5 ms·
Poll: Do you speak foreign languages?
- themerone 5y agoNo
- webmaven 5y agoDoes English count as "foreign"? In any case, I speak two languages natively, one of which is English.
- klyrs 5y agoForeign is relative. I'd count any language that isn't an official language of your country of birth or residence.
- Cpoll 5y agoI suspect that most multilingual Americans are immigrants or a child of immigrants. By your definition, they would not be considered to speak a foreign language. I for one don't know the intent of the question. Is there a reason the poster phrased it as "foreign languages" instead of "multilingual," or is that a language difference?
- klyrs 5y agoI said birth or residence. A precise reading would determine that an immigrant speaks two foreign languages: one foreign to their birth country and one foreign to their country of residence. My definition is not authoritative, of course, merely exemplary.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ALittleLight 5y agoSo, a Canadian who knows French and English, both of which are official languages of Canada, can speak zero foreign languages?
- klyrs 5y agoI'd say so, yes. I know American Sign Language and don't consider that to be foreign either. Perhaps 'official' isn't the right cut: indigenous languages aren't official in Canada nor the US and I certainly wouldn't call those foreign either (unless somebody lives in Portugal and speaks Lakota, of course. From a different perspective, English and French are both foreign languages, brought to the land by colonizers.
- LaurensBER 5y agoI think most people outside of the US will pick: "I speak more than one foreign language". Among my friends in western Europe speaking three conversational (usually native, English + French or German) seems to be the norm while being able to understand (but not speak) usually 1 or 2 more, depending on where they life, work and their education. Some countries have it a bit easier (e.g Dutch and German are close, I think that Italian, Spanish and Portuguese are also close, etc).
- mbustamanter 5y agoAs native Spanish speaker, I confirm the closeness to Italian and Portuguese. Particularly in scientific literature, I can read words in Italian/Portuguese and the sound I hear in my head is in Spanish. Other than that I speak French and English, although it doesn't feel that much of an accomplishment given that all the aforementioned stem from Latin. As an aside, I don't consider German to be a language I speak or even understand perfectly when I hear it, but being equipped with all those languages reading papers in German is a walk in the park.
- gumby 5y ago> but being equipped with all those languages reading papers in German is a walk in the park. I find when reading a news article in Italian I can get the bones of the article (bank robbery, police chase, no injuries, size of sum stolen) but not the meat (so we’re the robbers caught or did they get away?)
- mbustamanter 5y agoYes, that's why I can only do so with technical articles rather than conversational/general literature (papers rather than newspapers), the vocabulary is more standardized :)
- tmottabr 5y agoyeah... I do speak both portuguse (native) and fluent spanish to the point that native speakers sometimes thinking i am also native spanish speaker, but it almost fell like cheating the pool because both languages are so close. One fun point, i never really took proper Spanish classes, i started working with Spanish customer in 2008 and just took a 3 or 4 classes just to get the basics for the job interview i had to do. I got fluent actually speaking with our customer all over latin america. Beside those i also speak english that i learned mostly by playing video games.
- lsferreira42 5y agoYes, my native language is Brazilian Portuguese but i speak a very good Spanish and a not so good English. I'm at the same time improving my English and starting to learn Standard Chinese ( Mandarim ).
- unmole 5y agoDefine foreign language.
- captainbland 5y agoI don't speak them but sure know an assortment of dubiously useful words/phrases from various foreign languages by using duolingo intermittently.
- Aerroon 5y agoEnglish and German are the foreign languages I can speak. One day I'd like to add Japanese to this, but their writing system is hard to memorize.
- sterlind 5y agoI speak Russian, enough to be slowly conversational but far from fluent. quite a time for it to come in handy, but it's been really interesting talking to actual Russians. I'd like to learn Ukrainian as well since it's quite close, but I don't want to mix them up in my head.
- cbfrench 5y agoI can make an ass of myself in French. Does that count as speaking it?
- politelemon 5y agoWe.
- cbfrench 5y agoMercy boocoo!
