How many languages do you speak?

[Tdol]

Originally Posted by Vash

Mandarin, my local languare spoken in Shanghai, English, and a little bit Japanese.

You forgot to mention English.

[RonBee]

Originally Posted by tdol

You forgot to mention English.

Or you overlooked it. :wink:

I am, by the way, monolingual. (I know a little German, but I am far from fluent in it. (I once annoyed my Austrian-born sister-in-law by asking her, in German, how old she was. (She didn't tell me.))

:wink:

Originally Posted by Red5

Indicate how many languages you speak by voting, and then describe what they are.

Mandarin,and English ( I'm still working on it to make it be my second mother tongue as my Chinese :P :) )

Lucy wu

[Tdol]

You're getting there.

I'm basically bilingual (French-English), but I checked the 3-language box to include the partial knowledge of German that I have (I know the basics pretty well, but I haven't really had the chance to use it so it's really "rusty") and my even smaller knowledge of Spanish.
I counted the former two as making up my third language...

[Tdol]

Originally Posted by hermes

I'm basically bilingual (French-English), but I checked the 3-language box to include the partial knowledge of German that I have (I know the basics pretty well, but I haven't really had the chance to use it so it's really "rusty") and my even smaller knowledge of Spanish.
I counted the former two as making up my third language...

How did you acquire French and English- are they mother tongues or did you actively learn one? I think rusty German + a little Spanish = a language.

How did you acquire French and English- are they mother tongues or did you actively learn one? I think rusty German + a little Spanish = a language."

Well, French is my "stronger" language, that's the language I was taught during my early childhood. Later, as a child, I started acquiring English as a second language, and now here I am, with a good knowledge of both languages.

What matters when you want to really master a language is that you learn in during your childhood. Some linguists think the age of 12 is a threshold. Beyond that age, it appears that acquiring a new language becomes much more difficult. Not impossible of course, but adults never seem to achieve quite the same level of mastery in a foreign language as children do.

[Tdol]

The earlier the better- where are you from?

I just speak Spanish and some English, but I´m still improving the last one
I wish one day I could say: "I'm bilingual", but I think this day is very far away :wink:

[Tdol]

Not as far as you think.