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Foreign Language: Discuss
... but, please discuss in English
I was going to do a poll. However, I realize that we are all so unique, we'd have more special snowflakes than answers.
Describe and discuss your language skills. It would be great if you elaborate, but feel free to select from my list:
anything from...
I speak every language in the world, including the clicks and knocks of small tribes
I speak __# languages fluently
English was not my first language. I speak and think ___ the best.
I can speak ____ (any language other than pig latin) well enough to have a conversation with a patient speaker. I doubt I could live in ____ (whatever country) and communicate at their pace.
YOUR STORY HERE:
I'll go first. I feel ignorant. I don't speak any other language. I'm old enough that I missed the foreign language requirement in both high school and college. I took one semester of French for fun. I liked it. I'm surprised that I remember any of the words, but I do. It won't help much, because I don't think anyone in France is talking about a tableau noir these days.
I want to learn a foreign language, but which one? I have no real need for it. Should I pick based on the likelihood of use, the ease of learning it, or because I like the way it sounds?
Likelihood of use = Spanish. Seems to be America's second language. It would be nice to learn in case I needed to help someone who was not fluent in English.
My H's company is based in Sweden. Is it worth a try to learn it? It seems nice to be able to say basic phrases. Of course, people in his company speak better English than many people living in America.
Did any of you learn a language just because you liked the sound? If yes, which? Are you glad you did?
Do any of you write languages with other alphabets? Do you ever get confused when writing something?
What do you think is the best way to learn a new language?
Would you suggest any online resources?
Anything else to add?
Newlyweds since 2007
Re: Foreign Language: Discuss
The answer that best describes me is:
I can speak ____ (any language other than pig latin) well enough to have a conversation with a patient speaker. I doubt I could live in ____ (whatever country) and communicate at their pace.
This would be German for me. I grew up in a very German community in Wisconsin, and my ancestry is all German. I picked up a few phrases from my great-grandmother when she was alive (I was very little), then took German all through high school and also attended Concordia Language Village in MN for summer camp.
I am by no means fluent, but I can understand most anything spoken by someone speaking slow enough/without too much of a dialect. I have trouble generating my own (proper) sentences, though.
It's a pretty *useless* language for my current life. I don't know anyone who speaks German in my everyday life whatsoever. This is probably why my skills drop a little every year.
I do love the sound of German....this is part of why I wanted to learn it when I was young. I know that many Americans think it's too glottal, but when it's spoken well it's really beautiful, lilting, and soft.
The best way to learn a language is immersion....when I was in Germany/Austria, my skills improved dramatically quickly. But without that, I don't know. I've heard good things about Rosetta Stone, but have never tried it. I did have some tapes for my car before I went to Europe last, to brush up. They did help somewhat. I also used them to learn a few short Japanese phrases before I went there two years ago. I do like the tapes/CDs, if you have a commute and are disciplined enough to practice every day. Unfortunately, I borrowed a friend's and don't remember which brand I used, so I have no recommendations.
Growing up in Southern CA, you pick up a lot of Spanish by default - I also took several years of it in college, so that's my best language. However, I'm absolute crap at carrying on a conversation in it - I can kinda sorta read in it still, but my skills have gone waaaaaaay downhill since I graduated.
Oh, and when I was a pre-teen I started learning Russian (LOL the only word I can remember is "apple" - ??????!). I also picked up bits and pieces of Italian from my grandmother, but really only nouns, since she would sometimes call objects by their Italian name vs their English one, so it's not like I can carry on a conversation or understand people when they speak it.
I really don't know what the best way to learn a language is. Immersion is popular, but I genuinely don't know if it's the most effective way. I've also heard good things about Rosetta Stone tapes.