- bhaak 5y agoNative German language. Learned English through early exposure to computer stuff, later enhanced by learning the grammar from school and becoming fluent by watching English language movies, books, and using it on Usenet and IRC. One side of my family has some Italian background but unfortunately it didn't reach me and then 4 years of Italian in school left me with some very basic level knowledge. But I'm currently trying to improve that with Duolingo and Italian language subreddits. 7 years of French with (again unfortunately) 3 different terrible teacher. Can't even order a coffee in French. 7 years of Latin. Basically no fluency :-) but I still retain some reading skills. It was by far the best foreign language education I had. In hindsight, I find it surprising that no other class taught you almost no history or culture of the particular language. With Latin classes I learned so much about history, culture and literature, even if I forgot every bit of Latin words and grammar, it still would have been worthwhile.
- abnercoimbre 5y agoI came out as a polyglot [0] at my conference a few months ago. Spanish (native), French, English, and hopefully a fourth one coming soon! Learning a new language is enriching -- it automatically unlocks so much culture and entertainment. [0] https://media.handmade-seattle.com/closing-notes-2021/ https://media.handmade-seattle.com/closing-notes-2021/
- ushakov 5y agoi'd love to learn French too, i fell like i'm missing out! currently: russian (native), english and german secondary
- abnercoimbre 5y agoOne of my close friends is Russian! He introduced me to his favorite music in your language and it's so unique. The one strange phrase that sticks out to me is да нет, наверное. Can you remind me in which situations you would use it?
- ushakov 5y agodepends on what you listen to, i find that the majority of what you hear takes inspiration from the west or western values, truly unique i'd say are Little Big and Leningrad wikipedia has explanation for the phrase https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/да_нет,_наверное https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/да_нет,_наверное if i'm saying this phrase to somebody, then i'm suggesting that something may not be truth, in plain english it means "probably not" or "i guess not"
- abnercoimbre 5y ago> truly unique i'd say are Little Big and Leningrad Haha my friend introduced me to Little Big... starting with the BIG D song... > i'm suggesting that something may not be truth Ahh yes I remember now. Thanks for the link :) !
- micah94 5y agoTrying to learn Mandarin. Took French in school but can only read. Would be embarrassing to speak. I chose "No".
- silisili 5y agoFluently? One, English. I know enough Spanish to read it or generally understand what's being said, but not speak it. Currently trying to get to that same level with my wife's native tongue, but it's not romance nor germanic so significantly more difficult (for me).
- 28304283409234 5y agoFlagged for asking annoyingly uninteresting non hacker related questions.
- clove 5y agoProfessional fluency in Mandarin, can read both traditional and simplified characters. Worked as a translator for Taiwan's govt. I have conversational fluency in Japanese, as I live in Japan and have a Japanese wife. I'd like to learn Korean or Thai, as we travel to those places often (at least before the pandemic). I've learned the Korean alphabet, memorizing it on the airplane over there, the first time I went, actually. I can read Korean aloud, such as when ordering at a restaurant, but I sure as hell don't know what any of the sounds I am making mean. It's fun to go to a restaurant, order something, and be surprised at what comes to your table.
- PeterWhittaker 5y agoI speak 3 languages, but only one is foreign, so I answered “1”. Makes me sad, in some ways, because it used to be “more than one”. (I’m Canadian and have fluent English and French by virtue of education and marriage, and have learned and can still get by in Spanish. My Turkish, Arabic, and German have all faded, my Greek was never that great, and I may still be able to order two large beers in Polish.)
- sam_lowry_ 5y agoWrong question. The right one would be "Do you speak more than one language?"
- tyronehed 5y ago
- sebazzz 5y agoYes, English is a foreign language for me. I did have German and French in high school but that doesn't stick anymore, so I can't say much more than "Guten Tag".
- khedoros1 5y agoFluently? No. But I can at least somewhat express myself in German, Japanese, and Spanish. I can haltingly hold conversation in German and read enough to get most details from the Christmas letters from family there. It's my best of the 3.