Are You Bi (lingual)?

[Jokerman]

Currently it's English only for me but my wife & I are planning to take Spanish classes in the spring. Our little corner of the planet has a growing Latino population and we both work in fields where communicating with the public is part of our jobs.

I signed up for French in college but couldn't stand the instructor so I dropped the class after two weeks.

So how many languages can you speak, read or write?

[Jokerman]

1. Followup Question:

What languages do you know?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. If you're talking about languages I know well enough to be a tourist

they are

1) Japanese (I use it every day in my work)
2) Chinese (I did use it in China and Taiwan, but not recently)
3) German (grew up with German speaking relatives, and I still understand it quite well, although I can't speak it much.)
4) French (minored in it in college, still read it quite well)
5) Spanish (basic conversational)
6) Norwegian (real basic conversational)

Little bits of Russian, too, but I've mostly forgotten it.

Yes, I'm a language buff. One of my musician friends was terribly impressed by this, until I pointed out that he played the violin very well and several other instruments with varying degrees of skill. It's the same type of thing. You concentrate on what they have in common and HOW to learn, and it's easy from there on.

[Snow]

5. Very good point - it's HOW to learn that's the trick....

unfortunately, the standard school methods are not how. I learned how to learn languages from the Peace Corps. I find a lot of it is realizing that you don't have to think in your native tongue. If you're doing the "cajones means balls" thing in your head all the time, then you'll never get the fluency, whereas even if you know just a little bit, thinking that way makes things easier - something like "'do sao jen' is what you say in the market in Taiwan to ask a price" rather than thinking of the exact translation. Which usually isn't exact anyway; that's part of what'll mislead you.

And, since you asked, I speak Korean, Malay/Indonesian, and bits and pieces of Chinese, Japanese, German, French, and Spanish.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Indeed!

Back in the days when I taught Japanese, I used to give conversation tests, which consisted of having pairs of students come in and talk using the material in the chapter.

I noticed that the weaker students, when asked a question, such as "Kesa nanji ni okimashita ka" ("What time did you get up this morning?") would start mumbling, "Kesa, this morning, nanji, what time, okimashita, shit, what's okimashita?"

The students who worked with their tapes and videos and kept trying to talk to the Japanese exchange students and renting movies made in Japan (all tactics that I recommended) had the best results. They learned to deal with Japanese as a law unto itself, not as a warped cipher of English.

When I lived in Japan, I kept a notebook handy at all times, and whenever I heard how someone handled a given situation (Japan is a highly ritualized society in many ways), I wrote it down. That's how I learned the conversational Japanese ways of saying things like, "Fancy meeting you here," "So what?" "Please let me finish speaking," "You've put me on the spot" "Excuse me for butting in, but..." and other phrases that are absolutely impossible to translate literally.

[Jokerman]

10. "by the way"

I used to work for a Chinese man and very often, in the middle of speaking his own language he would say "by the way" in English. He claimed that there was no translation but it was a useful phrase.

[spinbaby]

17. Lots of English in Japanese

I swear sometimes that half the language is made up of mutated English. My favorite is baacodo atama (barcode head), a wonderful way of describing a combover. I'm always squinting at something in katakana trying to figure out exactly what English word they're aiming at. For instance ma ku do na ru do takes a lot of squinting before it resolves itself as McDonalds.

I'm good with Dutch, too, although I've never learned it. Dutch seems to be a German mutation combined with a good smattering of English. Because I speak both German and English, I can pick up probably three quarters of anything in Dutch.

[Snow]

25. Oh, man, Koreans do that too....

drives me nuts! Why not use Chinese characters? I look at a sign or something, and have to sound the bloody thing out because I can't recognize the word. Why not? Because it's English, written in Hangul. Grrrrr! And in speech, too. The tearooms/bakeries serve milk, in Korean 'oo-you'. But no....they call it 'meel-kuh'. Try pronouncing that. And then they snicker (well, not really, they're too polite) but look oddly at you for not being able to pronounce an English word.

[Karenina]

26. You make an EXCELLENT point, Snow!

Coming to German much too late to get "hardwired" for anything (except the mistakes I made learning that went uncorrected,) THINKING in German was the way to go! I realized that when 6 weeks after I arrived I had a DREAM in German where I had scant idea of what was being said. I figured my unconscious was soaking up all sorts of info my conscious brain was convinced it didn't yet understand. At first it was an effort, but became second nature surprisingly quickly AND forced me to listen very carefully to pick up more complex structures.

The upshot is (after having studied a bit,) I am hard-pressed to translate spoken language (I have to THINK to find an Englisch word, where often the Deutsch one is much more precise) while written language is quite simple, kinda like those 1000 piece puzzles.

