Daily Entertainment.

[muji]

How many languages do you and your pups speak?

Me: French, English, can understand ASL, Italian
Mal and Sallie: Firefly!Mandarin, English
Carlisle: English, Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, a little Russian
Kit Walker: English, French, several African tribal languages

Comments

[a1enzo]

"Ancient languages? Mega-boring! COBOL? Fortran? They're dinosaurs!"

[realmrsreynolds]

I tried to say Fortran out loud and it came out 4chan.

[sdelmonte]

Me: English, and not nearly as much Hebrew as I would like.

Charlie has bits and pieces of Spanish, French, and other EU-type languages.

Knox has some Yiddish.

Otherwise, my pups are very much a monolingual bunch.

[kd7sov]

I've got English. I can understand German fairly well, although I can't necessarily translate more than the gist; I know a few words of Spanish, French, and ASL; and I took a semester of Arabic. Oh, and I can usually recognize Italian when I see/hear it.

Felix speaks... whatever the language of Weyard is. It's a world language, despite there apparently being very few world travelers. I've occasionally speculated that being an Adept gives him some ability with languages, but that's probably less likely. He's also moderately good with "ancient Lemurian", which is kind of a catchall of Greek and Latin roots. Because it seemed like a good idea at the time, that's why.

Fluttershy speaks Equestrian. She also has the ability to communicate with animals, but that's not a language.

[camwyn]

My native language is English. I have a little Italian and I recently bought a bunch of used Latin textbooks to sit down and start refreshing what I learned in eighth grade. Curse you, Fallout New Vegas.

Native speakers of English:
Gordon speaks German well enough to do graduate level physics research in the language; canonically he did post-doc work at Innsbruck.
Adrian speaks enough Spanish not to disgrace himself in conversation with Mexicans. He has also made a point of picking up specific vocabulary from various people he's worked with in the Resistance and is capable of cursing with reasonable accuracy in English, Mexican Spanish, Dutch, Quebecois French, Polish, Malay, and Satere-Mawe.
Ray has enough German and Russian to read engineering journals in the languages, but is not really all that good at speaking them aloud. He can read Latin and to a much lesser degree, Greek, thanks largely to a lot of time spent working in Miskatonic University's library during the Stone Angels plot. A mage no longer in the Bar once pulled a copy of the entire Sumerian language out of the collective unconscious and crammed it into his head as well, so he's actually got better knowledge of Sumerian than of German, and he can use ASL reasonably well.
Arcade Gannon can handle himself in Latin.
Ellen knows what several foreign languages look like but could not speak them to save her life.
Fawkes only speaks English.

Non-native English speakers:
Varric can sorta-kinda read old Dwarvish but for the most part uses the common tongue of the different races of Thedas.
Medic is fluent in both English and German. His native German dialect is Swabian, but he speaks English deliberately when he's in the Bar or on the job for BLU, which is why the translation field doesn't bother rendering his German words into English.
Mordin: Oh God. Mordin's a hyperactive hyperfocused genius whose species sleeps one hour out of every twenty-four on average. I don't even KNOW how many languages that boy speaks. I know he once told Voodoo that he understands all the major Citadel races' languages but can't speak hanar because he doesn't have the ability to make lights and colors the way they do.
Belar: Is a god. He can bloody well speak anything he needs to. Including wolf.

[crazyfurries]

You forgot that Ray also speaks Wolf reasonably well after having spent quite a bit of time around Garion. He's the guy who taught Tyler, mostly because any kid is like a large organic vocal recorder. Better the boy learn the right phrases/postures than the wrong ones.

[nocarename]

Me: English, enough Mandarin to say hello, good-bye and count to five, a similar amount of French.

Tyler: English, French

Jerry: English, Ancient Greek

Ako: Japanese, increasingly good English, a smattering of French

Robo: English

Yuuno: English, Japanese, Mid-Chidan (magical space English), Belkan (magical space German) for certain. Probably more because he's an adventure archeologist.

[sophistry]

Me: English, Spanish, French, theoretically Irish... /o\

Crowley: All... the languages? Okay, not all of them, but! Having been around for the entirety of man's linguistic development, he speaks more than a few, going back over the millennia - and his broad familiarity with so many Indo-European languages (and his facility for insinuating himself into new surroundings) means that he is fairly handy at picking up new ones.

