Job Discussion Forums

[JZer]

Well, we teach English but how many hear have learned other languages? What languages have you studied? What languages would you like to study?

I have studied German, Korean, and Mandarin. I am conversational in all three. Though my Korean is slipping by the day.

I would really like to learn an African language like Swahili. I hope to eventually spend some time in Africa with the Peace Corps or another organization. But maybe I will end of in the Kyrgyz Republic and learn Kyrgyz.

I am guessing that I am becoming a life long language learner and wonder what language I will be speaking when I am 40. At 20 I was speaking German and now at 30 I speak Mandarin about 50 percent of the time.

[santi84]

Interesting thread

I took Japanese for a few years in high school (grade 9-12), Mandarin at university (2 semesters), and then started taking French part-time at the university (3 semesters) after I graduated. I am only conversational in French (and a poor conversationalist at that).

I don't plan on studying any other languages in the future because I need to continue French to eventually get provincial teacher certification.

I would love to continue Japanese... one day

[JZer]

santi84, if you want to talk about all the languages that I have taken a formal class in the list would include:

Japanese
Mandarin
German
Spanish
French
Portuguese

Interestingly, I have never taken a formal class in Korean. I never lived in an area in which I could take a formal Korean class.

[spiral78]

Czech, fluent.
Dutch functional.
Survival level Russian.
German for travel.

[kaw]

Rusty French, German, Italian & Spanish
Very basic Turkish and Arabic
Couple of words in Japanese and Swahili

[JZer]

Wie geht's?

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

-Upper intermediate Japanese (university one year intensive course, and have been living in Japan for going on seven years- more than half of that in rural areas where there were very few people able to converse in English. I've been studying bit by bit since arriving).

-Very rusty but in the past very high advanced / almost fluent French (FSL elementary school through to university second year for majors of French language and literature). Also lived in Ottawa for two years and went over to Quebec once every couple of weeks or so.

-Conversational German, though at one time could read novels in that language (studied in high school grades 10- OAC [grade 13 university preparation course level]) then needed it in university because one of my majors was the history of (classical) music (a lot of what is written about in classical music is in German- as are a lot of operas).

[JZer]

Viele haben deutsch studiert. Auf meinem Gymnasium kann man nicht deutsch studieren.

[basiltherat]

indonesian/malay but never studied it as such so extremely colloquial. anyone preferring standard indonesian would be disgusted by what they hear from me.

hebrew .. but, as a previous poster has said, it's slipping away due to non-use. shame really. must do better and try to refresh by reading a lot.

a bit over the age for language learning but would like to be able to understand arabic and would like to learn russian. love the sound of it.

best
basil

[gaijinalways]

Used to be intermediate Mandarin level, some Japanese, some basic Spanish, read French not too badly..

[scot47]

German (fluent)
French (rusty)
Latin, which I rarely use except when having tea with the Holy Father
Bulgarian (good)
Arabic ( good)

and I grew up in a Diglossia of Scots and English

Confusing, innit.

In retirement in Scotland I hope to do something about acquiring Scottish Gaelic. As someone into Language and languages, it only seems right that I should have some ability in all three languages of my nativa land.

[Dinah606]

Mandarin -- Conversational, but I can barely read anything.

German -- I used to be high intermediate, but I'm not so sure now. Last time I tried to have a conversation in German I kept popping out Mandarin phrases, and it was really quite a mess.

[Sadebugo]

[naturegirl321]

[JZer]

French-high school (I did not mention that I cannot speak a word of it). I really did not care about learning French back then. It is hard to believe that I actually ended up learning languages for fun.
German-university and grad school
Spanish-during grad school
Mandarin- at Taiwan Normal University
Japanese-at a Korean buxiban
Portuguese- at the technical university in Berlin

No formal Korean classes!