Do you speak another language besides English?

[+ glennnn]

I speak Spanish, French, Italian and German. Spanish was my second language, acquired as a child in the southwest U.S. and refined in high school. My reading is a 10. My speaking a 7. German was my college language, due to the technical language of my major. I have traveled to Germany several times. Read 8, speak 5. Next came French, learned at home from my life partner and through frequent stays in France. Read 9, speak 8. I learned Italian from home study of commercial materials (Pimsleur, Rosetta Stone), and several vacations in Italy. Read 5, speak 4.

 

My observations are:

It is easiest to learn when one is young (Spanish).

It is easier to learn in bed and through immersion (French).

It is easier to learn a romance language when you already know one.

German is similar to English in many ways, but they are both hard.

Learning a new language takes great motivation and tons of practice after childhood.

Europeans really respond to Americans who bother to learn at least the rudiments of their language. Yes, increasingly they all speak English, but if you want to make friends there, learn the language.

[Rudynate]

It is easier to learn in bed and through immersion (French).

 

I had completely forgotten about sex as a learning modality for foreign languages. I lived in Europe long enough ago so that it wasn't uncommon to end up in bed with someone who didn't speak a word of English. It was always fun to pick up a few words of his language in the time you spent together.

[samandtham]

Immersion, for me, is the best way to become very good at a language. It's equal parts necessity, plenty of opportunities for correction, and environment. When in a foreign country, you're in their domain, you follow their rules, which includes language. Sure, you will eventually find someone who would like to learn English, giving you some reprieve, but this person isn't trying to learn English 24/7.

[Rudynate]

Immersion, for me, is the best way to become very good at a language. It's equal parts necessity, plenty of opportunities for correction, and environment. When in a foreign country, you're in their domain, you follow their rules, which includes language. Sure, you will eventually find someone who would like to learn English, giving you some reprieve, but this person isn't trying to learn English 24/7.

 

I took a 3-week immersion course in German quite a long time ago. When I flew back to the US, I sat next to a German woman who was going to visit relatives for Thanksgiving. When I told her what I had just completed, she switched to German and wouldn't speak English and kept reminding me to speak German. We talked the entire 10 hours back to the US. I was toasted by the end of the flight.

[Guest]

But when I was a child watching reruns of Disney or Merrie Melodies Cartoons-wasn't William Tell a fairly common theme for them to make a joke of?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeElsQuxvTk

 

I don't know how the children of today even know about Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Those cartoons were already pretty old by the time I was a kid. Do today's kids still look at these old cartoons?

[+ Gar1eth]

Yes, when I was travelling in Europe in the 70s I spent some time with South Africans. They said that Dutch and Flemish speakers were reminded of their grandparents when they heard South Africans speak Afrikaans. That's amazing linguistically. It's as if American or Australian English had become separate languages from English: South African Dutch speakers weren't separated from the Dutch for all that much longer than we were from England, but Afrikaans became a separate language when our languages did not become separate. What is similar though is that our accents froze and preserved how English was spoken when we became separate communities from the UK. Researchers say that Australian English became set with its accent within 10 years of settlement here in the early 19th century.

 

Mike-do you have any ideas why Australian, UK, and Irish singers often (but not always) seem to lose their native accents while singing and sound more like Americans/Canadians? For example Olivia Newton-John in many of her songs I wouldn't say she sounds particularly Australian. Dusty Springfield-UK. Ronan Keating-Ireland. Keith Urban-Australia. Obviously not all-I could probably pick the Beatles as English. Helen Reddy maybe I could pick her out as Australian-etc.

 

Gman

[mike carey]

No, Gman, don't know why that is. As you said, there are some singers who don't slide into a North American accent, and others who don't do it in all their numbers. It's not limited to the ones you've listed, regional US accents tend to be 'normalised' too.

