What a neat idea for a thread!

My mother tongue is Gujarati, a language spoken by Indians from the state of Gujarat located in west India. I can read and write this language and understand it to some level.
This is how it looks: (I constructed these sentences, but typed them on Google Translate. However, Google Translate is not 100% correct in pronunciation, so I wrote it out. Google doesn't contain all the alphabet, either, so I tried to do with what was there. )

કેમ છો? - Kem cho. How are you?

મારી નામ અસ્લાનીસ્થેબેસ્ત છે. - Mari nam aslanisthebest che. (literally, My name Aslanisthebest is.)

મને ચીચ્કેન ટીક્કા  ગમે છે. - Muhneh Chicken Tikka guhmeh che. (literally, I chicken tikka like do.) (the "uh" is not so strong, it's kind of pronounced like this: Məneh. gəmeh. The "eh" is not that soft either; it's kind of drawn out, but it's not pronounced like "ay"
I can construct simple sentences like that and speak things like that if I know the vocabulary, but sometimes we write in the alphabet but using English words.
Like,
નાીસ ડેય ટુડેય - literally pronounced, "Nice Day Today" (that circle there is supposed to be one letter [which Google translate did not have] which kind of stands for "uh" and pretty much can be used for vowels that stand alone if the entire vowel is not written out. I couldn't find the vowel for "ee" so I had to do with that. )

I am sad that I can't speak Gujarati yet, but I'm really grateful that my mom taught us the alphabet early so that we can read and write it.

My first language is practically English. Since we used to travel alot, my parents decided to teach us English primarily because it is basically a universal language. So, hence, I can speak, read, and write English and it's one of my favourite subjects. I love vocabulary and grammar and I really like reading the dictionary.

The third language I can read and write and to a very, very small extend understand and speak (speak is like the tiniest bit) is Swahili. Swahili is a really great language, and the neat thing is that it has quite a few English words (Degoreti, a location in Kenya, means "the great", for instance.) and it has quite a few words that are pretty much cognates with Gujarati and Hindi. Swahili is in the Roman alphabet, so it is easier to read than Gujarati, but it is a bit hard to speak for me.

Some Swahili phrases:

Hamjambo! - Hello/How are you?
Habari yako? - How are you?
Mzuri sana. - Very well.
Hakuna Matata. - No trouble. (This is probably already known, lol)
Shukurani. - Thank-you.
Roho yangu na ikuimbie, Jinsi Wewe ulivyo mkuu. - Then sings my soul, How great Thou Art.
Nikochini ya mwamba, na mwamba juu yangu, Yesu ni fiche, niko chini ya mwamba. Mwambia adui, niko chini ya mwamba. Yesu ni fiche, niko chini ya mwamba. - I am under the Rock and the Rock is higher than me, Jesus hides me, I am under the Rock. Go tell my enemies, I am under the Rock. Jesus hides me, I am under the Rock.

I know most of my Swahili from songs. (in fact, all the examples here are from songs)

For the past two years in school, we've been taking Spanish. I've enjoyed taking this one, as well, and can speak it on a conversational level on a very small scale. I can only speak in the present tense with -ar, -er, and -ir verbs with knowing what I'm doing, but I would definitely need a piece of paper. I know a little bit of conversational Spanish off my head. I think I can read it, but not write it very well unless it is vocabulary I am familiar with.

I would really, really love to learn Dutch. I am really interested in The Netherlands and Holland and would honestly love to visit there; I would like to learn the language some day or another. If I know it, I think I might be able to learn German, which I am also interested in learning.
I would really love to learn Egyptian, Hebrew, and Greek. Egyptian because I'm fascinated with Ancient Egyptian History and think it would be cool if I knew this (although this is basically a dream because it ties in with my dream to be an archeologist. ), and Hebrew and Greek because I think it would be beyond amazing to read the Old and New Testament in the original text. Learning Latin would be cool, too, but that's another dream that I'm not sure what I'd do with when I learn it unless I become an archeologist.

Well I know English, obviously

Hablo español. (I speak Spanish- a little rusty, but I took *counts in head* 6-ish yrs of Spanish in middle and high school)

Ich spreche Deutsch. (I speak German- only some though, I've only had 2 years.)

