Arabic, English: fluent
French, Russian: basic understanding
German: just some words

Italian: mother tongue
English: First at school, which was barely enough for my Physics degree. My american wife gave an important contribution, too. Now we speak English in the family.
German: I live in Zurich since a long time and that' the language I speak most.

Like most italians, I speak/understand a bit of Spanish and French.

From Ottawa Canada, which is on the border of Quebec, so English is my mother tongue, I can read and speak some French. (Just don't ask me to write it). My wife's mother tongue is French, (Franco-Ontarian), but we speak English at home.

native tongue- English
fairly ok Japanese- coz I live in Japan
smattering of Indonesian( my wife's native tongue) an easy language to learn actually.
tiny residual trace elements of Mandarin I learned at University:)
My wife is one of those annoying people who pick up languages at a drop of a hat, she has been watching a Korean drama for a few weeks and now speaks more than a few phrases( add that to her Native Balinese+Indonesian, near native Javanese, English, great Japanese and ok French)

Bulgarian - Native and very useful internationally :)
English - rather fluent, kind of useless though :P
Some French - spent a few years in North Africa, traveled to FRA a lot, parents are fluent, the French don't speak anything else, so you don't really have a choice
Some German - my fist job was for a Germany company and as my boss (a German) refused to learn Bulgarian and his English had a very strong Bavarian accent...
Russian - used to be fluent, but haven't used it for a decade at least. The language of our 'big communist brothers' before the changes, we all had to learn it.

I can also curse and swear very well in Serbian, Arabic and Turkish.

Portuguese - In fact, Brasilian Portuguese, as I discover when I travel to Europe and used audio guides that I understand better English then Portugal portuguese.

English - To play here of course.

Spanish - I live near Argentina and Uruguai, so you learn at least the basic to comunicate well with your neighbours and buy on the free shops. And it worked on Spain too, how strange :-)

German - Studied four years at Goethe Institut when I intend to have a Phd on Germany, but give up and have forgetten almost everything, except how to curse and ask for a beer. Have been on Munchen Oktoberfest where it was really usefull :-)

France and Italian - Can aks for food, directions, and read most instructions, specially if it has some pictures.

@Ivo : the French have to study at least two foreign language at school. I know we have a bad reputation but most of the French can have a basic conversation in English.

Native Brazilian Portuguese, fluent English, lousy Spanish, can read and understand a fair bit of spoken French and Italian and know a song in Hungarian, besides a few words in Japanese ("Good morning", "Good afternoon", "Good night", "Thanks", "Goodbye" and the most important of all: "Is this eatable?"). :-P

Do you mean is this edible? Just picking on you JesusPetry. I know English is just "fluent" and not "native" for you.

@chamois - you may have to study, but this does not mean you've learned it or will want to use is :P

I was joking though - yes, it's a stereotype...

Thanks, Draugnar! In fact I knew the word but put too much thought in how to construct the Japanese sentence into English and got blocked.

Le francais m'occupe chaque jour entre 14h00 et 16h00.

je deteste l'ecole.

aussi, je desteste que je ne peux pas utiliser les accents facilement sur mon ordinateur portable. les francais me detestent quand je parle avec eux dans les chatrooms.

lol

Moi, j'ai l'meme probleme. Comment peut-on taper les accents sans la boite numerique (ou un clavier europeen?)

impossible, malhereusement.

lol. helas.

wait, how do you say "lol" in French?

@abgemacht : "mdr" but most French understand "lol" aswell

native tongue: English
(literarilly fluent)

First learned language: German, because I needed to learn a language and I have German cultural connections.
(semi-fluent) My last big hurdle is obtaining a large vocabulary. My accent is pretty good, according to a native speaker.

Second learned language: Japanese, because I got good at German and like it and wanted to be a translator (written), and figured another big trade language would come in handy. I did not choose Chinese because, if I ever traveled abroad, I would prefer to go to Japan.
(not fluent, though I can introduce myself) I can tentatively form basic sentences based on a six-week old vocabulary and understand the particle stuff fairly well.

Latin, Spanish, and East Franconian (a German dialect): know some grammatical tidbits that allow me to form some EXTREMELY basic sentences.

I find that I like and am good at linguistics in general. I have intermittently worked on and looked at some constructed languages, including one to provide non-babble-word-sounding place names for a world in a novel my brother is speculating about working on. Buhabu Buthym Buhabym.

Im really surprised how common German( as a second language) is here. Put that down to Bismark being a great Diplomat I guess

I think it's close similarity to English also helps - it can be seen as the 'easy option' to a school that has to teach some language.

