This week's poll comes from our member ashi. We're just curious how many languages you proficiently know. Interpret that how you want, but I guess the typical meaning would be that you can more or less read, speak, and listen to stuff in that language. (And the comment next to each answer is just for fun, so don't take it the wrong way.) And yes, we're assuming you know at least English, as this is primarily an English website.

You can submit poll ideas here (and try to keep them manga/anime-related):
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Question: How much ecchi does a good series need?
Choices:
Lots and lots! - votes: 1438 (10.4%)
Just enough to make it funny - votes: 5964 (43.2%)
None at all - votes: 6408 (46.4%)
There were 13810 total votes.
The poll ended: April 28th 2012

Yes, I know I forgot the option of "Don't care," but it was too late when I realized my mistake. With most votes going to the "none" option, I'm curious to see if that means ecchi is not necessary to making a good series or if that means no ecchi makes a series good. But that won't be a future poll...

A just ruler amongst tyrants

Five or more. Seems like I'm bragging but who cares, I do feel kind of cool that I know all these languages.
Deutsch (I'm a German), English (2nd language, very fluently), français (enough to nderstand books and newspapers, still learning), español (2nd year, still learning), tiếng Việt (mother tongue, though I don't use it often anymore), にほんご (I'm still struggling with hiragana and kanji)

Man is more ape than many of the apes.

Do dialects count? 😀

english, jap, chinese, korean, malay +++++

Where did you learn Japanese? I'm just asking because usually kana is the very first thing taught/learned. It would be very unusual to be "proficient" in Japanese without have a firm grasp on the kana or at least around 2,000 of the most commonly used kanji.

Does my native language count as the language I proficiently know? Or is this poll just about foreign languages?

By the way, guys, please notice the word "proficiently". I know the basics of 2 languages beside English (Japanese and German), I could have a simple conversation in them, but it doesn't mean that I'm proficient.

There are (a) a lot of liars (b) a lot of people who don't know the meaning of the word "proficiently" or (c) people counting programming languages as real languages. There's a high proportion of bilingual speakers in the world (more people are at least bilingual than not), and knowing four languages proficiently might be possible if you're an immigrant to/from wildly different multilingual countries (like somewhere in urban Asia to somewhere in urban Europe). But once you get to five there is a HUGE decrease in the percentage of people in the world who have that much proficiency and I seriously doubt 95% of the people who answered 5+ are "proficient" in more than 2-3.

That being said, it's no surprise that more than half the site is bilingual or trilingual, assuming that this site has a fairly proportional representation of people from around the world who are decent at English as well as their regional language(s).

Native English tend to be monolingual too, and only a quarter of Canadians have French as their mother tongue, so whoever wrote the first choice is biased. =P

I have a totally different question, though: if you are proficient in Latin, it is highly unlikely that you speak it well, because Latin is not the language of any particular community or culture.Does that mean you can never be proficient in Latin, because you have no good way of testing the full 'range' of proficiency?

in Germany, Volkshochchule, you start with Hiragana.

Man is more ape than many of the apes.

Proficiently I'd say English, German and Vietnamese. I have basic knowledge of French and Japanese, meaning I've had four years of French at school and went to a Japanese class for about one year. Though those were like ten years ago, so sadly not much has remained.

Say what? Hiragana is a part of kana. Kana is composed of Katakana and Hiragana. You can start with either, but usually both are covered completely before the first semester ends. I hate to say this, but did you read the word "proficiently" in the question? I've been learning the language for a few years now, but I'm very far from proficient in it. To be proficient, you really should have a strong understanding in reading/writing (in kana and kanji), speaking, listening, grammar, vocabulary, etc.

I'm from Finland, so I speak swedish as second official language, english fluently and also french and german.

I'm going with (b) for most of it. Of coarse (a) and (c) will be in there too, but I think there's a lot of people who either didn't notice the word "proficiently" or think knowing how to make a simple sentence qualifies as proficient. I took 4 years of Spanish and aced it, but even that's hard to qualify. I can make and understand decently complex sentences, I know the grammar decently, I know a fair amount of vocabulary, and I can understand a native speaker talking. That said, it's debatable if that's really "proficient".

As for Latin, there are still many places that use Latin. If you are Orthodox Roman Catholic, or know somebody in the clergy who is, they probably speak it fluently. I think Russian Orthodox has also returned to Latin masses. Either way, I think there's enough places and people still using Latin daily to get a "full range".

not so different from me, I missed the bragging opportunity. 😢

grammar mistake is intentional, grammar nazis need their entertainment.

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