Multilingual - Comments

English is my first language and I'm learning both German and Ukrainian. I would love to expand that to include Polish, Russian and possibly branch out to Italian and others.
I'd really love to be multilingual. Even if it gives me no help in life (I don't want to travel anywhere), just to know the languages.

English is my first language, and I know a little bit of Spanish, but only enough to carry a small conversation (I understand it better than I can speak it). My inability to speak the language has always saddened me because I'm half-Mexican, so I kind of feel like a disappointment, especially towards my grandparents on my mom's side who I've never had a full blown conversation with.

Fair point! I was interpreting standing in front of you to mean like in the general vicinity, within hearing range. But yeah.

@ clint barton.
I didn't actually mean literally standing in front of you. 'Cause you can kinda tell regardless of if you can understand or not when someone is saying something about you in another language. You kinda have to use tact if you're gonna talk shit.

But in my case, not a lot of people in the US speak Bangla (despite it being one of the most spoken languages in the world...) so it's kinda easy to do it.

Ehhhh, I caution against using a second language to talk shit about people standing right in front of you. I mean, obviously it depends on the specific language, but I can think of MANY instances where I've been with a group of friends and had a stranger (or a server!) say shit about us in another language thinking none of us could understand. I've been able to catch insults in German (and Dutch because of similarities), ASL, and Spanish (and Italian... since they're close enough), and I have a number of friends who have caught insults in French, Polish, Russian, Greek, Mandarin, and Arabic. I mean, different friends, but if you get a group of us together, one of us is likely to catch what was said.

estudié espanol por tres anos, does that count as fluent?

estudié espanol por tres anos, does that count as fluent?

I can speak Polish at like a basic level but it's useless because no one outside of Poland speaks Polish why can't I know useful languages like French or Spanish.

I'm so glad you wrote this cause I always wondered how many people on here were multilingual. I speak English and Spanish but I can understand Greek for the most part. I can speak a little bit but I understand it a lot better. I want to learn a lot more though!

My first language is Spanish and I learned English at a very early age. I also know a bit of French but I'm not very fluent.

I agree 100% of using my first language to talk shit about people I recently went to a trip to Philadelphia and the conference was full with white, non-Spanish-speaking people and I had a blast with my partner whenever they said something shitty (aka: racist).

My first language is English and after four years of Italian I can have a basic conversation. I'm better at reading and writing it though. I'm taking it again in college but I would also love to learn Greek and Arabic.

English as second language (did not learn it from my parents just from a good education and a lot of english/american tv without subtitles) and my first language is Dutch. A very useless language outside of the Netherlands and a part of Belgium....

English and Spanish, but that's not special at all where I live, so I really don't get the 'code-talking' experience because although English is default, most people speak at least some Spanish.

I speak fluent Malay and English. I learned a bit of German last semester but not much. I can understand a bit of Mandarin, Japanese, Tamil and Hindi because of all the movies I watched (and I have a lot of Chinese and Indian friends so there). I also can read Arabic though I only know the meaning of some of the words like 'ainun means eyes and albabun (I think) means door.

I took two years of Spanish in high school and I can only speak a very basic conversation. Like to see how the person is, if they speak English and to find out where the bathroom is. So all the basic important stuff. ha. But when my friend speaks it to her friends that only speak Spanish, I can understand what they're saying most of the time.

I also at one point knew a lot of German when I was younger. My grandfather is 100% German and taught me a few things when I was a baby. I knew how to count to ten in German before I knew how to count to ten in English. Now I can only count to five, say a few things like "bless you" or "thank you" and a couple curse words which I taught myself.

I'd love to learn Russian and American Sign Language (my one high school offered it as a second language course so I'm just assuming that could be considered.)

I'm able to speak English and Spanish. I'm also learning Japanese but I doubt that counts since it's still just in the learning phase. I'm also familiar with a few words in Tagalog and Cebuano courtesy of my girlfriend but I certainly don't under a lick of either language.

Even though I can speak and understand Spanish, I largely don't feel very comfortable speaking it. A lot of the time, I worry that I'm messing something up or not pronouncing something. It really makes me self-conscious to speak Spanish out loud, especially if I'm trying to speak it in front of a native speaker. Many people have been very kind to me though. I live in an area with a lot of Spanish speakers and a majority of my customers at work speak Spanish. They've spoken Spanish with me before and many of my regulars have complimented my Spanish and said I'm improving with pronunciation and sentence structure little by little. =^.^=

I speak English as a first language, I've got a year of French and 2 years of TA-ing French 2 (so I picked that up and also graded everything for 2-3), I can understand Spanish to an extent (and talk shit, who can't where I live though?), and I'm currently teaching myself Choctaw even though I'll probably never know any Choctaw speakers ;o;

I took 3 years of Spanish in high school and can't even have a basic conversation I want to learn French though because it's the second official language here

i speak hebrew and english, and i attempted to learn german in hs and college, but gave up, bc that shit is hard. Dx

I guess to a degree lol. I'm not confident in my speaking, but I can pick up and read Spanish pretty well. I'm also on/off teaching myself French and I wanna learn Portuguese or Italian.