Do you speak any foreign languages?

[Art 1]

Yes.

 

[Disnydad]

I am currently taking Spanish lessons after retiring to Florida.

 

[topolino]

I find that French and Spanish are closely related and German and English are closely related. If you know one, you can pick up the other.

Well yeah, the first two are Romance languages, and the second two are Germanic languages.

 

[BadgerGirl84]

Nope...just English with a northern Midwestern accent.

I've traveled to Costa Rica and several countries in Europe. Knowing just the basic travel phrases in Spanish, German and French has worked out just fine for me. I was required to take 2 years of a foreign language in college and I hated every minute of it.

 

[LongLiveDisney]

I speak Arabic fluently. I use it more than English even though English is my first language.

I'm also in the process of learning French.

 

[PigletsPal2]

I speak and understand Pig Latin like a native (as you would expect PigletsPal to do!).

I speak functional Spanish and French and my own hybrid Spancaise, a combination of Spanish and French. I once ordered "agua mineral sin gas con mucho helado" and asked for "mas macquillage" for my pan (mineral water not carbonated with a lot of ice cream and more make-up for my bread. I probably spelled macquillage wrong.).

My DDs are both fluent in Spanish, DD#2 speaks French and a smattering of Turkish and German.

Queen Colleen

 

[Handbag Lady]

I wish I stuck with French from High School. I can pretty much still say that I have a green pencil and that is it.

Being raised in Los Angeles, I can ask for beer AND the ladies bathroom in Spanish. (The two most needed things when one is 21 and walks into Mexico regularly.) And I can curse in Spanish, thanks to my next-door neighbor.


I would love to really learn Spanish, though.

I do travel and I am freaky-scared to be THAT American, so I learn conversational phrases in whatever language is native to where I am going: hello, please, help, hotel, transportation, taxi, bar, and the most important: THANK YOU.

 

[DeaverTex]

I speak the Texas dialect of Southern, and have picked up a smattering of Yankee from Mrs. Tex.

Seriously, though, I was reasonably proficient in German back when we were living in Heidelberg about 30 years ago, but since there's not much call for it around here I'm extremely rusty. As in, I can order at a restaurant and call somebody a few choice names. Back in elementary and jr. high, I spent 6 years discovering that I couldn't speak Spanish to save my life.

Both of us decided that, when we drove through France, we were better off just trying German and English rather than learning a few phrases. I mean, sure, you can ask someone, "Where is the train station?" but can you understand the answer?

 

[TLSnell1981]

A little Italian. I understand more, than I can speak.

 

[BearcatsFan]

After two years of high school Spanish, I only retained a few words. Mostly bad ones.

 

[VAfamily1998]

I don't know if I'm completely "fluent" in Spanish. I speak enough to get around and can understand a lot more than I can speak. I have a lot of trouble with different "tenses" of verbs--conjugating in the correct way and all.

But that is it. I wish I was proficient in more.

 

[SettinSail]

Intermediate level German, enough to function daily while we lived there for 2 years, took about 200 hours of lessons but it was TOUGH at my age.

I remember a lot of Spanish words and phrases from HS and college classes but sadly not enough to say I speak the language.

 

[Schmeck]

My high school French and Spanish are almost completely forgotten, as is the Hawaiian I learned in college. I do know a little bit of sign language from being a Special Education asst.

Older daughter (22) is fluent in Spanish, and knows enough Norwegian and Mandarin to speak to our family in Norway and her friend's mom from China, respectively. She also knows Latin. She was able to take some fun language courses at Harvard when she attended MIT!

Younger daughter is also very good at Spanish, but her synesthesia makes learning languages very difficult. She worked really hard to meet her college requirement for language, and is now very glad that she doesn't have to take any more language courses. I'm hoping she retains her Spanish though - it's important to be bilingual, IMO.

We all learned English as our first language.

 

[NHdisneylover]

I used to be truly fluent in Spanish. I still understand everything, but no longer read it easily (I used to just pick up novels with no issues) and when I try to speak it these days it gets all jumbled up with German It takes about 2 weeks of vacation in Spain to satrt getting it fully back--at which point we come home and then Spanish creeps into my German for another two weeks

I will never be fluent in German. I can watch TV and movies and have normal conversations most of the time. I still tend to get lost if people speak very fast or if multiple people are speaking at once, and my grammar stinks. It probably always will.

 

[Plannin'Shannon]

I'm conversational in Spanish and am currently taking classes to master the language. My grandmother spoke fluent Polish and I wish she had lived long enough to teach me. I do remember some beautiful Polish nursery rhymes she sang to me.