Languages Spoken

[dgwebster]

I speak English (native), Spanish & German, know a handful of Russian phrases and I can say a few Swedish tongue twisters! I will admit though that my German would need a refresher to be more useful that a tourist, and my spanish is not quite fluent, as I often have to stop and convert from English during using it.

One of the things that I was surprised to learn from my Swedish friend was how much the English language is ingrained as a part of learning. She started learning English at the age of 6 at school, and this progresses right the way through as a mandatory subject. When they reach 12/13 and move up into a higher school (would be called Secondary School here in Scotland) they then choose an additional language, that they learn conversational and "get-by" stuff, much the way we Brits are taught from Schools.

I fully believe in the method above, and my almost 3-year-old speaks English mostly, but I am teaching her Spanish already, to the point that she will fluently swap counting between the languages. She is learning simple stuff really, like hello, thank you, good bye etc. but I hope that one day she will speak it as well as she would English. My son will also be getting the same treatment as he grows older.

 

[Alejandro]

I speak and read English and of course Spanish. I can read some French, Portuguese and a little bit Russian. I'd wish I could read/speak German and Dutch though

 

[Myrdinn]

English first, Danish second, French and German from school, and Spanish and Italian through experience.
Living in Europe helps.

 

[Blaze]

It was VERY complicated ):

Unfortunetly over here it is compulsary to learn it in middle school -_-"

 

[Yahilles]

I forgot to say because i don´t actually "know" the languages, and i definitely can´t use them at all....but i can understand portuguese and italian pretty well, at least to get by (they are both so similar to castilian that enough words are readily recognizable to understand most of it). I guess the same applies to them, i´m sure any portuguese or italian guy can understand me in spanish well enough, even without any practice.

I think it's something similiar here, that polish people are able to communicate with czech people, and i've heard that if you know Polish and Russian language, you're free to communicate with people from Ukraine.

I'm always impressed by the minds and abilities of the people here at Caudata.org. Even the people who tend to apologize for their English speak and write it better than most American High School students.

I know i am not that good in English (but my main problem is how to spell things - know how to say something but my tongue is always making problems), but i see that (mainly on facebook) i see that american people are making language mistakes, many people i know say, for example, "it's to heavy", shouldn't that be "it's too heavy"?

 

[Snailbait]

Interesting topic!

I speak English and can get by pretty well in Japanese (used to be better, but I've not had to use it for years...). I know a tiny bit of German but no where near enough to have a conversation in it.