English fluently
Un po Italiano
Loisaida Spanglish
Yiddish curses

My French improves with each trip. Far from fluent, but I get by. And I have no problems communicating with Frenchmen.

English--Fluent
Spanish--since I was seven, I'm 17 now...
Italian--can read and understand well, can speak basically
Portuguese--can read

English - fluently
Conversational French, Italian, Spanish and Armenian.

English is my native language but I am also fluent in Spanish due to having Cuban parents. Hopefully enough French to get by in Paris this May,(took 3 years in high school, 2 semesters in college). Took one semester in German but pitiful in that language, which is sad since my mother in law is German. A little sign language as well. wish I had become a U.N. translator while I was young...my dream job back then!

Croatian and Serbian ( lived there as a child)
fluent English
high school French
tourist Italian
learning Spanish

Ok, now im going to be a little cheeky. For all those in the USA, you can credit yourselves with an additional language - American LOL.

The terminology between English and American can be so varied eg in England we say:
rubber you say erasor
Toilet - Washroom

are 2 examples

The other difference is that you say "not gotten" where we say "have not got"

So congrats on your additional language.
LOL

I understand all languages except Greek.


Of course if you say something that is not in English, my response is: "That's Greek to me."

I do speak several Southern dialects, however. North Georgia, South Georgia, Sand Mountain Alabama, etc.

I can even understand the people around Savannah, provided they are speaking English rather then Geechee or what ever that odd ball hybrid language is.

Mother tongue: Afrikaans
Fluent: English
Read and understand: Dutch/Flemish easily(like Myriam said of Afrikaans!)
Get by: German
Able to follow conversation: Tswana and Pedi - and use some phrases in those languages
Basic tourist phrases: Italian and Spanish
Studying: French.

Groete uit Suid-Afrika!

Don't know why I never answered this thread before, as it seems to have been around for a while!
ANyway, here are my languages:
English - mother tongue
French - near native/bilingual
Spanish - fluent
Italian - used to be fluent!
Romanian - learning, have achieved decent conversational level
Portuguese - basic

ok, my turn to show off: English, Italian, French, Spanish, all fluent. Catalan pretty good, German very basic...

I'm happy to add a few details to my previous post on this thread:
Hebrew is still my mother tongue.
My English is still fluent.
I now speak some French and feel pretty comfortable with it. Read it almost as easily as I do the first two.
Speak a bit of italian and read OK.
Read Dutch but speak just a little.

English
Spanish
Japanese
German

Wife - English, Spanish, French, Portugese, German, Italian

Oldest son - English, Spanish, French, Italian

Youngest son - English, German

Interesting...wonder why I never saw this thread...(and if I answered already, silly me!)

<b>Native speaker</b>: English, Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese
<b>Used to be fluent</b>: French
<b>Forgotten</b>: Japanese
<b>Touristy</b>: Italian
<b>Failed attempt to speak</b>: Spanish (but I can understand half of what they say, more if they say it slowly)

All this means I need to learn and find ways of retaining language.

1 hehe

Languages I speak:

English: Passably.
French: A few obsolete phrases from high school French class.
Italian: A few memorable curse words from my mother.
Romanian: A few memorable curse words from my father.

Found these tables interesting.

Most Native Speakers:
Mandarin Chinese (1.1 billion)
English (330 million)
Spanish (300 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (200 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Portuguese (160 million)
Russian (160 million)
Japanese (125 million)
German (100 million)
Punjabi (90 million)
Javanese (80 million)
French (75 million)

Most Secondary Speakers:
French (190 million)
English (150 million)
Russian (125 million)
Portuguese (28 million)
Arabic (21 million)
Spanish (20 million)
Chinese (20 million)
German (9 million)
Japanese (8 million)

Total speakers
Mandarin Chinese (1.12 billion)
English (480 million)
Spanish (320 million)
Russian (285 million)
French (265 million)
Hindi/Urdu (250 million)
Arabic (221 million)
Portuguese (188 million)
Bengali (185 million)
Japanese (133 million)
German (109 million)

Most Influential (on a points system)
English (37)
French (23)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16)
Arabic (14)
Chinese (13)
German (12)
Japanese (10)
Portuguese (10)
Hindi/Urdu (9)

English: Native speaker
French: conversant
Russian: bits &amp; pieces from high school
German, Italian &amp; Spanish: Fewer bits and pieces from parents' Yiddish and Pimsleur CD's.

Oh, yes, I am great at Yiddish curses too.

Is there a special category for Yiddish curses?

I really have to contest those &quot;tables&quot;. Worldwide, English is far more spoken as a &quot;secondary&quot; language than is French. Almost everywhere in the world, English is the most common secondary language. In fact, English is the only language in the world which is spoken as a secondary language by more people than who speak it as a first language.

In the European Union, according to the official report of language ability by the EU (on their website), almost 140 million people in the EU speak English as a second language vs. only 40 million who speak French as a 2nd language. BTW, another mistake in your tables, the EU reports that, just in the EU, 45 million people speak German as a secondary language (your table reported 9 million wordwide).