Spoke fluent French as a teenie, with a perfect Parisian accent, courtesy of an INCREDIBLE teacher I had in junior high who taught us as one teaches a child to speak. I realized what she'd given us when I met French tourists on several stops during a cross country trip who simply assumed I'd been brought up in Paris. My French program CRASHED and BURNED as I began learning Deutsch. I can read, watch TV, understand when spoken to... If I attempt to reply only German words come out. It's WEIRD!

Learned a bit of Japanese, (both kid units speak, read and write kanji). Helluva lot easier than German! Have studied Hebrew and now in Turkish immersion, courtesy of a Ballimer Meister with whom I'm studying traditional Turkish music.

Language is SUCH FUN! For me there always comes this point which is like the opening of a palace gate. SUDDENLY, as Boris Becker proclaimed on a Telekom commercial, "ICH BIN DRIN!"

[spinbaby]

27. You must have put German into the French compartment

I'm convinced there are compartments in the brain that hold different languages. I can speak 'em but I can't translate well from one to the other and I can't mix languages. They're in different brain compartments and there they stay.

[Karenina]

30. I often wonder about Latin based languages

compartments and such as I'm convinced "mentality" has MUCH to do with language. Took a "crash" Grammatik Kurs in August and our instructor gave us this exercise that took 4 concise sentences out of which we were 'spose ta construct ONE SENTENCE using "Nebensätze" conjunctive words u.s.w. I COULD NOT DO IT. My kid sat with me while I labored over my homework saying, "Oh c'mon Mom, it's SOOO easy," obwohl ich hatte keine Ahnung! Finally I realized when we went over it in class- MY BRAIN SIMPLY DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY. The exercise required I make something complicated and convoluted out of something simple. I spewed my objection and actually managed to use a complex construction. My instructor TOTALLY CRACKED UP LAUGHING, explaining to the rest of the class (from Argentina, Libya, Poland, Turkey, Israel, Columbia, Georgia, Serbia, Cuba, Russia...) "It's an American Englisch shorthand thing. I DO understand her!"

That said, I'm totally into D'Englisch. I HATE it, as it is corrupting Deutsch BUT in the heat of a discussion when I need a word, KNOWING my friends are bi-lingual I simply use whatever comes. It's about communication.

[Snow]

28. ~chuckle~ Lucky you, getting a Paris accent.....

the Peace Corps sent me to South Cholla Province, Korea, where I happily learned to speak just like all the farmers around me. Little do I realize that this is the Korean equivalent of Ozarks hillbilly dialect. However, Peace Corps kindly provided us with 2 weeks of language training every 6 months, something they did only in Korea (I think) because Korean is so tough. Well, I arrive there, in the northern capital province, and man, do the locals ever think I'm funny! And the Peace Corps language teachers are politely horrified. Never did completely lose the accent, though - I've been married to my (Seoul aristocrat) wife for 30 years and still talk a little funny. In fact, my daughter, age 19, was talking to a Korean/American at the gym last week, who informed her she spoke the oddest combination of upper class Seoul accent and really ignorant farmer accent. Daughter blushed and blamed me, but found it funny nevertheless.

[Karenina]

40. I met this Italian guy in So Cal

many years ago who learned ALL his Englisch IN DA GHETTO! White, blonde guy whose speech patterns were completely, totally, irrevocably STREET BLACK! Fortunately he was a drummer and people in his circle realized quite quickly that it was NOT and affectation. We compared stories about the faces we both got from people who we'd spoken to on the phone when they first saw our faces. Pretty FUNNY stuff!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. Tri: Portuguese + English + Spanish

+ some scattered fragments of French.

[rbnyc]

4. I was barred from taking language in HS.

I tried to take Spanish and was told that since I was not college material, they wanted to save the slots for better students. Then when I was accepted to an excellent college, I had no experience learning a second language. I took a year of French but didn't retain it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. That's a horror story

In continental Europe, everyone, college material or not, takes a foreign language. Whether they retain it is another question, but that's why you find things like the Swedish mystery novels of Mai Sjovall and Per Wahloo, in which a Swedish police detective is sent to Hungary to track down a missing Swede.

When he protests that he doesn't speak Hungarian, his superior assures him, "You can manage with just English and German."

Imagine the idea of an ordinary police detective being tri-lingual.

[jimbo fett]

7. Spanish. But spoken only. I can't read it very well. I had 3 years of

Spanish in school and have traveled to Latin America several times. I bilingual enough to go where I need to, get what I want and have light conversation (albeit SLOWLY) with people.

