How many languages do you speak?

[Antti]

Here's my list:
-Finnish, of course
-English, I've studied it for over five years, and I think I know it well, but my english is far too American
-Swedish, the other language in Finland, I can understand finnish swedish but swedish swedish is horrible
-Latin, almost three years of studying and I can understand written text if I can use a dictionary for help
-German, never studied it, but I can understand some of german TV channels I watch when I'm bored
-French, I've studied it for a year, but don't know it enough for a conversation
-Holiday Italian, I can say and understand a few basic phrases

Edit: seems like a long list but I feel comfortable only with the three first. But I'm learning more and more French all the time.

[esperantisto]

1. Esperanto (saluton Saaropean!)
2. Deutsch
3. English
...

I'm pretty good in Yiddish and I know a beetje Nederlands.

I can say a couple phrases in Mandarin, Japanese, Hebrew, Arabic, Icelandic, Italian*, French, Spanish*, Russian, Croat*, Czech, Polish,
& Hindi.

*(got by fine as a tourist)

[airis]

Finnish
English
Swedish, I understand it very well (even the one spoken in Sweden) and also speak it quite well. I watch Swedish tv-channels every day.
German, I have studied it for 7 years. I can understand and speak it, but not well.
(I want to learn French and other languages too. I watch the French tv5 and understand now something.)

[BossaNova]

- Japanese (Same as Finnish, I like Japanese games, comics and anime. But it's a very hard language, and at this moment I don't understand much more than arigatou and konnichiwa :p.)

did you know that the japanese arigatou comes from the portuguese obrigado? there are around 400 japanese words with portuguese origin!

PS: forgot to mention on my first list..

8-Cape Verdian Crioulo - understand it quite well, although I don't know to write it..

[wouter]

1 dutch (of course)
2 English (I can handle myself, reading and writing on this forum also helps a lot)
3 German (I can read it rather well but writing and speaking is more difficult )
4 French a speak/read it a little bit

[jaker]

Some languages you get for free when learning others, some you get half-price... so the question is a bit tough to answer. I have studied on some level and can say that I speak some
*English
*Swedish
*German
*French
*Italian
*Japanese
*Czech
but with Finnish you get some Estonian for free, with Swedish you get some Norwegian and Danish (for a reduced price at least )... with Czech you get a tiny amount of Polish --but the original price is very high . Same goes for Japanese, except that Japanese does not give you access to that many other languages (though I've started to become uncertain about its relation with Portuguese lately ).

--jaker

[Tiger]

There are also a lot of Dutch words in Japanese !

In the past, Japan was an isolated country, and noone could enter it.
The Japanese were affraid foreigners would influence their culture.
Only Dutchmen could trade with Japan (probably because they were too stupid to get to their culture ).
Japan learned a lot about medial care from the Dutch sailers, and learned it from Dutch books.
That's why there are a lot of Dutch words in the medical language in Japanese.
Some of them are not used anymore (like 'messu' was derivated from the Dutch 'mes' but is now replaced by 'naaifu' from the english 'knife'), but others are.
We also have some Japanese words in our language, but I think most languages have them.
(haiku, kamikaze, origami, etc )

[Wouter1]

"Geisha" is Dutch

The Dutch from the VOC in the 1700s called the whores in Japan "keesjes" from the verb "kezen".

"Kezen" is vulgair for having intercourse. (Can one say to f*ck on this forum?? )

This word "keesjes" changed over the years into Geishas.

[Tiger]

In Flemish, kezen is a substantive for Dutchmen :D

[Olivier]

Bizarre...

[micro]

I just wonder... how many, and which foreign languages do you speak?

Olivier

In school I learned 9 years of English, 5 years of Latin and 1 year of French. Unfortunately I'm not really good in speaking foreign languages, and the only one I cultivated a bit is English (though I still struggle with it). I regret now that I wasted so much time to learn a dead language, Latin, I should have taken French or Spanish instead. The only thing is that Latin helps a bit to figure out a French or Spanish word occasionally. After a couple of months travelling I learned a bit Indonesian, that's also spoken in Malaysia and relatively easy to learn and easy to pronounce. And it gave other languages some funny words like guru (teacher) or orang-utan (which means jungle man, while orang barat is a tourist from the west).

[emmem]

Dutch is my mother tongue.

I also speak English, although my pronunciation is not always 100% what it should be. And I have a terrible accent when it comes to speaking French.

And when I speak German all the words I don’t know are replaced with Dutch words.

[Debtam]

- Dutch (mother tongue)
- German (good, at least I think so)
- English (moderately)
- French (bad)

[Tiger]

And when I speak German all the words I don’t know are replaced with Dutch words.

Hehe, I've got the same problems with German
I just speak Dutch with a German accent, and some 'sch' in the words

[gille]

I speak:
- Flemish
- Dutch
- French
- English