How many languages do you speak?

[saevel25]

Luckily there is no such thing as American English. I speak Midwest American. I do know a few french words, but that is like 1% french.

[bubble]

two. french and english.

I'm french and have a good pretty good american english.

[jamo]

Just English. I took Spanish in middle and high school, but it was by far my worst subject. I can pick up the basics and tell tense based on conjugation, but I'm no where near fluent. Maybe someday.

[meenman]

English only.

Worked in a heavy spanish neighborhood for a few years and never picked up a word.

Currently work with a muslim and purposely mispronounce the words i hear him say on the phone just to annoy him.

90% of my customers are arab or indian and they try to teach me their languages, but I refuse for fear that it will knock more important knowledge out of my head - it irks them, but they still buy so f them.

[nevets88]

Do programming languages count?

If not, three. English, French, and American. ;) And Pig Latin.

I count programming languages as one language - "code speak" - code is a language in and of itself (screw comments :-) Some people just can't get their way around recursion forget the even more difficult concepts. Saw so many freshman who just couldn't get past the hardest 1st year comp sci programming class, their heads exploded. I also count reading music as a language too. Being able to sight read two staves of densely packed notes at the same time fast is not a trivial skill.

My Cantonese and Mandarin are meh, but I read and write better Chinese than I speak.

[boogielicious]

I wonder if any one else can understand the spam coming from the ME?

If not then I'm the only one here who can speak Arabic? Maybe?

@Abu3baid , what did the rest of the spam post say? I only caught the english words, obviously.

[saturday]

4, English, French, Farsi and Farsi Afghani ( different dialect but considered separate language. )

[Abu3baid]

@Abu3baid , what did the rest of the spam post say? I only caught the english words, obviously.

Nothing usefull I don't remember, but I think it was Jair about selling stuff mostly equipment.

[Yukari]

I don't speak any, but my wife speaks 4.5.

Contradicting your own statement there...

English and some French (not fluent).

[cipher]

Contradicting your own statement there... ;-) English and some French (not fluent).

OK, English, some Spanish and about half way there in Romanian for me.

[billchao]

One and a half. English, obviously, but Mandarin Chinese is my native tongue. I grew up here in America, though, so I'm pretty much illiterate. I can't read Chinese (except restaurant menus), I can't write, and I have the vocabulary of a ten year old. I also have a tendency to use English sentence structure to string together Chinese speech, which makes for some interesting moments at times with my relatives. This is why I'll never tell anyone that I'm fluent in Mandarin, despite the fact that I'm usually able to carry on a decent conversation.

I also studied Spanish in high school, but I didn't retain much. I've worked with a lot of Latinos, though, so I've managed to pick up a few things along the way (mostly the bad words).

[geauxforbroke]

Two: Fluent in English and Louisianian.

I know enough Spanish and German to get myself in trouble. The problem I have when trying to speak one of them is I might say something like "Ich habe dos cervezas".

[boogielicious]

One and a half. English, obviously, but Mandarin Chinese is my native tongue. I grew up here in America, though, so I'm pretty much illiterate. I can't read Chinese (except restaurant menus), I can't write, and I have the vocabulary of a ten year old. I also have a tendency to use English sentence structure to string together Chinese speech, which makes for some interesting moments at times with my relatives. This is why I'll never tell anyone that I'm fluent in Mandarin, despite the fact that I'm usually able to carry on a decent conversation.

I also studied Spanish in high school, but I didn't retain much. I've worked with a lot of Latinos, though, so I've managed to pick up a few things along the way (mostly the bad words).

A friend of mine had the similar experience with Polish.  He is fluent speaking Polish and would always talk Polish with his parents.  We had to go to Poland for work, so I asked that he come along.  When he got there, he said he now knew what it felt like to be illiterate.  He could converse freely with locals, but could not read a word.

[MPtheKid]

1 and 1/2. English and Spanish. I used to be close to fluent in Spanish, but it has been a while since I've used it extensively. I can carry on a conversation easily though.

[colin007]

Tagalog is similar to Spanish that's being spoken by a drunk that doesn't speak it very well to begin with! ;-)

Lol, not quite... I'm bilingual English and Spanish, and spent a weekend with some Tagalog speaking folks and it was nothing like Spanish. Maybe an occasional word but not enough to make me have the slightest idea what was going on.

[Roblar]

Stretch... wtf!  what the hell was that!?

Me: English.

...and I can shoot the $hit in Spanish, Catalan, Japanese, and, minimally, French.  I've also studied Comanche and Cherokee.  Go figure.

I like languages, but, sadly, I'm not fluent-fluent in anything.  ...even English!

[boogielicious]

I haven't heard Tagalog much, but I will have my next door neighbor speak it so I know what to expect.  I think Dutch is a very difficult language to pick out words.  I understand some French, Italian, Portuguese and German and can even pick out some Chinese and Japanese words.  But Dutch evades me.  I know people that are fluent and when they speak it, it sounds almost made up to me.

[billchao]

A friend of mine had the similar experience with Polish.  He is fluent speaking Polish and would always talk Polish with his parents.  We had to go to Poland for work, so I asked that he come along.  When he got there, he said he now knew what it felt like to be illiterate.  He could converse freely with locals, but could not read a word.

Yea, I know exactly how he must have felt. Fortunately, enough things in Taiwan are in English that I could get around. For example, street signs, monuments, that kind of stuff. The subway system in Taipei operates in different languages, with English being one of them. Movies and television shows are subtitled due to the different dialects people speak (the written language is Traditional Chinese), and some of them (movies in particular) have English subtitles as well. The system allows me to learn to read characters and words, kind of like the Rosetta Stone. If I had to spend an extended period of time there, I'd pick it right up fairly easily.