How many languages can you speak?

[Mark Sreeves]

I heard a joke once...

What do you call someone who can speak 2 languages?
Bilingual.

What do you call someone who can only speak 1 language?
English!

[HarryW]

Heh, so true

[simonm]

She can speak Hungarian, Russian, Rumanian, Hebrew and English.

Although she's lived in England for the last 17 years, her english has not improved attall. I call it lazyness. :rolleyes:

Me, I only speak English (but I would love to be able to speak another language).

[Jamagei]

I am a multi-lingual Illiterate, I can't speak in many languages.

But i can swear quite well in french. :)

[Bonker Gudd]

It's true :p
I had too much trouble with English to think about any other Languages. It took me 5 attempts to get my English O Level :rolleyes:

[ghost ryder]

i posted as 4, but then i read that it said FLUENTLY, in that case it would have 2 be two: english and urdu, i did GCSE german and got a B, but i 4got almost everything coz i spent most of the two years insulting my teacher and callin him a poof :)

im sure if i worked on it a little i could get fluent at german, but i want 2 learn spanish, portugese, italian or japanese

[Jamagei]

Urdu? where does that get spoken? (please excuse my ignorance)

I got a B in French, but like you totally forgot most of it. But this was because we had a really fit 25 yr old teacher (female).

I wanna learn French again, just so i can insult the bastards back.

[HarryW]

India or Pakistan... Pakistan if I had to guess one. Maybe both.

I got a B in GCSE German, would have got an A but I kind of accidentally-deliberately completely cocked up the last exam. I really really didn't like my German teacher.

[Jamagei]

Oh, it's a hard life being THAT intelligent :p

I did the same thing, With SCORE, it was a religous Education Certificate that no-one would care about, employees and all. I deliberatly didn't hand in my last piece of work so i could fail it. I had 8/30 and needed 9/30 for just a pass. The bastards still passed me. :mad:

[ghost ryder]

in pakistan man, duh!!

well ur lucky that ur teacher woz fit, like i sed, mine woz a poof (well allegedly, we asked him and he refused 2 comment, so we took the piss out of him 4 two years)

[HarryW]

They still pased you? The bastards, I mean the cheek of it. I got 9/30 I think ;)

[Jamagei]

yeah, i know. Cheeky Bastards, I wanted to be able to say i failed something at GCSE but I couldn't :(

[HarryW]

I failed GCSE Business Studies, neener neener neener. I was kind of helped along by the fact that the teacher for the first year was a useless shower of sh*te though.

[Jamagei]

Bastard. I just didn't want to seem like a total Nerd. But it seems you managed it better than I did. Well back then anyway :p

[ghost ryder]

well i would have failed maths

my teacher was an english lecturer and she was crazy, she also had a bald patch on her thin frizzy hair (she woz goin bald!!)
we always took the piss out of her, and i wasnt naturally good at maths, but i got a tutor, he helped me get a C

and i didnt fail any GCSEs either:p

[Jamagei]

I always hated biology, Well, disliked the teacher. In the mock exams i just got a C, i mean one mark less and i would have failed. Just to spite her, in the real thing i got a resounding B. Hehe, that'll teach the *****.

[ghost ryder]

i liked biology, it woz cool, my teacher was SO camp, he pranced around like a poof, thing is, he was married and had 2 kids!!

so he wasnt gay!!

my best subject is I.T. it rocks!! unfortunatly, one of my teachers is a fat tub of goo, and he dont know s***

[Arbiter]

You're bang on with that joke.

It really irritates me the way the English go to any coutry in the world and expect the denizens to speak fluent English. The English are just plain lazy when it comes to learning foreign languages (and I'm no exception).

When the English go abroad and try to talk to foreigners, if they don't understand what's being said, we just talk slower and louder at them and stick the letter O on the ends of words.

Fetcho me a coffeeo.

And then complain about how stupid the foreigners are.

I can speak a little French, a minute amount of German and one word of Danish. Oh, and whatever Japanese I learnt whilst reading Shogun. ;)

[ghost ryder]

yeah i know wot u mean, im english, but i would like 2 learn some foreign languages, coz it helps when u go abroad, but 2 find ppl like the ones arbiter described, look no further than ibiza, the land of the alkaholik englishman

[anoop007]

I can speak 3 fluently

Malayalam, English and Hindi

and I can understand and can speak somewhat.. Tamil and Kannada

It isn't much since we have got 16 official languages in my country! :eek

[ghost ryder]

damn!!

