[Zgarbas]

Native Romanian, so that one's obvious. Started learning English when I was 4 or so, haven't stopped since.
Learned German in school, but I was a really poor student, mainly since I only started wanting to learn it in my last year of highschool >.>. I know enough to get in trouble.

Like any Romanian, i can speak Spanish. I can hold conversations, understand 80-90% of what I hear, but when I say that I speak Spanish, I mean that i speak illiterate and gramatically incorrect Spanish. Few people seem to mind, though. I do mind the fact that I'm illiterate (re: can't write for the life of me), but I haven't gotten around to that one.

I did a bit of Swedish, which is the love of my life in languages, but the mix-up with German was too great and Japanese was taking over, and this was years ago, so I don't think I know anything anymore =(.

I did Latin in school and was pretty damned good at it too, but again, no practice and I wasn't fluent to begin with => uber fail. Fairly sure I forgot everything I knew about Old English too, though I could do basic translations at one point.

I am also a master of knowing random phrases and words in a gajillion languages, but that's mostly for conversation starters. There is something very fun about people's faces when you sprout a random Наташа, дай мне пистолет, немцы на улице or a Аз честно казано не ми пука. Speaking of Bulgarian, after spending a week surrounded by Bulgarians and finding a million common words with Romanian, I'm starting to fear Slavic languages a bit less.

Currently, my life is taken over by Japanese. I hope to make time for my other languages one day =).

When you say Romanians can speak Spanish, do you mean the languages are that closely related? (I must admit, my knowledge of Eastern European languages is sketchy at best...)

[Zgarbas]

They're closely related, though for some reason we find it easier to understand other languages than vice versa. Spanish people are rather pissed that we can effortlessly understand them without ever having taken a lesson, whereas they have to genuinely try for years to get conversational in Romanian. It helps that in Romania we get a lot of foreign media, so it would be pretty hard to find someone who hasn't watched at least one telenovela as a kid =).

I learn Spanish in school, and the pace I'm moving at there is... unimaginably slow. Home studying, I love you. I learn more Japanese at home per day than I learn Spanish at school per week. Honestly, I think with language, home studying is pretty awesome (as long as you stay motivated and don't slack off!)

Zgarbas Wrote:I did Latin in school and was pretty damned good at it too, but again, no practice and I wasn't fluent to begin with => uber fail. Fairly sure I forgot everything I knew about Old English too, though I could do basic translations at one point.

I heard that, out of the many modern Indo-European languages, Romanian preserves the most of its Latin influences in its vocabulary. Would you say this is true or do you think another language (Spanish/French?) is more closely related to Latin?

[Zgarbas]

Wasn't it Sardinian?

Romanian keeps a lot from Latin, but my Spanish/Italian/what not are not good enough for me to make a statement regarding that =). We did have fewer waves of language influences than most places, though, so that could make a difference.

Zgarbas Wrote:They're closely related, though for some reason we find it easier to understand other languages than vice versa. Spanish people are rather pissed that we can effortlessly understand them without ever having taken a lesson, whereas they have to genuinely try for years to get conversational in Romanian. It helps that in Romania we get a lot of foreign media, so it would be pretty hard to find someone who hasn't watched at least one telenovela as a kid =).

To that, all I can say is... iiiiiiii naaaaaaa... lol

My native language is German, but I've been living in Japan for 6 years now, so I mainly use Japanese and English in every day life.
In school I learned French, Latin and Spanish.