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![[poll]](http://images.proboards.com/poll_icon.gif "[poll]") Poll | Poll Question: In how many languages do you possess 30 or more words of vocabulary? |
Poll Totals:
| | Total Votes: 25
Total Voters: 25 |
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 Author | Topic: How many languages? (Read 2,466 times) |
kerouac2
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|  | How many languages?
« Thread Started on Feb 1, 2010, 11:35pm » | ![[Quote]](http://images.proboards.com/buttons/quote.gif "[Quote]") |
Asking people how many languages they can speak often engenders questionable results -- a lot of people are braggarts and others are too modest.
So this is just a simple poll about extremely basic vocabulary. I am assuming that if you know 30 words of a language, you know a few basic numbers...1,2,3, maybe more numbers, yes, no, thank you, please, sleep, eat, where, when, water, chicken, beef.... just really a few things that might help you in the most extreme circumstances. Maybe you even know 40 or 50 words, but you don't speak the language and you can't make a sentence.
But those few words are enough to help you survive, especially when you speak one or two other languages.
Frankly, I am not a champion, because my vocabulary in quite a few languages is more like 10 words than 30.
Try to be honest.
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kerouac2
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #1 on Feb 1, 2010, 11:37pm » | |
For me:
French
English
German
Spanish
Italian
Arabic
If I am honest, I will stop there, although I can understand some Portuguese, Dutch, Vietnamese, Mandarin and mumble a few words. So my answer is 6.
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livaco
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #2 on Feb 2, 2010, 12:57am » | |
For me:
English
French
Spanish
Swahili
(Maybe Italian, probably not anymore. Also I learned some Hindi but maybe not quite 30 words unless you count food....)
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lola
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #3 on Feb 2, 2010, 3:57am » | |
in descending order:
English
Spanish
French
German
Italian
Well, Latin I guess
The only one I can carry on any kind of a conversation in these days is English, though, and often not even that.
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cristina
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #4 on Feb 2, 2010, 4:42am » | |
English
French
Spanish
French and Spanish are tied for vocabulary. French wins for grammar, though. Even if some might question my grammar... 
I was hoping to include German, until I realized I only knew 28 words. 
And although I know the proper Italian names for at least 30 food items, that will not help me find a bathroom or hotel room in Italy so I excluded Italian too.
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bazfaz
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #5 on Feb 2, 2010, 7:23am » | |
I am still struggling with English.
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happytraveller
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #6 on Feb 2, 2010, 11:49am » | |
Swiss German
German
English
French
Italian
Spanish (About 50-100 words I can say, a lot more I can understand)
I bet some people will now say that Swiss German and German are the same language. But I can assure you that most germans would not have a clue what I talk about if I spoke Swiss German to them.
I understand a lot of dutch but can't speak any.
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kerouac2
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #8 on Feb 2, 2010, 1:08pm » | |
I hate people like that! 
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lola
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #9 on Feb 2, 2010, 3:26pm » | |
I know lots of words; it's stringing them together that defeats me, esp if you need verbs and tenses and whatnot.
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tillystar
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #10 on Feb 2, 2010, 3:52pm » | |
That’s like my Spanish, my vocab is great, I just can’t put the words into any sensible order. That’s why my Spanish improves after a couple of wines; I stop worrying about getting the grammar right. By 3am I am usually fluent.
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happytraveller
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kerouac2
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #12 on Feb 2, 2010, 5:44pm » | |
A lot of my isolated vocabulary is restaurant related. "Chicken?" "More red wine." Things like that.
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lola
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #13 on Feb 2, 2010, 6:22pm » | |
Calvin Trillin wrote that he wanted to learn the Chinese for "I'll have whatever the people at that table are having."
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spaceneedle
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #15 on Feb 2, 2010, 8:54pm » | |
That's a lot of languages.
I just speak two fluently, and two others in small doses.
spaceneedle, like you my ex-husband was fluent in Latin too, and also because he went to a Catholic school (in Montreal).
So he was fluent in:
Latin
French
English
Portuguese
Spanish
and some Italian.
My dad was fluent in six languages, including Chinese (Mandarin), as he was raised in Hong Kong.
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kerouac2
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #16 on Feb 2, 2010, 9:37pm » | |
Strange, since they speak Cantonese in Hong Kong... 
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spindrift
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #18 on Feb 3, 2010, 12:36am » | |
My Italian has become serviceable, my French is bad but I can usually make it work, my Spanish is weak but I'm good at guessing and I can get by in English. I started German but it makes my brain hurt. Oh, and it turns out I can actually read Sicilian (which any Sicilian will tell you is its own language and not an Italian dialect). My father's wife sent me some wonderful Commissario Montalbano crime novels last week set in Sicilia and written in Sicilian and if I get stuck I can usually say the words aloud and connect them to an Italian equivalent. It seems the spellings are more different than the pronunciations.
