what languages do you speak/learn and why?

[Dreamtale]

English, French, a little Japanese, and Russian of course

[lfk]

I speak Chinese,and we must learn English for course
at the same time,i'm fighting with 日本語 these days.

[Jeffry2009]

To me I speak Malaysian & english.

Then I learn 日本語 like lfk said.

[Anju-chan]

Spanish is the required language for my current school. My friends are going to learn either Latin or French next year, but I'm sticking with Spanish.
English is my mother tongue.

[psycho_luny]

my birth language is dutch.
is spoke mostly fluant englisch since i was about 8, thanks to my good friend the tv.
i speak a tiny bit of german. had to, for my career an car mechanic has to know german.
and a little bit japanese, thanks to anime

[RedShocktrooper]

I speak English by default - since I was born outside of Atlanta, Georgia, USA, I kinda have to. I took two years of German (oddly enough, because of a WWII game), and I'm considering either Japanese (for obvious reasons - and I also consider going into the Gaming industry as... something, and Japan's pretty big there), or Russian (because Russians are awesome).

[Nosauz]

I speak English, Chinese, Spanish, and am currently learning Japanese because of my own personal hobbies. I also find languages to be a opening to a closer more intimate approach to literature and history. Like reading Don Quixote in spanish the first time instead of a translation which to me is like another layer or distortion to the story.

[Tsuyoshi]

English, Italian as it's the language I was born into, and a bit of French which I hope to make perfect.

[RadiantBeam]

In high school we had a choice between French and Spanish. I chose to take three years of Spanish, and the first two years were a lot of fun; the third year was horrible though, mostly because of my teacher. English by birth, and a little bit of French.

[SirJeannot]

Originally Posted by lfk

I speak Chinese,and we must learn English for course
at the same time,i'm fighting with 日本語 these days.

I've kinda stopped. takes too much time to polish the other ones
and considering my poor level gets me anywhere in the country, I'm struggling to get motivated to study japanese during my spare time - but there is still the appeal of a pleasant country i really love being in.
too bad I had to leave

[fer619]

I speak:

English (fluent)
Spanish (fluent)
Japanese, German, Portuguese, Italian, Croatian (very little/a few words or phrases)

[C.A.]

English and Chinese(birth language), I learned Japanese for Super Robot Wars. I also know Chinese Hokkien dialect.

[Haladflire65]

I just wanted to add that I'm learning Latin from next year Also, I'll be adding Mandarin to my list...

I should really keep up with my Japanese... I used to be pretty much fluent but after I left Tokyo for Canada I'm getting rusty.... Same with my Korean... *Sighs* It's so hard to keep up with more than two languages. Being bilingual was easy but when Japanese was added things got complicated

[hinakatbklyn]

Only consistent language for me is English. Junior high and high, Spanish was required. One year in another high school Italian was an option. If I stuck with it, I might have been fluent in Italian. I used anime as a stepping stool to figure out some Japanese phrases.

[Ehnra]

I've grown up around languages so I speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Swedish and I'm learning Japanese to fill the collection. If I stumble upon some other language that might turn out to be easy to learn I might give it a try.

[Zu Ra]

Not much of a Polyglot . Other than English can barely manage Spanish and some very broken French from HS . Yeah also some Japanese, learnt from watching Anime .

I would like to learn at least 2/3 new languages . ^__^

[Armored Knight]

Arabic (native speaker). I like it very much. My language is probably the most difficult language in the world. And it probably has hundreds of millions of words. The pronunciation is hard. A single meaning of a word can be pronounced by more than 6 different forms based on its reference or its order in the sentence. It would take a nonnative speaker forever to learn it properly. If you speak Arabic, it would be easy pronounce anything else.

English (taught by default in school). One of the most popular languages in the world and the language of globalization. Almost everything is available in English. I learned many things because of it. It is definitely the most important language nowadays. I like it too.

I would like to learn more about some other languages such as Hebrew, Persian, Japanese and Urdu, but I haven't really started seriously yet.

[Ehnra]

Originally Posted by Armored Knight

...My language is probably the most difficult language in the world. And it probably has hundreds of millions of words. The pronunciation is hard. A single meaning of a word can be pronounced by more than 6 different forms based on its reference or its order in the sentence. It would take a nonnative speaker forever to learn it properly. ...

I take that as a challenge, I'm not really sure I'd do good with learning 2 languages at a time, but you definitely got me interested in learning Arabic :P

How does the grammatical structure of the Arabic Language differ from say English?

[Armored Knight]

How does the grammatical structure of the Arabic Language differ from say English?

Arabic grammar learning=nightmare. For native speakers, you don't even have to learn grammar if you speak formal Arabic. Learning Arabic grammar simply means knowing the rules, Arabic grammar is a knowledge it self and can be taught as a major in Universities.

Every word has a reference (original form) and it is changed based on its order in the sentence. This means it is different if you talk about male, female, two males, two females, plural males and plural females based on the its order which (called lifted, hold or broken. I just translated what we call them). This changed form must be combined with its order in the sentence.

There is singular which you already know.

Words for two either male or female.

The plural also has rules: male, female and general (we call it "broken" plural). Some words have more than on plural form male and general and female and general.

There is no "it" in Arabic. Everything is divided into male or female in terms of using pronouns, adverbs...etc. For example, the door is male while the car is female. The letter at the end of the word determines that.

The order and order form is very important. And because of it, formal Arabic doesn't have accents. If you speak it 100% correctly, it is always the same.

In addition to the complicated grammar, there are millions of words. Many words have more than one meaning, for example, "sword" has more than 5 meanings. Another example is, many animal names have more than one word.

There are verbs tenses of course. Past, present, future, order/command verbs...etc. And the verb forms are also changed according to what you are talking about. There is a verb form for every noun form, for example, plural male verb form is used for plural male noun form.

There are 28 letters in Arabic. Many of them don't have English pronunciation.

It is a hard language to learn, but there are always good ways to learn if you are motivated

I hope this was informative. If you want to know more information, you are welcome to ask. What I already talked about is just a needle in a haystack from Arabic grammar.

Edit: I forgot to mention that EVERY letter in a word have the following characteristics: lifted, hold or broken.
For example,
The letter "Jeem"
Ja lited
Jo hold
Jei broken
The word Jazar means carrots.
The word Jozor means islands.
Both are written like this "جزر". The word has 3 letters and Arabic letters are connected in writing from right to left.
In the first word, the "Jeem" and Waw" letters are hold.
In the second word, the "Jeem" and "Waw" letters are hold.
The last letter depends on its order in the sentence. The last letter is "Ra'a": Ra, Ro or Rei.
First word:
Jazaran
Jazaron
Jazarein
Second Word:
Jororan
Jozoron
Jozorien

Those six words are just the "plural" forms, don't forget that XD. There are other six plural forms *_*. I can also write the singular and "two" forms.

There is a small sign above or the below each letter to know whether if is lifted, hold or broken. It is usually not written because the readers can understand easily without them.

[Ehnra]

From what you have said, it does sound like it's a lot of work put down in the language, but overall it seems that the language itself has some structure that can be(not saying its easy) followed.