Polyglots unite!

1 year of elementary Latin
German language school, USDOD. Lived in Germany for 8 years.

My German is conversational, but my Latin sucks. I sometimes converse in German with German dealers, but as far as reading Latin, um, let's just say I depend on others for help.

 

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In my time at school in the sixties, we had to learn Dutch (my mother tongue), English, French, German, Latin and Greek. I was imbued with a facility of learning languages, but alas, rather lazy. Collecting coins induced me to study Middle Persian (I would have been the only student), but in the end I didn't. I followed a course of Arabic but never learned to read it, grrrr.... Some dabbling in Russian and Czech and Modern Greek, but not enough. Lazy times, taking life too easy... Now I'm sixty plus, it's very hard to learn what was easy forty years ago.

So I have to accept there's a little bit of all those languages in my brain attic and do the best I can with that little.

 

I speak English natively, and am learning classical Latin currently. I plan to learn classical Greek as well. Through my research I know the Greek alphabet (upper and lowercase), most of the Russian alphabet (that is, any letters that are derived from Greek, I become clueless when it gets Glagolitic). I know two words in Russian, Спасибо (thank you) and яблоко (apple). To show you how much I don’t know about Russian, I didn’t even know how to spell the words, only how to say them. I know some Chinese characters (and by extension some Japanese Kanji), but they are mostly restricted to various dynasty and reign titles and a cursory Tong Bao. I know all the Chinese numbers. The only Chinese characters I can truly translate is 明 (Ming, meaning “bright”) and 通 (Bao, meaning “treasure”). The rest all mean nothing to me in English. I took one year of Spanish but what I have learned has deserted me. However, I have found I am able to guess at the meaning of a Spanish word a bit better since I started taking Latin. Latin does help a bit in that regard, because it gives it some practical use. I always have figured that once I am finished with Latin I would like to learn Italian. Anyway, what I am really trying to say is that I know bits and pieces of some languages, but full languages are currently not on my radar as of yet except for Latin.

 

I can speak, write, and even swear fluently in four languages: english, german, spanish and french. At home we speak at least 3 of those on a daily basis.

Besides being useful in my profession (technical consultant), the most utility for me has come from being able to read numismatic works and participate in coin forums
in the various languages.

 

Greek & English speaker read and write both, some spanish I am fluent in the swear words. Spanish has a similair cadence to Greek I feel, I use an app that teaches Italian but havent used it in a while... sure is a sexy language, I know the Phoenician alphabet too does that count for something ? if so add that to my stats up on the big board