Are there any polyglots here on lit? I speak five languages and

That's bullshit but I choose to believe it.

So far I can read in spanish and english. I can get by in french but am working on it.

after this I'm learning russian

>I maintain fluency in five languages and I still shitpost on 4chan

Except you're lying

>>7945692
I can read 5 languages, but with 2 of those with difficulty and not enough to read a serious literary work in it. I found that the only thing that really works to maintain and improve your skills is good old practice.

I speak 4 and never did anything to purposedly improve them. My parents speak different languages than the one which is spoken in my country so it's only natural I ended up speaking a few

I learned my mother's first language first, then the language of my country as I started school, then it was easy to pick up on my father's language when I started studying it in school because I was already good at it, and then of course English because it's 2016

I find it difficult to muster the motivation to learn more languages than I absolutely need. 2 is all I'll ever need. There is more literature in just one of my languages than I could ever hope to read.

I speak 4 languages but can read in 9 languages. Learning Dutch right now which will make it 5 spoken and 10 readable but after Dutch I plan to make it 11 readable with Akkadian.

Speak: English, Latin, French, Ancient Greek
Read: The above plus Koine Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Middle English, Old Norse

>>7945740
top quality bait

>>7945692
Four. English, Spanish, Japanese, and French.

English and Spanish are perfect as I went to school in the US and my Mexican parents made sure I was tutored in spanish so I would write and read well in that lanuage also.

Japanese and French was a hobby throughout my youth, and it easy to grasp the language differences as I had experience as a complete bilingual.

I spent a year in Japan and even managed to read well enough to read simple novels, but I've forgotten a lot of kanji as I don't practice it often.

French is great read, but still don't speak as well as I wish I did as I've not spent a prolonged time in a french speaking country.

>>7945692
I used to speak 5 fluently , but ever since I had a personal crisis I lost all my skills and natural talent and I'm back at square one. I even lost my ability to speak my native language.It's like I'm too self aware of what I'm saying, of the grammatical constructions and then I end up saying absolutely nothing, just a series of individual words that together make absolutely no sense. It's driving me crazy.
Please help me.

>>7945719
You'll find thay most people who speak many languages are european who live in a small continent with multitude of different languages and cultures right around the corner.

American's only really have Spanish and English speaking countries nearby, so they tend to default to those two and only learn more for cultural purposes.

>>7945692
>Also which languages do you speak?
I know the language of love and therefore I can communicate with everyone.

>>7945748
ITS NOT BAIT BUDDY I DIDNR FUCKEN SPENT 10 HOURS Q DAY STUDYIBG TO HEAR YOUR BULLSHIT, mate. Don't ever reply to mevagsib.

But seriously this is what I'm learning right now. Kiss my anus because I was born bilingual with French and English out my mom's vagina. I learned Latin and Greek in two years during college. Biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek took less than a year. Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse took over a year. I'm now learning Dutch from Duolingo, Memrise and Michel Thomas. I will tell you what I used to learn each one if you really want to know. It took about a decade of learning to acquire these skills, so please don't undermine my net worth, honey.

>>7945778
you "speak" Latin and old greek even though no one is really sure how it was pronounced?

>>7945787
Common misconception.

>>7945692
I speak 3, can read 5
I tried Japanese, the teacher was basically a weeb Sheldon Cooper and got tired of it.
I thought about German, but I don't know anymore because muh migration.
I'll probably take French, because of proximity.
Haven't thought of any other language, being fluent both in Spanish and English is basically everything I need for now

>inb4 spic
no.

I'm a linguistics major. Competent in French and German, fairly fluent in Japanese, and I want to add either Korean or Mandarin to the list at some point, but I also want to learn ancient greek because muh Aeschylus.

Going off of that, anyone have experience learning Ancient Greek? Textbook recommendations?

I speak three. I guess that's not really up there in impressive numbers, but I'm British and most English speakers don't learn another at all.
I learnt German at school, then I did my degree in German and Russian.

