Writer's Block: Voulez-vous parler ...

[theoldwolf]

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Well, I seem to have snagged the brass ring with this question.

I am a native speaker of: English
I have close to native fluency in: French, German and Italian
I am comfortable in most subjects in: Spanish
I can survive in: Portuguese, Norwegian, Hebrew, Japanese, Gaielge, Serbian, and Croatian
I can get thrown in jail in: Slovenian, Turkish, Romanian, Dutch, Mandarin, Swedish and Danish
I have worked with and can understand varying degrees of: Bulgarian, Albanian, Lingala, Catalan, Arabic and Russian.
I am currently studying: Hebrew and Farsi

If I could learn only one other language well, it would definitely be Mandarin, based on the number of speakers - this would open up limitless opportunities.

If I were allowed to choose others that I had the time to learn well, the list would include Hindi/Urdu (basically the same tongue); Russian; Arabic and Turkish.

With these in my pocket, I could probably communicate with 95% of the world's population, as most people speak one of the languages I have mentioned as a first, second or third language. That would be fun.

Comments

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

Sheesh, I had to look up Lingala to see where it's spoken. For a word man, I am way out of my league with regard to other languages. Next to you, anyway.

So... have you been thrown in jail in all those languages?

[ccdesan.livejournal.com]

Haha! Serbian was the only one I came close in... and that was pretty scary. I've been very lucky, when I've traveled to the wild places, to have good friends and good guides. With good security.