I only know one so far but I am ambitious and plan to learn at least 7 before I die, most of them dead. By asking “how many languages do you know” I mean to say “how many languages are you so confident in that you can sit down and read a book?”
There is a fellow listed in the Guiness book of world records who speaks over 100 languages! I wonder if he speaks English?
btw, which language has the fewest irregular verbs?
I have to be honest, I can read a book in German mostly because of its similarities to Dutch, not because I remember much of the 5 years of high school German (with the most abominable teacher there ever was 
).
I have once been able to read books in French…when I was 16 or so.
Ingrid
btw, which language has the fewest irregular verbs?
Turkish has apparently the fewest irregular verbs. Only the verb to be is irregular. I imagine as a Greek, Peter, you would be minded to put that down to some special kind of mental infirmity on their part… 
Chinese has none at all. No conjugation.
I have forgotten my Dutch and I don’t know English yet.
I can read a book in spanish, but I dunno if I can read a REAL book in english… I mean, the other day I tried to read 1984, and I just had to find the translation… I got quickly confused.
i know 1 and a quarter languages. english and some latin. eep…
English and Korean. My Korean reading ability is pretty good but it depends on the subject. I can get through the ‘easier’ pages in a newspaper like ‘society’ or ‘travel’ but the politics page is too difficult. And I’m not interested so it’s no loss. I picked up a grade 12 Korean book one day and read through a story or two without too much trouble.
Korean and English. Native Korean. Write English as I write in this forum.
Talking in English is rather harder partly because I often find some of the words that fit don’t come quickly.
Read a bit of Classical Chinese. But the pronunciation is one adapted for Koreans ages ago. It was for Korean as Latin is for English.
A little bit of German. But I couldn’t get through Einsteins paper on Special Relativity very easily even after I majored in physics.
Took an elementary course of Japanese, though I forgot much of it.
Scratched on Biblical Hebrew, Latin, and Ancient Greek but made no substantial progress in any of them. Now learning Greek again.
Old Norse and Old English, French, Sanskrit, Arabic, Akkadian are on my list of Languages to learn. Sumerian is one that I couldn’t find a resource good enough to learn it. It is said to be another agglutinative language as Korean is. (I had to look fo rthis agglu- word. It’s h*ll difficult to memorize this. 
)
P.S.
As for reading, I could read Harry Potter with no real difficulty. But couldn’t easily get through Lolita. And the English alive, that people post on forums and news groups, is sometimes hard to keep up with. And look! I missed the last part of this topic. 
Is there a reason why the verb for “to be” always seems to be irregular???
Apparently the Indo-European word “to be” was irregular and so its progeny preserved that irregularity to some extent. Actually, I’m not sure that there even was a specific word for “be” or if it is just a collision of different words (“grow”, “become”, “exist”, etc.).
Just 2 languages here by the way.
The oldest Indo-European (as evidenced by Sanskrit) had the verb “to be;” though, just like the other classical languages, apposition of stative nouns and adjectives to create nominal sentences was always possible. One can easily pick out the roots of countless IE tongues just by the conjugation of the verb as:
I am = asmi
thou art = asi
he/she/it is = asti
we are = smas
you are = stha
they are = santi
Indo-European isn’t the only linguistic branch with irregularity in “to be,” however; Japanese is surprisingly irregular when it comes to certain usages with the verb, inter aliis. Exactly why “to be” is irregular, though, is the same reason that any words are irregular: common usage corrupts, and therefore the more common a word is used, the more chances there are for people to get it wrong. Moreover, most languages are rather structured in their grammatical declensions and conjugations. Most of the time this is helpful and beneficial to the language and is a natural extension of it; but sometimes these sophisticated grammatical devices become combersome and impractical. Thus the Sanskrit word is asi not assi, and santi instead of asnti. Believe it or not, practical aesthetics govern language more than any other factor: effectiveness of communication is the lord of all linguistics.
I’m only truly fluent in five or so, but I’ve studied at least two dozen others in detail. Languages rock.
I clicked on ‘4 or more’ because I’ve got two years of Spanish with little to show for it, fairly good German (spoken ability but little in reading), Swiss German (spoken only) counted as a separate language from standard German, and reasonably good Latin (reading only).
I have rudimentary French (reading only) and rudimentary Attic Greek (reading only), but not enough of either to really count.
Middle Egyptian had a word sometimes translated as ‘to be’, ‘is’ etc., but it was far weaker in meaning. Generally, Egyptians used words with meanings like ‘grows’, ‘blooms’, ‘exists’, ‘stands’ etc., instead of this weak quasi-‘be’ word, which, properly understood, really is not, stricktly speaking, a counterpart of Indo-European words that mean ‘to be’. Now if I could only remember what that word was!
Wine sometimes has this effect on one’s memory. I’m loose as a goose right now.
William, you are correct. But the language I had in mind was Esperanto – it has no irregular verbs.
Vi pravas, sed mi kredis ke EmptyMan demandas pri naturaj lingvoj.
Apparently the Indo-European word “to be” was irregular and so its progeny preserved that irregularity to some extent. Actually, I’m not sure that there even was a specific word for “be” or if it is just a collision of different words (“grow”, “become”, “exist”, etc.).
Turkish isn’t an Indo-European language, but I’m sure everyone reading this thread knows that. Actually, it belongs to the Ural-Altaic family of languages, which includes Finnish, Hungarian, Lap and, if some are to be believed, Japanese and Korean.
The Japanese, however, don’t like being told that their language is not an isolate. So I wouldn’t mention it to one of the Emperor’s subjects. But there are two trivial non-facts which readers may find interesting:
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The only naturalized Japanese citizen ever to sit in the Diet was a Finn.
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The Finnish question particle ko looks a bit like the Japanese question particle ka
Dull facts with which you can bore those sitting next to you.
Swiss German (spoken only) counted as a separate language from standard German
Really? If you read formal written Swiss, can you tell if it is Swiss? Anyway, it’s all German to me. Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish is another issue all together though, because the language names are tied to the country’s name…
I only have English (native) and lotsa Latin. Biblical and Modern Hebrew, Attic Greek, some Italian and the eensiest bit of Aramaic. I want fluency in Hebrew and Better skills in Greek, Latin and Aramaic before too much longer, and I want to start in on Sanskrit and learning what I can of PIE.
I tried Lojban, but it was too goofy for me to take seriously.