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International poll, so please boost for a wider sample.

How many languages can you read (and, of course, understand!) without the help of an online translator?

  • > 5 (3%, 432 votes)
  • 4-5 (15%, 1922 votes)
  • 2-3 (62%, 7497 votes)
  • 1 (18%, 2206 votes)
12057 voters. Poll end: 1 anno fa

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

How many languages can you read (and, of course, understand) without the help of an online translator?

  • Perl, python, go, C ... 👩🏼‍💻 (0 votes)
  • Je m'appelle une chatte 🐈‍⬛ (0 votes)
  • At what difficulty level? (0 votes)
  • None - I have a system! (0 votes)
Poll end: 1 anno fa

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

would be interesting to see the results of a secobd poll with the same question, but tooted and boosted at a different time of the day (so it might reach people in other parts of the world).
in reply to Keri

@kerissima

This will last a week, so there is time even for martians 😁

@Keri
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

are we counting human languages only? Because the answer would be higher if I also count programming languages
in reply to Elena ``of Valhalla''

@valhalla @gspeng
I've posted poetry in x86 ASM, so yeah, coding languages are languages, but I didn't count/include them for this poll. I voted 2-3 (English & German).

I hope most people follow suite, else results will be horribly skewed. Had I included coding languages, and languages I can read/speak at a child's level, it'd be well over 6+.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

>without the help of an online translator

what about offline translator or dictionaries :akkoderp:

in reply to ⏣ (corrupted)

@xarvos

I don't think a lot of people will browse a paper dictionary, nowadays, except maybe for the few languages unsupported by google translator.
I'd count this as a +1, for the effort required.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@xarvos No, you’re assuming a paper dictionary takes more effort. If the dictionary is to hand, as it is to many linguists in many reading situations, to a user familiar with paper dictionaries the effort is often no greater, and the result often better: eg the ability to see several similar headwords in one opening v-à-v having to enter a fresh search term for another variant.
in reply to slideman

@slideman @xarvos

I'm aware of the advantage of paper vs. screen (and on maps is even higher), but the most of the working places I know, mine at first, are too cluttered even for a Collins pocket Dictionary… 🥴

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@xarvos “Too cluttered for a dictionary” is a priority choice viz. you deem other things more important. If for whatever reason you *need* the paper dictionary, you move it up the priority list and stow something else to make space.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@xarvos You get a lot more out of a good dictionary. Speed and convenience doesn’t equate to better or deeper knowledge.
Unknown parent

PA1EJO
for spanish and italian I would ask my wife
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Perfectly understand it's 2, but understand simple texts, or generally understand more complex ones it would be 4-5 (I entered 2-3 in the poll)
in reply to Max, whispers to you too now

@StrepsipZerg same here, it depends quite the language level. It's not quite the same to understand a basic newspaper article and a complex scientific text (which let me hesitate between 4 and 6...)
in reply to Gwenaël Le Bras

@gwenbras @StrepsipZerg I'd struggle reading scientific papers in my native language... I'm glad it's all in english 😅
in reply to Max, whispers to you too now

@StrepsipZerg Same here; Dutch native, English and German fluent, for French I need to look up too many words, so have answered 2-3. My wife also speaks Danish (plus understanding of Norwegian and Swedish) and Spanish, she could safely answer 4-5
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I took "understand" to mean "understand what I'm reading" not "understand when spoken" (which would immediately bring my score down by about 75%)
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I'd have been better to choose 1, 2, 3, 4, more because the difference between 2 and 3 is the most important thing I'm interested here.
in reply to Karl Voit :emacs: :orgmode:

@publicvoit

I think to make another one next week, going into more details, like languages understood: this will end next Saturday.

But feel free to make your own, if you're interested!

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I'm a US-American and not proud of it. Only fluent in English, so I selected "1" in the poll. Though I do know some Spanish (studied on and off for decades), a tiny bit of German (studied for a year in college 30 years ago), and have been doing French lessons on DuoLingo for about six months.
in reply to Pax Ahimsa Gethen 🏳️‍⚧️

@funcrunch

The definition of "US-American" is laudable :blobheart: and it's not your fault if you were born there.

