Hey, Bradley, Càm on rât nhieu!
I also speak Vietnamese, pretty fluently, some Thai, Khmer, Lao, and Cantonese, and pretty good Spanish from my years of living in Miami.
Oh, yes, and occasionally English.
English.
While not technically a language I am self taught at communicating via radio-telegraphy using Morse Code. I can "send" code using a key at speeds of up to 25 words-per-minute and can copy code I hear at about the same speed. After five years of practice I am starting to develop the ability to "head copy". In other words I am able to decipher the dots and dashs in my mind with out having to transcribe the incoming message with pencil and paper one letter at a time. Short commonly used words often appear whole on my mental blackboard instead of a string of letters. When new to using Morse Code it was stressful and demanded total concentration but with practice it becomes easier almost second nature.
I had three years of Spanish in high school. I don't remember much of it now but I've thought about getting back into it as it is a language I hear more and more often when I'm out in public.
Bentmike, I would include Morse Code in languages because it uses the same mental mechanism. If I had included computer languages, I could add Basic and HTML as ones that I know to at least a moderate extent. I'm just surprised nobody has fessed up to knowing Esperanto.
Saintpeter, it's pretty great that you know ASL as it is a really useful language to have. The wifey is learning it to better help her student who know only ASL and is pretty isolated by it.
papipeguy - your Pennsylvanian is spot-on! :rofl:
I speak English, can curse in Pennsylvania Dutch, and have an extremely rudimentary introduction to Spanish (One year in High School). I think it would be fascinating to learn at least one more language, but my other hobbies are plentiful and time consuming.
I think that it is interesting that the programming languages and transliterations, like morse code have been brought up.
Usually they are not considered in the same class as natural languages. Different parts of the brain are used, I think. (There is some data that suggests that native tongues and languages learned as adults, or at least learned by methods other than total-immersion, overlap but don't take place only in the same areas of the brain.)
However, when you start dreaming in any language, or the information starts clumping, like BentMike wrote about, some serious pathways are getting burned.
anthony
Thanks guys, my lexicon grows. Captain, I've been to Japan 16 times but the usual drink of choice when out with customers had been scotch and saki. By the time I got around to beer I don't know what I was speaking. But I do remember "Domo arigato goziamas"......I think.