[name not needed]

8. i am partially fluent in italian

[Orrin_73]

11. Turkish, Dutch, English and German

Turkish is my mother tongue, I was born in Turkey at age 5 we moved to Holland were I learned the other 3 languages. Its very handy to know nore then one language.

kucinich.us

deanforamerica.com
clark04.com
sharpton2004.org

Tom DeLay:"I challenge anyone to live on my salary" <$158,000 a year>

[Cannikin]

12. I was bi-lingual in college...

but I was just experimenting.:crazy:

[Karenina]

19. Merhaba Orrin!

Yeni yilin cutla olsun!!! (Did I get that right?) :toast:

[Orrin_73]

23. Tesekkur ederim Karenina!!!

Where did you learn Turkish? that was very good.

kucinich.us

deanforamerica.com
clark04.com
sharpton2004.org

Tom DeLay:"I challenge anyone to live on my salary" <$158,000 a year>

[Karenina]

38. From Sesame Street...

Who are the people in your neighborhood?
in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood well
Who are the people in your neighborhood?
They're the people that you meet
when you're walking down the street
They're the people that you meet EACH DAY!

[Q3JR4]

13. Ummmmm...........

Do computer languages count?

:P

[Kamika]

14. english, korean, and bad french

Tri :)

[RebelOne]

15. Know a little Spanish after having lived in So. Florida

I took Spanish courses when I lived there, but have a problem with the spoken word. But I can read it some, since most of the store signs where I lived were in Spanish.

[Character Assassin]

16. Tri, working on quad

English, German, Norwegian.

Trying to learn Scots Gaelic.

[Padraig18]

18. Quadrilingual:

Irish, English, Spanish and French. :)

[Red_Storm]

20. English, Spanish, some Portuguese and some French.......

[rustydog]

21. I speak two languages: English and Bad English

Como esta?
donde es tu domicil?
donde es el gato
el gato es grande!
me carro es un cheby malibu.

Actually, I can read spanish and figure out what the content is.
I speak it horribly and comprendo nada.

[rustydog]

22. What to they call a person who speaks 3 languages?

Tri-lingual
What do they call a person who speaks 2 languages?
Bi-lingual
What do they call a person who speaks one language?
An American

[elfwitch]

24. Spanglish

I speak a really screwed up form of Tex-Mex know around my parts as Spanglish. I understand enough Spanish to know what people are saying. I speak enough to get me where I'm going. Unfortunately I have included many Spanish terms in to my normal English speaking. hence... SPANGLISH.

[Karenina]

32. I had that too when I lived in L.A.

It's USELESS here with the Spaniards and South Americans. Oh well..
:shrug:

[CShine]

29. I have a close friend who.......

....is my source when I want to understand what's being said in foreign languages. He majored in Spanish at Colgate, got a master's in Romance Philology at Columbia, taught languages at the college level for awhile, then worked for 20 years at a job in Miami that required his multilingual abilites.

If I remember correctly, besides English, he's fluent in.......

Spanish
French
German
Italian

...and can at least function while speaking in....

Portuguese
Japanese
Romanian
Afrikaans
Some Indonesian language that I've forgotten


I have no idea how some people can digest that many languages.

[HEyHEY]

31. Well I don't give myself official "Bi-lingual" status

But I speak french quite well.

[frogfromthenorth2]

33. Menteur!!!!

Salut, ça va?!?!

:evilgrin:

[HEyHEY]

35. bien

I warn you though I can't spell in french worth a damn.

Mais je ete une habitant de trois riverieres Quebec. J ete une etudiant a la universite du Quebec. Pour la programme immersion en francais. J ai besoin plus de practice mais je parle meiller cou les autre person qui habit colombie britannique!

[frogfromthenorth2]

36. Excellent!

Trois-Rivière.... Not the most exciting city in Quebec...lol... You now live in BC? Great!

[HEyHEY]

37. thanks

T-R is the asshole of Quebec. Luckily it was between Quebec City and Montreal, so I had a way to remain sane.

Although I always blamed T-R for a depression I went in to for a while. It seemed to hit right as I crossed tha big bridge and saw the town..
I still haven't seen lac st jean..that is a big thing on the to do list.

I actaully live in Alberta but I'm from Vancouver

[Kellanved]

34. not really

I mean I'm functional in English (you all know to what extend ;-) ) and forgot a lot of Latin.
I've snapped up some Spanish and French, but can barely communicate in either (understanding and reading might work, but writing and talking is a problem).

[GURUving]

39. Vicariously

My SO speaks English and Spanish. I rely on her to keep me from getting beat up in hispanic bars.