Wo shuo idear putonghua.

But have almost totally forgot how to Romanize.

Ho voluto imparare il cinese fa molti anni ma ancora non ho studiato molto ma credo che tu hai detto che 'io so parlare il cinese

"I've wanted to learn Mandarin Chinese for several years but have not yet studied much. I believe that you said 'I can speak Mandarin'"

我也會中文！
日本語もできます～
But I also studied Finnish, Korean, and American Sign Language during college. (too bad I can't use the last one here..)

Duei le.

"That is correct."

My Romanization is all fucked up because between my high school lessons, my first two years of college, my second two years of college, a few experiences in Hong Kong, and a few other freelance pieces of work, I picked up a bunch of different systems of it. Now I'm about 10 years out of use, so I can speak it conversationally, but Romanizing is awful.

Man, I wish I knew how to include characters, zephyris. I'd look like a badass then.

That's awesome Zephyris. If we could somehow figure out how to put ASL on the web, I'd be able to share with you there as well though I'm sure you're much more advanced in it than I. If it's a Latin based language, I'm pretty good with it but get outside of that and I have a lot to learn still.

Tell me, is Finnish a lot like Russian or more like Swedish or neither of the above?

I know that Estonian is in the same language family as Finnish, I'm not sure what else is, but Russian is not.

@SacredDigits I started learning Mandarin awhile back when my son first started talking about getting into Kung Fu but then he switched to Goju-Ryu Karate-Do and so I stopped learning chinese and started Japanese. I don't claim to be able to write it though. LOL

I know a little Japanese (not as much as zephyris, but enough to get me around in Tokyo).

Funny linguistic story:

I learned that all you really need to know to fit in both linguistically and culturally in Japan is:

Watashi wa beron beron des.

It means, "I am stinking drunk."

Cultural rules don't really apply to people who are inebriated, so if you get caught out doing something you thought was fine but you're getting odd looks, just float that one out there. Instant win.

Algun dia quiero aprender un idioma del norte o del este de europa como el ruso, el noruego o tal vez el fines. Soy loco por los idiomas! Razon por lo cual los enseňo tanto."

"Some day I want to learn a language from the north or east of Europe like Russian, Norwegian or perhaps Finnish. I'm crazy about languages! That's the reason I teach them so often."

Awesome advice! Definitely come in more handy than my "nan sai de su ka?" which means "how old are you?" LOL

FirstApple, neither of the above. They all belong to different language families. Swedish is Germanic, Finnish is Uralic, and Russian is Slavic. I'm not sure how much detail you want, so there's the basic answer.

Grazie Eleven, C'e perfetto per me!

Mazeltov, mein chavers!

Obi - you got me on that one. I don't know anything about Yiddish

C'est l'heure de dormir pour moi. A demain mes amis!

Buenos noches.

Mazeltov=congratulations/good luck/well done/emphatic hi ("tov" is "good," so "Mazeltov" is amplifying the "good.")

mein=my/mine (same as German)

chavers=friend (with that being masculine/feminine in nature, so it'd be "chaveras" for all of you sporting double X chromosomes on site.)

:)

Also:

Mazeltov=Hebrew
Mein=German
Chavers=mix between Hebrew and old Germanic/Russian greetings

And there are words that have English elements occaisonally, too, so Yiddish, much like the Jews, has a Hebrew root that just soaks up the words and culture around it and takes it in... :)

russian and swedish are more closely related than finnish is to either of them.

BALD is right! Wikipedia says so!

僕に少しだけ日本語ができます。僕の書くことと話すことはよくないですよ。でも僕の聞く事と読むことは良いです。

I was never any good at particles or making things sound smoother. My endings could use work, too. My Japanese is amateur at best, I'd say.

@Bald, you couldn't understand most of what someone is saying to you in Finnish if you only spoke Swedish though. When I think of related in language terms I think of how Polish, Bulgarian, and Russian are related. I'm not saying you're wrong or anything. I don't speak either of the languages, so I can't speak from experience. But from what I understand the grammar and phonetics are completely different.

FirstApple, Finnish has fourteen or fifteen noun cases, whereas English has two or three. I've heard it's one of the hardest languages for a non-native Finn to learn (meaning Finnish children have no trouble with it).

@Bald: Awkward. Sorry Bald. I misread that. :P

Ruski jezik je slavenski jezik te stoga usko povezan sa Poljskim, Češkim, Slovačkim, Hrvatskim, Srpskim, Bugarskim, tj. drugim slavenskim jezicima. Švedski je germanski pa time blizi Njemačkom, Engleskom. Finski jezik je u ugro-finskoj skupini, zaseban od 3 velike europske skupine jezike - germanski, romanski i slavenski. Pozz.

Once, I thought I would be one of those people who spoke a bazillion languages. I'm English first language, took ten years of Spanish and six of French. Knew a little food-related Cantonese When I went to college, I figured I would learn Japanese and Russian and maybe work for the State Department or the CIA. I took two years of college Japanese and it kicked my ass. I never made it to Russian and now I've forgotten almost all my Japanese. The Spanish, and to a lesser extent, the French stuck with me because I soaked it in while I was stil a kid.

Lol, Finnish was so darn hard! But it was my favorite class in my freshman year just cause it was so relaxed, the teacher was nice, and we only had like 5 students. Could just pretend to be a kindergartner again XD.

To give a sample of how different Finnish is:
1 - yksi
2 - kaksi
3 - kolme
4 - neljä
5 - viisi
6 - kuusi
7 - seitsemän
8 - kahdeksan
9 - yhdeksän
10 - kymmenen

Good day - Hyvää Päivää
I love you - Minä rakastan sinua.
And my favorite word in Finnish: Ice cream - Jäätelöä!
And it is so cute hearing native Finns saying their own language because they don't have the "sh" sound, so it sounds more like "Finnis"

My German teacher in High School was an ethnic Estonian. After learning some Finnish in college, I wrote a letter to her in Finnish, and she said she was able to understand most of it. And also, Finnish is more distantly related to Hungarian, making the Finno-Ugric language family. Other languages include Sami (spoken by Lapp people in the north of Scandinavia), and some other languages in Russia.

Wow, this has been an enlightening and fun thread. Thanks everyone who has chipped in on it thus far. While I'm not surprised to see so many brilliant minds that this website attracts to know various other languages, I must profess my astonishment that more of you do NOT know Spanish considering its prominence in the US now.

My Spanish was taught to me by a Spaniard, so it's not totally usable in the US. Plus, neither of my home regions (Upstate NY and Metro Detroit) is big on Spanish anyway.