Native language
English - I speak it with a fairly neutral British accent, which tends to take on at least some of the characteristics of the accent of whoever I’m talking to.

Languages I’ve studied formally:
French (7 years at secondary school)
German (6 years at secondary school)
Chinese (5 years at universities in the UK and Taiwan)
Japanese (4 years at universities in the UK and Japan)
Irish (5 weeks at a language centre in Ireland)
Welsh (2 weeks at a college in Wales)

Languages I’ve studied/am studying on my own:
Cantonese, Czech, Esperanto, Irish, Italian, Manx, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish, Taiwanese, Welsh

I’ve completed or am working my way through at least one course for each of these languages. I feel fairly confident and comfortable conversing in Welsh, Irish and Spanish, and also reading and writing them. The same can’t be said of the others, yet.

Languages I’ve dabbled with:
Arabic (Modern Standard), Hungarian, Icelandic, Korean, Latin, Russian, Turkish, Urdu

I’ve only worked my way through a few lessons and/or learnt some phrases in these languages.

Language goals and aspirations

Ultimately I’d love to be fluent in all the languages I’ve studied or dabbled with, and in many others. I recognise that this is perhaps overly ambitious so am concentrating on:

Welsh, Irish & Scottish Gaelic
I would like to feel as comfortable in these languages as I do in English: to understand, speak, read, write and sing them with as near native ability as possible.

Mandarin Chinese
My aim is to retain my fluency in Mandarin and to improve my command of the spoken language. I would also like to improve my reading and writing in Chinese, though this is not a top priority.

Spanish
In the long term I would like to acquire fluency in Spanish.

Japanese, French and German
I’d like to regain the fluency I once had in these languages, and to improve that fluency.

Czech
I’ve been studying Czech since September 2006 and am finding it both interesting and challenging. I am not sure how far I’ll go with the language. I’d like to acquire at least a fairly good conversational ability, though expect this will take quite a long time.

I’d also like to improve my command of Italian, Portuguese and Russian. This is not a priority at the moment though.

I also have language courses for Arabic (Egyptian), Breton, Cornish and Norwegian that I haven’t got round to looking at or listening to yet. I would like learn these languages eventually.

Wish list
 Other languages I might have a go at learning one of these days.

Basque, British Sign Language (BSL), Greek, Hawaiian, Hindi, Maori, Persian, Polish