How many languages do you speak?

[MelFromOz]

Bom Dia! ( this is Good day in Portuguese)

Yia sou! (Hello in Greek)

And of course hello in English!

I can speak 3 languages, my step father who raised me is Greek and I learnt this from a very young age as well as Portuguese which is my mother and her side of the family.

I know a few words in Spanish but I could not hold a conversation, my natural father is from Chile so I learnt a bit from him. A very small amount of Italian which I learnt in high school, and that's about it!

I love knowing how to speak different languages and maybe one day I can serve where the need is greater in any of the languages I know:)

Oh! How could I forget! G'day mate! I also speak Australian which is where I'm from:D

[nikviz]

Bom Dia! ( this is Good day in Portuguese)

Yia sou! (Hello in Greek)

And of course hello in English!

I can speak 3 languages, my step father who raised me is Greek and I learnt this from a very young age as well as Portuguese which is my mother and her side of the family.

I know a few words in Spanish but I could not hold a conversation, my natural father is from Chile so I learnt a bit from him. A very small amount of Italian which I learnt in high school, and that's about it!

I love knowing how to speak different languages and maybe one day I can serve where the need is greater in any of the languages I know:)

Oh! How could I forget! G'day mate! I also speak Australian which is where I'm from:D

Είναι τόσο ευχάριστο που μιλάει και άλλος Ελληνικά ένιωθα τόση μοναξιά, σαν την καλαμιά στον κάμπο.

(translation) It's so pleasant to speak Greek and other, Ι felt so loneliness, like the stubble in the plain.

[MelFromOz]

Γεια σου αδελφός μου! Θα ήμουν ευτυχής να μιλούν την Ελληνική γλώσσα μαζί σας ανά πάσα στιγμή, ώστε να μην χρειάζεται να αισθάνονται μοναξιά πια! ><

Translation: Hello my brother! I would be happy to speak Greek with you anytime so you don't have to feel lonely anymore!

[inkartinc]

I can speak...English, Spanish...Spanglish,

No one has mentioned...the pure language. It really is different. We learned spanish we when we moved to Honduras. I learned by being at the meetings and out in service. Memorized an introduction from the Reasoning book and got really good at it, pausing for answers to the question and moving on. People thought I knew the language. This caused a few interesting experiences. As time went by I was conducting studies very well (I think) but my problem then was I didn't know anything to say or understand before or after the study. The Bible discussion was fine, day to day conversations, nothing. Slowly that has grown, but it took me a while. It was also a while before I could take notes at a convention/assembly.

Another example was a brother in our daughters congregation. The opposite happened with him. He was raised in the US by illegal parents, from Mexico. They were not JW's. He learned the truth by himself, studying at 17 years of age and is now serving at Bethel. He wanted to go to the Spanish convention with us one year, he learned the truth in English which is fine since he went thru school in US learning to read and speak English. But wanted to "experience" a Spanish convention. He sat next to my husband and I could hear him asking him over and over again: "What does that word mean?" "Where is Hechos?" "What is pregursor?" it was funny to hear him through the day. We had fun teasing him about that.

[Pallen]

Just English for me.  I have tried to learn spanish a second language as I have a desire to learn another one but my feeble brain was not able to get its logic.  I am learning some Esperanto at lernu! it is still slow for me but it is fun to learn. It will not be the one language we all speak in the new system, but is a very logical language to learn.  My wife is learning some too.  Anyone else here ever learn Esperanto as a second language in your country?

[New World Explorer]

I speak Polish, English ..  I understand some French and Creole plus I lived in Spain (Yes Carlos I lived in Madrid ha ha ha) I used to know some Spanish but I am slowly forgeting it.

I lived in Germany when I was young ...  but again forgeting German as well.

Looking forward to a ONE LANGUAGE in a New World.

[carlos]

I am supposed to speak English and Romanian, apart from Spanish which is my native language. But if you think my English is far from perfect, my Romanian is even worse. And my Spanish is deteriorating!

 

Anyway, all Romance languages are very similar. If you speak Spanish, you can quite easily communicate with Portuguese and Italians to a great degree. Even French and Romanian, which are a bit more different, share a lot of vocabulary with Spanish.