And I like to claim that I know basic domestic rabbit (But I'm not sure if the mods would rather I talk about that here or in the animal thread )

I'm fascinated by different ways of communication both human and non-human... I really want to continue German and Spanish lessons, but I'm not sure time will allow for in in college Perhaps I can take an online course though it won't be as good as having the professor there.

Some things I really find fascinating are cognates.

Ex. The word for "library" in Spanish is "biblioteca" and in German is "bibliothek." It really shows the different relations and infusions between languages.

What I don't like is genders... Spanish has two, and German has three... this affects what article you use in front of the noun and can be very confusing... (ex. Das Buch- gr. "the book" - is neuter, where as Die Lampe- the Lamp is feminine). Another thing I find odd is how everyone else seems to use commas for decimals and periods in the larger numbers... did English speaking people switch it up at some point... or am I just studying the mixed up languages?

Anyway who's up for trilingual counting?

(Eng-Sp-Ger)
One-Uno-Eins
Two-Dos-Zwie
Three-Tres-Drie
Four-Cuatro-Vier
Five-Cinco-Fünf
Six-Seis-Sechs
Seven-Siete-Sieben
Eight-Ocho-Acht
Nine-Nueve-Neun
Ten-Diez-Zhen

That's so neat that you know German, wolf! (along with Spanish and rabbit talk. xD )

Cognates between two languages, with one not being English, are interesting, yes! For instance, in Spanish, "mesa" means table, and in Swahili, "meza" is table. In Spanish, "peso" is money and in Gujarati, "paysa" is money.

Argh, I forgot about genders in languages--these trip me up a lot. Swahili and English don't have them, thankfully, but it's been a bit of a challenge keeping up with Spanish and Gujarati. Like German, Gujarati has three, but I haven't studied the grammatical construction in detail yet, so I'm not sure if something before the noun indicates the gender of the noun.

What's so neat about counting is that in nearly every language, the numbers all sound about the same.

wow, Bella, you sure know a lot of languages that's really awesome
it's so cool you know German wolfy, my great great granddad was German but I can't speak the language to save my life (my granddad speak it pretty well though ) and I envy all of you who can speak Spanish *sighs* such a beautiful language
well, I'm a native Russian speaker, but being bilingual, I speak English just as good I can understand a little Ukrainian as it somewhat resembles Russian, but I can't speak it (I do know a few words in Ukranian though )

so some interesting things about Russian
the alphabet consists of 33 letters: 21 consonants, 10 vowels, and two letters without sound - soft sign and hard sign.

it's a languages that also three genders, masculine, feminine and neutral, the nouns all have a genders and then you have to match the verbs and adjectives to the nouns. It can get pretty complicated at times, because endings on a word in Russian are extremely important, there are lots of different rules as to what sort of endings to put when, and you really have to just memorize them. For example in English you just say, I am a girl, I gave to the girl, I took from the girl, I am talking of a girl and so on, in Russian you would put a different ending on 'girl' each time

There are quite a bit of exception rules, like you hear it prounced one way, but you write it quite differently

I would really love to learn French and Spanish some day (those are my favorite languages)

I'd love to learn Russian! I think I'd struggle to without a real life teacher though, I have a friend who had the option to take a beginner's course in Russian at university and I'm always jealous that my university didn't offer it

I can speak just enough French to bumble along when I visit France, but I mean the bare minimum

I'm in the (life long) process of learning Irish, or 'Gaeilge' (gale-guh). Having Irish parents they did try to get me to learn when I was a child but for some reason or another I refused and never learned a thing, other than a couple of words that stuck in my head. But as I've got older I've become fascinated by the language and after falling in love with Irish language poets like Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill I decided to try again.
I've reached the point where I can read Irish fairly well which was half the battle It's not pronounced phonetically, from an English point of view anyway. I can carry on a reasonable conversation, although the rarity of the language means I don't get to do this often in real life. By coincidence I was talking to a doctor the other day who asked about my family history, and it turned out he spoke some Gaeilge too (much to the irritation of the nurse, who was trying to write down everything we said ).

A little background - Irish actually has three dialects: Ulster, Munster and Connacht. Generally if you know one you can more or less understand the other, although I find Connacht to be a bit outside the box sometimes (I've mostly learned Munster). It's pretty normal for someone who isn't learning Irish as a first language to wind up speaking a mix of dialects, which I'm pretty sure I do

Some helpful phrases -

Dia duit (jee-ah git, or jee-ah ditch) - Hello

This literally means 'God to you', and you respond with

Dia is Muire duit (jee-ah iss Mwir-ah git)

literally 'God and Mary to you'.