He speaks most major European languages in their modern(ish) form, while his fluency in older languages tends to cluster around the Mediterranean and the Near/Middle East. He also has a smattering of ancient languages that stretches across the Asian continent, Enough Russian To Get By, some basic Mandarin and Wu (Suzhou dialect), and a few words of Japanese.

Also, uh, Parseltongue. But he doesn't like to spread that one around.

[vivien]

Also, uh, Parseltongue. But he doesn't like to spread that one around.

Bwahahaha, I forgot about that.

[gorgonfondness]

Lunar has a worldwide language and several dialects. Mia speaks with a light Vanetian dialect. She can also say some things in an ancient magic language but can't really read it.

Lucas speaks whatever language is spoken on the Nowhere Islands with the equivalent of a country accent. He is a farm kid, after all.

Shinigami can speak any Earth language needed. I'm guessing the ones he uses most often are English, Japanese, and possibly Spanish. (He does live in Nevada...)

I no longer know enough to fake my way through Spanish, so I only know English right now. D:

[minkhollow]

(GIP because I can. :D)

me: English; I remember enough Spanish that I can still read it (and could ask someone to slow down please if I needed to) and... barely any Japanese at all, but I can usually tell you that's what I'm seeing/hearing if I catch key characters/words.
Cata and Sam: Canon calls the local common language Sixlandish; I'm not sure how many others they'd have had cause to encounter, but it's very possible they know some bits.
Claudia: English and a number of programming languages, but human languages are something she can't get her head around as easily.
Apollo: ...all of them, probably. He's a god and Olympus moves around a lot. But ancient Greek will always have a place in his heart.

[themightyspazz]

John speaks some Spanish ("YOU'RE ALL MUERTO!" "John Marston! Remember the nombre!") but not much.

Aside from English, Voodoo's fluent in Pashto, Spanish, Russian, Chechen, Arabic, Korean, and Swalihi.

I'm fluent in Spanish. Don't get the chance to use it where I live now, but you do not take the language for four years and live a stone's throw from TJ and not pick up something. I know some German, Japanese, and Russian, too, but not all that much.

[starrydome]

Me: I speak Danish, English, German. Some Spanish as well. I read Norwegian and Swedish. And a little Latin.

Elrond: knows every single elven dialect there is (and there are many). Westron. Possible all other kind of strange tongues spoken in Middle-earth.

[starrydome]

And my mun-journal is axtually up and running but I was too lazy to change. Sorry.

[mogget_cat]

Me: English, some French, a tiny smattering of Japanese, and some basic Esperanto. >_>

Yrael: Common Speech/English, some Japanese (thanks to Kyo), French (thanks to Meg Giry), and some tiny bit of Italian and Latin (thanks to Dr. Lecter).

Sunshine: English

Zelgadiss: Common Speech/Whatever they're speaking in canon.

[wakeupnew]

I do English and godawful Spanish, in the way where I took classes for eight or nine years and can mostly understand it, if reading it or someone is speaking slowly enough, but cannot speak without sounding like a child.

Characters ... Hawkeye knows a tiny bit of French, as is occasionally helpful in Maine, and a couple of Korean phrases. Kurt seems to be taking both French and Spanish (thank you, worst continuity on a television show ever) at the high school level, but I'm going ahead and millicanoning that his French is much better; it's what he's more interested in, anyway, because: Paris. Watson speaks a few words of hopeless French. The rest of them: only English! Which occasionally gets Liz into trouble.

[wakeupnew]

That is to say: I cannot speak the language without sounding like a child. And that's being generous; kids' sentence structure and grammar are way better than mine.

[chanter1944]

Me: English, Spanish (passably, actively working toward fluency), a teenytiny bit of Portuguese (prettiest language ever!), a few mostly *cough* colorful Mandarin phrases thanks to the Firefly pups in the bar. My recognition of different languages is actually very good, whether or not I can speak them; when you're a blind teenage culture geek with a shortwave radio and a lot of time on your hands, you learn to differentiate fast. It's fun! :)

Sariel: English, Kweyol (Saint Lucia's French patois)

[fallsinplace]

Me: English and a small amount of French, with a sprinkling of German and Spanish.

Belle: Creole and English. She probably knows a tiny bit of Spanish, but not enough to count as speaking it.

Lorna: just English, though I imagine she took Latin in high school and college since a language is usually required.

Kyo: Japanese and some English.