 

There was a time, some decades ago, when mixed Spanish-Portuguese conventions were held in Spain. Some talks were in Spanish, some in Portuguese, and everyone understood them more or less.

[gal]

English,Romanian and Hungarian  nut not perfect in any of them lol

[Margaret]

I know English but am trying to learn Spanish from our new JW Language app.

[Victoria]

I can speak, read and write Russian very well. I study "watchtower" in Russian Sign. I can speak, read and write English more or less, the most difficult thing is to listen and understand native English speakers.Ukrainian speach can be understandable and of course I can read it but not everything is clear. I can say Our God is Jehovah in Chinese☺

[well]

I can speak, read and write Russian very well. I study "watchtower" in Russian Sign. I can speak, read and write English more or less, the most difficult thing is to listen and understand native English speakers.Ukrainian speach can be understandable and of course I can read it but not everything is clear. I can say Our God is Jehovah in Chinese☺

 

Say the Chinese one, please! 

[Victoria]

I am not sure I can write Pin-yin correctly but I will try.

Wo men te shan di shi Ye he hua.

I am afraid I can not pronounce it with correct tones.

Also I can say:

Wo ai ni

[Victoria]

I've found one mistake. Wo men DE.As far as I know the Chinese don't make any difference between t and d, p and b and so on.

[well]

I am not sure I can write Pin-yin correctly but I will try.

Wo men te shan di shi Ye he hua.

I am afraid I can not pronounce it with correct tones.

Also I can say:

Wo ai ni

Wo ye ai ni, Victoria!

[Victoria]

Wow! I can speak and understand Chinese!

[Sylv]

English is my main language, but I speak/read/write Dutch as I grew up in the Netherlands, but I have lost my fluency since I hardly ever use it. Also some German.

[bohemian]

I have restarted my Czech language studies using various means. The short Pimsleur course was very easy for me but it got me into using the language and thinking in it again.

I'm now using a Teach Yourself course, which again is fairly basic, but I am learning some new vocabulary too, and some colloquialisms.

An app called Mnemolingo is useful for building vocabulary (don't know if they do other languages); I also have 2 dictionaries on my iPad (one of which very helpfully indicates noun genders!) as well as google translate app.

EDIT: mnemolingo covers 14 languages, on iPad anyway, including Russian, Slovak, Romanian as well as more common European languages.

My conclusion is that I find it very useful and productive to use several things in tandem.

I don't have many people to talk to in the language, so practicing is difficult - I talk to some friends in Czech Republic via Skype but they want to practice their English!

I'm hoping to visit Prague for the convention and will be staying with Czech brothers, so I have a cunning plan to spend one day speaking nothing but English so they can practice, then a day speaking nothing but Czech. That will be difficult for both, but I feel it will be very productive for both too.

I absolutely love learning languages (except French which drives me potty!) My wife is learning Arabic and is doing very well with it, using the Pimsleur course. It's expensive, but it does work.

I want to encourage all you dear brothers and sisters trying to learn another tongue, keep on! You are doing a great thing! If your goal is to help people learn the truth in their own language, then Jehovah will surely bless your efforts.

Edited January 28, 2015 by bohemian

[Greg Dent]

I cant really say i speak anything more than english. But my wife and i both know a few words of french spanish german russian mandarin Portuguese and italian. Just what we picked up talking to friends in different congs. I would really like to learn more spanish. 

[bohemian]

Does anyone relate to these thoughts that I had?

Years ago, I never thought about speaking a foreign language. We learnt some German in school, but it seemed very divorced from everyday life. There was little or no use for it where I lived, so it was just another school subject that had to be taken. No significance at all to me.

Later, in the truth and living in a multicultural area, pioneering and meeting people from lots of countries (all seeking asylum in those days) I found it necessary to use literature in different languages. I started Bible studies in Romanian, Albanian, Czech, Slovak and learned a 'smattering' of these languages, but mostly greetings and some theocratic terms.

I finally had to make a choice between two potential fields, and the brother I pioneered with most of the time and I decided that he would concentrate on Albanian and I would concentrate on Czech.

