Language: You Know Them, People Want To Learn Them

[Crane's]

English, native speaker
German, second household language
Mandarin, beginner

 

[alliswell]

Originally Posted by Johnny_5

A couple of years back I was in Connemara taking in the scenery. Stopped at one of the very few stores/gas stations there and the people there only spoke Gaelic, so I presume it is spoken as a primary language there among natives...I can imagine that being a hike for you though...Good luck with that.

Gan dabht bhi'odar ag fucka'il around leat.

 

[whoopee]

English - native
Mandarin - native
Spanish - basic/intermediate
French - beginning

 

[kwiteaboy]

English - native
Norwegian - intermediate
French - intermediate

 

[trogdor]

Originally Posted by letmebefell

Gan dabht bhi'odar ag fucka'il around leat.

That's proper Connacht Irish!

 

[AlexPanzer]

Russian - native
English - secondary

 

[Johnny_5]

Originally Posted by trogdor

I suspect that they may have been teasing you a bit -- there are no monolingual Irish speakers left, so these lads probably did know English even if they pretended not to!

The Connemara Gaeltacht is (I think) the biggest, and owing to its proximity to Galway city, it has a higher proportion of young/cool Irish speakers (for example, on the Irish language TV station TG4, they all speak in Connacht Irish -- South Park has even been dubbed into Irish).

Then again, we've got a fair few down here in Munster -- especially in Kerry and on the Dingle (An Daingean) peninsula. Although, even the name of the town is controversial -- see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingle

No they werent playing for sure. They were both in their 40s-50s and when I walked in I remember the clerk and another customer having a conversation in the Gaelic and it continued as I walked through the shop. When I asked the clerk a question the clerk had no idea what I was saying and I had to get my mother to translate.

 

[JLibourel]

I note that several people here and listed Latin and (presumably ancient) Greek. Since the OP mentioned speaking fluency, I wonder how many people are out there who can actually converse fluently in Latin and ancient Greek. I studied those languages for many years but can't claim any fluency in speaking them.

 

[slipperywhenwet]

English - Native speaker.
Mandarin - I was nearly fluent when I finished studying, but I've lost a lot. Now I would say I have a conversational level.
Korean - Beginner. I can get by, but not hold conversations.


I've never felt that Korean was a beautiful language. I adore Mandarin though, I also find that it's very singy-songy (is that a word?). I found that I like Japanese quite a bit, so I will begin learning it in the fall.

 

[Half Honky]

English - native
Polish - knew it as a kid, forgot it since there's not much use for it outside Poland
Tagalog/Illongo - Anyone worth talking to also knows English

Mandarin - Just finished my 2nd year in college, but I can't continue taking it and graduate on time.
Japanese - Just finished some history classes taught in Japanese at my college and after my year at Keio hope to take the 1kyuu JLPT.

 

[LabelKing]

English
Shanghainese

 

[tiecollector]

Originally Posted by Johnny_5

Does anyone have any experience with The Rosetta Stone products? I am interested in Spanish, Chinese, and Greek.


Rosetta Stone is a waste of money imo. Especially to learn something without a Roman alphabet.

Originally Posted by UserName84

From the very little I have learned so far...

Yes hyeren chem hasgunare. Which means "I don't understand Armenian" (it's literally "I Armenian (the language) am not understanding." If you really are interested a great help for me in learning has been the Pimsleur books on CD, I got it off Amazon.

The Pimsleur CDs didn't teach me anything for Korean really. I did speak to an Armenian girl once and found that it had some odd similarities to Korean.

 

[bbaquiran]

Know:
English
Tagalog

Want to learn:
Spanish

 

[somecallmebj]

Originally Posted by Half *****

English - native
Polish - knew it as a kid, forgot it since there's not much use for it outside Poland
Tagalog/Illongo - Anyone worth talking to also knows English

Mandarin - Just finished my 2nd year in college, but I can't continue taking it and graduate on time.
Japanese - Just finished some history classes taught in Japanese at my college and after my year at Keio hope to take the 1kyuu JLPT.

I wish you luck on the 1kyuu. That will be quite an accomplishment if you pass it. I'm thinking about going to Keio for their JPL. How much difficulty did you have getting admitted? And how long have you been studying?

 

[dtmt]

Don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but you can find a lot of language conversation groups on meetup.com.