Domino: In canon she has been able to understand and speak every language she's run into. Whether she has it as a power, or she spends an unimaginable amount of time studying is never addressed.

[saphyria]

*noms on* I had forgotten whether Kyo had ever seen Yrael's true shape before, so I've spent a good part of the last hour reading old threads. Kyo has seen Yrael's true shape, like... twice, but has never even mentioned his own.

[ceitfianna]

Me: French, little bit of Modern Greek, read and write Ancient Greek and Latin

Will Scarlett: English and knows some Latin as that's what all the church services are in

Demeter: Definitely knows Greek, French, all European languages and can pick up others easily due to divine cheating

Jane Austen: English, French, some Latin and Greek

Moist von Lipwig: English/Ankh-Morporkian, Uberwaldian/German hybrid, some Genuan/French-Italian hybrid

William Evans-only English though he also knows how to curse in Russian and whatever languages that Adrian might have taught him while they waited for Mrs. Wilson

Sameth-Common Speech, I feel like he probably learned some other languages in Ancelstierre but don't know what they are.

Tumnus-English, some of other Narnian languages-Elven and the like

The Pirate King-English, some French and Spanish along with the power of song

[notabricklayer]

Me: English, can understand ASL (thought I could also speak it, but as one deaf client the other day proved, not so much!) and my tech is browbeating me into learning Spanish. Mostly by occassionaly only reporting back in Spanish. Brat.

Ace: Pre-reboot - do you have a few days? She has quite a few under her belt, and can curse in more. Post-reboot - English, Spanish, can probably get by in a few of the Middle-Eastern languages, understands enough Chinese to order off the menu, and can cheerfully and fluently insult and/or barter with the major intergalactic species.

Glor: Westron, Sindarian, Quenyan, and Peredhil. :D

Shaz: English. What?

Katya: Russian, English, a smidge of Spanish and French, an even tinier smidge of Mandarin Chinese.

Bones: English, some Romulan, some Klingon, some Vulcan.

Balthazar: English (including the form he spoke, and all of its permutations to the present day), French, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese (as a plot point, even!) and... um. Probably everything else, at this point. You have to do something with your time.

Romana: ............ Um. 'All'? IDK. She cheats with a TARDIS.

[starrydome]

As in "I am fine" meaning something else entirely ;)

[herdivineshadow]

Personally, I've got English and... a smattering of schoolgirl German and Latin.

I've not really thought about it for my pups other than for Guy... but he's fluent in English, Latin, Norman French and Occitan. I decided at some point that he preferred to read in French since his mum was French and he spent a fair amount of time in France as a teenager - plus the whole thing with French being the official language of court at the time.

Also, he knows a few words of Arabic from when he was being naughty in the Holy Land.

[synchronicity2]

Me: English, some Spanish (I can read it well, understand it okay, speak it marginally, and can't write it out at all).

Doc: English, some Spanish (better than mine but it's mostly useful phrases for the time period and the locale), some Latin (due to church + medical texts / studying at Tulane), and a few minimal words/phrases in Navajo (thanks to Chavez).

Dan: Like Doc, it's English, with minimal Spanish (his is worse than Doc's) and only a few things in Latin (again, due to church).

Carl: English, and Scots, definitely. He's fairly well-versed in Russian, Gaelic, and Arabic, and only slightly less fluent in French (his accent is HORRID, btw) and Spanish. I'm sure he's picked up random bits of other things here and there.

Han: Basic. He reads and writes in Aurebesh. He's also pretty decent in Bocce and can manage in Huttese; he can understand Shyriiwook but obviously can't speak it. He can probably swear in just about anything he comes across.

Jake Lonergan: English, minimal Spanish. (Though at this point in canon, the Spanish is gone, along with almost everything else in his memory.)

Jonah Hex: English, some Cajun French, some Spanish, and well he can also raise the dead and talk to them, so uh yeah, there's that.

Skellig: ...English, definitely. Marginal amounts of Russian (horrible, horrible accent though) and Latin. There's probably some other odds and ends around there, after having been around for so long but...some of them likely wouldn't make sense to humans anyway. He can also talk in bird/owlspeak.

[basic_powers]

Tyler: He's an American boy (sorta. Not sure where 'having spent years 0-5 on the moon' lands, but his parents spoke english almost exclusively so he's a native speaker as far as that goes...) from Kansas so he's picked up a very minor twang, even with being a city boy. He's becoming fairly fluent in Japanese, more spoken than written (srsly, the kanji thing oy) and is quite fluent in Wolf thanks to Ray. Fifteen years later, he's extremely fluent in nearly 15 languages, for reading and writing, and still collecting more.

