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Quote (Ejoty @ 12th January 2004 18:00)

Quote (Rocky @ 9th January 2004 21:48)

english is the dominant language throughout the world, so there's not really a point to knowing more.

BUT i am rather good in french, and i would love to learn finnish, it's one of the two languages left that are germanic based, and it's a really beautiful language.

Not to nit-pick, Rocky, but my previous post showed that more than twice as many people speak Mandarin Chinese than speak English, and if you count the other dialects then Chinese has 3 times as many speakers as English, so English isn't really the dominant language then. Also, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, and Icelandic all have a Germanic origin. The Finnish language however, has a much stronger link to the very old Ugric language which is not Germanic based, but instead related to Hungarian and some northern Siberian languages.

D.P. I'm sorry , but my book (Geographica, B & Noble and Random House) doesn't specify if those numbers indicate what the people speak as a 1rst language or if it includes multilinguists.

Hey, on another note, I taught myself the Cyrillic alphabet this last summer for the heck of it. Yay, now I can pronounce a bunch of Russian words that I don't know the meaning of.

actually that hungarian thing was what i mean, i talked about it with my ap euro history teacher last year, i got them confused. i remember him saying that finland and hungary have the only languages left off of whatever base.


and english might now have the most speakers, but go almost anywhere in the world and you will find people who speak english very well. especially europe and scandinavia, and as far as i'm concerned, that's all that matters.

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IAN CURTIS
18 - 5 - 80
LOVE WILL TEAR US APART

Quote (Ejoty @ 12th January 2004 17:00)

Quote (Rocky @ 9th January 2004 21:48)

english is the dominant language throughout the world, so there's not really a point to knowing more.

BUT i am rather good in french, and i would love to learn finnish, it's one of the two languages left that are germanic based, and it's a really beautiful language.

Not to nit-pick, Rocky, but my previous post showed that more than twice as many people speak Mandarin Chinese than speak English, and if you count the other dialects then Chinese has 3 times as many speakers as English, so English isn't really the dominant language then.

English can be considered the "dominant" language if you consider that world-wide trade is conducted in English.

Your list looks like it would be "as a first language" beacuse if you assume the count was done based on population counts of each nation, then you go down and subtract based on country. If you just look at English, the US eliminiates 300 million of those. I don't know the populations of other countries, but that just leaves 22 million for the rest of the world. Unless that book is really old, then "as a first language" is how it's based.

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"I had to write four novels before they let me write comic books."
-Brad Meltzer

I'm most comfortable with English, but I get by in French, and I can hold conversations in Spanish, Japanese, and Irish Gaelic.

I'm pretty much done learning languages for now because I won't have time to take any more as an undergrad, but if I ever get the chance, I'd really like to work on Latin and Greek. Both of those would help quite a bit with my scholarly endeavours.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

It's a 2002 revision of a 1999 book that I got the numbers from. These are from the book too.

Populations
Australia 18 million
UK 57
Canada 31
USA 270

Total 376 million.

There are more English speakers in Africa, but there are people in the countries listed above that don't speak English (or not as a first language)... but anyway, they must be talking about "as a first language". The gap between the #1 and #2 languages is probably too big to change in 2 years, but still maybe they're not exact. I only put them on for our own amusement and because I had faith that the 1 through 12 ranking is right.

I didn't try to make this a census issue; I just like learning about languages.

This post has been edited by Ejoty on 12th January 2004 23:55

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Get me off this Disciplinary Committee so I can play any FF except for FF8!!!

alright i searched something in the assistant thing and found this topic (yes i know site mods, it's REEEEAAAAAALLLLLYYYYYYY OLD but) i'm going to try to revive it...

i can fluently speak canadian... yes, yes i know it's uber hard but i can do it... and as for foreign languages i can speak enough foreign languages to cuss people out and make sure they can't understand what i'm saying

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~ A Hero Is Someone Who Stands When Their Legs Are Gone~

Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese were my native languages before I learned English. I can jabber decently in German too, thanks to high school and a somewhat ill-advised exchange program.

PB78

P.S. German is a interesting language for cussing. If you speak it quickly and loudly, almost everything sounds like an epithet.

Quote (Ejoty @ 9th January 2004 19:12)

These responses are so fun to hear!  Hey, for the hell of it here are the world's 12 most spoken languages and their number of speakers (in millions).

1.  Mandarin (Chinese) 885
2.  English  322
3.  Spanish  266
4.  Bengali  189
5.  Hindi  182
6.  Portuguese  170
6.  Russian  170  (tie)
8.  Japanese  125
9.  German  98
10. Wu (Shanghai Chinese) 77
11. Javanese  75.5
12. Korean  75

P.S.  A question for Del: you say you speak Scots slang, but do you or many people you know speak Scots Gaelic?

I'm a little leary of that list for no other reason than arabic ain't in the number 2 spot.

I speak English and Spanish, and am studying Japanese, German, Quenya, Latin, and Itallian. (by studying, I mean I own and read a book on them, not go to class)


oh yea,
"I'm back, b_tch!"

I speak, read, and write English. I can speak Cantonese Chinese, but I can't read or write Chinese well (Chinese on paper is the same for all dialects). I understand a little bit of Mandarin Chinese as well. I can also read and write (write slowly) Latin, but I can't speak it.

I'm planning on learning to speak Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and/or Russian.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Well, I speak a good amount of German...there are still some words that I don't understand but over all I understand about 80% of what I hear although I can write it better than I can speak it.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

I speak and write Canto-Chinese and Mandarin-Chinese fluently, and i know bits and pieces of Vietnamese

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Pretty little fly
Why does it cry?
Caught in a web
Soon you'll be...EATEN

FF6 addicts unite! wanna RP?

I might just as well have created a new topic for this because the title is a bit strange, but then decided why not.

I've a bit of a passion for foreign languages (not enough of a passion to major in linguistics, but enough to take a few classes for fun).

I'm a native speaker of English, and I spent 6 years formally studying Spanish (though I can no longer do anything more than chit-chat with that knowledge). I'm currently in my second year of formal study of Korean (and am applying to an immersion program in South Korea).

I've also dabbled in French and Latin (though it's hardly worth mentioning either one because it's been a while since I've touched them, and never got very far along).

Anyway, I'm curious what languages everyone here speaks?

Wow, this topic has been around for seven years and I never responded, probably because I'm not much of a linguist. I took three years of Spanish in high school, many, many years ago. At this point, I could probably read about a third of what you put in front of me, and every once in a while I find myself spewing out a full sentence in Spanish that would actually make sense if I was near anyone else who spoke the language.

At this point, I think I'm lucky if I maintain my grasp on English, let alone anything else. However, when the baby comes, I'm pretty sure we're going to try our best to help it be multilingual, even if that means we have to start picking up some new stuff ourselves.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I'm trying to re-learn Latin this year (took a few classes in high-school). I got this series called Reading Latin, and have slowly been working through the exercises and stuff. It's pretty fun.

My wife is from Jiangxi, in China (so yeah, I definitely enjoy the foreign tonguing, lol), and her parents are staying with us, so I understand a little Mandarin, and we're trying to teach my daughter.

I took some German in high school, and would love to get back into it someday, but focusing on the above two languages is more than enough for me right now.

Quote (finalalias @ 19th March 2011 10:24)

I'm trying to re-learn Latin this year (took a few classes in high-school). I got this series called Reading Latin, and have slowly been working through the exercises and stuff. It's pretty fun.

My wife is from Jiangxi, in China (so yeah, I definitely enjoy the foreign tonguing, lol), and her parents are staying with us, so I understand a little Mandarin, and we're trying to teach my daughter.

Do you like Reading Latin (because I've felt that many of the Latin textbooks aren't up to snuff)?

Are you learning to speak and read Mandarin? or just to speak it?

Regardless, good luck!

Same boat as R51 in that I never responded to this thread despite it being from the land before time. English is my native language and I like to think I have a reasonable grasp on it when I'm sober enough! I speak french as a result of living in Quebec, and Italian, as it's the only language a good chunk of my family can actually speak. I can understand a bit of Spanish thanks to it's similarities with Italian but have no real understanding with the language beyond that.

Would love to learn another language, but I can't make up my mind on which I'd be most interested in. Oh well!

This post has been edited by Dragon_Fire on 19th March 2011 19:11

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Okay, but there was a goat!

Quote (Kane @ 19th March 2011 13:41)

Do you like Reading Latin (because I've felt that many of the Latin textbooks aren't up to snuff)?

Are you learning to speak and read Mandarin? or just to speak it?

Regardless, good luck!