Again, though, it was theocratic Czech that I was learning. I could conduct Bible studies and use the Bible in Czech, and I even for a short while conducted a study in the book Daniel's Prophecy!

My wife and I decided to spend a week in Prague for a short holiday and there realized we knew virtually nothing of the actual language!

I had never felt so 'out of my depth' before. Suddenly I realized that really knowing the language meant much more than just knowing theorcratic terms. Yes, we could speak in the ministry, but little else. We found it difficult to just talk to people and make friends with them, as we do in the ministry in English (or in the congregation) before introducing in depth theocratic matters. I needed to actually learn the ordinary things if I was to consider myself a Czech speaker.

This was a cathartic moment for me.

Not having a foreign-language congregation to get immersed in made it more challenging. I realized that it was not just vocabulary I needed, but after several years I now feel finally that I am getting to grips with the use of the language, where every verb comes in two 'aspects', there are 7 cases which affect the forms of every noun, and every adjective, adverb, pronoun has to agree with the noun in its case. Even some numbers change according to gender, or case. Even an accent mark on a letter can totally change the meaning of a word.

These are just a few observations from my own experience. Your experience may be totally different. I would love to hear of your techniques for learning etc. and your experiences in this challenging field.

[Victoria]

To my mind one of the most important things is to learn not just words but phrases and expressions. For example, Russians don't ask: how old are you? They ask: how many you years? (If to translate it word by word). JW Language is a wonderful tool that helps to speak naturally, isn't it?

[carlos]

I can speak, read and write Russian very well. I study "watchtower" in Russian Sign. I can speak, read and write English more or less, the most difficult thing is to listen and understand native English speakers.Ukrainian speach can be understandable and of course I can read it but not everything is clear. I can say Our God is Jehovah in Chinese☺

 

Victoria, is Russian your native language?

[carlos]

I don't have many people to talk to in the language, so practicing is difficult - I talk to some friends in Czech Republic via Skype but they want to practice their English!

I'm hoping to visit Prague for the convention and will be staying with Czech brothers, so I have a cunning plan to spend one day speaking nothing but English so they can practice, then a day speaking nothing but Czech. That will be difficult for both, but I feel it will be very productive for both too.

 

Chris, I thought you were attending a Czech group, then I read in another recent post of yours that there is no group. Wow, it must be a real challenge to learn the language without having much people to talk to!

 

Do you find many Czechs when you go in service?

 

When I visited London last year I didn't hear many Romanians, but there were lots of Poles. Although I suppose it depends of the area.

[Victoria]

Victoria, is Russian your native language?

Yes, it is! I was surprised when got to know that 100 languages are spoken in Russia. In my childhood I never met a person speaking another language. I wonder why you asked me, Carlos.

[bohemian]

Chris, I thought you were attending a Czech group, then I read in another recent post of yours that there is no group. Wow, it must be a real challenge to learn the language without having much people to talk to!

 

Do you find many Czechs when you go in service?

 

When I visited London last year I didn't hear many Romanians, but there were lots of Poles. Although I suppose it depends of the area.

Yes, it is difficult. There are few Czechs in the area, although I do occasionally meet one. As I don't get out in the ministry very much because of my health, especially in Winter, I don't meet many English speakers either! Ha, ha.

@Victoria. I agree, learning the forms of speech can be interesting and don't follow the same speech patterns as our own.

"I'm hungry" in English is literally "I have hunger" in Czech and in German. "How are you" in Czech is literally "how do you have yourself". Of course, we have our own idioms too, as do other languages. "Raining cats and dogs" is idiomatically in Czech "pouring like a watering can".

[carlos]

Yes, it is! I was surprised when got to know that 100 languages are spoken in Russia. In my childhood I never met a person speaking another language. I wonder why you asked me, Carlos.

 

Oh, because you said you can speak, write and read Russian very well. I was told Russian is extremely difficult to learn and no one gets to master it correctly unless they are native speakers. So I thought you either are a native speaker or a genius. Well, one thing doesn't exclude the other.  :-D