Do you, or someone you know, speak 2 or more languages that you would consider to be polar opposites?

Question

I just wondered if you speak 2 languages that you would consider to be complete opposites, totally unrelated. Like, I don't know, Russian and Swahili, or Chinese and Arabic. (Or is it just me who sees these languages as opposites? I don't really know why I consider them to be so.)

Answer 1

i can speak arabic, spanish, urdu, a little chinese and a little japanese and also a little french.

Answer 2

I can fluently speak English and Welsh. And these languages are different in many ways.

I can also speak Spanish and French, which are both Romance languages and related. And German, which is related to English. And I'm also learning Russian, which is different from the rest of the ones I know.

Answer 3

I would consider any language written in a script entirely different from English ( Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese, etc)
pronounced completely differently too, to be a polar opposite of English. I can only compare languages to my own native tongue.

Answer 4

I speak Russian, English, Spanish and some Italian. However, in spite of the fact that Russian alphabet (Cyrillic) is different from Latin alphabet, all these languages belonged to the same Indo-European group of languages. They all derived from Sanskrit. English, Spanish and Italian have several present, past and future tenses. Russian has only present, past and future. However the modality of the verbs is considerably more "charged" than in English, Spanish or Italian. So, what is different and what is opposite? I feel that more languages one knows, more common features he or she can find in them.

Answer 5

Hmm, Estonian and English?

Unrelated languages, one of which is spoken by perhaps 4 million people in a tiny country that was under the control of a much larger country for decades, the other of which is spoken by a billion or so people on every continent.

Answer 6

I personally know a Korean woman who speaks Spanish. Also many of the Chinese people who live here in Puerto Rico learn to Speak Spanish.

Answer 7

I speak English and Japanese. It's not too hard. A friend of mine speaks Chinese and English. It's not too hard for him. Another friend of mine speaks Hindi and English. He's native in both. Some other friend of mine speaks Polish and Chinese fluently, and he also speaks English, Russian, and Mongolian. I used to work with a guy, who's mum was Korean, and dad was Jamaican, so he spoke English with Jamaican accent, and spoke Korean too.

Answer 8

Yes I do, I speak English and Hebrew. I moved from America to Israel when was five years old. It wasn't easy but when you're Young it's much much easier, for example my nephew spoke English, Hebrew and Yiddish ( similar to German) when he was five years old. If you are considering on learning a new language, good Luke.

Answer 9

Yes...I speak English, Mandarin, Malay, and Arabic.

Answer 10

I speak fluent Cantonese and English, can get by in Mandarin and am learning German.