What languages do you speak?

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gnmmarechal

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Portuguese (native), English, some Spanish and some French.

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English, Portuguese, French and German, all in order by my mastery level of the language.
And I speak some peterish as well :rofl:
Soooo your English > Portuguese ? lel
 
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FAST6191

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Soooo your English > Portuguese ? lel

I have seen it fairly often these last few years, especially for English, where someone takes a school course (especially science/engineering/computing), job or does a lot of internet/games with English as the primary language. They then get something like the atrophy you get when you used to move to another country and let your native one slip a bit, or even more amusing have the native one be more of a day to day asking directions and shopping and English be the one for complex debates. Afraid I have not read any more formal studies on it that I might be able to link though.
You can probably see something similar with the various types of English as well where I would lay decent money on many native UK types (not so sure about the other way around but still would take a decent bet) not finding much in http://www.onestopenglish.com/gramm...ritish-english-grammar-article/152820.article to be strange to the ear if they grew up speaking to Americans.

Alternatively it might just be that the poster moved (back) there later on in life and missed out on some things but sports the flag anyway.

Edit. @RevPokemon when you say Greek do you mean one of the modern flavours, as opposed to ancient Greek? If it is one of the modern ones then I am curious what value it would hold here, assuming you are not going for some flavour of Greek orthodox that is.
 

RevPokemon

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Cool - I've always wanted to be able to at least read hebrew and greek, though understanding context and ancient hebrew is quite another thing!
Very true as it can be quite confusing since the academic community is often in debates in how the words of Hebrew/Aramaic were originally used in context which can have huge impacts (virgin/young girl debate for example).
 

Davidosky99

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Portuguese (native), English, some Spanish and some French.

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Soooo your English > Portuguese ? lel
Yeah I can say that my English is more developed than my Portuguese... It might be because I use it more often or because I use it too to communicate with almost everyone on the internet, as well as I have to use it in the content I consume ... :P
 

gnmmarechal

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Yeah I can say that my English is more developed than my Portuguese... It might be because I use it more often or because I use it too to communicate with almost everyone on the internet, as well as I have to use it in the content I consume ... :P
Oh well, I can't laugh, I'm probably the same. My English keeps improving, but my Portuguese.... doesn't. lol. I'm starting not to know how to say words in Portuguese, while I know them in English, and I know what they mean.... just not in my mother tongue. lol
 
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jayjay123

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Very true as it can be quite confusing since the academic community is often in debates in how the words of Hebrew/Aramaic were originally used in context which can have huge impacts (virgin/young girl debate for example).
Exactly! It's easy to forget, given the amazing job translators have done, that you're dealing with history that's thousands of years old and from a very different cultural age.
 
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Davidosky99

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Oh well, I can't laugh, I'm probably the same. My English keeps improving, but my Portuguese.... doesn't. lol. I'm starting not to know how to say words in Portuguese, while I know them in English, and I know what they mean.... just not in my mother tongue. lol
Exactly!
Sometimes in normal conversations with Portuguese people I just start taking in English and they don't understand or say "In Portuguese please" ("Agora em Português!")
But I find English overall a more attractive and simple language for either it being so simple and attractive and it being a global language :D and because of that my Portuguese keeps being replaced with English :rofl2:
 
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FAST6191

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In the UK at least if you say "in English" or "English please" it is usually because someone is mumbling/drunk, or someone a bit of an accent and you are being racist. As such I read that comment with the internal voice being something between Portuguese and sarf london/cockney wideboy accent and amused myself.

On a slightly different note do you consider it rude to not use English (if you are in an English speaking country) with someone else which speaks the same language? I have met that a few times now when hanging around people from other European countries and my response has always been "if you expect me to join in the conversation best to have it happen in a language I understand". It would not have even crossed my mind to consider it rude.
 

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Can't remember if I've already replied to this.

English and Japanese. English being my native language. I've studied Japanese for around 10 years, including 4 years studying Japanese Language as my major at university. I've since lived in Japan for around 5 years, and have a Japanese wife who doesn't speak English (thus, Japanese is my language of daily conversation these days).

