Who here has English has their second language?

[HeathcliffMontague]

Or third or fourth, whatever. Please keep it civil. Certainly a second one for me, as I keep discovering new terms all the time. Scandi here.

I understand German very well, can sort of survive in France. As much as I love Spain, you lot speak freaking fast  
 
Vietnamese I tried and failed at, as a Northern European. Mods, this is at least tangentially related to SL, as we have a global crowd in this virtual world of ours

[Alwin Alcott]

second ..
Dutch
English
most South African ( strong related to dutch, same origin some hundred of year ago)
a little German
even less French
primary should even be Zeeuws, my real native language, but they refuse to declaire it official, it's a dialect.

[Sid Nagy]

I'm Dutch, so Dutch is my first language.
I live in the province Limburg, that has it's own dialect. So that is my second language.
Than there is English that I handle pretty well, just like German (I live about 2 miles from the German border). So those are number 3 and 4.
I know enough French to get around in France without starving, but a real conversation in that language is way above my possibilities.
I can read South African pretty good (As Alwin already explained, it has a Dutch origin, but they have drifted apart pretty much over the years, much more than US and UK English did.)

And than there is this: I can be silent in almost every language of the world.
And there are more than 5000 of them!  Amazing or what?

Edited September 14 by Sid Nagy
Improvements and.... it's Saturday. The best day of the week to edit.

[Dorientje Woller]

3 hours ago, Sid Nagy said:

I live in the province Limburg, that has it's own dialect. So that is my second language

So, everything goes slow in your life  Don't worry, peeps, it's a Flemish goof between our provinces.

[Janet Voxel]

English is my second language.

French is my first, although most French will disagree, because I’m from Quebec and it has its……quirks. 400 years and an ocean will do that to you. I also have a Joual accent (think working class Québécois) because of the neighborhood I grew up in.

I can also understand Haitian Kreyol, Spanish and Portuguese pretty well.

[Ishka Magic]

Second to me. Started to learn it at school and then through the interwebs and SL. Still learning though

Native is german

 

And I can do typo in both, fluent!

 

 

Edited September 14 by Ishka Magic
Typo XD

[Sid Nagy]

16 minutes ago, Ishka Magic said:

And I can do typo in both, fluent!

If typo was a language, it would be my native one.

Edited September 14 by Sid Nagy

[Caitlin Tobias]

I am Dutch, and English is my second language. I also speak a bit of German and French. And a lot of nonsense.

[Stephanie Misfit]

I envy people who can speak multiple languages. The study of different languages is not really valued in Australia.

[Ishka Magic]

3 hours ago, Stephanie Misfit said:

I envy people who can speak multiple languages. The study of different languages is not really valued in Australia.

But isn't english like 9 languages in a trenchcoat?

Edited September 15 by Ishka Magic

[Alwin Alcott]

1 hour ago, Stephanie Misfit said:

I envy people who can speak multiple languages. The study of different languages is not really valued in Australia.

i don't know how it is now, but english lessons start at 6-12 yrs of age, and in the 13-16 yrs education group,  english, french and german lessons was pretty common in the Netherlands

[Sid Nagy]

4 hours ago, Stephanie Misfit said:

I envy people who can speak multiple languages. The study of different languages is not really valued in Australia.

To learn some English is almost mandatory these days for people from the non English speaking countries of the world, because of the Internet and all the new aspects it opened up, such as international online platforms like Second Life. On a continent like Australia, where everybody speaks English, there is no real need to learn a second language.

Compare that with the EU: It hosts 24 official languages. Then it becomes handy to know at least a bit of the languages from the neighboring countries, if one visits them regularly (or if one watches their TV channels).  So it is logical that Europeans tend to know more languages, than people that have a native English tongue.

Edited September 15 by Sid Nagy

[Orwar]

   English is a secondary language for me. I can understand a fair bit of Norwegian (they just use the occasional weird word and speak as if they're mid-orgasm) and some Danish and almost as much German (Germans tend to speak more articulate, Danes mash their words, so even though it's linguistically closer they end up about similar). Icelandic and Dutch both can be hit or miss, some words are similar or even basically the same, other times not so much. 

   My primary language is Swedish, usually spoken (and written, in some cases) with a fairly strong norhern-Upplandic dialect (because saying/writing something is 'tunnare' makes no bleeding sense, it's more barell-y? How is that 'thinner'?!). 

[Aiyumei]

First language Bulgarian and English as second, but I also understand Macedonian, Serbian, Albanian as well as some Romanian, Greek, Turkish and Polish, although I can't really reply back on them. Ukranian and Russian are also very similar to my native language, so I often don't have much trouble understanding them. I recently started diving into Japanese and have been slowly learning it.
We have fair amount of common words and phrases here, which makes it easy to understand each other most of the time and when that fails, hand gestures always come into play.

