How many foreign languages do you speak and which ones?

Question

Only curiosity! It´s for English native speakers and not!

Was the knowledge of these language useful in your present job or did they help you to find a job?

GrahamH: VERY impressive!!

Answer 1

I work at a major UK airport and speaking languages is part of my job:

I hold a university degree in French, Spanish and Italian
I also hold UK Institute of Linguists qualifications in those languages as well as Portuguese, Turkish, Romanian and Gujarati. I am also fluent in Catalan and Galician (galego)

Although without qualifications, I am also fairly proficient in Punjabi, Hindi/Urdu, and Polish, and I can pass the time of day in Hungarian, Basque, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Farsi, Greek and Lithuanian. I am also having a go at Quechua at the moment, having spent some time in Peru with my son's Peruvian in-laws, but it's looking as though I may have to admit defeat on that one.....

Answer 2

In addition to my native U.S. English, I speak 3 foreign languages:

Esperanto - I learned it as a language learning experiment, because I wanted to find out if I could learn a foreign language.

Spanish - Because I failed it in High School, leading me to believe for many years that I couldn't learn a language, and it became a vendetta. I had to master it before I could go on.

German - because it is an ancestral language of mine.

Esperanto surprised me quite a bit. When I began learning it, I had the same opinion about it most of us in the U.S. have. I thought that since it was a "made up" language, nobody spoke it and it was practically useless, but once I had learned it, I was pleasantly surprised that it is spoken by people all over the world, an estimated 2 million people. I've had conversations in it with people I would never have met were it not for Esperanto. I've read literature and listened to music in it that I would never have been exposed to had I not taken the few months it took to learn. Learning Esperanto has been the most enriching Language experience I've had yet.

But I'm not finished yet. In the future I would like to learn:

Mandarin - because I would like to travel in Asia, and Mandarin would be a very handy language to know for this travel.

American Sign Language - Just because it interests me.

Answer 3

Apart from English and Welsh, which I can't really consider as foreign, I have Esperanto, German, Russian and French, all of which I know fairly well. I can get by in Spanish and Slovene, and I know enough Latin, Old English and Middle High German to understand quite a lot of what I read. At the moment I'm learning Arabic.

I'm a linguist, so this does help me occasionally with my work, though maybe not as often as one might imagine. After all, I have at least one colleague who doesn't know any language well apart from English.

Answer 4

I learnt French to degree level, German to A-Level and Spanish to GCSE. I was always good at languages in school and enjoyed them and went on to do them at Uni with European Studies, but hated it. Hated the course and saw no future. I didn't want to spend every day talking in another language and didn't fancy any of the jobs that were coming up for language graduates.

I dropped out and went into Personnel where I was very successful and happy in my job. I only use my languages now when watching films (which have subtitles anyway!), or on holiday. I suppose some might say a bit of a waste, but I don't feel it was. You have to go with what feels right don't you?

Answer 5

I am a French native speaker and (French included) I speak five languages : a perfect French ; a fluent English ; scholar German, Spanish and Portuguese. I have tried to learn Greek using the special learning method named "ASSIMIL" and Swahili too by myself on Internet. I have few notions about Italian Chinese and Japanese. Last year I have started to learn the language of bad or non hearing people. I'd like to learn Russian too.

Answer 6

I speak Spanish and French fluently, some Norwegian and Arabic, and a little German. Spanish has been very helpful in my job because I've designed a course at the university for Spanish speakers. I also worked in the jail while I was a grad student and interviewed inmates in Spanish (and English.)

...

Answer 7

I speak English, French, German, Spanish, Polish and Russian. I am not English native speaker.

Answer 8

I can speak fluent English and French, pretty fluent Spanish and intermediate level German.
I also know a bit of Comorian, Swahili and Thai, as I lived in Comoro Islands, Kenia, Chad and Thailand.

Ah, and I used to be mother tongue Italian (I AM Italian!), but more and more I notice that I am at loss for words, especially in scientific discussions. Quite said, ehin?!

Answer 9

I'm English,

I speak French and modern Hebrew,

I can go to the shops in Dutch (though couldn't hold a proper conversation)

Three and a bit languages in one head? No one can live at that speed!

Answer 10

I speak English , Spanish and a little French.