What languages do you speak? Where are you from?

[Deafsn0w]

I'm curious. I've always heard that people in Europe are required to learn a foreign language in elementary school. I want to know if this is true. I find it really weird that people in the US aren't required to learn a foreign language until high school.


I know American Sign Language and English. I'm from the US.

 

[Homecoming]

أنا من الشرق الأوسط وأتحدث اللغة العربية. يسعدني أن أعرف أنك تعيش في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية

 

[Emily_Numb]

I'm from England. I'm 37. We weren't taught another language until we were 12 years old back in those days. I was taught French & German in secondary school.

 

[Meaninglesslife50]

السلام علیک یا اخی! انا تعلمت عربی فی‌المدرسه
Well that's all the arabic that I learned from school!​

 

[RottenDeer]

I speak German and English.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

I'm American Born Chinese and I only know English. I took three years of French in high school that I've almost completely forgotten and one month of Mandarin Chinese at some fun college foreign exchange program thing in Taiwan. I also know how to recognize some basic Japanese phrases from consuming too much of their media.

 

[262653]

I wonder how many active Russian speaking users are here. I know about that specific thread but people there mostly discuss methods while I'm looking more for off-topic inconsequential stuff.

When I try to articulate myself, I often have to alternate languages because I find some things to be easier to express in Russian and some in English.

 

[mathieu]

I am in australia and we learnt German from grade 1-12. Also a few years of Japanese. I don't remember any really. I speak English and a tiny bit of French (basically nothing) but I spend some time each day learning French on Busuu or practicing on Tandem.

 

[death137]

I speak Amharic and English

 

[Eren]

I speak spanish, Im from Spain.

 

[Amumu]

English, French, German. I began to learn new languages when I was 6 if I'm not mistaken.
I'm from Europe

 

[Rue89]

I'm from the US and only speak English.

 

[Amumu]

I'm curious. I've always heard that people in Europe are required to learn a foreign language in elementary school. I want to know if this is true. I find it really weird that people in the US aren't required to learn a foreign language until high school.

That's not weird at all, due to the fact that you must learn English to work in a globalized world.

 

[Susannah]

I'm from Norway and I speak Norwegian, Swedish, English, French and some Spanish. I understand Danish and some German. Nobody except Swedish people understand Norwegian, so we are obliged to learn at least English.

Lots of loveS

 

[KleinerWolf]

I'm from China, in China we speak Chinese.


FYI:
I speak duh English, but nort, nort very gud!

 

[Homecoming]

I'm from China, in China we speak Chinese.


FYI:
I speak duh English, but nort, nort very gud!

我喜欢你的总统。 他是中国公民的真正英雄！

 

[KleinerWolf]

我喜欢你的总统。 他是中国公民的真正英雄！

View attachment 46345

Genau.

 

[Amumu]

View attachment 46350

Genau.

Poor Winnie the Pooh, Chinese people might miss him.

 

[grungeCat]

I speak Polish as I'm from Poland and a little bit English and German. However now I have to learn Norwegian if I want to survive in Norway. It will be a hard labor as Norwegian is a difficult language and I'm very bad at learning new languages. Maybe I won't have to dothat if my SN won't be taken over by local police.

 

[cyberlordsumit]

I'm from India, I speak Marathi as my Mother Tongue, Hindi as National Language, English as Academic Language since i was very litte too.

I had started learning Spanish and Japanese and know basics and all but My 'trigger' for being here is in the Foreign Language Academy itself.

Ironic.

 

[KleinerWolf]

Poor Winnie the Pooh, Chinese people might miss him.
View attachment 46351

why? he gon' die ?
"she'll be right".
Someone else just gonna replace him.

but what's with obama,
he's not even the president no more XD

 

[death137]

I'm from India, I speak Marathi as my Mother Tongue, Hindi as National Language, English as Academic Language since i was very litte too.

I had started learning Spanish and Japanese and know basics and all but My 'trigger' for being here is in the Foreign Language Academy itself.

Ironic.

Is it stress?

 

[schopenh]

Only English
Ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch verstehen
Aprendo español ahora
In Ireland we start learning a second language in secondary school (roughly ages 13-17). I learned french for a few of those years but dropped it in my final year which is actually quite a rare thing to do. Everyone must study the state standardised Irish from primary education all the way to the end of secondary school. But very few actually learn much from all that.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

I'm from the States. I started learning Spanish very early, but nothing more than present-tense and basics. Took a couple of years in high school, then took an accelerated course in college, two years in two semesters, and became semi-fluent. I have enough* to survive and joke around.


*I used to say that I speak enough, but the only time I ever use that phrase is when I'm speaking in Spanish, and they say "have enough" of a language.

I think a better title for the thread, especially for those whose first language isn't English, would have been "Where you from?"

(That was hilarious to me. It is all love, no offense intended. I've traveled so much in Latin America I hear it all the time, and I've noticed other non-English speaking natives say it, too. I love it. And I know from experience it takes balls to reach out and make the effort to communicate in a foreign language, so it's not all love, there's plenty of respect in there, too.)

 

[Amumu]

why? he gon' die ?
"she'll be right".
Someone else just gonna replace him.

but what's with obama,
he's not even the president no more XD

The name Winnie the Pooh is censored in PRC
I am well aware that Obama isn't POTUS anymore lol
But the picture is still funny

 

[KleinerWolf]

The name Winnie the Pooh is censored in PRC
I am well aware that Obama isn't POTUS anymore lol
But the picture is still funny

Old memes age well.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

The name Winnie the Pooh is censored in PRC

Who is P?????

(j/k)

 

[BipolarGuy]

English, obviously.
I also started learning German on Duolingo but when I started to get a bit more advanced I realised that Duolingo is a bit rubbish as it doesn't explain general concepts. It just throws similar phrases or sentences at you repeatedly in the hope that stuff sticks and you figure things out yourself.

For instance, "Das Madchen", "Die Frau" and "Der Mann" is repeated constantly.
But the principles behind der, die and das are not adequately explained and so rather than applying a rule, you have to remember whether it's der, die or das for every single thing!

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Hers something that's only funny to people who are bilingual in Spanish and English, and I think it's funnier to those in the Latino culture than gringo:

¿Guate fuck?

 

[Deleted member 19654]

Grew up speaking Chinese and English but now I'm only really fluent in English. I also speak a little bit of French.