Edited September 15 by Aiyumei

[InnerCity Elf]

English is second, first is German, then, with a chasm behind those, I know some Japanese, French, Spanish, Portuguese. Trying to learn Dutch. If a language fairy passed by and I could wish to speak one language perfectly on the spot, foolishly, I'd choose Icelandic, just because.

Oh, I forgot, in theory, I should know a lot of Latin, had it in school for eight years... But, it does come in handy sometimes, when sightseeing a church.

Edited September 15 by InnerCity Elf

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Ik voel dat het Nederlands-sprekende gepeupel hier inderdaad grofweg ondergerepresenteerd is (slechts 40% van alle gepeupel in deze draad), zodat ik inhaak. Engels is mijn secundaire taal. Nederlands is mijn primaire.

I feel that the Dutch-speaking people here are indeed grossly underrepresented (only 40% of all the people in this thread), so I'll join in. English is my second language, Dutch is my primary.

Edited September 15 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Ina Fairport]

I am Dutch
My second languages English and French

 

[Clem Marques]

Portuguese is my first language. English is my passion.

[HeathcliffMontague]

11 hours ago, Ishka Magic said:

But isn't english like 9 languages in a trenchcoat?

Sort of the blame lies on my forefathers who used to row down there. Blame the rest on the French, as usual  

[HeathcliffMontague]

3 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Ik voel dat het Nederlands-sprekende gepeupel hier inderdaad grofweg ondergerepresenteerd is (slechts 40% van alle gepeupel in deze draad), zodat ik inhaak. Engels is mijn secundaire taal. Nederlands is mijn primaire.

I feel that the Dutch-speaking people here are indeed grossly underrepresented (only 40% of all the people in this thread), so I'll join in. English is my second language, Dutch is my primary.

And somehow I understand your first paragraph perfectly. As written. Spoken might be another issue  

Edited September 15 by HeathcliffMontague

[Arielle Popstar]

My primary language is a juggling act between Dutch, English and if Zeeuws is recognized as a separate language, can throw that into the mix as well, as I spent a few of my early years living there. English has been the main language from my teens onwards but I still sometimes laps back to Dutch for some words which have more meaning for me then their English translations.

[Pixie Kobichenko]

I would never know English is not any of the above posters first languages- ya’ll are very well expressed & conveyed.  
 

2nd languages are not a priority at least in the state I live in but overall likely the entire USA.  I took HS French but I remember very little of it.  I truly with Spanish had been taught as I was growing up. It would have enabled me to interact better with neighbors & made me more desirable in the jobs I’ve had (call centers).  I live in a predominately Hispanic area now & shop in a grocery store literally called Carniceria Panaderia.  Very few employees speak English and I get embarrassed at my lack of communication skills- tho I’m slowly learning phrases for ordering at the hot dish counter & while ringing up my groceries, etc.  

[HeathcliffMontague]

9 hours ago, Orwar said:

   English is a secondary language for me. I can understand a fair bit of Norwegian (they just use the occasional weird word and speak as if they're mid-orgasm) and some Danish and almost as much German (Germans tend to speak more articulate, Danes mash their words, so even though it's linguistically closer they end up about similar). Icelandic and Dutch both can be hit or miss, some words are similar or even basically the same, other times not so much. 

   My primary language is Swedish, usually spoken (and written, in some cases) with a fairly strong norhern-Upplandic dialect (because saying/writing something is 'tunnare' makes no bleeding sense, it's more barell-y? How is that 'thinner'?!). 

Hei, nabo. I find the Scandinaian languages as something you just have get used to. You just have to adjust a bit and train your ear, and you'll be fine 99 percent of the time. We have a gazillion dialects, which might be why we do better in the UK than some Americans  

[Caitlin Tobias]

9 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

Ik voel dat het Nederlands-sprekende gepeupel hier inderdaad grofweg ondergerepresenteerd is (slechts 40% van alle gepeupel in deze draad), zodat ik inhaak. Engels is mijn secundaire taal. Nederlands is mijn primaire.

I feel that the Dutch-speaking people here are indeed grossly underrepresented (only 40% of all the people in this thread), so I'll join in. English is my second language, Dutch is my primary.

Gepeupel....🧐

 

[Tjay Wicken]

English is secondary for me as well. First language is Danish but having lived in Spain and now Sweden for the past many years I'm fluent in both of those as well. I also communicate fairly well with norwegians, but I tend to use some kind of mix between Danish and Swedish when speaking depending on where in Norway the person is from.

My father was of Polish descent so I was taught quite well by my grandmother growing up, but at this point I can just about have a small conversation going, it's fading as I am not using it at all. I also speak, read and write French fairly well thanks to it being my second choice back in school, but definitely not fluent.

Edited September 16 by Tjay Wicken