[Arbiter]

Forgot to mention - I also speak little Bangali (which I learnt off an ex-girlfriend.

[ghost ryder]

cool, that would come in handy if ur life was ever in danger and the only way to save it was to speak in bengali!! :)

[Arbiter]

Where I live, it's a common occurrance...

[ghost ryder]

that must b quite handy then

[Mark Sreeves]

Originally posted by ghost ryder
i posted as 4, but then i read that it said FLUENTLY, in that case it would have 2 be two: english and urdu



Aye! you can't write English though. :D

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


If you aren't English your 2nd language will probably BE English. What language are we supposed to learn as a second language?

I went backpacking in Turkey some time ago (not in the tourist parts) and felt somewhat inadequate only being able to speak English. When I got home I enrolled on a German course and finally took GCSE German.
Soon afterwards I went on a trip to France and because I can't speak French too well I felt like a "Typical English" again! :(


I can count in Welsh if that's any help!

[SurfDemon]

Being Scottish I'm afraid I fall into the same bracket as our English cousins, except to make matters worse I have a thick accent making my English hard to understand.

When we rented our first house in Canada, this Chineese guy turned up to install the blinds. I was chatting away to him and giving him a hand, but we were having a little bit of difficulty understanding each others English (with our accents). Eventually I asked him how long he had been in the country. It turned out he had immigrated 20 years ago. He asked me, and I replied that I had come from Scotland only 3 or 4 months previously. He replied, "Wow your english is really good if you've only been speaking it that long. You'll pick it up in no time!". I didn't have the heart to tell him I'd been speaking it for 30 odd years.:(

I can order beer in about 10 different languages if that helps.

SD

[Behemoth]

If im havinf a good evening, I can't even order beer in English properly. Usually just pointing at the pump is enough...:rolleyes:

[Mark Sreeves]

SurfDemon
At least the Scottish accent isn't a bad is Geordie!


Quite a few lorrys in UK now run on Dutch plates so they pay less road tax. You see this quite a lot now but the first time I came across this it was a Scottish artic with Dutch Registation plates. I was a bit puzzled by this and asked the driver where he was from. Well, you can guess that I couldn't understand a piggin' word he said but it had "Geordie Dave" painted on the driver's door. :)

[Arbiter]

When I mentioned I could speak one word of Danish I forgot to mention what that word was.

It's 'Ol'. Meaning beer.

Wy aye. Nuke'arsle!

There y'are. I can speak Geordie as well!

[SurfDemon]

"Wy,aye, it's a cannie bag of tudor, man"

SD

[parksie]

English, French, German :)

Oh, and I also know how to order a beer in Spanish (too many music trips) :D

[adamcox]

my best subject is I.T. it rocks!! unfortunatly, one of my teachers is a fat tub of goo, and he dont know s***

Very much the same here... although we only have the one teacher!

[Emo]

Well, here's me:

Can Speak/Read/Write
[list=1]
Bulgarian
English
[/list=1]

Can Understand
[list=1]
Macedonian (Right Vladko? :D)
Russian
Ugoslavian (Serbian)
Bulgarian
English
Romanian Slang
[/list=1]

[simonm]

OK, The English get a lot of flak for not speaking any other languages but can you blame us? Which language should we learn when the language we already speak can be understood in so many different countries?

Now, if one was going to spend a lot of time in a particular country then it would be worth learning the language. Otherwise, why should I learn Spanish for a two week holiday in Spain? So far I've spent about 1 week of my life in a german speaking country. Until I'm going to be in another country long enough to make it worth it, what's the point of learning another language?

[ghost ryder]

i also know rap slang; like slugs, heat, etc.

[MerryVIP]

I don't know if I speak English fluently, but atleast I understand it :D

Älä kysy mitä tämä merkitsee. :rolleyes:

[Active]

Can Speak, Read and Write :
Tamil {+ 4 different dialects}
English

Can Speak and Read :
Hindi
Telugu
Malayalam

Can Speak:
Kannada

[ricmitch_uk]

I'm English. I can speak:
English
French
German
Latin
Geordie
Aussi
etc.
etc.
:D