Dot: ...she's fluent in most every computer language up to the time of 1994, and quite fluent in English, however she's not yet become a master at human languages. Keyword. Yet.

Mother: He's a fluent speaker and reader in Russian, Arabic, and German, thanks to many, many conspiracy and security related instruction manuals and friends made over the years, aside form being a native English speaker. He CAN read some mandarin, but don't expect him to be speaking it anytime soon without making the native speakers wince.

Kit Baxter: Candian, fluent in British english, passingly decent in french, but thanks to her Russian parents, she's fairly fluent in that. Mostly when it comes to cursing.

[inlovewithwords]

Me: English, French, Spanish (the latter two are a little sketchy these days)

Tavi: Aleran, Canish (as far as we know Kitai hasn't bothered to teach him her native language yet), can probably translate Latin to Aleran. While the Bar translation does make Aleran into English, canonically some words are kept Aleran-or-rather-handed-down-Latin-ish, so those stay the way Butcher made them. Also, despite translation existing, Tavi deliberately keeps to Aleran idioms for some things.

[waco_jim]

Me: English, enough Spanish to vaguely understand written Spanish if I have Google on-hand, not enough to speak it conversationally. Took it for seven years and have probably forgotten more of it than the average American has ever learned.

Jim and McCabe: English only.

Borgel: He speaks English with no noticeable accent as far as I can recall. His native tongue is the language of the Old Country. He is also fluent in the language of at least one country that directly borders the Old Country. He might also know some Quebecois French, though he may have been lying about that.

And of course, there's nothing in the book that suggests he might not know even more languages than that.

[river_meimei]

Me: English is my native and only fluent language. Three years of Japanese mean I can kind of get around in a very halting way; I can understand French mostly okay if it's not too complicated, but am very bad at speaking it; I can read Latin okay mostly. I can speak a very random scattering of ASL words, but I've forgotten a lot of the more useful ones so I'm bad at understanding it. Italian and Spanish I can usually understand if it's slow and simple, but can't speak much at all. I used to be able to get around in Arabic (Modern Standard or very bad Egyptian) but I've forgotten nearly all of it.

River: Firefly!Mandarin, English, the High Speech of Gilead when it's plot-relevant, at least a bit of Stitch's language. In general River can psychically pick up on bits of people's language enough to at least throw in some phrases and comprehend others, but she doesn't usually retain that long-term.
Regan: Firefly!Mandarin, English.
Trowa: Oh gosh. English, Japanese, German; enough Spanish and French to get around, but he kind of sounds like a foreigner; gradually increasing bits and pieces of L4 Arabic, which he speaks much better (but also much more lower-class colloquially) than he reads/writes. Bits and pieces of other languages, especially a few key phrases like "How much is this?" and "circus" and "Surrender now."
Uzura: ...whatever they speak in Kinkan Town! Which is either English, Japanese, or German depending on how you look at it. Mostly we go with German, because of meta.
Clare: ...whatever they speak in her world. I don't even know. It's a fake fantasy medieval Europe in a Japanese manga, and the one time we see a writing system it clearly bears no resemblance to any Earth script I know of. There don't seem to be multiple languages in the area where she lives, anyway.

[vivien]

Ooh, ooh. I make all my characters be skilled with the languages, since I am not.

Me = English! I took three years of French back in the day, and I understand Spanish, especially in context, okay. I can't speak either besides a scattering of survival phrases.

Tom = Parseltongue! English, medieval and ancient Latin, Greek, Medieval French (in academic context), Italian, French, and probably some others he has never mentioned.

Ingress = English, rat, pigeon, whatever the hell they speak in Valdemar, and French. She's received tutoring in Latin.

Bela = English, French, Russian, Italian, Latin, some Arabic

Et voila!

[hey35andholding]

Me: English, high school French (atrocious accent, proficient written)
Clementine: English, high school Spanish (knows enough to communicate in poorly-accented Spanish during PSAs)
Dixie: English, Fluent Spanish (enough to travel around Mexico unencumbered), some French (enough to sing 'Help Me File My Claim' in the language).
Juliet, English, some Spanish if I'm remembering right (and I have headcanon that she leaned French to communicate with her grandma).