First Fluent Language?

[Hopeless]

And its not a dialect, after 350 years our language is different, and far more expressive and fluid than guttural Dutch lol

It's difficult for me to distinguish between it and rural Dutch dialects, though.
And I can understand both written and spoken Afrikaans better than I can most of those dialects.

I agree there, i think we are closer to 1500 High Dutch, your 41 dialects are confusing as hell in the majority, Amsterdam is a good place for me to try speak Afrikaans to Dutch people though. Ons is baie dieselfde maar nie heeltemal nie

[Averoigne]

Japanese

[Napkiraly]

Afrikaans is actually a separate language. While there is a large amount of mutual intelligibility, it's not a dialect.

Anyway, for me it's English.

No they speak Dutch like old Dutch farmers. If they would live in rural areas like Zeeland (Province of the Netherlands) people would understand them.

No, Afrikaans is a separate language. It's like saying Croatian and Serbian are the same language. Afrikaans is a daughter language of the Dutch language, but is not a variety but a separate language. More info here.

[Hopeless]

No they speak Dutch like old Dutch farmers. If they would live in rural areas like Zeeland (Province of the Netherlands) people would understand them.

No, Afrikaans is a separate language. It's like saying Croatian and Serbian are the same language. Afrikaans is a daughter language of the Dutch language, but is not a variety but a separate language. More info here.

Thank you

[Arumdaum]

When did I say that the descendants are all that similar?

And tbh they're not thousands of miles apart linguistically.

*points to "evolved from a completely different language"*

Proto-Indo-European isn't completely different from itself.

Here you have it folks.

Also, Polish and German are completely different. Here's a short little blurb in German.

Gutenmorgen, mein nom ist Ken, und ich komme aus Amerika. Ich vershtehe ein bisschen Deutsche.

And Polish:
Dzień dobry, nazywam się Ken, i pochodzą z Ameryki. Rozumiem trochę po polsku.

Yeah, Proto-Indo-European isn't completely different from itself. What does that have to do with any of its descendants?

And, so what? You're going to assume that they're completely different from a single blurb that I don't fully understand? There's lots of German loanwords in Polish, and there's also some grammatical (albeit limited) similarity between the languages.

[Arumdaum]

No they speak Dutch like old Dutch farmers. If they would live in rural areas like Zeeland (Province of the Netherlands) people would understand them.

No, Afrikaans is a separate language. It's like saying Croatian and Serbian are the same language. Afrikaans is a daughter language of the Dutch language, but is not a variety but a separate language. More info here.

Croatian and Serbian are the same the language, actually, unlike Afrikaans and Dutch.

[Lordanya]

Egyptian Arabic, I am Egyptian.

[Pretty Awesome Persons]

There's Afrikaans in the poll, but not Spanish?

I learned English "first", since I'm American, but I'm fluent in Spanish because my parents made sure to teach me it. I'm currently learning French and Russian, but I'm much much better at French, for obvious reasons.

[Napkiraly]

No, Afrikaans is a separate language. It's like saying Croatian and Serbian are the same language. Afrikaans is a daughter language of the Dutch language, but is not a variety but a separate language. More info here.

Croatian and Serbian are the same the language, actually, unlike Afrikaans and Dutch.

I thought the differences were enough that it was considered a separate language?

[Arumdaum]

Croatian and Serbian are the same the language, actually, unlike Afrikaans and Dutch.

I thought the differences were enough that it was considered a separate language?

There's no difference... at all.

I'm assuming it's like if someone from New York tried to talk to someone from Pennsylvania, or something like that. idk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbocroatian_language

edit: they only have different names for political reasons or some shiz

[Vazdania]

I'm curious to hear the linguistic origins of NSers. Also, in an attempt to give substance to this topic, I've prepared a number of questions to keep in mind when responding. What is the first language you learned fluently? Did you learn from from your family or elsewhere (school, neighborhood, etc.)? Is this language you group up speaking? If not, what was? Or did you grow up bilingual? If such is the case, can you note what languages you learned and how they were used (perhaps one was only used in school, with distant family, neighbors, etc.)?

Is your language the dominant/official language of the nation or area you live in? If you grew up learning more than one main language, is that something to be expected of kids where you live?

Also, if there are a number of dialects of the language you speak, what one do speak (or grew up with in the area you live in)?

Perhaps you grew up with three languages under your belt, or you grew up needing to know a type of sign language. If so, I apologize that the poll does not provide for such an option, but I encourage you to tell your story in your post. I also apologize if your language is not listed as one of the nine named specifically above, but I based the options off of expected majorities on this site, internet usage and penetration by country, and the most commonly spoken languages in the world.