I've a friend for Argentina always stating "I'm American too!".

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I I answered 2 language, but in fact I regularly use a dictionary for both
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

pretty hard to answer. I sometimes even look up English stuff, on the other hand, I do online translating into English because it usually gets better results. Also sometime look up stuff in my native language. So, while being able to read at least 4, the answer could have been 0. (And I also have to factor in that some languages are similar enough to read, like if you know Danish, Norwegian text looks like text with a lot of typos)
Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@library_squirrel

Same for me: I can read some romance languages other than Italian (fr, es, pt, ca, oc), but when I must write them I prefer to help myself with a translator because I've a lot of issues with the correct orientation of accents.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Fluent in 3 but I can also kinda read russian and mostly understand it without a dictionary so just barely falling in the 4-5 category
Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@ciccillo

Ti sei spiegato benissimo!

Ricordo un film (mi pare con Chevy Chase, ma non sono sicuro) dove un canadese inglese deve andare nel Canada francese e studia su un manuale per turisti.

A un distributore ha una conversazione banalissima in francese con un tipo, risale in auto e dice alla moglie: "Vedi che il manuale funziona?"

E l'altro tipo, con lo stesso manuale in mano, dice la stessa cosa alla moglie 🤣

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

human languages? 1 and several bits. I feel confident enough in basic French that I answered 2 in the poll.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Computer languages more than 5. Human languages (excluding all the en variants), about 3ish (I can get the gist of some of most of the latin script Indo-European ones such as French and German and some Japanese if it is in Romaji)
Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@vicgrinberg

I was thinking about an average toot, something between "look at my cat!" and a doctoral disquisition about the concept of mutual aid in writers after Bakunin.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Would be interesting to see where I'm the world these answers come from, although that would automatically skew the answers. Non-English speaking countries would hardly have the answer 1.
in reply to Menno

@MennoWolff

Yes, next week, after this poll, I'll make some more "localized" ones.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

4. It kinda feels like cheating since Swedish and Danish is very similar to my native Norwegian.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Sure, but they’re also extremely close to each other. Same language, but different variants of it.
in reply to Torb (old account)

@torb

Thanks for the clarification!

I still don't know Norwegian enough to get the difference… even if I had some bottles of wine with this very nice artist (who spoke a good Italian).

no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_R%…

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

The historic roots is that originally we didn’t have an official written Norwegian but just wrote Danish which gradually turned slightly Norwegian to form the Bokmål (“book tongue”) variant. This was due to us being under Denmark and most elites used Danish or something close to it.

Around the same time Ivar Aasen went around the country (esp. rural areas) and did research on what various dialects of actual Norwegian sounded like. He used this as an basis for a written form that was close to what Norwegian was actually like: Nynorsk (“new norwegian”).

Over time they’ve gotten more similar to each other, but to this day I can read Nynorsk in my own dialect easily while Bokmål sounds like I’m trying pretend to have grown up in the city.

Sadly, Nynorsk is dying slowly and taking a lot traditional Norwegian culture with it. Personally there is so little Nynorsk to read that it was just to difficult to learn properly for me. So I can’t really write in a written language that’s natural to my own dialect.

in reply to Torb (old account)

@torb

Thanks for the explanation!

I think not a lot of persons outside Noway are aware of that.

in reply to Torb (old account)

@torb

@GustavinoBevilacqua

Norwegian is also kind of "a dozen languages in trenchcoat" situation tough. Or actually two trenchcoats... I think there are dialects within Norway that are further apart than e.g. some pairs of Norwegian and Swedish dialects.

in reply to Kyrre Sjøbæk

@kyrsjo Disagree strongly with that description. Dialects are a perfectly natural part of languages!

