Great story about a 20 year old who speaks 11 languages here.

Made me wonder what the most number of languages anyone has been officially certified as speaking.

I love the idea that there would be just one person on the planet, who at some point has been able to speak all the languages on Earth. Totally unrealistic obviously, but it’s a romantic concept.

I’m fairly good with English and can manage a few sentences in German. That’s my lot. Languages just don’t stick in my head.

English is the lingua franca of the world.

57 apparently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziad_Fazah

I can order upto 3 beers in about 6 languages. English first language, passable french and fluent bulls**t.

I seem to recall that Peter Ustinov was good for about 12 languages

Loosely related, here’s the story of a savant who learned to speak Icelandic in a week – and was then interviewed on live tv in Icekland!

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPHv9KqpgqM[/video]

can read and understand spoken french and spanish – im crap at speaking it though

and work through a menu in dutch

its amaizing how forgranted i took this as i regularly travel places and i found my self in ukraine where i couldnt even a train as the alphabet is so different it really screwed me up !

English is the lingua franca of the world.

Might be chinese soon 🙂

I had a 17 yr old student a few years ago who spoke about 5 fluently (incl Korean(hardest language for a westerner apparently)and Arabic) and about another 5 passably. He taught himself off you tube!

Almoost one.

‘Master’ a language?

I honestly don’t think I’m even a master of English despite it being my ‘mother-tongue’ … I can use it perfectly well for day-to-day conversation and discussing technical stuff at work etc etc, but when you hear properly clever people like Steven Fry and the likes talking they clearly have a much broader vocab and understanding of the language than I do.

Even my wife understands more about English grammar and structure than most Brit’s – she’s learnt English as a 2nd language so has had to approach it technically correctly rather than just ‘picking it up’ like kids do.

She’s always explaining to me how English is different/similar to Brazilian Portuguese, and some of the stuff she refers to I don’t understand myself …

I have a friend who spends a lot of time travelling to various countries. Having shown no aptitude for languages as a youngster, his job demanded that he be able to speak a little of the languages for the most commonly visited countries (he had staff in those countries) so he reluctantly set about learning how to say hello and how are you and stuff.

Turns out he was a natural and very quickly became excellent in French, German, Italian and Arabic. He has a natural handicap because since he’s a scouser, he doesn’t really speak English. Claims to be pretty much fluent in all those languages now, even at a technical level.

‘Master’ is not a good word. Language can be understood better in terms of a ladder.

For example, a newbie might be on the firts rung, while a fluent speaker/reader/writer/ might be on the 10th, with everything in betwee.

For me, it would probably be something like:

English 10
French 9
German 6
Ukrainian 4
Latin 6
Greek 6

Learning languages would be easy for most people if they were put in the right situation and with the right support.

The thing is, even the concept of what determines a language is fairly fluid. There are thousands of languages all around the world that are only spoken by a small tribe, but they are sometimes similar to other languages. The whole sphere of linguistics and I suppose anthropology is amazing, I love it.

I can speak English and French to a fair level and bits of German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi and Tagalog….I couldn’t really have an intelligent conversation in the last few though. Would love to be fluent in them as well as Cantonese.

I’m learning Portuguese at the moment and found it really slow going to begin with. It now seems to be sinking in. The general consensus I believe is the younger you are the easier it is. At 39, I might be a bit old.

The general consensus I believe is the younger you are the easier it is. At 39, I might be a bit old.

Don’t believe that for a moment – the huge difference is being surrounded and forced to use the language. I picked up pretty decent Spanish within a couple of years of living here, if I’d had lessons I’m sure it would have been even faster. The only thing I expect to never lose is my English accent…

My sister speaks Russian, Italian, Chinese and French as well as English. I can only manage Spanish and English, unless you count Java, C++, and reasonable Perl and Ruby 🙂

I can make myself really badly misunderstood in French, Spanish, Portuguese and English. I’d love to be fluent in French and Spanish, but not enough to do anything about it.

Yeah, I can generally make myself understood in French. German and Spanish tend to be limited to beers and prostitutes.

the huge difference is being surrounded and forced to use the language

You might be right there. I’ve recently started listening and watching TV and radio in Portuguese and that may be why its sinking in better. I think the age might be an excuse and the truth is I’ve just forgotten how to learn stuff. 🙂

I lived in Peru as a teenager and picked up Castellano/Spanish by being immersed in it. It’s still there in the background but since I don’t use it too often it’s not natural to me any more. I do remember dreaming in Castellano though.

English as my mother tongue and at some point was fluent in French (good enough for management level job) but since moving to Denmark and learning Danish, I seem to have lost the French. I guess it would come back if I spent some time there again.

Sometimes it is nice to notice how much you can get of other European languages based on a mixed understanding of a germanic and a latin one.

I was in Spain a few years ago with a group of Norwegian girls (don’t ask!) and they all spoke at least three languages fluently: English, Norwegian and Swedish. Swedish is the default Scandinavian language so most people up there speak (or at least understand the gist of) it.

A couple of them were also fluent in one or two other European languages: French, Spanish, German or Italian.

I knew a Czech air hostess who spoke 4 languages fluently: Czech, English, Spanish and Italian.

Ziad Fazah doesn’t speak quite as many as he says. There’s a suggestion that you can only learn 20 or so languages to any degree of depth. Which might be bollocks of course.

Scandinavians all claim to understand each others languages which isn’t really true. Given the choice, many of them prefer to speak English to each other.
My wifes family all speak Danish, English and some German and French and then between them they also have some Italian, Russian, Swedish and dutch.

The problem that us Brits have is that most other nationalities learn English/American as a second language and want to practice when they find a native speaker. In common with many Brits, I’ll have a bash a putting a sentence together in French but I then struggle if I get more than a one word reply!

French 10
english 9
spanish 9
Fortran 77 7
Perl 8

Out of 10 I would give myself

English 9.5
Plants 5
Portuguese 4

🙂

English 10
French 9
Spanish 5
Italian 2

Can say “please”, “thank you” and “2 beers please” in a few more…