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Asked by to Aimee, Chris, Dave, Greig, Laurence on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Aimee Hopper answered on 23 Jun 2014:
I can speak Welsh as a 2nd language, but I haven’t in a while so I’m pretty rusty. I’ve tried learning French and German too, but I’m still very much a beginner in those!
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Greig Cowan answered on 23 Jun 2014:
Hi evamayq! No, not really. I lived in France and Switzerland for 4 years when I was working at the CERN laboratory, so I really should be fluent in French. I can understand a bit, but it can be quite difficult to learn when you are at work all day and every meeting you have is in English! The dominant language in science is English, which is quite lucky for us, but can also make us lazy since there is no real need to learn other languages. Being a native English speaker also means that many non-native speakers come to you for advice when writing papers and emails.
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Dave Jones answered on 23 Jun 2014:
Yes, I speak Spanish. I learnt German in school but was never very good (or interested, really). Then, while I was doing my PhD I spent a year working in Spain. When I went, I couldn’t speak any Spanish so it was pretty scary, but I worked hard to learn and it paid off! Now I’m working in Chile and teaching physics classes in Spanish!
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Laurence Perreault Levasseur answered on 23 Jun 2014:
Yes, I speak French (It’s my first language, so that makes English my second language). I also speak Spanish (I went to Paraguay while in school to do volunteer work) and Persian (Farsi). I know few sentences of German and Italian, and my Chinese roommate has been trying to make me pronounce mandarin right for about a year now (not that I’m very good at it!). I think right now I can a) count b) say thank you c) manage to get by in China by using LOADS of wide hand waving/gestures 😉
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