>>7946057

as a linguistics major, are people fluent only in their native language looked down upon? Are you expected/required to be at least bilingual?

>>7945707
What one thing has to do with the other?

>>7946648
No.

Native spanish speaker. Fluent in english. Currently studying german (and german is my favorite language so far, so this one won't be "oh, I reached B1, I can stop now. It will be a lifetime project instead, I want to improve my german throughout my entire life). Studied portuguese for a semester, I can't remember all of it, but thanks to my spanish background I can communicate quite easily with a strong Rio accent, even though I'd like to improve my european accent.

Want to learn: French (not a priority, since it's a romance language), Japanese, Russian, Swedish, Czech, Dutch, and either Arabic or Mandarin.

File: 1457883909987.png (194KB, 311x435px) Image search: [Google]

194KB, 311x435px

>>7945692
I speak Spanish and English on a shit level. Spanish is my native language, so there's nothing to be said there. English is a different story however. Having two years in school where every class was in English helped, but I think the biggest thing was watching dubbed cartoons and copious amounts of videogames. The former was especially nice since I got to watch dubbed versions, connecting both languages little by little. I tried to give Japanese a go on the University, but it was extremely boring, moreover when it wasn't scheduled every single day. I can read a few Kanjis, about 100 of them, but that's about it.

>>7946691
there is literally no reason for you to improve on your european portuguese accent except for hipster points
t. Portuguese person

keep the BR accent, it's beautiful and can prove much more useful (don't tell my family I said this)

>>7946705
I like both BR and EU pronunciations actually, I don't know, I guess I just like to "fully explore" the languages that I learn, that's why I also memorized the pronunciation rules and some slight style changes of european spanish, to have a broader knowledge of it. Fun fact: In latin America, uneducated people think that "vosotros" and its conjugations are some kind of ultra-formal way of saying you (2nd person singular) while in fact it is an INFORMAL 2nd person plural.

>>7946648
At my college (CSU) it is required that you take at least two languages beyond English in order to graduate. At other schools it might be different, but I wouldn't look down on anyone only fluent in their native language. Learning a language is hard especially when you don't acquire it at a time when your brain is most poised to do so (childhood).

>>7945692
I speak English and some Russian, and I can read some Swedish.

For Russian and really for any language, going out and speaking to people in the language is how you learn better. Reading also helps, but I found talking to others really lets you get the cases, grammar, etc. right because it forces you to do it on the spot without thinking.

File: muyfani.jpg (59KB, 600x451px) Image search: [Google]

59KB, 600x451px

spanish & english, because spic.

I do want to pick up french though. the transition from one romance language to another shouldn't be a hassle what some say.

How on Earth do you self study a language? I've never really progressed beyond having a crack at audio courses and dicking around on Duolingo and I've been in the country of my target language for two years now.

I'm still A1.

Fluent in English and Persian (read at a middle school level, and write at an elementary school level), can read/write some Spanish but can't speak well, can read a little bit of Arabic without understanding because it is the same as Persian.

Also know basic Japanese phrases from when I would watch animu

I wish I knew more.

>>7949139
if you pick up a teapot and put the spout in your urethra it sounds like the persian language a bit

>>7949143
I find that a bit ignorant considering Persian is actually extremely pretty and soft.

>>7949146
if the teapot has freshly brewed green leaf tea itll sound very much like persian...but if its a bag of earl gray its more like czech

>>7946692
How the hell would dubs help you learn languages?

I'm only fluent speaking and reading English, but I'm currently studying Russian. I'm surprised how many polyglots turned up, I didn't think /lit/ read in any languages, let alone multiple.

>>7945740

Keking hard here lad.

>>7945692
I speak French, English and Arabic (I can't read it though). I can read in Spanish and I know a few Japanese Words.