Conas tá tú? (kun-us TAW too) How are you?

Shantih is ainm dom (Shantih iss an-em dom) My name is Shantih

Go raibh maith agat (guh rev mah a-gut) Thank you

Slán (slawn) - Goodbye

Slán go fóill (slawn guh foll) Goodbye for now

Irish is gendered, the thing that I always have to try to remember with that is that often male nouns aren't aspirated, but female ones are. 'Aspiration' is when a word gains a 'h' and therefore the first consonant is relaxed. For example, a word like 'bean' (ban) woman, becomes 'an bhean' (un van) a woman, whereas a male noun would have remained the same.

Nikochini ya mwamba, na mwamba juu yangu, Yesu ni fiche, niko chini ya mwamba. Mwambia adui, niko chini ya mwamba. Yesu ni fiche, niko chini ya mwamba. - I am under the Rock and the Rock is higher than me, Jesus hides me, I am under the Rock. Go tell my enemies, I am under the Rock. Jesus hides me, I am under the Rock.

That's so pretty! Do you know of any singer online that I could listen to singing that?

wolfloversk Ah, another rusty/vague Spanish speaker! I can speak certain things, but I haven't practiced in years, and I certainly forget how to spell everything. *starts rambling off a string of Spanish numbers:* "11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20..."

wild rose Russian is so beautiful!
Shantih I'd love to learn Irish, but I thought it was called Gaelic? (Not Gaeilge) Do you know of any free online courses/sites...anything?

I know some German terms and phrases, some Spanish, & some Italian, but all very very very little amounts. I'd like to take up Italian or maybe Gaelic soon.

I've often considered learning some Italian, I have my Italian stepfather's surname so when I visit Italy or meet Italian people they assume I can speak some of the language...it's quite awkward

Shantih I'd love to learn Irish, but I thought it was called Gaelic? (Not Gaeilge) Do you know of any free online courses/sites...anything?

It certainly is a Gaelic language and it's not wrong to call it Gaelic, but it is a bit misleading. Gaelic refers to a group of languages that include Irish, Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) and Manx (from the Isle of Man). In Ireland a lot of people actually use the word Gaelic to refer to Gaelic football, so saying "I'm going to learn Gaelic" will have people probably thinking you want to pick up a sport So it's a toss up between calling it Irish, or Gaeilge. Since a lot of people aren't aware that it's not actually called Gaelic I tend to ease into it by calling it Irish Gaelic to start and then dropping the Gaelic later in the conversation And then I call it Gaeilge to other speakers.

http://www.bitesizeirishgaelic.com/ is a nice starter for learning Irish, it is a paying site but you can try out the first five lessons for free and they teach you greetings, counting, asking how someone is and replying, and basic conversation.

Thanks, Wrose!! That is so cool that Russian is your native language and that you can read, write, and speak two languages fluently. Russian is such a lovely language; the alphabet is so fascinating! I'd love to learn Russian one day. *adds it to her dream-list of languages to learn* That's really interesting about the endings!

Shantih, I've always thought Gaeilge (thanks for the info on what to call it. ) sounds so beautiful. That's really neat that you are familiar with it, seeing how it is becoming a rare language.

Thanks, AslansChild! I'm trying to find something on youtube, but am unsuccessful. :/ For reading it, though, Swahili is much like Spanish in that it is phonetically pronounced how it is written. (you pronounce Swahili vowels precisely the way you pronounce Spanish vowels. "a" is like the first "a" in armadillo, "e" is like the "e" in kettle, "i" is like "ee" in keen, "o" is like the "oa" in road and "u" is like the "oo" in cool.) Everything else is pronounced just as it is written.

That's awesome that you know some German, Spanish, and Italian! I know about .00001% of Italian adjectives due to music, but that's about it.

Je sais vous parliez des langues étrangères, mais, je besoin parler dans un langue étrangère. Je parle français un petit peu--je l'étudie à mon université. Je n'ai pas la chance utiliser, à moins que DiGs parle avec moi.

Spoiler

I know you are talking about foreign languages, but I would like to speak a foreign language. I speak a little French--I study it at my college. I don't have much chance to practice it, unless DiGs talks with me.