Sweden haven’t really taken care to make sure their dialects survive. That’s why they have way less diversity in that department.

in reply to Torb (old account)

@torb

@GustavinoBevilacqua

Of course they are a natural part of languages! My point was rather that the division into languages in Scandinavia has more to do with the political boundaries than how people actually speak. As an example, Swedish from Bohuslän is closer to my Norwegian dialect (from Oslo/Akershus area) than some western Norwegian dialects. Also, for people learning Norwegian as an adult, the variety of dialects can be quite bewildering.

in reply to Kyrre Sjøbæk

@kyrsjo @torb

Languages are mainly dialects with a bigger army…

I live in Western Liguria, and every valley has its own variant of the Ligurian language (the most of them not even related with the language of Genoa, the capital).

in reply to Kyrre Sjøbæk

@kyrsjo @torb "A language is a dialect with an army and navy" (here I can understand some German dialects better than some Dutch dialects even though my native language is Dutch)

reshared this

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

growing up in Belgium and then moving to Norway feels a bit like cheating here.

Belgium has 3 official languages (Dutch, French, German) + we all learn English.

Norwegian and Danish look almost the same written, and Swedish is similar enough to understand (especially since there are a lot of Swedes in Norway and they exclusively speak and write Swedish so it’s easy to pick up on).

in reply to clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

@clacke @fossheim I didn't have German in primary school, but I had one (voluntary) hour of German in high school.
I did have my fair share of Derrick with Dutch subtitles (before Horst Tappert's WW2 history was discovered), so I'm only fluent in crimi lingo ;-)
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Perfectly understand, 4. Plus 2 more depending on the difficulty of the text. I selected 4-5 though.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

2-3, più 2 che 3 sperando diventi un 3 entro il prossimo anno, il mio singalese fa ancora schifo per considerarlo. ^^'

Comunque tutte le volte che c'è un sondaggio di questo genere c'è qualcuno che chiede seriamente se bisogna contare i linguaggi di programmazione (perché?)

Allora se si devono considerare le comunicazioni uomo-macchina perché non contare anche il gattese? il canese?
L'importanza del linguaggio del corpo?

in reply to Pollomostro🐣

Ed il post di prima era semiserio (perché niente grammatica) ma avrei potuto includere i linguaggi musicali se per esempio avessi studiato contrappunto o le regole della musica carnatica... 🤷
Così non si finisce più. ^^'

Tornando più in tema, alcune lingue indoarie non hanno una grammatica difficile se già si conosce una lingua romanza (magari con un infarinatura di latino). Il problema per me è proprio il vocabolario. Ahah

in reply to Pollomostro🐣

@pollomostro

Per esempio la costruzione delle frasi dell'arabo è molto più affine a quella italiana che non quella tedesca (o, peggio, polacca o russa).

Poi il vocabolario è solo questione di memoria: a volte mi succede di dover usare un traduttore perché mi viene in mente un termine in francese o inglese ma non ricordo l'equivalente italiano.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Should I count in my native language if I consult a dictionary more than the average? :thonking:
Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@heroicendeavour @martinvermeer

Not at all.
I used English (and a very plain one) assuming the most of the people can have at least a basic understanding of it.

If I made the same poll in Italian it wouldn't have the same diffusion.

But next week I'll make some "localized" polls.

Unknown parent

@Wille @Mark Rendle @Rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua Yes, being Scandinavian feels like a cheat code in this poll. 🤣

(5: Scandinavian, Scandinavian, Scandinavian, German, English) (or is that 4 Scandinavian languages?)

Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@heroicendeavour @martinvermeer

😄
I watch a lot of metalworking videos.
My wife doesn't understand English, but she is so used to very wide Southern US accents (mainly Abom79 and Joe Pie) that when she hear somebody from England or Wales she asks me which language they are speaking.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

What about non-writable languages like any of the many sign-languages? They are fully featured languages after all.
in reply to MacLemon

@MacLemon

Uhm… yes, I think it would be possible to toot a video with sign language.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

due secco non c'era? Quale sarebbe la terza? l'avanzo di quello che si capisce dallo spagnolo più l'avanzo di un po' di francese? Effettivamente 2/3 :D
in realtà è male 1 ma questa opzione sarebbe stata troppo di nicchia o forse no :D
in reply to StatusSquatter :squat: 🍫

@statussquatter

La prossima settimana vedrò di fare sondaggi più dettagliati.
Tra poco gli admin di cisti vengono a citofonarmi perché sto facendo troppo traffico!