[samandtham]

Mike-do you have any ideas why Australian, UK, and Irish singers often (but not always) seem to lose their native accents while singing and sound more like Americans/Canadians? For example Olivia Newton-John in many of her songs I wouldn't say she sounds particularly Australian. Dusty Springfield-UK. Ronan Keating-Ireland. Keith Urban-Australia. Obviously not all-I could probably pick the Beatles as English. Helen Reddy maybe I could pick her out as Australian-etc.

 

Gman

 

One of my favorite '90s boybands, 5ive, is collectively guilty of this. Every time they are interviewed, I'd always go "Man, they sound funny for Americans." lol

[curiousnomore]

I opened my first Spanish textbook an the first day of my HS freshman year. And found a list of English to Spanish curse words and phrases that had been overlooked by the school staff. That list is all I remember.

[BSR]

I didn't really know where to post this, and this thread seemed as good a place as any ... I just watched "Los Nuestros" over the Internet. I never know what to expect of TV miniseries, usually not much, but wow, this one blew me away. It's the story of two Spanish kids who get kidnapped in Mali and the Spanish Special Forces who rescue them. Everything about this production is first-rate: the storyline, dialogue, acting, action scenes, production values, EVERYTHING! And yes, a few of the actors are smokin' hot. My only minor quibble is not enough shirtless scenes, but now I'm just getting picky. Unfortunately, no subtitles in English (or any other language) are available, so your Spanish has to be at least decent to understand what's going on.

 

Here's the link to the first (of three) episodes: http://www.mitele.es/series-online/los-nuestros/temporada-1/capitulo-1/

The links to the second and third episodes are lower on the linked page. Each episode is about 80 minutes, so the whole thing is about 4 hours long. It flies by, though, I was on the edge of my seat for much of it. Also, you do have to put up with a few commercials, just one or two 20-second ads per 80-minute episode. A bit of advice: don't try to jump back or forward in the video, because that messes up the playback. I kept trying to re-watch the shirtless scenes which caused the player to re-start at the beginning of the episode and re-play the ads.

 

"Los Nuestros" was so good that I'll probably watch the whole thing again, and no, not just for the shirtless scenes

[BSR]

Here's the lead, Hugo Silva. I had never seen him with short hair ... wow!

http://todotele.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Hugo-Silva-Los-Nuestros.jpg

And one of the Special Ops guys, played by Sergio Torrico ...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mU24eE9Pl_o/UdFW6Zq6VRI/AAAAAAAAgYY/k2hFVVEzxeY/s960/197039_433446776739767_1912389102_n.jpg

 

These two were what made me want to watch "Los Nuestros" in the first place. It turned out to be a very pleasant surprise that the miniseries was as good as it was.

[Rudynate]

Here's the lead, Hugo Silva. I had never seen him with short hair ... wow!

http://todotele.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Hugo-Silva-Los-Nuestros.jpg

And one of the Special Ops guys, played by Sergio Torrico ...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mU24eE9Pl_o/UdFW6Zq6VRI/AAAAAAAAgYY/k2hFVVEzxeY/s960/197039_433446776739767_1912389102_n.jpg

 

These two were what made me want to watch "Los Nuestros" in the first place. It turned out to be a very pleasant surprise that the miniseries was as good as it was.

 

 

I'm speechless.

[samandtham]

Wow! Thanks for the recommendation, BSR! I don't speak a lick of Spanish, but I'm pretty sure I'll find my way with Los Nuestros!

 

I've always considered watching a TV show or a movie to be a very good indicator of one's comprehension. When we need to read something, we can take our time. But with a movie, having to rewind often gets old real quick.

 

I personally can't watch a French film without French subtitles yet (I still need to read what was said) but I'm pretty good with cut-up segments like this: http://www.canalplus.fr/c-humour/pid8256-c-bloques.html?vid=1310058. It also helps to know the topic beforehand, so that I can muster up all the words I know in that particular subject matter.

[Rudynate]

Wow! Thanks for the recommendation, BSR! I don't speak a lick of Spanish, but I'm pretty sure I'll find my way with Los Nuestros!

