How many languages do you know at least one word in?

I am fluent in English and internet speak, but I know just enough to get myself in trouble or killed in:
German
Spanish
French
Russian
Sioux
Italian
and ASL

I am also somewhat proficient in:
Pig-Latin
Baby
and Cat

I’d say I know at least one word in around fifteen languages. Some of them aren’t such polite words. ;-)

17½

French
English
Spanish
Portuguese
Italian
German
YIddish
Hebrew
Finnish (thanks to @jblondesjon
Swedish
Danish
Arabic
Russian
Classical Greek
modern Greek
Latin

If you count all the borrowed words in the English language it would be around 50.

Isn’t no universal?

@ucme you know half a word from a full language, or a whole word from a half language?

Just want to clarify.

@mowens.

“Nyet.”

“Ingen.”

“Ei.”

”немає”

”όχι”

@YARNLADY makes a good point, but I’ll try off the top of my head: English (elephant), French (puits), Spanish (chiquitita), Italian (ciao), Russian (matryoshka), Mandarin (Nín hǎo), Finnish (hän), Swedish (hen), Dutch (Sinterklaas), Danish (hygge), Japanese (hajimemashite), Hawaiian (ohana), Greek (mimesis), Swahili (simba), Yiddish (chutzpah)... and I know how to sign a few things in American Sign Language.

@mowens Just my dimidium pectus pectoris attempt at latin.

French
English
Spanish
German
Italian
Hebrew
YIddish
Norwegian
Russian
Greek
Latin
Chinese
Japanese
Hawaiian
Norwegian
Danish
And others in which I only know the name of some things they eat. Some of them are languages in which I’ve sung.
Mostly, I tried to learn Yes, no, thank you, hello, and goodby any where I traveled. I did not always succeed.

One word?

Well:
– Italian, of course
– English
– French
– German
– Latin
– Spanish
– Japanese
– Russian
– Norwegian
– Hebrew
– Greek

Fun fact: most of the words i know in all the languages aside for Italian and English are insults and/or swearwords. Yes, including Latin

Somewhere between 0 and 5 gazillion.

English: I can’t think of any exemplary words now, but I’ll try to post one later.
Spanish: Mi esposa- my wife.
French: Je ne parle pas français- I don’t speak no French ;-p
Nepali: Lho tse- south peak.
Tibetan: Chomolungma- Holy Mother.
Russian: Spasiba- feminine form of “thank you”, phonetically using the modern English alphabet.
German: Donkeyshame- thank you. ;-p
Japanese: Sayonara- “good bye”, phonetically using the modern English alphabet.
Thai: Khob khun- “thank you”, phonetically using the modern English alphabet.
Hindi: Dhanyavad- thank you.
Dutch: Graag gedaan- you’re welcome.
Latin: Caveat emptor- buyer beware.

Those are 12.

A lot. Off the top of my head I know at least one word in English (cat), French (monde), Spanish (cerro), Italian (ragazzo), German (Schuh), Romanian (acum), Russian (pravoslavnje), Serbian (vodi), Czech (mladence), Croatian (sve), Polish (sokoly), Latin (forfex), Greek (ouketi), Turkish (gelebileceksin), Chinese (ziji), Japanese (fukikakeru), Arabic (dawlat), Swedish (hander), Norwegian (jeg), Anglo-Saxon (hwaet), Chamorro (taitai), Quechua (ch’arki), Nahuatl (tzatecomatl), Dyirbal (yuri), Tok Pisin (bilong), Swahili (kizito), Hungarian (szall), Latvian (vairs), Lithuanian (laikas), Irish (siuil), Sanskrit (agnibhyas), Thai (anachak), Vietnamese (anh), Georgian (tkven), Hindi (mehboob), Faliscan (foied), Uzbek (deniz), Uyghur (qaqigha)...can’t think of anymore…so that’s 38. :P

I’m disappointed to say I cannot name anything in Amharic, Tigrinya, Lao, Malay, Farsi, Pashto…but I plan on being able to :)

Off the top of my head I counted fifteen. A couple of them are dishes.

My son, in an act of defiance, wouldn’t do his homework or study in Spanish. I told him he should be able to get a C just by living in Northern California and having it all around him.

Not much…for some reason I know the word cat and devil in a few languages; chat, gato, neko. Diable, diablo, akuma, djevelen.
All I gots to say, we need @fundevogel in here to teach us all cool Scandinavian cussing.

I am hopeless with languages, but it turns out to be more than I thought:
Besides English (obviously):
French, German, Spanish, Welsh, Irish (Gaelic), Japanese, Italian (mostly food items), Greek (also mostly food items), Latin, Russian, Dutch, Czech.

Hmmmm lets see:

Kalimera – greek
Ciao bello aragazzo – Italian
Dovizenia – polish
Spasiba – russian
Ezaiek habibi – Egyptian
Toda raba – Hebrew
Baka – Japanese
Ohama – chinese
Ich has – german
Allas gut – luxembourgish
I dashur – albanian
Tista – swedish
Pichu – czeck
Ola che que tal – spanish

And im pretty much fluent in French and Portuguese :)

English
Italian
German
French
Spanish
Yiddish
Japanese
Chinese (Ok, so that one word I know in Chinese is boob, still a word!)
Filipino

I’m curious. When you all say “Chinese”, what particular Chinese are you talking about? There are many Chinese dialects (e.g. mandarin), it’s pretty vague when someone says they speak/know “Chinese”.

@Michael_Huntington I don’t know, I learnt my “Chinese” word from my friends Chinese housemate but I didn’t ask her what dialect it was.

Oh… just ONE word? That seems odd.

@Michael_Huntington Most people probably mean Mandarin, which is what I meant when I wrote “Chinese”. Actually, most linguists consider Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, etc. separate languages since they are mutually unintelligible with one another.