What languages can you speak fluently?

Many interests, few pursued. If anyone saw the previous thread, I am still grudgingly trudging along with Spanish. I am not enjoying the Latin American experience, and will probably forget all that's been learned come next year... Obligation may only drag you so far.

I will likely be studying abroad soon, though, so I can't not learn the native tongue? Yes? Foolproof, I can't wiggle my way out of this one.

 

No reason to get all defensive, I agree. You are blessed to speak the tongue of... the numbers, the whizzes of our society. Math. All it is to me is squiggly lines, scribbles on a piece of paper. I can barely understand it, let alone "speak" it (and if I ace any test, it is because I am memorizing. that is, as with any other language, not learning). Mathematicians form a closed society, and I would like in on this exclusive group. I guess such is the case with all speakers, though, anyone who does not speak their tongue is left out. It's sad. I want in.

Think of all the wonderful conversations to be had.

 

I don't speak a hundred different languages like every person at school seems to think I do. I really only speak two: English and [Mexican] Spanish.

I'm half-fluent in Italian, can understand just a tad of German, a bit of Russian, and very little Japanese, but that's it.​

 

im fluent in sarcasm :3 but seriously, im starting to learn japanese. and one of my primary ways of learning is through watching anime and other japanese things.

 

I beg to defer on the mathematics claim. Mathematics is not a form of expression so much as a system that can be observed. You cannot express or communicate anything but mathematics itself using mathematics. It has no outlet for personal expression to my knowledge.

 

English and moderate french I guess. i know certain phrases in italian and german due to musical backgroudn and can extrapolate certain amounts of latin from italian and french.

 

i speak chinese(little),english,indonesian
i also speak hokkien a little but didn't understand the meaning ( a little bit)
im interest of leaning japanese only....
i know how to speak the word but can't understand there meaning either

 

I speak English and Portuguese. I consider myself to be a better English speaker than a Portuguese speaker since my speech is much more fluid in English when I'm not muttering and when I speak English, I don't really have to think about what I'm saying and the words just come to me naturally whereas with Portuguese, my speech is a little jumbled up and I speak with an American accent(according to my friends and family) and it requires more thought to speak since I think about whether or not I conjugating correctly or whether this noun is masculine or feminine unlike my friends who are native speakers and thus speak it more naturally. Although they have mentioned that I do know how to speak Portuguese more correctly than they do and that I'm improving since I'm starting to respond to things much more quickly and naturally. So I am making a lot of progress for somebody who only started to learn the language 3 years ago. 8'D

I also have a passing knowledge of Spanish, Italian and French because I'm able to extrapolate from my current knowledge of Portuguese and the Romance languages also have a lot in common. The grammar amongst the languages is quite similar so if you know one, the only thing that becomes difficult afterwards is the vocabulary. And I know some Japanese. Although I've only been studying it on and off so my knowledge of it is still basic.

 

I can only speak English. I can understand Tagalog but cannot speak or write it. This is probably thanks to English being a national language in the Philippines: I've never had to force myself to speak Tagalog so others can understand me. Important broadcasts in the Philippines are aired in English because it's used as a common language among Philippine's many different major languages and dialects.

I wish to someday be able to speak and understand Norwegian and German.

Sound is, by definition, the vibration of matter.
And a radio is a device that transmits and receives electromagnetic waves.
And computers calculate nothing but zeros and ones, true and false. Just using on and off states (the binary numeral system), you can communicate just about anything, including text, audio and images (the binary equivalent of the character "a" is "01100001"). Even Morse code is a form of digital code. And I would argue that mathematics is the only truly universal language (quoting from the movie Contact [highly recommended]), as it could transcend sight, sound and races (and species).

Because "01100001" may not hold any semantics by itself just as the phrase "mahal kita" may not hold any meaning to those that don't understand Filipino, doesn't mean it can't be translated to something more meaningful. As we do with sound, we can manipulate numbers as a form of communication.

I suggest people reading this look up Jean-Dominique Bauby.

 

I speak both English and Traditional Spanish fluently. I found this can be annoying at the daycare when I'm getting paged, saying "Can you translate this? What did he say?" when I've got about a bajillion other things I need to do.

Give me another week or two and I will begin learning Mandarin for my new job starting in August. I'm a little afraid of that.

 

Digital language is not the same as mathematics. When I think of mathematics, I do not think of numbers, I think of the processes of adding and subtracting and multiplying them; I think of formulas. You can say that a number or a set of numbers is similar to a character in an alphabet, but mathematics itself is not a way to communicate with another person. At best, you can use numbers to create an encryption for another language, but mathematics itself, as in the solving of problems using axioms, is not a form of self expression.

Unless I am still missing something crucial.

 

Aren't all digital code systems mathematics—a system of encoding and decoding information using a commonly agreed upon algorithmic standard? You can say the same for words and symbols. Somehow the word "love" (the letters L O V and E put together [pronounced luhv]) came to have its definition, and those that understand English agree with this definition. Understanding a language is the act of interpreting a sequence of sounds or symbols from a given alphabet to derive meaning. All words are given a predefined meaning, and all languages have to be interpreted against a set of rules to be understood, thus languages are formulas, so languages themselves are a form of mathematics (I've just discovered this on my own today so don't think me an expert). As for numbers, I agree that numbers can only serve as a container or medium of other languages to be understood by humans, but the fact we can derive meaning from it at all I think makes it a language in of itself.

 

However, my point is that someone who is not familiar with the word love is not going to be able to observe those characters and derive the meaning under any circumstances. Even if you consider it an encoding, no amount of decoding is going to help them realize the meaning of those characters. Language is a man-made construct that is agreed upon and explained between individuals and the meaning cannot be derived from objective observation of the characters themselves. While you can use mathematics to create a language—in fact, you could get a bunch of formulas and use them as characters—no one would be able to derive the meaning of that language based on the math alone, so it will always be a medium for other things and not a language in itself.

 

Any bilingual member here probably knows that translation is treason. Each language was built and evolved in order to suit special needs, you cannot wrap just any idea around a given language efficiently. Mathematics, being a language, is no exception.

We could also mention programming languages. BTW, did you know the LOLCAT language evolved into LOLCODE, a functional programming language ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE

 

My argument still stands. You cannot use mathematics for self-expression without a translation of sorts.

 

For self expression ? No, unless you bend it :

1 <3 u

--<3<3--<3<3----
-<3<3<3<3<3<3--
--<3<3<3<3<3---
---<3<3<3<3----
----<3<3<3-----
------<3--------


For expression ? Yes.

 

A debate in a "What languages do you speak?" thread... Are there no depths you people won't sink to?

I'm fluent in Dutch and English, and rusty in French and German (the latter more so than the former). I don't think I could still have a decent conversation in the latter languages, but I guess I could understand most written texts if the vocabulary used wouldn't be too eloquent.