How many languages do you know ?

Good grief, osso. If I was going into some kinda business, I'd hire you as my agent. Thanks for the kind words and vote of confidence.

Very good post, fbaezer!

Your depiction shows clearly the difference between those who have been immersed in the local culture and just other foreign language learners..

I also know three languages.
Bengali
English
Hindi

French, Italian, and Thousand Islands...

Other than my native language, none.

I can translate a bit to and from Latin. There was point in college while I took a
Latin class that was taught in Latin that I could speak and understand it on a very
rudimentary level. That didn't last long.

I also took some Greek, koine (New Testament), classical, and Homeric. That's
long gone.

I took a year of Italian as a novice, but I mostly remember the profanity I
learned on the streets of East Boston.

In high school I took French for two years. Some words and phrases remain.
My greatest accomplishment is the ability to read street signs in Québec.
(Did that accent aigu impress you?)

I know four languages and use them more or less on daily basis. Swedish, Danish, English and German. I can read and understand Norwegian, but I don´t speak it.I can order food and ask tourist questions in Italian and French, but not always understand the answers.
Once someone asked me what language I think in. I had to think that over for a bit and came to the conclusion I think in the language that the person I think about speaks.

My understanding was that you had to nearly speak four languages to get past highschool in India i.e. Hindi, your own state language, English, and your choice of one other which was usually French.

The world is getting smaller in a hurry. By 2050 or 2060 I'd figure to see ten or twenty languages left in the world which anybody was actually speaking:

English and German (Germanic)
French and Spanish (Romance)
Russian (Slavic)
Mandarin Chinese
Japanese
Hindi
Hebrew and Arabic (Semitic)

They're going to have to pick one standard language, probably English, to teach all people in the world FIRST and then let them learn their own cultural languages, and they'll need a decent phonetic alphabet for English for that purpose, we don't have one at present.

I was schooled in India, where I still live. The school I studied at followed a British-inspired system. English was the compulsory first language in the curriculum and Hindi was the second. As my state was a Hindi-speaking state, we did not have to study a third language. We were instead enthrusted with Sanskrit - mother of Indo-European group of languages - which is now considered dead, except for in one village in Kerala where everyone speaks it. It was fairly basic stuff and most of us got away with it courtesy of rote memorisation. And it was for just four years of middle school. I especially got very good grades in its tests - once I even got a chocolate for being the only one in class to get a full score.

There was no fourth language in my case, at least. Students down south have to probably learn more languages. In addition to English and Hindi, they obviusly also learn their state language.

Learning a (fourth) foreign language is becoming more common now, but during my time, very few schools offered that privelege.

That's a good one!

I think it is a very unique characteristic of early forms of life (that is us in the year 2011 as well).
What do you mean you ask?
Well the very idea that "fashion" or "how we look" in general is a way to express ourselves is a very archaic, primitive concept. Why? because it is very empirical.
In the early life forms, they were very empirical about everything, quotes such as, "if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist" were expressed and well accepted. Science flourished, excelled and were even praised upon by "rational" humans. Spirituality, energy, and "things that can't bee seen" were often regarded as "non-existent" (Though around the year 2000 science was beginning to prove the existence of energy and even westerners started to turn to spiritual perspectives of life when views and approach to life vested into empiricism has proven to fail). And fashion is one of the characteristics of this philosophy. We try very very hard to express ourselves in fashion. No matter how impossible it is, we try to use clothing, language, and actions to identify who we are, very crudely. And what is even more shocking, is that to compensate for this discrepancy between who we really are and what we are capable of showing in the physical world, we would actually try to change who we are on the inside so that we match what we look like on the outside. (Of course this creates many more problems for the individual of "not being able to be true the self", "poser", "fake", etc. and creates niche such as "emos", "blonds", "asians", "beaners", "nerds", "gangsters" etc. and individuals try to conform to these, sacrificing autonomy and free will ).
Fashion, physical attributes, and what we say is a poor form of language but in this empirical, temporal, spacial, becoming, mortal world, it is difficult to divest ourselves from this concept.

If we are completely true to ourselves, know that one is all and all is one, and we are only energy and nothing more, or less, garments would mean nothing and is definitely not a form of language to convey anything.

"What do our garments say/speak about us?"
the garments say nothing about us, but to think that "garments speak something about us", says something about us.

I'm thinking of taking a class in Latin that is being offered by a very learned man here in our village, but I'm actually more interested in the ancillary subject matter of the class which he has explained as being the history, art, geography, and military strategy and movement of the early Romans here in England than I am in the language, so I will call the teacher today to talk with him and determine whether or not I'd be an appropriate learner for his class.

Right now, I only speak English. I can read French enough to figure most of it out, but I can't speak it or understand it if it is spoken quickly.

German, French and English. My French is not quite as fluent as the other two.
I find that French is the most beautiful of all languages.

I was always curious, everyone says this. What is it about the language that makes it sound "beautiful" in your opinion? Grammar? Sound? Flow? Concept behind the language?

French is not simple or easy to learn. To my ears it sounds elegant and melodic.
The French speak it with pride, they find it beautiful too. Aristocratic families in Germany had their children learn French (and English) as babies.
I have seen a lot of French B&W films of the 40s and 50s, some of the greatest
ever.

I know 4
Russian, English, Arabic and French.

I know only two, English (my main language, fairly fluent in American English) and Spanish (understand almost natively to Mexico and speak it with a small American accent.) Been around it every day for 3 years but haven't had to speak it, but have used it when necessary (such as at work, translating in public etc) but when it comes to speaking it I have a little bit more trouble. Due to the lack of practice. It's just so embarrassing to use it when everyone around you also speaks English as well as you do , and who's Spanish is barely fluent (only having to use with family and occasional vacations). So yeah, I understand it almost perfectly, speak it alright, and write it almost perfect! 0 years of class.

welcome to a2k, andrew.

Let me see. I know one, two - only one.

Polish my first language, English and French, speak Belarusian as well, but can't read and write