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Which languages do you speak?

I am a native English speaker and recently started learning Esperanto a few weeks ago. I was inspired by a TED Talk that explained how Esperanto is an excellent first choice for those interested in acquiring multiple languages.

Due to its relative simplicity, learning Esperanto effectively prepares your brain for learning additional languages, making the process quicker and smoother.

So how many here speak different languages and what are they?

65 comments
  • Man, TED talks suck.

    That guy scammed you into learning a conlang with the excuse that it does something that all languages do and nobody is even telling you.

    Just learn a romance language if you want access to a family of concepts that will carry over easily, friend. It comes with the bonus of being able to talk to people.

    Anyway, I'm often light on personal info here, but I'm in a bilingual territory, learned English as a kid, the basics of a couple others through life stuff and I get a few more through osmosis because all languages do that Esperanto trick.

    • All languages do that, yes, but as Esperanto is easier than the others, it makes it a very good first language.

      I learnt English at school for almost 10 years without being able to have a discussion. I learnt Esperanto in a few months, actually used it to communicate with foreigners, and a few months after I was able to communicate in English. My English is still far from perfect, but without Esperanto I wouldn't even be here.

      • That seems more like a teaching methodology problem than a target language problem. Honestly, I don't know where you are, but the way English is taught in schools in many regions is terrible, so that doesn't tell you too much about the relative merits of learning Esperanto.

        But hey, if you got it out of your system that's good for you. I don't begrudge anybody learning a language, even if it's a made up one. I just wouldn't want to support the idea that monolinguals should go out of their way to tackle conlangs, or Esperanto specifically. Go learn something you're curious and motivated about.

    • Well here in the US, and in the state I'm in, not a lot of bilingual needs. I know Spanish is pretty popular in a lot of places, and I'll eventually learn it. But since I'm 55 years old, esperanto seemed more fun. And it's got an interesting history. Thanks!

  • Ojibway ... or a dialect of Ojibway in northern Ontario. It's my first language I spoke for about the first four years of my life and dominate language I spoke until I was about 13, then I started actually speaking English all the time starting at about 18. It took me years to get used to full on English conversation but now I'm comfortable in it. I still remember my Indigenous language but I seldom use it because I have no one to talk to any more. I don't live close to my family or friends who speak it and even in my home community and group, the language is dying out. I think I'm pretty much the last generation who fully spoke the language because everyone after me speaks prominently English and Ojibway second (if they speak it at all).

    So I can safely say that Ojibway is my first language and English is my second.

  • Arabic and English. I'm learning esperanto, Ukrainian and Latin all at the same time (Latin is most important and Esperanto is least)

    I'm also learning a very little amount of Hebrew since it's similar to Arabic in a lot of ways. Like Scottish and English.

  • French is my native tongue, I can converse in Creole and have a convincing accent because of my family;

    I learned English, Spanish, Italian at school (in that order), few words of German later on my own, learned some Swedish vocabulary on Duolingo, Icelandic basics for when I visited, I can only read and pronounce Cyrillic without understanding it.

    I'm interested in Korean lately, but haven't even started

  • I'm proficient at Portuguese, Italian, and written English. I can also understand some Latin and German. Plus a few Romance languages through mutual intelligibility.

    Due to its relative simplicity, learning Esperanto effectively prepares your brain for learning additional languages, making the process quicker and smoother.

    Ah, the propaedeutic effect? I think that Esperanto shows the "guts" of the grammar faster than other languages do, and that helps learning languages with similar features.

  • English, Spanish, Basque, French, some Russian, currently learning German.

  • I'm English (distinction from British as there isnt any programme for or impetus to learn celtic languages like the other countries) and for a long time the only other language I spoke was French to a very, very poor and sub-conversational level (from school).

    Since 2016 or so (on and off) I've been learning Dutch. When you tell people that, the first question you get (from both english native speakers and the Dutch) is 'why'?

    So whilst I work and live in the UK, my company has a bunch of EU offices and I have worked closely with our large Belgian office for almost 10 years now and as of last year I now work for that EU branch of the company and my current project is with a Dutch client which has spurred me on a lot recently to learn again.

    I also have two Dutch friends (from other ends of the country) who help and encourage me.

    So I'm currently at a basic/low conversational level, I can deal with every day basic interactions.

    Sure, Spanish, French or even German makes a lot more sense to most people but I have so many strong links with the Netherlands that Dutch is the only one that makes sense to learn for me and is the one I use the most by miles.

  • Native English, then Spanish, Portuguese and French, in order of proficiency. I speak Spanish all day at work, have a fair amount of Brazilian media and a sizable Brazilian population here that I interact with on occasion. Ironically, though I've been studying French the longest, I didn't have any real use for it aside from reading after high school. Now, there's a couple of French podcasts I'll listen to, but I still find French television to be pretty boring, so I mostly get to use it at a French book club, on the rare occasions I can attend. Currently, about halfway through a degree to try and address how lopsided my skills in French have gotten, while also having an easy option to tick the box for jobs that want a degree, but don't care what it's in.

    I still have a long list of languages I'd like to learn, but they tend to share the unfortunate characteristics of simultaneously being difficult to learn, while also having very limited practical application for me. One of these days, I'll actually stick with learning something more useful again, like German, rather than going through Japanese, Icelandic, Finnish or Irish for another round to see if I can stick it out.

  • Fluent in English. I can understand/read most Quebecois French from classes when I was a kid but zero ability to speak it. I know more Russian or Greek than French. Otherwise it's just languages that aren't super useful like Klingon or Latin.

65 comments