---

I grew up speaking English, learned from my parents and school. I grew up in Southeastern Massachusetts, so English is the dominant language, but it is common, at least where I've lived and gone to school, to meet people who grew up speaking Portuguese, although in varying fluency. I've only met a few of people my age who speak English and Portuguese fluently. Most others seem to have only enough to be conversational with their grandparents or to catch a few family in-jokes. I am not among those people; I only learned English as child, but wish I could've had the opportunity to grow up with two under my belt.

When I was little, I knew a lot of adults who spoken in the non-rhotic accent that many seem to use to characterize the region, but I most of my friends and I didn't speak in it unless pissed off or stressed about something. As I got older and began to go to school in more urban areas, I met more people who spoke in an accent similar to a Bostonian one, but none very thick. Starting about a year ago, it seems I too have begun to absorb this lack of R's and broad A's, but in occasional casual conversations, so it's not totally pervasive. I do have a growing tendency to speak with a broad A, but I still cling to R's so as to not find myself entirely engrossed in an accent I have a general dislike for.

Italian and English at the same time...

[Churchilland]

I learnt English and Welsh around the same time, I would say English was the first one I learnt, but I can't remember not being able to speak Welsh...

Oes na siaradwyr Cymraeg arall ar y pwnc hwn?!

[Luziyca]

Canadian English (with American grammar except cheque, dialogue, and travelling). Only fluent language I speak though I know fragments of Spanish, then French.

Then again, I only really began speaking when I was around five, so...

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Both Spanish and English for me.

In English, all I have is an accent but I am fluent although my primary language is Spanish.

I like English more though.

[Olthar]

Elvish.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

I learnt English and Welsh around the same time, I would say English was the first one I learnt, but I can't remember not being able to speak Welsh...

Oes na siaradwyr Cymraeg arall ar y pwnc hwn?!

Wut?!

[Starkiller101]

Elvish.

praise the elves

[Arglorand]

I thought the differences were enough that it was considered a separate language?

There's no difference... at all.

I'm assuming it's like if someone from New York tried to talk to someone from Pennsylvania, or something like that. idk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbocroatian_language

edit: they only have different names for political reasons or some shiz

It's also the same language as Bosnian and Montenegrin.

There are a couple of differences between more specific words in the three countries, but largely only as notable as there are between American and British English.

[Iuronia]

There's no difference... at all.

I'm assuming it's like if someone from New York tried to talk to someone from Pennsylvania, or something like that. idk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbocroatian_language

edit: they only have different names for political reasons or some shiz

It's also the same language as Bosnian and Montenegrin.

There are a couple of differences between more specific words in the three countries, but largely only as notable as there are between American and British English.

That's because the two are dialects, unlike Afrikaans and Dutch. I mean, Serbocroatian is considered one language, Serbian and Croatian themselves are considered dialects.

[Scholencia]

Russian.


Uhh, what? The Germanic languages evolved from a completely different language. Unless that's what you're saying, in which case I didn't get that.

Latin branched into two main lines, those led eventually to Germanic and Romantic languages, it is a very extensive example, but after 350 years and a geographic difference of a few thousand kilometres with influences from sources like the British, Portuguese and Malaysian slaves the language changed quite a bit, i will however not get into the masses of spelling differences and expression differences, reading and writing is still relatively understandable, speaking it is the main divide in Afrikaans and Dutch

There is no Afrikaner language or etnicity, they are all Dutch diaspora and speaking a dutch dialect.

[Ashihara no Nakatsukuni]

English, mostly due to being born and raised in the U.S.

[Scholencia]

It's also the same language as Bosnian and Montenegrin.

There are a couple of differences between more specific words in the three countries, but largely only as notable as there are between American and British English.

That's because the two are dialects, unlike Afrikaans and Dutch. I mean, Serbocroatian is considered one language, Serbian and Croatian themselves are considered dialects.

The SerboCroatian language is only Croatian language since the Serbians invented their grammar in the 19th century. The first Croatian grammar is written in the 16th century.

Also there are the Kajkavian and chakavian dialect which are a bit different and exist only in Croatian.

[Escasia]

I grew up with both English and Welsh.

These days though, my Welsh isn't too sharp.

I learnt English and Welsh around the same time, I would say English was the first one I learnt, but I can't remember not being able to speak Welsh...

Oes na siaradwyr Cymraeg arall ar y pwnc hwn?!

Oes, dwi'n siarad Cymraeg yn weddol dda.

[Mettia]

My mother tongue is Hungarian, but I speak fluent English, and some German. (I also learned French, Dutch and Japanese for a while... )

[Nationalist Eminral Republic]

Filipino (or Tagalog)