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

beeing swiss helps alot as well. I mean, technically there are quite many forms of swiss german to understand, if one wants to travel from village to village. On the other hand i guess that not even counts as a 'one'.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Feeling horrible anglophone for answering 1, but the truth is that I need translation for 20--50% of words for the other 3 I'm not completely lost in.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@breadandcircuses if you take language learning seriously, you will never waive good translating tools. The better your knowledge, the more sophisticated your tools.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@vicgrinberg - phew - relief, I was worried I as being overly optimistic. I have to point out here that reading for me is a lot easier than listening, especially to a broad dialect delivered at machine gun speed or without half the consonants. Guess that's why you said "read".
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Hard to answer, depends on content. de and en with all content. he especially rabbinic (including modern rabbinic texts), significant everyday use but not all, YI easy texts. So do I answer 2, 3 or 4? Perhaps I could still read some Latin and easy texts in some Romance languages? A few things in Swedish, a few in Icelandic?
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@ciccillo I wasn't sure about my understanding of Italian, but I understood most of your posts, so I guess it's good enough. Even though I didn't know all words. Ovviamente scrivere italiano è molto più difficile :-)
in reply to clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

@clacke @wfaler @markrendle And then there's Dutch. While I certainly couldn't read a novel, things like newspapers are usually not that difficult to understand to a reasonable degree. How should that be counted?
in reply to PA1EJO

@ejo60 I do this too. „spouse” is definitely an offline translator, right?
in reply to Wendy Nather

@wendynather @fuzztech

I know, and I still have many of them.

I used them even when I had a dial-up link to the Internet, because then it was cheaper to look on them than online.

Alas "modern" online things made many of us pretty lazy… Google Translator is closer than a book on the shelf, which requires standing up and browsing pages :sadness:

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I could read a newspaper in five languages, and understand basic texts in seven or so.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Are we talking about

  • popular news / your current game / ... (0 votes)
  • texts on a familiar subject (0 votes)
  • texts on an unfamiliar subject (0 votes)
  • contracts by companies, composed for ambiguity (0 votes)
Poll end: 1 anno fa

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

assuming programming languages don't count. i'm a goddamned UN when it comes to talking to computers, not people.
in reply to salyavin

@salyavin

I forgot to specify.
Think to an average toot, something between "it's caturday!" and a PhD dissertation…

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I can get by usually in French but I'm not very confident and lean heavily on translation there for anything beyond grade school vocabulary, so I said 1 in your poll.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I can tell the Americans haven't gotten a hold of this post yet because "1" is way behind.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

It depends what you mean by 'read'. I can get a fair grasp of the meaning of things written in most languages descended from Germanic or Latin roots, but I wouldn't claim to be able to read any of them fluently or confidently.
in reply to Simon Brooke

@simon_brooke

I made that pool at 4 am just to satisfy my own curiosity.

Think to a toot a bit more complex than "here is my cat" and far less difficult than a PhD disquisition…

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

For anyone who answered 2-3 languages, it actually 2 or 3? I have a feeling that bilingualism is pretty common here, especially since this got boosted to a Canadian instance

  • 2 languages (0 votes)
  • 3 languages (0 votes)
Poll end: 1 anno fa

in reply to Orifices in the Void

@bezorp

I was limited by the number of options available, but I'm planning to make something more detailed next week.

Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@slylittlefox

Argh!

Thanks for the warning. I made that at 4 am!

I don't know if editing the toot all the votes will stay there… so I prefer to don't take the risk.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@clacke @wfaler @markrendle In that case, between the three Scandinavian languages and Dutch (plus English and German), I guess I can vote 4-5 without cheating too much.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I dialetti regionali valgono anche? Nel caso sarebbero tre per me allora. Inoltre, ho qualche reminescenza di francese dalle medie e, come tutti gli italiani, capisco un po' lo spagnolo.
in reply to Alex 🐘

@alsivx

Le lingue sono dialetti con un esercito alle spalle, quindi secondo me sì, soprattutto se riesci a leggere Wikipedia nella tua lingua regionale.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Perfetto. Chiedo perché vengono sempre messi in secondo piano rispetto all'apprendimento di altre lingue.

