanish and Mandarin due to my knowledge of Japanese and Tagalog, but time is so little. :(

Is Tagalog and Spanish that similar? I learned that it's a language tha takes some words from spanish but otherwise is not related to it.
 

Buttons

Member
I'm not really familiar with how big those differences are. The difference between Dutch and Afrikaans anyway is relatively minor, I mean, it's significant enough to justify it being a separate language, but that's about it. It might be more similar to Dutch than West-Frisian (which is a small language spoken in one part of the North of the Netherlands) even. Most Dutchmen should be able to follow what someone is saying Afrikaans no problem.



Really? They are mutually intelligible for the most part. I never have any problem understanding the language, just speaking it is difficult.

As someone who speaks Afrikaans I can offer some insight. Afrikaans grammar is like a simplified version of Dutch, however the vocabulary has some major differences in some areas. Another main difference is the pronunciation and just the general sound of the language.
Having said that, many Dutch people should be able to understand spoken Afrikaans and vice-versa.

Written Dutch is pretty easy for me to understand and I'd imagine it would be the same for someone from the Netherlands reading Afrikaans. Spoken Dutch I can also understand, but it depends on the speaker. If he speaks too fast and there are too many Dutch-specific words, I may have a bit of trouble understanding. I usually get better at it after a while, like after speaking to a Dutch friend for a day or two, or watching Dutch tv.

As someone who is also a native speaker of German (and English), the best example I could give is that sometimes understanding a Dutch person is a bit like German trying to understand Swiss German. You understand the words, but the sound and accent make it really hard to understand everything.

Here's an example: a Flemish tv reporter interviewing Charlize Theron in Dutch, she responds in Afrikaans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fYB9s0Nyzk

Oh, and Afrikaans is cool because it has so many neologisms that don't exist in Dutch.

I remember that video, it's pretty cool. Just wanted to note that while Charlize does reply in Afrikaans, she does adapt it and adds more Dutch sounding words so the reporter understands her better.
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man

Why nope? I had a polyglot professor who was fluent in (in his words): "Arabic, Aramaic, Catalan, Classical Chinese, Coptic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Manchu, Mongol, Pali, Portuguese, Sanskrit, Spanish, Tibetan, Welsh". He had published in English, French, and Latin and he was teaching me Islam (a course where he frequently spoke or explained Arabic). The rest of his publishing history suggested enough experience with many of the other languages to translate source documents at a sufficient level to translate them and use them when writing journal articles. I know he had also taught Hebrew, Japanese, Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan writing at the university, so he was clearly fluent in those :p There's a big jump between 21 and 50, but I'd say there's a bigger jump between 2 and 21.
 

TTTR

Member
I can only speak German fluently as it is my native language.
My English abilities are rather limited.

But wth, I learned Latin and Ancient Greek in school (can't speak them though). :)
 

slider

Member
Some people are very gifted at languages. I know a guy who phoned me one day and said "I taught myself Swahili over the summer... any use to you?" (I shit you not.)

He already spoke about 8 languages to operational extensive level. Shame I didn't have a need for Swahili. Now he's a sophisticated, urbane guy and he absolutely has my respect but he couldn't do the job I do.

Also, video dude in OP is very talented.
 

Desiato

Member
Really fucking impressive. Lots of respect for this guy. Only wish I could become as talented as him. I know Dutch, English, French (has gotten rusty though), and Japanese. Makes me feel so stupid, but also motivates me in a way.
 

RangersFan

Member
was wondering if anyone is like me. a lot of my relatives and my parents speak Cantonese (chinese dialect for those who don't know) and I understand pretty fluently. but for some reason I can't speak worth a damn. I can't even formulate sentence other than very very minor ones, but I understand almost fluently. I mean my parents probably spoke a lot of it to me as a baby and toddler but I only went to chinese school when I was like 7 or 8 and only for a few years and did very poorly cause I couldn't speak at all. I just find it odd, I really wish I was able to speak fluently, and not only Cantonese but Mandarin as well. Plus I always wanted to learn Japanese, and Spanish is becoming pretty damn useful to know as well...
 

Mœbius

Member
That's pretty damn amazing, kudos to him.

I know 5 languages: English, French, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin). Although I'm kinda cheating with the last one since I'm still learning it and far from fluent.
 

cvxfreak

Member
Is Tagalog and Spanish that similar? I learned that it's a language tha takes some words from spanish but otherwise is not related to it.

Not grammatically, but there is tons and tons of borrowed vocabulary. They're not mutually intelligible, at least when spoken, but etymologically the connections are very strong and readily apparent.
 
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