English (mother tongue--USAmerican)
German (had a friend who went to Waldsee, a German-language-learning camp in northern Minnesota, and invited me along one year; kept it up in high school)
French (wanted to take a second language in high school; didn't want to take Spanish out of contrariness. Just have two years; read poorly and speak abominably.)
Turkish (was an exchange student in Turkey. Have forgotten a lot.)
Russian (fell in love with Dostoevsky and decided to be a Russian major. That didn't last long...just took a year, my freshman year of college. But I did meet my future wife in the class.)
Ancient Greek (I was a religion major; everyone told me that I should take Ancient [Attic] Greek rather than Biblical Greek, because AG would allow me to read BG but not the other way around. I've forgotten a lot but will hopefully pick it up again pretty quickly next year in seminary.)
Ancient Hebrew (Ditto--just one summer course at a Lutheran seminary near my hometown.)
Norwegian (heritage. Just took a year in college.)
Now I live in Korea and can only say "hello," "thank you," "goodbye," "I want to go to Wolgye Station," "Left," and "Right." Oh, also "karaoke." But very little else.
I'd love to learn Japanese; right now I just know a few words...what an awesome country.

"I'd love to learn Japanese; ...what an awesome country."

Just wish they'd stay in it. The 'War of Japanese Aggression' was, indeed, pretty awesome. The Rape of Nanking didn't make them too popular with their near neighbour, and it still rankles to this day as they won't even admit to it, in any language.

Learn how to say 'F*ck you, Japan'. That's all the Japanese you'll ever need.

"Im really surprised how common German( as a second language) is here. Put that down to Bismark being a great Diplomat I guess "

I'd rather look for the reasons in the periods after Bismark.

@Timur

Chill dude. Do you get the difference between the leadership of the Empire of Japan some seventy years ago and the current Japanese? All that is fucked seem to be your brain...

I speak English as a native. I also studied Japanese for four years and can read and write at a high school level; I recently moved to Tokyo where I live and work as a missionary.

I want to learn another SE Asian language, but will likely wait until my Japanese vocabulary is more filled-out.

@Timur

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_Japan

Perhaps the extensive list of apologies catalogued above rings hollow to those who suffered, or whose parents or grandparents suffered, under Japanese rule. That would be understandable. The Japanese Empire and people in its employ committed crimes that can never be repaid or made right.

I am also aware, or at any rate I imagine it to be the case, that there are lots of people in Japan, including some in the Japanese government, who are unaware of or in denial about or unrepentant for their ancestors' and their countrymen's crimes during WWII and in the decades of colonialism previous to that. I wish there weren't, but unfortunately it's to be expected.

But how is it productive or just to say that, sixty-five years afterwards, all the Japanese I need to know is "F*ck you, Japan," when successive Japanese governments and their representatives have repeatedly apologized for their country's actions and Japan has itself been a model member of the commonwealth of nations?

The Japanese as a nation suffered pretty terribly as a result of their country's aggression. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. Ask the survivors of the firebombing of Tokyo, or of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was widespread hunger and misery at the beginning of the American occupation. Many of Japan's leaders were brought to trial, convicted, and punished with imprisonment or execution for their crimes.

Furthermore, Japan has done a remarkably good job of staying within its own borders since 1945. Better than, for example, their neighbors the Chinese--just ask the Tibetans. To preemptively take a club out of Timur's hands, the Japanese have of course also done better at staying within their own borders since 1945 than my own native United States--although they're a big part of the reason we ever sent troops in large numbers abroad in the first place, and I think that many of the US's out-of-border military actions (the Korean War, Gulf War I, etc.) were wise and just. But I digress.

None of that erases the sufferings of the people and the nations who were oppressed by Japan, or returns the lives ended or ruined as a result of the crimes of the Japanese government or of individual Japanese. But neither is it just that the Japanese of today be solely judged by the evil actions of past generations.

Japan has friendly and courteous people, beautiful landscape (both natural and artificial), delicious food, and a fascinating and refined culture, to name just a few of its many, many positive attributes. I have been there three times now and hope I will be able to return often. And so with no disrespect intended to South Korea, the beautiful and hospitable country where I currently reside, or to any other country that suffered as a result of Japanese actions during WWII or the century previous, but also with no apologies to anyone except for my potentially bad Japanese (I'm relying on Google Translate), I say again:

日本：どのような素晴らしい国！

/grandiloquent troll-feeding