speaking a different language.

[vash]

the Spanish absentee ballot has me thinking...

i work with alot of non native people. i mean they are from everywhere. i notice that alot of them speak more than one language.

i have Cantonese down pat, i am learning mandarin, and i can massacre Spanish with the best of them ( i have forgotten alot)

am i imagining things when i think foreigners tend to be more multi-lingual?

[gchappel]

What do you call a person that can speak two languages?
Bilingual

What do you call a person that can speak three languages?
Trilingual

What do you call a person that speaks only one language?
American


gary

[billyboy]

Love that picture on your avatar. She seems like a really fun gal to hang out with. Her husband is one lucky dude. Anyway, the language thing. I have wondered if it has to do with a certain arrogance that we Americans have, we don't need no stinkin other languages! I saw a guy on one of those TV talent shows who made up his own language. he thought that it was quite an accomplishment. Of course, no one else in the world could understand it. Just a minor detail.

[TerryH]

There's been banter for years about a world wide language. Probably not in the near future.

Similar banter said the world would switch to completely metric 30 years ago. Perhaps some day, but still a long ways down the road.

We Americans are stubborn and steadfast.


I've been browsing job ads. I would qualify for many more positions, except I don't speak spanish. doh!

[svandamme]

i spoke fluent english by the age of ten, just by watching english language tv shows
french took a bit longer, didn't pick it up in school, did pick it up party'ing and pulling birds...
These days, i'm accentless in english, or rather, i switch english accents depending on who i'm hanging out with (irish, scottish, northern englanders, american, or even specific american accents, Boston accent, southern accent ... i pick em up in no time flat

When i was 5-10, there hardly were any tv shows for kids in dutch, at least not big productions
So the bulk of what i watched was English language stuff, the A-team, Knight Rider, Airwolf, Battle Star Galactica, Star Trek, rerun's of The avengers or the saint...
subtitled
Movies and cartoons, same thing, Snow white, Jungle book, Donald Duckonly in english, with subtitles

my kid sister, is 9 ... she is not even close to where i was at her age

why, All disney and kids movies these days, are dubbed in Dutch...
She has a wide variety of Children TV programming, in Dutch

The french germans, italians and spanish folks, often a lot less fluent in English, they often understand it, but don't speak it as well... why , dubbed movies, dubbed TV shows and a lot of native language kids TV...

you gotta be immersed with a language to pick it up
the earlier the better

[sammyg2]

If I lived in another country, I'd speak their language. If they come to our country, they should speak our language.
Since I don't plan to travel to any non-english speaking countries in the future, I won't bother learning any more languages.

[nostatic]

Learning a foreign language is one of the truly great things in life. Not only does it exercise your mind in certain ways, it also exposes you to other cultures and ways of thinking about the world. It is amazing what you can learn about life from language and how it is structured/translated/etc.

I've been slowly working on Mandarin, now am starting Spanish. Learned German in HS/college, though I rarely get to practice it. I'm hoping Spanish will be fairly easy to pick up as I've been around the language all my life and am used to hearing it and speaking bits of it. Just that pesky grammar and vocabulary to fill in...

[126coupe]

I have always admired folks that speak a language other than their native tongue.
Going to Italy in November for a few weeks, I have been learning Italian for the last 10 months. I am about half way through Pimsluer III. I really enjoy it

[Paco Anton]

I learnt English as a kid so I could read PPOT

Also picked up Portuguese while living in Brazil and took some French lessons. I have tried German but only managed to remember the names of car parts so I could buy them off German eBay.

[Steve PH]

The classic English attitude to foreign languages is "if Johnny foreigner doesn't understand, just speak louder!"

Okay in all seriousness that's fairly low but over here in the land of warm beer and Lucas electrics we really are bad when it comes to learning languages. Partly its laziness, most people I have ever met from all over the planet mysteriously speak English (I like to think of that as Star Trek syndrome) and also in our education system a second language isn't taught until about the age of 12 or 13. For best results you really need to start teaching an alternative language at a much younger age.

On a personal level I can throw a couple of words together in French or Italian to cope with going to the pub/shop ("Un biere sil'vous plait!"), sadly that's about it.

[126coupe]

Vorrei un birra per favore. La Lasgna e molto buona, mi piace Italia.

