Which languages do you speak?

[FatalaS]

English,Russian,Latin,Lithuanian.

 

[Mattronium]

Voted 1 English. Learning Spanish, but not enough to count

 

[norbyx]

English, Italian, and spanish... all 3 fluent.

 

[Blaster]

English, and some German basic

 

[Hislordship]

I speak dutch and english
And a little bit of german and thai
I'm learning to speak thai cuz i would like to be able to talk to my family in law without my gf having to translate for me ^^

 

[Hydroas]

German, English, Slovensky and bits of Rusky with this I understood the complete east Europe, because this is nearly the same

 

[rasta]

English and French.

 

[NightExplorer96]

^Same.

English & French. I was born in Russia but never held on to Russian

-Alex

 

[Teej]

I am quite rusty, as I don't use them much anymore, but, for work, I used to speak any combination of English (American), English (Brit), French, Russian, Yugoslavian, Polish, Spanish, and if I count idioms and expressions only, some Yiddish, some Tutsi, some Gujarati, some Hindi, some Turkish, some Punjabi, some German, and I forget what else off the top of my head.

It depended on what kind of projects I was on at the time.

The rust is pretty severe I discovered a few years ago when my sister in law needed help with something, and knew I had 6 years of French, and could help her with it...and, I looked at it, and felt like Charley in Flowers for Algernon.

 

[Eudaimonium]

I am quite rusty, as I don't use them much anymore, but, for work, I used to speak any combination of English (American), English (Brit), French, Russian, Yugoslavian, Polish, Spanish, and if I count idioms and expressions only, some Yiddish, some Tutsi, some Gujarati, some Hindi, some Turkish, some Punjabi, some German, and I forget what else off the top of my head.

It depended on what kind of projects I was on at the time.

The rust is pretty severe I discovered a few years ago when my sister in law needed help with something, and knew I had 6 years of French, and could help her with it...and, I looked at it, and felt like Charley in Flowers for Algernon.

A jel?

How come you know the language of these parts?

Also, since Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore but countries that composed it speak almost-the-same language with some minor regional accent and phrases difference, you can totally count that for like, 3 languages (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian) for bragging rights

 

[3Pig]

Id say 1.3, I can speak english, a little bit of German, a little bit of Mandarin and some Finnish swear words

 

[Teej]

A jel?

How come you know the language of these parts?

Also, since Yugoslavia doesn't exist anymore but countries that composed it speak almost-the-same language with some minor regional accent and phrases difference, you can totally count that for like, 3 languages (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian) for bragging rights

I was working at some hazardous waste site projects, and, the crews were Slavic, and most did not speak English...so, I felt I needed to learn their languages to be able to communicate. It was pretty interesting.

Some things were a bit confusing for certain terms, because they didn't translate well. I wanted to tell them something about pipe elbows they needed to fix at the site, and asked how to say "Elbow", wrote it down, added it to my instructions to them, and got blank looks when I told them.

It seems that there, they call the bends in the pipes KNEES, so saying "ELBOWS" did not mean anything about plumbing to them.

If I said to an American plumbing crew that their knees were too weak to pass the tests, they'd look at me just as strangely I'm sure.

 

[VisibleGreen]

English and Bad English

 

[Eudaimonium]

I was working at some hazardous waste site projects, and, the crews were Slavic, and most did not speak English...so, I felt I needed to learn their languages to be able to communicate. It was pretty interesting.

Some things were a bit confusing for certain terms, because they didn't translate well. I wanted to tell them something about pipe elbows they needed to fix at the site, and asked how to say "Elbow", wrote it down, added it to my instructions to them, and got blank looks when I told them.

It seems that there, they call the bends in the pipes KNEES, so saying "ELBOWS" did not mean anything about plumbing to them.

If I said to an American plumbing crew that their knees were too weak to pass the tests, they'd look at me just as strangely I'm sure.

LOL!

I can imagine! Cultural differences being as big as this, I know that some phrases are impossible to translate without entire paragraph of word background explanations.

Tooling, machining and technical terms are especially bad, and not to mention something related to tradition and history, like traditional meals and customs which do not have a translation because they do not exist in other cultures.

So you were just working with a bunch of people and picked up a language? You must be a natural talent for learning languages. I applaud

 

[Teej]

LOL!

I can imagine! Cultural differences being as big as this, I know that some phrases are impossible to translate without entire paragraph of word background explanations.

Tooling, machining and technical terms are especially bad, and not to mention something related to tradition and history, like traditional meals and customs which do not have a translation because they do not exist in other cultures.

So you were just working with a bunch of people and picked up a language? You must be a natural talent for learning languages. I applaud

Everyone has a story, and, if you can't understand them, you can't hear it.



I DON'T have a natural talent for it though, it was work to learn it, it did not come naturally. Even just having them repeat back to me how the words and cadences should sound so my "Thick American Accent" would not make things hard to understand. Also, I worked on these projects for many years, and, it was more along the lines of a lot of "how do I say....?" and, what are you eating? I'd write a note that phonetically reminded me of how to say what, and so forth, so over time, I learned some, and could then use that to build upon to learn more.

I just realized I forgot to list Farsi, and, I still remember that "read" in Farsi means to go #2, so when they hear someone say in English that they are going to read something in the bathroom, etc, they can't help but giggle.

:crackup:

 

[Eudaimonium]

Everyone has a story, and, if you can't understand them, you can't hear it.

That is a very nice sentiment

+Rep already given, so, yeah. Kudos