bable babble

I hear of or meet people who are able to speak six or so languages and it simply blows my mind, I have a hard enough time speaking my native language sometimes...or typing it. I am by no means fluent in any other language besides English, but I know enough of a few others to get me by if I had to.
I speak:

German; I took three years of German in middle school and high school, which left me at the 101 level when I took a semester in college. Yes, rather pathetic. At this point my grammar skills auf Deutsch are almost non existent, but if I'm around other German speakers I can usually remember a fair amount of vocabulary. I was told by one of my teachers that I had a very good accent and I think that helps a lot too. I know how to say the important things like "where's the bathroom?", "I love you", "where's the good chocolate?" and a drinking song or two to sing with some non alcoholic beverage.

ASL; also known as American Sign Language. Technically I don't speak it, no one does, we sign it. I've been interested in sign since I was a kid and I've wanted to learn for a long time, I thought about taking it for the language requirement in college but upon learning that it would take more classes to get the requirement in ASL than in other languages, I resorted to German; however, after my first semester of German, it didn't fit into my schedule and so I decided to go for ASL. I have LOVED ASL, though I am by no means fluent, I almost feel that I can express myself better in sign than it English. I took five semesters of ASL, all that was offered at my school and got the language requirement. I'm probably the best at sign after English, however it takes a while to get into my 'sign brain' to switch gears from verbal to visual language, and you'd be amazed how fast real signers can sign. Another aspect of ASL is that you can't just learn the language, you also have to learn about Deaf culture, to even try and understand how the Deaf see things. For instance, they call themselves Deaf as opposed to deaf and various things like that. Also there are multiple signed languages used by the Deaf and hard of hearing. Anyway I could go on and on about this.

Spanish; I've never actually really learned Spanish, nor have I had the desire to do so but I have been around enough Spanish speakers that I've picked up a fair amount of it. And there's always what I learned from Seaseme Street and other various children's shows. My room mate who was learning Spanish would ask me what things meant and sometimes I could tell her, other times I would remind her that she was the one learning Spanish and not me, I didn't know.

Italian; I am currently starting to learn Italian, I very much love Italy and hope to go there in the very near future and so I thought it prudent to have some grasp of the language. So far Italian's okay, mostly it's hard trying to retain so many words and frustrating because I don't know enough to say the things I want to, and I have the words in German. My brain thinks the German might work because it's also something that's not English. I didn't really have this problem with ASL because it's not a spoken language, however if someone makes a gesture that's also a sign I sign back to them until I remember that most people don't sign...sigh... anyway I like Italian, it's fun to pronounce, although sometimes it's hard to figure out how to pronounce because the Italians use a lot more vowels than English speakers do.

So now I am a linguistically confused girl who can count to ten in five languages(one of these is English).

Ein, zwie, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht, nine, zen.

Uno, dos, tres, quattro, cinco, seis, ocho, nueve, diece.

Uno, due, tre, quattro, chinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, deici.

do you know which is which? Obviously ASL is not up there, it's really hard to write in ASL. Also if I spelled wrong please forgive me.