I counted once, and realized that I know 10 languages! Fun! Here they are, in no particular order:
Japanese
Hebrew
French
Spanish
German
Swedish
Hausa (an African language)
Latin
Italian
English, of course :-)
This list becomes far less impressive when you know how little I know of each :-). I'm only somewhat conversational in Spanish (and English, of course :-)), yet it's amazing how much I use what I know (French I use mostly for dance, and Italian for music)...
This morning, I told my mom "Aqui estan sus zapatos" (Spanish for "here are your shoes") and she responded, "Tak su mycket" (phonetic spelling of Swedish for "thanks so much") :-)
Lisa's fond of saying "Danke shin; var sa good; gracias" whenever she's grateful for something-it doesn't make much sense (German: thanks a lot; Swedish: enjoy your food; Spanish: thanks) but it is multicultural :-)
We all use thank you, danke (German), tak su mycket (Swedish), and gracias (Spanish) interchangeably. Amy and I have never broken into another foriegn language when we speak to one another in Spanish yet. We often revert to English, however! :-)
2 comments:
Sounds like my family. ^_^
I know a variety of languages, but like you, little of each. Technically, I am fluent only in English, but that I would debate, as I can barely make sense after taking 17 years of it. ^_^
My dad, though can speak many languages well...and it was funny to hear this three sentence exchange at one particular Chinese restaurant:
(phonetic spelling of Chinese)
Dad: Ni hao. Wo men yo chi kou ren. (Hello. We have seven people(i.e. set up a table for seven, please).)
Waitress(who is obviously of Chinese descent): I'm sorry, I don't speak Chinese.
Dad: Oh. Um, table for seven, please.
The waitress walked off, Dad following while looking mildly disappointed, and we kids followed behind, covering grins. ^_^
--Josiah C.
I am glad to know there is someone else out there who is so interested in foreign languages. I know (as in know verb tenses, noun declensions and\or pronouns):(In order of most knowledge to least.)
English
Italian
German
Spanish
Portuguese
French
Others(meaning I browsed the wikipedia page on it)-Swedish, Danish, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Greek and Czech. (un po', un piquito, etc)
www.wordreference.com provides several different English-Foreign dictionaries.
Jace,
(Crossway kid)
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