I absolutely adore learning languages. At least romance ones that aren't too difficult.
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tillystar
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #19 on Feb 3, 2010, 9:17am » | |
Umm I am not too bright in any language...I picked 1 above as I as thinking of ones in addition to my own language and then I realised that is wrong anyway as I can say French and Spanish. So it should have been 3.
I really wanted to add Basque but I think its probably only about 20 words and as for getting by...apart from yes, no, please, thank you, hello, good bye and food items they are lots of random words like darling, butterfly, house, fountain and star which aren't really good for much
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kerouac2
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #20 on Feb 3, 2010, 1:51pm » | |
Some of the words that I counted are not only not very useful but not very nice at all, like 'zob' in Arabic.
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tillystar
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lola
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #22 on Feb 3, 2010, 3:07pm » | |
The only German word my husband knows is "scheise."
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kerouac2
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #23 on Feb 3, 2010, 3:21pm » | |
That's part of my vocabulary, too.
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lagatta
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #24 on Feb 3, 2010, 4:40pm » | |
French, English and Italian fluently.
half-decent Spanish, still-rather-painful German but vocabulary many times what Kerouac demands. I have the problem of learning German mostly by reading, a bit of listening to websites and recordings, some writing to patient German-speaking friends. Not enough opportunity to practice here, so I can read complex articles on the concept of time and the environmental crisis but hesitate speaking on the phone. A Viennese friend who lived in Toronto for 30 years - interrupted by some forays as an architect at the German Legoland - has moved back "home" and is speaking full-on Viennese now. Unlike Swiss German, it is not considered a separate language, but is rather disconcerting. Especially over the phone.
The other languages I know at least 30 useful daily words in are Dutch and Portuguese.
I took courses in Arabic at university and at community centres. I'm sure I know well over 30 words, from vulgar words like "zob" and far worse to Muslim religious concepts, but I've forgotten too much daily vocabulary. Those kitschy little lessons about "buying fruit at the market" are actually useful. I look back at my lesson books; since I'm a visual artist my calligraphy is beautiful, but I've also forgotten a lot of written words. Would like to have time to get back to Arabic, but I've had to study European languages for more practical reasons. I can't reasonably be able to work in Arabic before I'm too old.
I really urge younger people to learn at least one major language that is not of European origin. Tillystar, which spoken Chinese language do you speak? Yeah, I'm jealous of that and Arabic.
Had just sent an e-mail to a friend in Paris who was born in Brazil to Jewish Viennese exilees; he speaks at least 12 languages with decent fluency but he is rather a phenomenon in that respect, and not just because he grew up speaking German and Portuguese.
happytraveller, it is always controversial whether certain tongues are languages or dialects. Do people also write in Swiss German? (I'm thinking literary works). The Swiss newspapers I've read are in standard German, of course there are some differences such as ss rather than ß and I think there are more loadwords from French, but those don't seen any more different than a French Swiss text would be with regard to one from France (numbers etc).
There is no problem for people from France or other French-speaking countries to understand our TV or radio broadcasts, read books or newspapers or understand educated speakers here, but I could see people from elsewhere in the French-speaking world having considerable problems understanding some rural or less-educated people who speak "joual" (full-on working-class or rural Québécois French).
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deyana
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deyana
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happytraveller
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #27 on Feb 4, 2010, 8:05am » | |
Feb 3, 2010, 4:40pm, lagatta wrote:happytraveller, it is always controversial whether certain tongues are languages or dialects. Do people also write in Swiss German? (I'm thinking literary works). The Swiss newspapers I've read are in standard German, of course there are some differences such as ss rather than ß and I think there are more loadwords from French, but those don't seen any more different than a French Swiss text would be with regard to one from France (numbers etc).
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Oh no it is much more different than French and Swiss French. Swissgerman is officially not a written language, (even though it exists) you are right, all newspapers are in high german. We've had this discussion on an other forum and I started writing some sentences in swiss german and the germans had no clue what I was talking about. Of course some words are similar, even identical, others are completely different and we structure the sentence a bit different.
I have realised that some germans think they can understand swiss german, not realising that they hear swiss germans speaking GERMAN, with a swiss accent though. Quite funny ! 
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kerouac2
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #28 on Feb 4, 2010, 8:22am » | |
I have heard that Swiss-German is quite close to Alsatian, but I don't know how close...
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happytraveller
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| | Re: How many languages?
« Reply #29 on Feb 4, 2010, 9:51am » | |
It is closer to the dialect they speak in the black forest, they can usually understand us.
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