 

I've always considered watching a TV show or a movie to be a very good indicator of one's comprehension. When we need to read something, we can take our time. But with a movie, having to rewind often gets old real quick.

 

I personally can't watch a French film without French subtitles yet (I still need to read what was said) but I'm pretty good with cut-up segments like this: http://www.canalplus.fr/c-humour/pid8256-c-bloques.html?vid=1310058. It also helps to know the topic beforehand, so that I can muster up all the words I know in that particular subject matter.

 

It also helps if you can find materials that are deliberately slowly-spoken. From time to time, I listen to the the slowly-spoken German news on Deutsche Welle. Then I listen to it again at normal speed.

[samandtham]

It also helps if you can find materials that are deliberately slowly-spoken. From time to time, I listen to the the slowly-spoken German news on Deutsche Welle. Then I listen to it again at normal speed.

 

Plenty of YouTube videos now have a "speed" option, under the "Settings" icon. I use this quite often when listening to French and Italian talk shows in the background while I work.

[alrajee]

I learned French a few years ago in preparation for a trip to Montreal. I came to the city confident that I would at least be able to speak tourist. I was not at all prepared for the Quebec accent that was nothing like the audio guides and the YouTube videos I was watching. It was almost impossible to pick up what they were saying that I caved in and asked them to speak slower or if they can say the same thing in English.

 

Since that visit, I've visited French-speaking cities in Europe. I had an easier time understanding the Swiss, Belgians, and French more than the Quebecois. I feel that it's because the conversations I was having mirrored what I was listening to that things were a little more decipherable.

 

But I'm sure that were I to live in Montreal or anywhere in Quebec for an extended period of time, I'll eventually get the hang of their accent.

[+ tassojunior]

I'm one of those people who learns languages easily. I learned French in high school - completed four years in only three years. I wasn't fluent but I was able to converse easily and French people often complimented my accent. Alas, I never used it much, so I'm very rusty, although I still understand spoken French easily.

 

I have devoted quite a bit of effort to German. I took a couple years of college-level German, several courses at the Goethe Institut, and an intensive course of several weeks in Germany. I also worked one-on-one with a tutor for awhile. During the time with the tutor, I got really good, although not quite fluent. I could sit and converse with him easily on nearly any topic. Again, I rarely use it, so speaking isn't completely comfortable. I listen to the news in German and understand most of it. I watch German movies and understand most of the dialog without looking at the sub-titles.

 

 

I love the way Mandarin sounds when spoken by non-native western speakers, so I am pondering learning Mandarin.

 

I've also had equal h.s. and college French and German. The French works ok in Quebec but in France, Mon dieu!, those Frenchies abhor American accents, US or Quebec, so I just speak English. German has no accent problems and English is a German language so the day before flying I start "Denken in Deutsch" and alternate German or English. Almost everyone in Germany speaks fluent English now and many public signs, like subways and buses are only in English. None of my Czech friends speak a word of German even though they visit Switzerland a lot. A few only speak Czech but I'm too old to try to learn a Slavic language. Fortunately, none of my Czech friends have ever learned the word "No" and that's fine by me.

Edited February 19, 2019 by tassojunior

[liubit]

I learned French a few years ago in preparation for a trip to Montreal. I came to the city confident that I would at least be able to speak tourist. I was not at all prepared for the Quebec accent that was nothing like the audio guides and the YouTube videos I was watching. It was almost impossible to pick up what they were saying that I caved in and asked them to speak slower or if they can say the same thing in English.

 

Since that visit, I've visited French-speaking cities in Europe. I had an easier time understanding the Swiss, Belgians, and French more than the Quebecois. I feel that it's because the conversations I was having mirrored what I was listening to that things were a little more decipherable.

 

But I'm sure that were I to live in Montreal or anywhere in Quebec for an extended period of time, I'll eventually get the hang of their accent.

