How many foreign languages can you speak?

[MarillionFan]

Speak and when I mean speak I mean foreign languages.

I can do a little French, Indonesian used to be quite good and I can get by in Thai.

Anyone putting a gag about 'speaking Fortran' or any other computer language gets repped.

Poll to follow

[Mich the Tester]

Dutch; mother tongue standard
French; good enough
German; OK after a few days practice
Italian; OK after a few days practice

[RowleyBirkinQC]

English, errrrrr, bit of French, errrrrrrrr little bit of German, aaaaaaaand, oh yes, I am 100% fluent in Slur.

Edit : I was also told the Spanish word for c*** in a bar once.

Edit : I was also told the Italian for go and f*** yourself in a bar once.

[TimberWolf]

Fluently? Reading Newspaper level? Writing?

I can get by in German, especially in understanding others, but Germans seem better equipped to understand my English than they do my German.

French, just common words and phrases.

According to this, admittedly amateurish source, the guy there reckons:

the 75 most common words make up 40% of language occurrences
the 200 most common words make up 50% of language occurrences
the 524 most common words make up 60% of language occurrences
the 1257 most common words make up 70% of language occurrences
the 2925 most common words make up 80% of language occurrences
the 7444 most common words make up 90% of language occurrences
the 13374 most common words make up 95% of language occurrences
the 25508 most common words make up 99% of language occurrences

which if true means you could get by with a bit of bluffing, muttering and shouting with just 75 words.

The most commonly used words are, I suspect, usually short and easy to say too. Boomed.

[TykeMerc]

Edit : I was also told the Spanish word for c*** in a bar once.

Edit : I was also told the Italian for go and f*** yourself in a bar once.

I've no doubt that both of those have been directed at you on multiple occasions in many languages.

[Mich the Tester]

which if true means you could get by with a bit of bluffing, muttering and shouting with just 75 words.

Sounds about right; at some stage you reach a point where instead of looking up or asking for a word in your own language, you get people to explain it to you or tell you in the language you are learning; that way you'll remember it AND it'll be implanted in your brain in that language, so don't have to think, for example, 'what's the Dutch for a bin?', you just use the word.

This is actually very important; once you've got some basics, don't be embarassed to point at something and ask people what it's called; 95% of people in the world will not laugh at you and will be quite pleased to help. As for the other 5%, they probably don't have any mates anyway.

[cailin maith]

English
Irish
A Level French (Conversational-ish)
O Level Italian (Very basic)

Holiday Spanish & Holiday Thai

[amcdonald]

Doesn't English count as a foreign language these days ?

[ChrisPackit]

English: Fluent

American: Fluent

Canadian: Fluent

Scottish: Fluent

Italian: Piss Poor (though I once got a snog off an Italian girl buy saying the only Italian phrase I know, something like "Bella Stella...Bella Minutzi" translates to "Beautiful Stars ..... Beautiful breasts")

[Sysman]

Sounds about right; at some stage you reach a point where instead of looking up or asking for a word in your own language, you get people to explain it to you or tell you in the language you are learning; that way you'll remember it AND it'll be implanted in your brain in that language, so don't have to think, for example, 'what's the Dutch for a bin?', you just use the word.

This is actually very important; once you've got some basics, don't be embarassed to point at something and ask people what it's called; 95% of people in the world will not laugh at you and will be quite pleased to help. As for the other 5%, they probably don't have any mates anyway.

All true. And it does come back. I can't speak Dutch any more so didn't count it for the poll, but given some solid Dutch exposure I'm sure it would come back. I can still read it, and at a technical level too.