Let us all talk about favorite languages!

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Isabella Hime

Isabella Hime

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http://sciencefocus.com/qa/what-record-most-languages-spoken-one-person


[h=1]What is the record for the most languages spoken by one person?[/h]
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It depends on how high (or low) you set the bar of fluency. Ziad Fazah, born in Liberia, brought up in Beirut and now living in Brazil, claims to be the world's greatest living polyglot, with a total of 59 languages. He has been 'tested' on Spanish television, where it was not clear just how well he could communicate in some of them.
His record, however, pales in comparison to some from the past. Cardinal Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti, born in 1774, spoke 38 languages and 40 dialects. The 10th-century Muslim polymath Al-Farabi was reputed to know 70 languages. The German Hans Conon von der Gabelentz, born in 1807, researched and published grammars of 80 languages. The record, though, probably belongs to Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong Kong from 1854 to 1859, who was said to know 200 languages, and capable of speaking 100.

Submitted by Len Fisher





Isabellas are into listening to music in languages they don't understand. The language becomes an instrument in the song for Isabellas.. This is why they classify music based on country or language a lot!
 
I like seeing languages written because some of the scripts are very flowery looking.
 
I like each and every single language, but I guess my favourite one is English, mostly because I speak it every day, and use it nearly every minute in my life.
 
My favorites are : Latin, German, Japanese, Russian. Among others. I was taught French and enjoyed it a lot, but I didn't find French to be as pretty as my other favorites.
 
I like Spanish and Gaelic because they're so musical and rhythmic. And I love the way Arabic script looks.
 
Spanish is a language Isabellas will never learn because they like sitting in clusters of Hispanic girls making cute sounds at each other that Isabellas don't understand! Isabellas feel the same about French!
 
Russian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Gaelic, aaaaaaand Mandarin.

Russian and Japanese because they sound so fluid to my ears, just some REALLY beautiful sounds put together.

Korean and Thai because I think they're interesting languages to hear.

Gaelic and Mandarin, because some names from their origin are my favorites, and I'd LOVE to learn Mandarin because some of their words change meaning if you use a different tone in your voice. Gaelic has old roots, and I see it as a beautiful language, like Latin, where it should be spoken more!

Also, I LOVE seeing the written forms of languages!
 
Japanese is one of my favorites because it sounds adorable to me. I blame it on years of exposure to mahou shoujo anime and pokémon. Moving along, I like Spanish and French, as well. However, I never really liked Portuguese; the Brazilian dialect makes the pronunciation of the words harder than it needs to be and the European one sounds to me like "How many unstressed syllables can I cut out before I sound like French?" Latin's okay, but knowing Spanish before I started learning Latin made it look like some awkward teenager who grew up to have a bunch of children who turned out prettier than her. Regarding the Germanic languages, I don't really care much for German, Dutch, or even my native English, but find Swedish and Icelandic to sound better to my ears.
 
<-- native English, Urdu, Punjabi (I guess you could say it's like a sub-language to urdu?)

Growing up, I learned Arabic & French. My dad speaks German fluently, but I feel like it's too strong& powerful vocally for me to pick up quickly. I picked up quite a bit of Japanese from cousins & anime; not to mention my cute voice & white accent makes for an adorable sounding anime-character. I'm currently on an endeavor of speaking Mandarin Chinese, having more trouble with tones than characters.

I can easily reproduce correct sounds in Korean because it's a tongue similar to my native language. Russian makes my tongue tickle, as my father knows quite a bit of it. I was never into Spanish, probably because I grew up in New York (lol, Spanish immigrants >.<) and Latin was just something I thought I'd learn when I grew up and felt like reading ancient history. I've tried my hand at Greek letters & I find it thrilling. LOL. Let's just say I'm a language geek? If you speak the same language to me for even twenty minutes every day for a month or so, I'll start picking up on the words and learning the meaning just by the way you're speaking. When my Chinese friends are watching movies without subtitles, I can easily understand the words that are repeated.

I think I just have an ear for linguistics from my dad :]

Why am I an engineering major again?
 
German I adore, because hearing German spoken makes me feel comforted and secure (not so odd, my grandfather and uncle speak it).

I find that there's a lot of beauty in fluently spoken French and Spanish, both being very similar in a lot of ways and essentially equally pleasing to the ear. I have a bit of a preference for hearing spoken Spanish, though. It's a bit softer a language.

I cannot begin to explain my love for Vietnamese, but it is there as well.
 
Isabellas like those harsh sounding languages because they make great sounds in metal..
 
I speak nine languages and my favorites are Japanese, English and Romanian
 
Sea Queen Kittiana said:
German I adore, because hearing German spoken makes me feel comforted and secure (not so odd, my grandfather and uncle speak it).
Click to expand...

I obviously need to speak more German to Kitti. :D

German and Japanese are my current languages of choice. I took a week of Spanish as well, but German is my all-time love. <3 Does this mean it's time to get back to learning new languages? I haven't really decided what my next language should be. Swahili? ;D
 
Africa.. now there is a place I've not collected music from! Metal must not be popular there.. have not found any bands from there yet.. same for the Middle East.. Got one or two from there but not many..
 
Viet, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Melayu, Cantonese and Illocano.
 
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