What foreign languages does CAF know?

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BartholomewB said:
When Jimmy Carter was president, back in the seventies, I once went to an international convention of some kind where he was the guest speaker. I couldn’t understand a word he said
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As an American who goes to England fairly frequently, I can understand most of the UK accents better than average, but when I tried to watch Ken Loach’s film “Kes”, the accent was extremely difficult. There is one part of the film where a bunch of the adult miners and their wives are speaking at some gathering and I would have needed subtitles in English.
 
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You’re not alone, @Tis_Bearself! It’s difficult for a lot of British people, as well. I suspect Ken Loach chose that region on purpose, to make a political point.
 
I’ve seen several of his films and that is the only one where I had difficulty understanding the language. I guess I need to spend more time in the North of England.
 
I’m an American so I only fluent in English.

Though I’ve taken several years of Spanish and a few weeks of Italian.

I’m actually planning on taking Latin soon.

…

This reminds me of a joke I heard once at a conference.

What do you call a person who speaks more than one language? Multilingual. What do you call a person who speaks only one language? American.

🤓
 
I’m a linguist so am familiar with quite a few, both ancient and modern; I speak them in various degrees of fluency and some it’s more a reading knowledge than speaking. Grew up in a trilingual environment - English, French-Canadian, and Polish
 
It’s funny, being from northern New England, I can speak with a “wicked shahp” NE accent (even while tryin’ ta get the John Deah out’the bahn ‘cause my joe jeezly cah won’t staht with this pissah of a snow stawm - I’d rathah be eatin’ lobstah down in Florider with my sistah Linder); but I don’t usually speak with it. Not sure if it’s because I’m too aware of it or what.
 
I can speak a tiny bit of Amharic as my ex was Ethiopian.Can kind of follow conversations.
 
I am volunteering at DP: Welcome, which is a volunteer arm of Project Gutenberg. We proof, matching digital texts to scanned texts for public domain books. Looking at projects available on the different levels, there is great need for people qualified in languages other than English. I can do texts in English with Romance languages, but even my French is too rusty.
 
Besides English, I am decent at Russian. At one time I was much better at German and Croatian but have lost a lot of it since I haven’t used it much in recent years.
 
German (native language) , french (grandma’s native tongue), latin (university), a little spain (school), medieval german (university).
Looking forward to learn proper farsi as my father is iranian. Russian is also on the to-do list 😀
 
English, German, sign language, Swedish and therefor understand and make myself understood when speaking with Norwegian and Danish people. Some Finnish, very little Spanish. Understand Dutch if they speak slowly. Learning Latin at the moment. This is not considered a lot where I live as we are taught at least 3 languages at school.

Recognise French, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Russian, Arabic, Turkish, Irish etc. and know when to get help.
 
I can do the Nebraska accent that my daddeh an’ his kin folk had. I tend to pick up whatever accent I’m around the most. When I was living near Baltimore for years, I began to sound like the locals though I am not from there. Sometimes when I have been working with numbers of people from India or Germany who speak English as a second language, I begin to sound like them.

I do also know Latin to read. I have not spoken it out loud since I used to recite things like Catullus’ (G-rated) poems in high school, and I do not speak it conversationally.
 
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Studied Greek and Hebrew in seminary. Learned Latin and French from my grandmother and sister, learned Spanish, living in Texas. I know a few phrases (very few) in Japanese, from having gone out with a girl who was Japanese, and having a good friend who’s Japanese, who is now an interpreter for the Washington Nationals. I know a little German (very little) from being stationed there, but would like to learn more.
 
I took Spanish in high school and German in college. I’m trying to revive the Spanish, a lot of which has withered away. I can exchange pleasantries in French and Italian.
 
I don’t know ny foreign languages except French which I can read a little and with a dictionary have little trouble understanding. I am a native speaker of New Zealand English (which Americans think sounds ‘English’ and ‘soft’) and can carry on a conversation in Māori.
 
I’m absorbed in Biblical Hebrew!
Maybe I’ll get to Biblical Greek next.

I like linguistics so I just know basic grammar of a few languages (just enough to know how to use dictionary)
Cantonese Mandarin Japanese Korean Latin Spanish Arabic Hebrew
 
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