(this part was posted in Quora on 2021 with some additions)
My case is different if by speak can mean identify
1. My main language is Greek as i m native in Greece
2. My fist language i learnt myself was Japanese writing from vinyl records of 60s ad from that time i have learnt a few words , no more than 100
3. My first official language was German during the 5th class in low school
4.
The
second official language was French while in high school
5.
I
learned English at 18 age and is my standard since then.just two years of learning then i stopped as the speaker in the social school was used only Enlish. it made me very tired very soon.
6. I had a few lessons of Bulgarian which then forgotten as i never used it again . It was the time we did some coop with a people from Bulgaria
7.
There
as also a minimal interest with Hindi on mid90s after watching movies and
listening songs by satellite . BTW Greek music was well influenced by Hindi
songs of the 60s I know how to write and still remember a few characters
8. I have listened to many languages from shortwaves The fist I liked among with the culture was Chinese this as around 76. Later a student teached me how to write and speak the very basic . we also had a short time discussion on Japanese songs i decoded
9.
After
a trip to SEA i stuck with Malay music and language. this includes also with
Malay and Indonesian culture.
In addition i have bought a mini dictionary for Thai language . I have learned a few characters but still cant read that language easily at my near 60Sometiomes i can mix that with Viet even it s relatively different .
10. Except that i could identify Italian Spanish Dutch Albanian Hungarian Russian Turkish and Finnish form those older times
11. With the usage of shortwaves i could later identify Turkic tat can be between Kazakh Uigur Mongol and the same ad Farsi and the same (Tajik, Dari, Pushtun etc) Amharic , Berber , Hebrew etc
Here i add a post in reddit that shows a few more languages after some thought few days later:
Except English I speak little French German Malaysian and very little Chinese Spanish Japanese Hindi Bulgarian and Russian that means just a few words [I had long studies in GE FR and short for BU in between]
The langs i can identify are Albanian, Romanian, Macedonian, Magyar, Russian, Arabic ,Hausa, Berber, Hebrew , Amharic, Turkish ,Uighur* , Farsi ,Dari ,Tamil, Tibetan,,Cantonese*, Korean, Thai, Viet, Khmer Pilipino.
* or italics refer to a language family As example Uighur is meant also with mongol, Kyrgyz and of the same family langs . As for Cantonese can mean also for Hakka that sounds similar and is not so easy to distinguish them .
Langs is one of my hottest interests since the 70s. I have bought mor than 20 mini dictionaries that time 70-85. Mot of this knowledge is since 70-80s My First lang was Japanese since 64 when I was just 2 years old
I think that enough, huh ? There are possibly a few more than i never identified after recording from shortwaves those times this is a 50 years passion!