[Bill Douglas]

I speak English and are currently learning American.




Actually I can say something like hello or thanks, or see you later in about 20 differnt languages. Sort of a curtisy when meeting forien people

[Oh Haha]

I, too believe that if you are in "Merica you should be speaking English BUT I would like to learn German.

In the hopes that someday we could afford to go to Germany.

yeah, I know they speak enough English to get by but it would be cool to at least understand what they are saying and communicate to the locals.

I don't know that I have the patience to learn a different language, though.

[jyl]

I speak/read/write English and French, and am working on my Chinese (Mandarin) - spoke some as a kid, but never read/wrote, now working on that plus traditional brush calligraphy. Used to know some German but no longer. My kids are learning French and the older one Chinese.

Foreign languages are fun and interesting.

[126coupe]

Originally Posted by Oh Haha

I, too believe that if you are in "Merica you should be speaking English BUT I would like to learn German.

In the hopes that someday we could afford to go to Germany.

yeah, I know they speak enough English to get by but it would be cool to at least understand what they are saying and communicate to the locals.

I don't know that I have the patience to learn a different language, though.

Get Pimsluer or Rosetta Stone, 1 hour a day for 1 year and you would be surprised
On the language scale of 5, you will be a 1+ to 2-
5 is fluent, fluent being you have the communications skill of an attorney and /or most professionals. You only need to communicate w the locals. You talk about food, drink, your kids, your job, where? why? and when?

[Rick Lee]

I've got German down to a near-native level. But Mandarin is slow-going. I started it in Fairfax Co. adult ed. classes a few years ago. When I got to the third level, they kept calling me and telling me they had to cancel the course because I was the only person who had signed up. Happened three times. The only other classes in the area were during the day when I was at work. Now I have a trip to China coming up soon, some of which will be guiding my folks around, and I'm pretty rusty. It's just a lot easier to function in Mandarin when I'm surrounded by it for every second of the day for weeks. All I get now is overhearing my wife on the phone with her mom. I can follow along some, but my speaking sucks.

I took intensive Russian for one semester in college before I went to the Ukraine and I actually did ok there. But I graduated before I got past the second level and never got back into it.

[cantdrv55]

I can speak French.

Pie ala mode!

[djmcmath]

My experience meeting Europeans is that most of them speak at least 2 languages, one of which is their native language and one of which is usually English. It didn't seem too uncommon to meet people who spoke German or French, Italian, and English. Americans really are just lazy about learning other languages. I agree with Steve PH fully -- waiting until 12 or 13 to start learning a second is just too late. But then, there are adults working in professional environments in this country who still haven't attained a basic grasp on English, so ...

But then, the places I've been in Europe didn't seem to do a whole lot of bilingual signage or labeling. It seems like virtually everything was printed in the local language. So while the locals speak other languages, they don't change their signs to say so.

More recently, that's changing. Last time I was over, I noticed signs and labels in Arabic, which seemed odd to me.

Dan

[Zef]

Originally Posted by jyl

I speak/read/write English and French, and am working on my Chinese (Mandarin) - spoke some as a kid, but never read/wrote, now working on that plus traditional brush calligraphy. Used to know some German but no longer. My kids are learning French and the older one Chinese.

Foreign languages are fun and interesting.

You got it right....I'm trilingual....English-Français-español. My two daughters learn this too...Open the horizons, this world is a small one.

[flatsixjunky]

I'm (mostly) a website translator, I'm also a proofreader and writer. I grew up between Brooklyn and San Juan, P.R; my wife is French. I'm completely trilingual, English, Spanish and French, I'm fluent in Italian, Portuguese and some German, although it's by far my weakest. My daughters 9 and 4 are already trilingual, my wife talks to them exclusively in French, I'm the English and Spanish pusher. We now have a 1 month old baby that will most certainly come around too. One thing I love about it is that when I read, I can pick the book in it's original language, not a water down version of some translator which sometimes I think I would've done a better job at it myself. When we travel I can pick up jokes and little things that most tourist would be oblivious to, this can also save you money and lot's of troubles.

BTW, I should have mentioned that I have lived in P.R. South America, U.S.A., more than one state and in Europe, more than one country.