>>7949312
I don't know but check these dubs right here

>>7949366
OH SHIT

File: dwWpG1Jb.jpg (14KB, 160x160px) Image search: [Google]

14KB, 160x160px

>>7949366
Kek be praised

I speak 6 and I can read in all of them.

Dutch (native)
English
Italian
French
German
Afrikaans, which I learnt in two weeks.

I need a dictionary if I'm reading complex books in German or French, but that's it.

My native tongue, English and Spanish. I tried to learn a lot of different languages over the years, including French, Latin and German. Never had the focus to actually learn any of them to a satisfying degree. Now I'll try Japanese. I want to know an Asian language. Hopefully I don't quit after 6 months.

the #1 thing i learned by going to university is that literally everyone is lying about their knowledge of languages, because the vast majority of them just don't know how "knowing a language" actually works

>girl in my class "knows german", later turns out she can barely, fumblingly read some 101 vocab
>girl in my class "is french" and "knows french", has one french parent and can kind of grope way through a newspaper article, gets destroyed when actual french person shows up
>guy says he "knows german and french and latin" for his degree, actually did a piss-easy pass-fail/non-grade course eight years prior and can't remember a thing in any of them
>guy says he "knows norse", means he passed a 101 course
>guy says he "knows latin/greek", means he passed a 101 course (aka me)
>guy says he "knows spanish", means "took it in high school, can ask where a restaurant is in unbearable gringo accent and totally intends to actually learn it some day!!"
>guy says he "knows italian", watch him read a basic italian sentence that even i can tell is saying "the man ate the ______" and he's like "UHH.. SOMETHING.. SOMETHING TO DO WITH FOOD? THE GUY WANTS.. FOOD?"
>professor of german history gets destroyed in german language conversation with an actual german professor from germany
>professor of russian history gets destroyed in russian conversation with native russian student
>professor of persian lists "Persian (with dictionary + grammar)" in his CV
>professor of arabic history barely knows MSA
>9th year machiavellian/florentine studies TA can't speak colloquial italian

nonstop

fucking nonstop

everyone is just lying all the time

every single one of the above people told me "I know [language]."

>>7949463
I'm guilty of doing this a few years ago when I told people "I know German" when in reality I only knew basic conversational skills and I could only write certain things in German which I've totally forgotten. I've learned not to lie about my language skills and I don't know any German.

>>7949463
Or, you know, there could be actual people with an actual interest in foreign languages. I'm dead serious when I say that I have an obsession with german. I even stopped reading my Kafka's books because I want to experience them in german first.

>>7949463

This happens a lot at my university as well. I took a class on ancient law and when my professor tried to read a sentence in Ancient Greek, he looked over it quickly, started translating like "well, essentially, the gist of the sentence is that the, uh, well.... it's not that important anyoway". He claimed reading fluency in Latin and Greek. What a jabroni.

>>7949312
I watched the damn thing countless of times in English and Spanish. Words stick to you if most of your time is being exposed to them. That and I was a child.

>>7949366
Nice, check my singles.

File: westgermanictree.png (52KB, 1289x1249px) Image search: [Google]

52KB, 1289x1249px

there is an arrogant indian kid at my school who claims to speak 10 languages.
>english, cuz murica
>hindi, marathi and one other indian language because he is indian
>french, even though he has only been taking it for 2 years (american language teaching is retarded as hell)
>spanish, even though he knows like 3 words
>german, same thing^
>dutch, same thing^
>polish, could maybe half pronounce one word
>russian, same thing^
GGRRAAHH I FUCKING HATE THIS TYPE OF PERSON
technically, using the indian kid's strategy, i could claim to speak german, low german, old english, middle english, welsh, west frisian, old norse, dutch, and spanish; but i only claim to know english (native) and dutch with some fluency in written language
how do i
ugh
ugh

>>7949593
holy shit teenage girl

post your feet please

>>7945692
currently bilingual but i want to learn basic german and ancient greek. interested in this thread.