How many languages do you speak?

Submitted by JapisCool on April 20, 2025
Multilinguals of JetPunk, how many languages do you speak? And how good are you on it? And if you can, please explain how you learned them.

To start off, I speak 3, which would be Filipino, English, and Russian. I currently live in Russia which explains why I know it.

I can also understand Spanish, but cannot utter a single sentence due to the fact that I only learn it from school.

28 Comments
+5
Level 61
Apr 20, 2025
2 - Greek and English
+3
Level 69
Apr 20, 2025
3 - Armenian, English, Spanish

Born in Armenia, Armenian is my first language, learned English by immersion into American culture, and learned Spanish in high school

+1
Level 17
Apr 20, 2025
Interesting, how's your Russian? Did you also study it in school?
+1
Level 69
Apr 20, 2025
Yes, we had to study it in school, but I am currently in the American public school system and have not received any education in the Russian language in many years. I cannot speak or read Russian fluently.
+3
Level 55
Apr 20, 2025
Polish, English and learning German
+2
Level 58
Apr 20, 2025
Swedish, English and I’m learning German
+3
Level 92
Apr 20, 2025
1. The language I'm currently using.

I took one year of Spanish in my Freshman year but didn't retain much of it. The thing I remember the most of Jugo de Naranja. Which is sort of a random thing to remember lol

+6
Level 66
Apr 20, 2025
Four - English (native), French, German and Spanish

My route was almost fully academic. I started in secondary school: French aged 11 and German and Spanish aged 12 (if you don’t count the pretty elementary French and Spanish lessons I had in primary school).

I did all three for GCSE (national exams you take when you’re 16) and A Level (national school leavers’ exams when you’re 18 which are used to determine your university place). As far as I’m aware, I’m the only person in the history of my secondary school to take all three at A Level.

I then got a First in a triple honours degree studying all three at the university. As part of my degree, I did a year abroad in Lyon (French has always been my strongest anyway).

I also spent time teaching French in a primary school in Scotland and all three in a secondary school here in England.

Without meaning to sound arrogant, language learning has always just been something that comes naturally to me.

+2
Level 57
Apr 30, 2025
You sound like one of my old teachers, who is also fluent in all of those languages and has conversational skills in many others.
+1
Level 30
Apr 20, 2025
100
+1
Level 63
Apr 20, 2025
"Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks." – José Rizal
+1
Level 33
Apr 21, 2025
French by nature

English (learning at school but I have all ly parameters in English. Objective: be bilingual before 2027)

Spanish (at school too, Tengo muchas dificultades)

+2
Level 78
Apr 21, 2025
My mother's tongue is Croatian. I'm not willing to argue whether Serbo-Croatian is one or four separate languages, but I can understand people from different parts of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to various degree. I actively speak English and Slovene to some degree, and I learnt German for years but kept forgetting much of vocabulary. Latin was mandatory in my high school and is omnipresent in my profession. Now I'm learning Slovak and once I hopefully get better at it, I'll give a try to Romanian (although I'm already aware of some serious obstacles in that language).
+1
Level 81
Apr 21, 2025
What profession uses Latin ? The only two I can think of would be horticulture/zoology (plant or animal names), or the clergy?
+2
Level 78
Apr 21, 2025
Well, you guessed it, I'm a horticulture major. Medicine, pharmacy, astronomy, etc. also use Latin terms.
+1
Level 81
Apr 21, 2025
I didn't realise so many professions used Latin.
+1
Level 81
Apr 21, 2025
English (my first language). I can get by in French, Italian and German, plus a few words in Spanish. I am nowhere near fluent in any of them, some would also say in English. I am OK with menus, and for directions, but that is about it.

I know a few swear words in Polish, Greek, and Dutch !

+3
Level 63
Apr 21, 2025
holy lag spike bro made 4 comments
+1
Level 81
Apr 21, 2025
oops, 3 deleted!
+2
Level 61
Apr 21, 2025
English, Spanish (fairly proficient), & Bengali (receptive bilingual)

- English, from living in the US for 14 years

- Spanish from 7 years of Spanish through middle & high school; a trip to Costa Rica really helped fluency

- Bengali, since my family is from West Bengal; strangely, while I can understand it fluently, I struggle to speak it, always selecting words adjacent to or rhyming to the one I intend

E.G. house = "bari" & car = "gari", but I'll mix them up when trying to formulate a sentence

I like languages a bunch, so I can recognize them & like spotting patterns, plus some similarities (e.g. Portuguese & Spanish, similar words in French, German) but those 3 are the ones I know best. Would love to learn some more!

+1
Level 48
Apr 21, 2025
English is my native language, and the only one I'm actually proficient in speaking. I've been learning French for 7 years, but I'm much better at reading/writing than speaking, and I can understand a bit just listening. I started learning Irish last year, and that's a work in progress
+1
Level 47
Apr 21, 2025
I would say five:

English, Azerbaijani, Russian - Native proficiency

Turkish - Full professional proficiency

Japanese - Elementary proficiency

+2
Level 55
Apr 22, 2025
I can speak

Urdu - fluently(native).

English - Not so fluent.

Pashto - Struggles a little bit.

Punjabi - Can understand completely but hard to speak.

I am trying to learn Gurmukhi and Devanagari script to unlock Hindi and Punjabi for myself.

+1
Level 78
Apr 22, 2025
I know English (from the time I was in an English medium kindergarten at the age of 2 1/2).

I know a Marwadi dialect ( Rajasthani) since that’s technically my mother tongue, though I hardly get to speak that since most of my relatives talk to me and each other mainly in English.

I know Marathi (the local language in Maharashtra) and Hindi ( the national language spoken by much of North India), and a bit of Russian ( I can read it and write it and understand a bit of it) since I learnt a bit of that in college but have had no practise. :). Did a year of French in school so I know a bit of that.

I can understand bits of and know a few words of other Indo-European and Asian languages as well like Spanish, Gujarati, Turkish, Punjabi and Italian.

+1
Level 78
Apr 22, 2025
And weirdly, I speak all these languages with the same accent …😅
+1
Level 17
Apr 25, 2025
theres nothing wrong with that
+1
Level 63
Apr 22, 2025
five:

Polish (N)

English (B2/C1)

Russian (B1)

German (A2)

French (A1)

+1
Level 48
Apr 23, 2025
3

Polish

English

Russian