Our languages

What languages do you speak, read, or understand?

My native language is Finnish, which is a small Fenno-Ugrian language, related to Estonian and some minor languages spoken in Russia. In Finalnd, there are only 5,36 million habitants, and of them, some percents speak Swedish and Sami as their mother tongue. Finnish is very different of the Latin or German based languages and thus it's quite difficult for some of us to learn foreign languages.

The other languages I can speak are Swedish and English, and I can understand and read French and Gernan quite well. I also understand some very simple Italian, but can't really speak it at all. It's always nice to try to buy tickets or order the dishes in an Italian restaurant!

I hope I couls speak some Spanish and Russian!

The languages we are learning in Belgium are French and Dutch. Sometimes German as well, but I didn't. I speak French, Dutch and English. I'm actually learning Russian. I can read Spanish, Portuguese and try to understand them. I also know some Italian and Japanese sentences.

I'd really like to learn Polish (my best friend is from Warsaw) and Japanese. Maybe I'll self-teach myself Italian.

My first language is English, and I have learned Italian to a pretty acceptable level, though the Italians can see immediately I am not a real Italian because I still make too many silly grammatical mistakes.

As I told many of you already I had a period when I really tried to teach myself Russian, back in the mid 90's, but unfortunately I didn't accomplish a whole lot, it was too difficult a language. I still remember the cyrillic alphabets and a few sentenses and words... I would like to pick up a little more and refresh my memories now that I have some awesome friends from Russia!!

I can sort of understand simple written German and Spanish , but I am not at the level of "speaking" at all, because I have no knowledge of their grammatical structures. I have been musing about taking up on either languages and start to learn a little more seirously, just that never seem to get around it... it is just a matter of self-discipline..

I also remember quite a lot of japanese from my growing up years and if I hear it spoken I can understand about 70-80% of it, though I can no longer speak it either, I have been totally out of practice for too long!.

It's sad how we need to keep practising a language for it to stay in our minds. As for Russian, I'm afraid it is too hard for me but I'm holding on. If I don't succeed this year (I'll have exams in June - oral - and probably in August), I will probably change the language. I'll keep English, but maybe I will do Italian or German. I'm very interested in Greek but I will have to do Ancient Greek (7-8h/week) and I hate that. So I'll see what happens...

My native language is Russian,I understand and can speak English,read and write Swedish and Norvegian,I learnt the Scandinavian languages becouse like them very much but unfortunately I have no practis so my Swedish and Norwegian are akward I'd like to speak German,French and Italien(hi,Oliver!).
I like Englishmaybe now it's more simple language but it has a rich history and I am going to tell you about that later

Old Irish blessing
" May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
...And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand."