How many languages do you speak?

amother

Silver

Mon, Jun 29 2020, 7:44 pm

sequoia wrote:

Ok so apparently everyone speaks Ukrainian but me.

I am really struggling with it 😢
The more I learn, the more difficult/different it seems.

That's cause I immigrated at a much older age than you Smile

You are there now, right? Do you "need" to speak it there or you just want to learn it?

4g01o

Mon, Jun 29 2020, 8:03 pm

penguin wrote:

Q. What do you call a person who speaks three languages?
A. Trilingual. (Or polyglot)

Q. What do you call a person who speaks two languages?
A. Bilingual.

Q. What do you call a person who speaks one language?
A. British.(Or American… depends where the joke is being told.)

Lol I'm from England and surprise I only speak English! A little Hebrew but really enough to just about get by on a short trip to visit haha

penguin

Tue, Jun 30 2020, 5:12 pm

Quote:

Ok so apparently everyone speaks Ukrainian but me.

I am really struggling with it 😢
The more I learn, the more difficult/different it seems.

It's not similar to Russian?

amother

Aquamarine

Tue, Jun 30 2020, 5:13 pm

Quote:

I thought about learning spanish to converse with my cleaning lady..

I bought Russian for Dummies to try to communicate better when I had cleaning help from Russia.

Then I decided it's a lot easier to learn Spanish, especially if you know French & Latin... also no new alphabet. And the last few cleaning ladies ended up being Spanish.

amother

Jetblack

Tue, Jun 30 2020, 6:00 pm

penguin wrote:

Quote:

Ok so apparently everyone speaks Ukrainian but me.

I am really struggling with it 😢
The more I learn, the more difficult/different it seems.

It's not similar to Russian?

It's closer to Polish than Russian

sequoia

Tue, Jun 30 2020, 6:11 pm

penguin wrote:

Quote:

Ok so apparently everyone speaks Ukrainian but me.

I am really struggling with it 😢
The more I learn, the more difficult/different it seems.

It's not similar to Russian?

That’s the thing — it SEEMS similar, and then once you start reading/learning, it’s actually quite different.

Belarusian is more similar.

amother

Turquoise

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 5:07 am

Zehava wrote:

Girls maybe. But not even. Most Antwerp women I know don’t speak a word of French not much Hebrew.

I'm native Antwerpian. Most woman I know from here speak and understand french and Hebrew. We have french from 5th grade and up and most schools learn in hebrew. Although I know lot of words in Hebrew I have some kind of blockage with french /Hebrew. Although I passed my business level test of french while doing my BA. I only use it when talking to French clients on the phone. Very badly but they understand mostly what I want. Most french speaking Brussels /Walonian people only speak French. Yiddish is my mother tongue. Nederlands fluent and of course english. I used to work for an international IG company and I learned there lots of medical jargon in Turkish, polish and more, one african employee taught me arabic numbers. He is muslim and black. We had many conversations about Hebrew having many words in arabic like arba is the number 4 in arabic too and many months in arabic are spoken the same as the Hebrew ones. Very educational Smile

amother

Navy

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 5:11 am

penguin wrote:

Q. What do you call a person who speaks one language?
A. British.(Or American… depends where the joke is being told.)

I am a dual national and speak both British English and American English. Tongue Out

singleagain

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 7:37 am

amother [ Navy ] wrote:

I am a dual national and speak both British English and American English. Tongue Out

Yes. That's a fair point. I forgot. If I'm reading Sophie Kinsella or JoJo Moyes or watching a lot of Doctor Who or Downton, I slip into British English also.

amother

Yellow

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 7:40 am

Native language is English.
Learned Irish from 5-18 years old.
Learned German from 13-18 years old.
Learned courses in Arabic and Russian in uni (but only know the basics).
Now I speak in Hebrew all day, every day!

amother

Seagreen

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 11:11 am

Fab4 wrote:

Lol I'm from England and surprise I only speak English! A little Hebrew but really enough to just about get by on a short trip to visit haha

Same 😱 Yiddish words I have copied are easier for me to speak than even Hebrew. I wonder why that it that Hebrew just doesn’t sink in with me. I daven in English even.

sequoia

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 11:42 am

amother [ Seagreen ] wrote:

Same 😱 Yiddish words I have copied are easier for me to speak than even Hebrew. I wonder why that it that Hebrew just doesn’t sink in with me. I daven in English even.

Oh good someone else who does this!

amother

Emerald

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 11:54 am

fluent in:
german
slovak
russian
english

mediocre:
french
hebrew
yiddish
czech

basic:
japanese
hungarian

the ladies who wondered whether ukrainian is similar to russian---well yes it is definitely related as they are both in the group of slavonic languages, but there are other slavonic languages that are closer to ukrainian like ruthenian or slovak or even some polsih dialects... I speak 2 slavonic languages and hence understand ukrainian very well. just ebcuase you speak english it doesnt automatically mean that you understand danish. speaking german AND another germanic language will definitely help you unerstand danish though.

amother

Orchid

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 12:00 pm

amother [ Orchid ] wrote:

I speak two languages on mother tongue level
one language fluently
two languages on B2 level (advanced intermediate/basic fluent)
one language used to speak almost fluently but have forgotten most of it Sad

can still understand, though
one language can understand a lot but can't really speak

Grew up in NY, but have spent a lot of time in other countries, now live in Europe.

amother [ OP ] wrote:

May I know which ones?
You're amother, after all Wink

Yes, but if I list which languages I could just as well do so under my real name, since the combination is quite unusual. And I don't want it to be known that I am on this board.

chanchy123

Wed, Jul 01 2020, 12:49 pm

I am fluent in Hebrew and English I know some Arabic can read very slowly and I have a descent vocabulary so can pick out lots of words but only Fusha and not so much spoken Arabic. My grammar is terrible and I don’t know the language well enough to really understand. Knowing English and Hebrew I can sort of work out some Yiddish and can sort of follow written French.
For work I have to match subtitles to speech mostly I do English/Hebrew text to Arabic so if I know what they’re saying in English I can follow the Arabic poetry well, Farsi is harder because the grammar and intonation are very different from the languages I know. I know about ten words in Farsi and can sometimes pick out the Arabic words they use. I’ve done Russian French German Urdu and Turkish too.