Québécois French is very, very difficult to understand even for native French speakers -like me-. French Canadian programs broadcast on French TV are subtitled.

[Guest]

I learned French a few years ago in preparation for a trip to Montreal. I came to the city confident that I would at least be able to speak tourist. I was not at all prepared for the Quebec accent that was nothing like the audio guides and the YouTube videos,,,

Since that visit, I've visited French-speaking cities in Europe. I had an easier time understanding the Swiss, Belgians, and French more than the Quebecois. I feel that it's because the conversations I was having mirrored what I was listening to that things were a little more decipherable.

Don't feel too bad. When Quebec TV programs or movies are shown in France, they use French subtitles. The French cannot understand Canadians when they speak French, though the French Canadians can understand the French. The difference between the French spoken in Canada and that spoken in Europe is significantly greater than the difference between Castilian Spanish and Latin American Spanish, or US English and British English. Of course, I have trouble understanding the English when they speak, and will always turn on subtitles when watching English movies (though I can understand most of it if I put in the effort).

[Guy Fawkes]

[LookingAround]

If I can use the reverse situation-then not always. I formerly had some acquaintances from Brazil. One of them spoke and understood Spanish fairly fluently. That might have been because he had done an exchange year at an American high school and taken Spanish. His friend also from Brazil did not really understand Spanish at all.

 

 

An interesting thing is Afrikaans and Dutch. Apparently Dutch speakers have an easier time understanding Afrikaans than vice versa. I think I've heard that Afrikaans speakers sound to the Dutch much like their grandparents speak-if it's not the reverse.

 

Gman

True but to me (I speak Dutch) it sounds like old fashioned but uneducated. More course.

[LookingAround]

I've been told it's because Afrikaans is basically 18th Century Dutch which has in some ways been simplified-loss of genders and of case inflection. Could the difference between Dutch and Afrikaans have occurred because there was less commerce between Holland and S. Africa as opposed to the UK and either the USA or Australia?

 

Another part of the puzzle is that the Dutch make a distinction with how their grandparents talk/talked to how they currently speak. I'm assuming the big change might be due to increasing homogenization of the local dialect probably starting around WW1 and increasing after WW2 due to urbanization and mass media. For example-I was born in 1961. My grandparents were born in either the late 1800's or early 1900's. They also didn't die until the 1980's and in one case the early 1990's. In general I can't really say that they spoke that much differently than I do today or that my nieces or nephew speak that much differently than I do. So for modern Dutch to say that their grandparents spoke a lot differently than they do today means the Dutch language has changed significantly over the last 100 years.

 

Also I have to tell y'all that I've been watching a lot of British game shows on my iPhone through YouTube. And I can tell you that our vocabularies maybe fairly congruent with the people of the UK. But some of the accents, compounded by me only listening to copies of the program and on a small iPhone speaker, have me scratching my very bald head as to what they are saying. Of course I know not everyone in the UK can understand everyone else either. And the accents can be a lot more extreme than would occur in most of the USA.

 

Mike -do the accents in Australia vary as much as they do in the UK-or would the variations for the most part be more similar to the lesser variations we see here in the USA?

 

Gman

Dutch spellings have officially changed over time (e.g. visscher vs visser) but the pronunciations have mostly stayed the same.

[LookingAround]

Wasn't it 'Schreveningin' with the 'r' essential?

 

I did a bunch of consulting in Nederland in the '80s and that was how they said it. I think.

No. There’s no R in scheveningen.

[alrajee]

Québécois French is very, very difficult to understand even for native French speakers -like me-. French Canadian programs broadcast on French TV are subtitled.

That's what I heard too. I watched an interview of Celine Dion by a French talk show and barely understood her, only getting what she was saying when she spoke slowly or when she seemed to try and speak more neutrally.

In contrast, I understood an interview of Jean Paul Gaultier by the same program, even though he spoke really fast.

[+ Charlie]

My Czech students spoke very good English, but they said they couldn't understand a speaker from Alabama.