What languages do you speak?

[Ganondorf]

Kudos for being interested in Quenya! (A major inspiration for which was Finnish.)
And Japanese would probably be my option no.1 if I had the time to learn a completely new language.

Thanks!  And yes, I am aware of the connection with Quenya and Finnish as well

[vers la flamme]

Quenya is an impressive constructed language or "conlang". Love the script Tolkien invented for it.

[USMC1960s]

Spanish, near fluently. While in the Marine Corps I was stationed in Puerto Rico as a Morse Code Intercept Operator, SIGINT,  Signals Intelligence, best job I ever had, by far. I was there 2 years, had one year of Spanish in high school before I decided to leave school after my second year. But, being immersed in a language helps tremendously when trying to learn it.

[Fëanor]

I've always been fascinated with language, though I must admit my limitations. In terms of conversational fluency, I can only claim (American) English. I've studied French for years, and can read and write it quite efficiently, but my conversational abilities in the language are nil. Nothing a few months in a French speaking country wouldn't fix, but nevertheless. I could also survive in an Esperanto-speaking country if such a thing ever were to exist. No, seriously; I learned the language in my more idealistic youth. Quite easy to pick up, as it was designed to be, and quite a beautiful language in my opinion. I've feebly attempted to learn Italian and German in the past, and I've just started trying to learn the basics of Spanish.

What say you all? Sorry if this thread has been done before.

I speak only English fluently.  Though I studied French for a total of 7 years in grade school and high school I never spoke fluently.  That's not much credit to me I'll admit but I also very much blame the school system where I studied.

My French study was provided by the English Protestant School Board of Montreal.  At the time French was poorly instructed, (almost like Latin: lots of declensions and conjugations and almost no emphasis on verbal).  Furthermore in Quebec the language spoken was & is Canadian French which differs in pronunciation and somewhat in vocabulary. That was not all what we were taught.  Our teachers smugly told us that they taught only Metropolitan French.

After university I enrolled to study so more French.  In this case our teacher was French Canadian himself and taught accordingly.  I was making real progress for a time but I left the Province and  unfortunately ceased my French study.

That was a very long time ago so maybe the system for French teaching is better today.  I hope so because the political & social situation in Quebec today makes it pretty imperative to speak French.

[Mandryka]

I think French is a particularly hard language for English speakers to understand. They have a nasty habit of not saying final consonants.

[Herman]

Well, English is pretty weird, too, in its prononunciation rules, or rather, lack thereof.

[Fëanor]

I think French is a particularly hard language for English speakers to understand. They have a nasty habit of not saying final consonants.

If you speak a European language and you want "hard" you'll probably find that in a tonal language.  My son's first language is English, (like me), but he speaks a halting Mandarin.  Now there's a weird language, not only tones but a very different grammar.

[Florestan]

I think that English grammar is simple, far more simple than the French or Romanian ones, for instance*. What's really difficult is learning the pronunciation by heart because there are few rules and lots of exceptions.

* simple, not logical, mind you!

[LKB]

I took two years of German back when dinosaurs ruled the Earth. And the years of professional singing naturally entailed frequent usage of several languages, though German remains the only one in which l am conversant, i.e. not fluent.

I'm very rusty though. The opportunities to use German in normal conversation are exceedingly rare here, and merely singing in any given language does very little to enhance one's usage of it in conversation.

[Mandryka]

I think that English grammar is simple, far more simple than the French or Romanian ones, for instance*. What's really difficult is learning the pronunciation by heart because there are few rules and lots of exceptions.

* simple, not logical, mind you!

The thing people tell me is hard is things like the bit I've put in italics in these sentences (I forget the grammatical term - danglers maybe)

You don't like it, do you.

He said he loves you, didn't he.

Re understanding English, people tell me that English English, particularly London cockney, is really hard.

 And that American English is easy (though I suspect these people have never heard a Mississippi drawl in the style of William Faulkner.) Scottish English is just impossible for everyone

[prémont]

The thing people tell me is hard is things like the bit I've put in italics in the sentence (I forget the grammatical term - danglers maybe)

You don't like it, do you.

He said he loves you, didn't he.

This is easy for a Dane because we express ourselves in the same way:

Han sagde han elsker dig, gjorde han ikke?

[Florestan]

You don't like it, do you.

He said he loves you, didn't he.

I don't find it particularly hard --- at least, there is a clear and non-exceptionable rule.

In Romanian, though, things are simpler: no matter who says it, either in the negative or the positive, the sentence always ends nu-i așa? (literally isn't  so?)

For instance:

You don't like it, do you. = Nu-ți place, nu-i așa?

He said he loves you, didn't he. = (El)* a (A) spus că te iubește, nu-i așa?

* In Romanian the pronoun can be / is often dropped because for each pronoun there is a different conjugation so no mistake can be made about it.