I've failed at attempts to learn any other language, however. I'd love to know German or Russian.

On a slightly different note do you consider it rude to not use English (if you are in an English speaking country) with someone else which speaks the same language? I have met that a few times now when hanging around people from other European countries and my response has always been "if you expect me to join in the conversation best to have it happen in a language I understand". It would not have even crossed my mind to consider it rude.
This is a bit curious. I have no time for these 'speak English or go back to your own country' racist buffoons. It's natural that you'd use whatever language comes the most naturally for you. Why would two Polish people (for example) converse in any language except Polish?

In Japan, I would obviously converse in English with any other foreigner. On the other hand, if there are Japanese people in our group then it would be polite to switch to Japanese so everybody understands (assuming the foreigner is of a similar level of Japanese, which is not always the case. Complicated eh.).
 
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Davidosky99

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In the UK at least if you say "in English" or "English please" it is usually because someone is mumbling/drunk, or someone a bit of an accent and you are being racist. As such I read that comment with the internal voice being something between Portuguese and sarf london/cockney wideboy accent and amused myself.

On a slightly different note do you consider it rude to not use English (if you are in an English speaking country) with someone else which speaks the same language? I have met that a few times now when hanging around people from other European countries and my response has always been "if you expect me to join in the conversation best to have it happen in a language I understand". It would not have even crossed my mind to consider it rude.
First, that's not my accent, I have been told that I have overall a neutral accent. :rofl: I don't have a British accent in any way.
To answer your question, no I don't consider it rude to speak the language I desire in other countries.
Sure, it might be a little annoying to the persons who are watching people talking in different languages they don't understand, but I don't mind when the same happens to me, so I couldn't care less about speaking my language in an English speaking country (although I would totally use the English language all the time if I were in an English speaking country)
 
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FAST6191

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This is a bit curious. I have no time for these 'speak English or go back to your own country' racist buffoons. It's natural that you'd use whatever language comes the most naturally for you. Why would two Polish people (for example) converse in any language except Polish?

I agree. I had just met the idea several times over the years.
One day I was at university and we were walking to another class or something, two people were from Greece and having a conversation in Greek. One then stopped and apologised and said sorry that was really rude, I should be speaking to (my other greek mate) in English.
More recently a guy that runs a restaurant I do some stuff for was having a conversation in French with his sister or maybe aunt, he apologised to the others in the room for it afterwards.
In both cases there were three or more theoretically non speakers around and nobody even thought to be offended, to notion that someone might be being just as strange to them as me. I have met it several other times over the years but the first one was the first and many years ago and the other one was the last time a few months ago.

As for why then some people do it for practice, some people do it because it is easier (most scientific, technological and engineering literature being written in English and you might well have only learned the English terms is a big one, though in some cases that means alternating a lot) and I have also seen it where someone might have forgotten the language or become less able to keep up (usually someone that had been speaking it until somewhat recently vs someone that might have been somewhere else for decades).

First, that's not my accent, I have been told that I have overall a neutral accent. :rofl: I don't have a British accent in any way.
I was not saying you did, just that is the voice my head read it in/imagined it in.

On neutral accents I would say the only people I have met with neutral accents have been deaf people, everybody else tends to have something. Granted some people call a standard accent a neutral one, Americans in particular sometimes call various midwestern accents neutral which is a curious choice of words and also few would mistake someone with such an accent for anything other than American. Some even seem to get quite upset about that if you say they do have an accent.
In your case even without word choice or pronunciation choice* would someone from Brazil be able to tell you are from Portugal and not just someone that learned it from a book or something?

*if I don't know French to that level I certainly don't know Portuguese (I know the differences can be somewhat more extreme than French or English between old world and new) but there have to be some words, grammar choices and such that you could make a normal sentence that is the same in both.
 

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Only English fluently, but can sorta kinda speak Latin and Italian. Can read and write all 3 just fine though. Too lazy to bother to learn more than that.
 

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