In effetti vengono chiamati volgarmente dialetti ma il termine corretto sarebbe "lingue regionali" e sono anche tutelate dall'Unione Europea da quanto avevo letto in merito.

Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@lisseuse

Something in the middle: getting the essential of the meaning, if not the whole.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

This would have needed more context. I'm fully at home with just two, but have some fluency with two more. What is the answer?
in reply to Mikko Rintasaari

@Adept

I made that at 4 am, just for a personal curiosity without any scientific method.

If you can read toots in 4 languages then choose 4-5: next week I'll try to make something more serious, if I find some sociologists who want to help.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@LolaRS my two cents:

knowing 2 and 3 languages is very different.. it's common enough for a Mexican to speak some English but very rare to speak French on top of that.. Same for an Armenian.. they commonly enough speak Russian.... but rarely a third language.. and so on.. i find that 2 and 3 are different enough 1, 2, 3-4, 5+ in my opinion would have been better options

in reply to Júbilo Haku

@jubilo @LolaRS

Next week I'll make a more "scientific" survey: this one was made at 4am just for a personal curiosity.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

interesting survey; looking forward to the results! 😊

How many languages can you read (and, of course, understand!)


btw, it need not be that one can understand all the languages that they read and vice-versa :)

in reply to Pewex

@pewex

I mean "without to copy the text of a toot and paste it into Google Translate".

I wrote that poll at 4am…

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

a bit of a tough question tbh, i rely on google translate heavily when I'm reading stuff online in Polish, but i don't *need* to (for example, I never use google translate for stuff that I can't immediately copy/paste, like if I'm talking to a friend or reading something on the street), I am just extremely intellectually lazy and want google translate to build the general direction of what I'm reading before I decide whether or not I actually want to read it (and sometimes/often it gets it wrong — then I go back and read it to see what it actually says). so idk
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

also I have terrible memory, so often in English I feel like there's a word for something and I have to refer to a thesaurus to find similar words to whatever general concept I have in my mind. In other languages what ends up happening is I know a particular word exists but I can't quite remember which it is, in those cases I also ask an online translator.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I've had to learn (there was no choice) Classic Latin in school, hence a lot of languages are somewhat readable and understandable.
in reply to HRH ginsterbusch

@ginsterbusch

A friend, who was the best Greek student at the classic lyceum, went to Athens with some friend to see a soccer match.

After a visit of the town they had to take a bus to the stadium, and he asked an old lady selling newspapers if they have to take the bus 42 or 43.

The lady look at him with a dubious eye, and asked him in Italian: "which number do you want to say?"

😄

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Sadly, just one. I used to be able to read German, but that was decades ago. Could I pick up a book in German and read it now? Maybe, but doubtful. I can also read a teeny tiny bit of Spanish, like maybe elementary school level. But it’s really only English.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I may have to look up a French word here and there but I can read it pretty well.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

For me, it's one. However, I can vaguely understand basic Dutch/French as well.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

dutch, English, German, frysian,

In nl we also have Limburgs, but that is kind of secret kind of dialect

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Do you mean fluently? Because that's just two for me, but there are lots regarding which I can make sense of quite a bit as long as I take my time.
in reply to Jennie Kermode

@jennie_kermode

No, just for reading a toot mid-way between "Here is my cat ❤" and a PhD dissertation.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

It would be interesting to see the results of an identical poll, posted at the same time on a different social media platform.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@kathimmel seven or eight? Maybe even ten. (I can read and understand Portuguese, for example, because I’m fluent in French and Spanish and just ok in Italian.)
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