I certainly forget how to spell everything.

Yo también

I suppose I should practice a little spanish:

Me llamo wolfloversk. Tengo un conejo, se llama Fluffy, un cobayo, Quorra, y dos gatos, Whitey y Nosey.

And since that nearly came out as German, I'll switch.

Ich habe zwei ältere Brüder. Ich bin aus New York und ich bin eine Studentin. Mien Hauptfact ist Zoologie.

Also something interesting to note: both Spanish and German speakers say "It pleases me" rather than "I like it" In Spanish "Me gusta..." and german "...gefällt mir" However Germans have other ways of saying that they like something too, such as the word "gern" or the verb "mögen"

I posted in the last language thread; the last post, actually. I started writing up a new post for this thread, but i worded it better last time, so i'll just quote it. Here's hoping i don't kill this one, too.

I have a definite interest in other languages, but the only language apart from English that i can "speak" with any fluency is ASL. I'm not exactly fluent in that either, but i've taken a number of classes and with enough patience, i can communicate fine. I'm thinking about working toward becoming a certified interpreter.

Like unto ASL, i've studied Spanish on again/off again for several years, and with some guesswork i can read most labels. An actual conversation, unless it involves princes and princesses playing drums in the tower (thank you, Spanish course), is beyond my capabilities, unless the other person also speaks some English.

I understand a very little French/German/Latin (could get the gist of the earlier French conversations), and while i would like to learn French, i've never taken any kind of class in it. I have a couple books on learning German, but i've lost the earlier one. Studied Latin a little in school, but again, largely guesswork.

I was fortunate enough to take two mission trips - one to Zambia, one to Brazil - and picked up some language while i was there. They learn English in primary school in Zambia, so mostly i picked up songs there. We had an interpreter in Brazil, but she couldn't be everywhere at once, so we made do with a mixture Spanish, English, and Portuguese, with some help from a 100-word dictionary designed for tourists. I have some very fond memories of conversing in this mixed dialect.

Anyone ever hear of Esperanto? I've looked into it once or twice (you can learn it on-line from several different places), but while i'm interested, self-motivation has never been one of my strengths.

Someone mentioned accents - i think the South Africans have a beautiful one. I tend to pick up accents if i hang around someone long enough, but i'm not very good at remembering them, and they usually fall apart if i try and speak with one for too long.

So, yeah. Like i said, a definite interest (and some natural talent) at languages, but not much actual skill.

Evening! (Goedenavond!)

I'm learning Dutch at the moment. I plan to take an internship in Holland soon, so I figured it'd probably be a good idea to start learning their language.

Very interesting to see such a wide variety of languages that people are learning and know on this forum.

Shantih, Irish sounds so cool, I saw documentery once about Irish in America and there was one part there where something was said in Irish (I think it was a song or poem or something, can't remember exactly cause I saw the documetery when I was like 9, maybe younger) and it was really beautiful and I really liked it. I dream of learning it someday. Is it a very difficult language?

Thanks to all who said Russian is a beautiful language it used to be more beautiful, it's quite a fact that Russian has become poorer since Peter the Great, and now with all the slang, it's getting even worse

There's also such a thing known as the Slavic Language (Slavanski) which is like the pre-Russian language, no one speaks it now, but we do have what is callged Tserkovno Slavanski (Church Slavic) and that is the language that most sermons in the Orthodox Church are sung in, it's sort of the language of the church, similar to modern day Russian, if you know Russian you can understand it pretty well, it also helps to be aquainted with older Russian language and terms used before. Church books are written in it, I tried my hand at it in calligraphy class, it's a beautiful language

One thing I find really interesting is that every language has certain sayings thtat if you translate them they sound so weird like in Russian we have a saying when a person is very suprised or shocked that his eyes climbed up to his forehead....but as you see in English it sound SO weird
Same thing in English, I was translating some English sayings in Russian and I was like 'huh, this doesn't make any sense, someone remind me why I decided to do this )

That is so beyond neat, The Grey Pilgrim!!

Wrose, I like that Russian expression and can see how it applies. One Gujarati expression that sounds a bit humorous and makes sense, too, is: when someone is about to die, they say "One foot in in the grave and the other on a banana peel." When I heard that for the first time, I cracked up. When looking up translations when studying Swahili, sometimes really interesting but nonsensical things come up.