Thanks, and I do like Reading Latin so far. It's specifically geared toward adults who want to be able to read the language, and I think that really helps to focus the course. It does a good job of integrating classical Latin plays and stories along with the grammar and vocabulary. My biggest mistake at first was that I got two of the 3 books (reading text and independent study guide) and wasn't able to get the Grammar Vocabulary and Exercises book until later. The latter is the central book of the course and without it the other two are pretty useless; just a heads-up if anyone decides to buy the books.

And I've pretty much given up trying to read and write Mandarin for now, just trying to get by speaking and comprehending it. One of these days I'm definitely going to try to re-learn reading it, though, as it definitely does help one learn when one can read. When I first started learning, I was taking a college course on it, and unfortunately my instructor insisted on teaching us the traditional characters rather than the simplified ones so afterward when I went to China, I had a really hard time reading anything.

This post has been edited by finalalias on 19th March 2011 19:54

Quote (Dragon_Fire @ 19th March 2011 15:11)

Same boat as R51 in that I never responded to this thread despite it being from the land before time.

This thread IS the Secret of Saurus Rock!

I speak English as my native language about as well as any good ole southern boy can be expected to. In Junior High is took a year of both Spanish and French, and took Spanish as my foreign language in High school. I'm fairly fluent in the language. I could survive in a Spanish-speaking country, if need be. I've got the key phrases down; "Where's the bathroom?", "I need to go to the hospital!", "Does this looks infected?", etc.

I would like to become expertly proficient in a foreign language, though. Given how many Spanish-speaking immigrants we have coming into America every year, Spanish wouldn't be a bad language to learn at all. Although I'd love to learn Chinese or Japanese(though that's probably the closet weeaboo in me).

This post has been edited by Malevolence on 19th March 2011 21:11

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moé in the streets, senpai in the sheets

I always thought it was weird when my friends would take French or German language classes, as we're in Texas and already have a few students who don't speak fluent English, hahaha. Spanish is definitely the most practical in this region!

I took three years of Spanish, and I'm pretty glad I did. I now live somewhere that's about 87 percent Spanish. A lot of the adults don't even know English, even though it's America. Here, they won't hire you unless you're bilingual (I can smalltalk, but classroom spanish isn't El Paso spanish, lol.) There are definite differences, like the word for ice cream in the class would be "gelado," whereas locally, you'd say "nieve." If you said nieve in a class/to an English speaker, they'd think you meant snow, as it means that too. If you're from I think Brazil (?), ice cream would be "Mantecato." Differences like that make it tough to actually communicate, lol.

I like some Spanish music, though. I like Mana and Cafe Tacuba a lot.

I would like to learn Japanese. My grandmother's first two languages are japanese and Okinawan, which is now a dead language. She only knew a little English when she married and moved to America. Only my uncle can talk to her in Japanese. I'm just kind of scared that by the time I learn it, she won't be around for me to talk to her

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You're telling me that there's no hope.

I'm telling you you're wrong.

I'm currently taking Latin. While this doesn't really have any real life application other than translating angsty facebook statuses and saying things in a different language just to sound cool, it'll likely come in handy in my future studies. Despite the fact that I complain about Latin a lot (just ask chat), it actually is a pretty cool language. As far as vowels are concerned, it's a beautiful language, and it has a brilliant degree of almost mathmatical precision when it comes to nouns, verbs and sentence structure.

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Currently Playing : Final Fantasy V
Most Recently Beat : Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
Favorite Game : Final Fantasy X

The newest CoNcast is up! Have a listen!

Id like to read/understand Japanese if, for nothing else, I could widen my game playing experiences!!!!

I would like to learn to speak German. My family on my mother's side is strictly German and I would like to follow my heritage. My dad's side is Russian and, although I have taken classes, it was not something I picked up on and consequently cant say but a few curse words.

I studied French, Spanish and Latin at school. I remember pretty much no Spanish, a little Latin, and a chunk of French. Definitely not enough to be able to speak to anyone on any level other than the basics.

Recently, though, I've really wanted to start learning sign language. I'm too lazy to use words most of the time, so it'd suit me down to the ground.

I am going to Italy with the gf and her family in May, and am currently trying to learn Italian. I bought "Immersion" Italian levels 1-3 at Borders for $39. Much better price than the equivalent from Rosetta Stone...which would have been $579.

I am enjoying it so far. Cin cin!

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

My native tongue is Swedish, but I also speak English (duh!), Italian (I'm half-Italian, soo...) and some German (studying it in school).