As a Dane I can read Norwegian and Swedish like 99+%. I don't need any help to read news and the like most of the time but occasionally you come across a word you need to look up.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I wouldn't call myself fluent by any means, but I can get the gist of french, dutch, and esperanto.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I got English and Spanish (which, by extension, allows me to read and comprehend most Portuguese and like a good chunk of French). So -4.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I swear this is the secondary poll I answered one way but was attributed a different answer. 🤔
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

depends on the complexity of the text. I can always understand Esperanto (unless it's particularly poorly written), and often Japanese and German. Less often for other languages.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

For longer specialised wording I prefer a translator too.
Sometime I usee Deepl, seldom Google Translate.
Unknown parent

James Wood
@Gloucester_Lad French is a funny one. I've never specifically studied it, and can't speak it at all, but I've read bits of mathematical papers in it and probably had an easier time in it than I would have had in Japanese (which I can speak to an okay degree). So much French technical vocabulary is either the same in English or has some cognate.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Well, depends on what you mean by 'read': is it being able to read and enjoy literary fiction or just extract the necessary information from things like timetables, technical manuals, soccer results and cookbooks? The former definition of 'read' results in 3 languages, the latter in a *lot* more.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

😂 now THAT is a completely different story and might reduce my languages to one or two.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

"How many languages can you read (and, of course, understand!) without the help of an online translator?"

Wat?

in reply to Sibrosan

@sibrosan

Question written at 4am… the idea was about toots in various languages, not books, newspapers, etc.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Ik begrijp er nog steeds geen woord van... wacht eens even... Google Translate maakt ervan "Hoeveel talen kun je lezen (en natuurlijk begrijpen!) zonder de hulp van een online vertaler?"

Nou, 1 dan

😜

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Ja, alleen 🤪 is geen Nederlands. Als emoji's ook meetellen als een taal, dan kom ik misschien toch op 2 🙂
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I didn't count Korean even though I can muddle through. Arabic is rusty, and my Chinese has been better, but no surprise, I can handle German, Spanish, and French with little effort, mainly due to sharing the Latin Alphabet.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I'm assuming dictionaries count as translators, since with a dictionary I can read like 15 languages, while I only speak like two.
Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@HolgerHellinger

Programming languages are excluded, Schwäbisch could be considered a language on its own.

But I don't know how many people will toot in Schwäbisch…

in reply to Curmudgeon

@jetton

Funny: California DMV had the written driver's license test in 32 languages.
Now they have pruned it "just" to seven…
Many European countries have a lot to learn from this!

governing.com/community/califo…

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I'm part of the 4% that has voted >5, but I think I should explain what I mean with «understand».

Catalan is my first language, so no problem. Spanish, about same level.

English: I may have problems reading very popular literature with many vulgar / saxon rooted words.

French: I read French comics easily, novels is harder. French subtitles in French media, no problem.

Never studied Portuguese, Galician, Occitan or Italian but I can more or less understand normal texts.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I can read novels etc in Dutch, English and Swedish. Those are the languages that I typically buy books in.

Reading books in French or German is a bit of an effort. I might buy a guide book when on vacation. That is also the case for Danish and Norwegian (but most speakers of Danish are very hard for me to understand).

I can manage the gist of the occasional toot in Spanish or in Italian. And some short quote in Latin or classical Greek.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I went with 1 but it's more like one and a half I can read a little bit in French but often need to get help from an online translator. If it's very long (like fanfic)
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Depends on the definition of "read" (and to some degree "languages" too 😬 ). It's quite easy to understand enough of a written language to get the main point, even if you'd never say you "know" that language
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Ah yeh, but not like reading a news article or something? In a few languages I could figure out a post here but would really not like to try to decipher a complex text. (Eg. From ok-ish Swedish and scraping-by German, I can decipher most other Germanic/Scandinavian things)
in reply to Steve McCormick

@quasilocal

I wrote that poll at 4am 😉 thinking of some Italian instances forbidding people to toot in other languages than Italian, a policy I consider very dumb.
Of course the most you know, the better!

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Well, that sounds like a good way to breed an insular jingoistic/nationalistic mess 🙃

Surely nobody who wants to communicate in the wider community will abide by such rules.

Unknown parent

rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@Rolistespod

I wrote that poll at 4am 😄

I was just curious to know how many people can read toots in different languages.

I think next week I'll make another poll to see which are the most used languages.

Unknown parent

Víktor Bautista i Roca

@DaemonFC
I've just tested for a Swahili saying I've shared a few hours ago.

It's EXTREMELY bad.

«Ajambaye kwa hasira hujipasua msamba» becomes «Ajwho angrily sues the spread».

Google translate says: «Ajambaye in anger rips his crotch»

Real translation is «Who farts in anger rips their perineum»

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

, my vote (4-5) is also considering "normal" texts and not technical or complex ones.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I'm claiming 2-3, but it's more like 1 + a few halves, because there's a few languages I know some of, but don't have a huge vocabulary in.
in reply to Lisa

@TicklishHoneyBee

Well, between to get the gist of a toot and to read a whole sociology treatise there is a wide range…

@Lisa
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Me - native English speaker, fluent Spanish and French, fluent Japanese speaker (but can read only at a basic level.) I can read Portuguese and Italian pretty well too, based on my Spanish and a year or so studying both. Some Czech, but it's bloomin' difficult! I studied French and Spanish at uni, and used to teach English as a foreign language, including in Japan, Czech Republic and Venezuela, so was lucky to learn in situ.

Computer languages - nope 😕

in reply to SomersetWhovian 🇺🇦💙

@ClaireCopperman

A friend of mine went to work as a dishwasher in Sheffield.

When she came back she perfectly spoke… Neapolitan 🤣

It was the most used language in the back of the restaurant…

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

It is really a surprise to me that only 20% of the sample are monolingual.
in reply to Wim🧮

@wim_v12e

Next week I'll search for some sociologists to split the poll in a better way.

I wrote that poll at 4am, just for a personal curiosity, and I even forgot to change the language of the toot.

Here in Italy there are instances forbidding to toot in other languages than Italian… that is pretty useless, unless people want to communicate just with "Good morning! Coffee?" messages.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I really don't like that idea. I like to post in many languages, sometimes even ones that I don't speak (like Italian).
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

@Rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua @Wim🧮 I can sort-of-understand not wanting to have to deal with moderating contents in more than one language (although I expect that finding moderators that understand both Italian and English is pretty easy)

OTOH, that would also be a HUGE NO from me if I was choosing an instance

(mind you, all of my posts are in STARTREK_IT, so they are monolingual, right? :D )

in reply to Wim🧮

@Wim🧮 @Rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua in an international context I'm very much not surprised, the people who voted understand enough English to read the poll, and their first language is pretty much likely not to be English, so that's at least two
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Hmm...interesting question! My native language is ASL. There is no (standard) written form for ASL, so "reading" doesn't make sense. I am fluent in English. I also taught myself a few languages, none that I am sufficiently skilled (say 1 on 1 to 5 rating). What do you say about that?
in reply to The Blue Wizard

@thebluewizard

My idea was about reading average toots, a bit more complex than "here is my cat" and a lot less complex than a PhD dissertation.
So, if you can get a bit more than just the gist, count that for an understood language 🙂

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Gotcha. So you are hoping to "confirm" your hunch that many people can one or more languages where the text in the language can sometimes be understood at simple level. Like "Oui, je comprends!" for example.

Of course there are text where it can be complete opaque.

in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

in that case I'd upgrade myself from 1 to 2ish, but as I can't find a way to change my vote on a poll on here I shall accept that I'm simply representing the stereotypical Englishman ;-)
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I speak and read english and german fluently, so I can have a rough understanding of dutch, danish and sometimes svedish writings.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

Speak und understand English and German. Though the number of understood languages goes up for a given value of "understand" - I generally get the gist of Dutch if its written down or spoken slowly. Simple sentences or words of romance languages also work (who said learning Latin was useless?). Definitely very limited understanding though.
in reply to rag. Gustavino Bevilacqua

I bet most of the 1 language folk have English as a first language. (Like me! - I did French and Spanish at school but wouldn't claim to be fluent and have picked up bits of Norse, German, Farsi & Arabic over the years.)

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