Can I ask a side question? What do you think of a young child learning a second language? Good idea? Bad idea? I'm curious because I always thought it was a great idea, especially since languages are picked up more easily in childhood. However, I have a friend with a 1.5 year old daughter who hates (and I do mean HAAAAATES) Dora the Explorer. When I asked her why, she said it was because the children who watched it ended up learning Spanish and she thought it was "wrong that they learn that before English." I was surprised that she had this point of view, since I'd never heard anyone say this before. Thoughts?
i speak english...doh. also speak spanish fluently. my family spoke it around me so i just picked it up. i also took an online class to fullfill a requirement at UW...haha, i only took the midterm and final...felt like cheating!
i will say that i can read and comprehend spanish much better than i can speak. if i'm not around it all the time i lose it a little but once i hear it, it's like we are old friends.
i also took three years of german in high school and was very fluent. my german club friends and i would geek out and speak to each other...total nerd alert
since i obviously had no one to speak to after HS, i lost most of it 
i can pick up words here and there out of a conversation and pick up context. oh and i can count 
i should start relearning again.
back to german club real quick...it was pretty comical to see a bunch of mexicans speaking german...haha.
if i had to learn a language now, i would use the rosetta stone stuff. i'm gonna learn japanese since it's pretty useful out here. plus i'd be able to yell, "on your left" to the japanese tourists as i pass them and they wouldn't jump out of their skin
side question: i think it's a great idea to start children as young as possible in regards to another language. my 2 year old niece is pretty fluent in both english and spanish. it's actually really amazing when you think about it.
in regards to your friend hating dora...well in imo, i think that's a tad ignorant. my four year old niece learns a lot from dora because my bro and his wife don't speak much spanish. she also loves lilo and stitch and when she came to visit, she was so excited to hula and actually did a great job. i think it's a great way for kids to learn about cultures and languages. i don't think it really matters which one they pick up first. spanish is actually pretty easy to pick up compared to english.
hola, me llamo dora...haha
She thinks her 1.5 year old is going to learn Spanish from Dora? Even a mensa-smart person cannot learn Spanish from Dora. That show is cute for throwing out a few words per episode. By no means could that interfere with English language learning.
I have heard people say that speaking more than one language fluently can be confusing for babies/toddlers. They substitute and mix words from both. My impression was that was in situations where more than one language was spoken at home. For instance, if a family has grandparents who live with them... the grandparents and parents speak in ___ (say Spanish or Japanese)... the parents speak both English and ___ to the baby... then, the baby/toddler learns words to symbolize things... but, does not separate the languages.
My personal belief is that it is important for kids to learn another language. I don't have experience with the example where other languages are spoken fluently at home... so can't comment on the pros/cons.
In a classroom setting, learning another language as early as possible makes sense. My daughter took Spanish in preschool. Her teacher was from Mexico City. My daughter learned all of the words with the proper accent. It was cute. None of the kids in the preschool program had trouble confusing words with their every day English. They learned simple phrases, songs, counting, colors, and common names.
Isn't it important to learn another language before puberty? I heard that some sounds in certain languages can't be learned by an adult. Is that true?
Newlyweds since 2007
I know - I was really shocked when she first told me how much she hated Dora. She's otherwise a very intelligent and reasonable person, so I was really surprised at her reaction to a small child learning a tiny bit of Spanish. I thought it was, for lack of a better word, a rather ignorant reaction - especially since she herself has spoken two languages (English and the dialect of her Aboriginal tribe) since birth. *shrug*
I know that with some languages/dialects, you can only learn sounds up until a certain point and then your brain basically shuts off those connections...the one I'm thinking of is the click-based language used in the Kalahari Desert. Apparently an adult simply cannot learn to make those clicking noises.
In addition to English, I can speak/read/write Arabic - Modern Standard Arabic (MSA - used in the media mainly) and Iraqi Dialect. My reading skills are the strongest but I can speak it well enough to have a conversation with a patient speaker. I wouldn't say I am fluent but I am working on strengthening my skills. I learned it through the military as a part of my job and although I am not doing that specifici job anymore, I am trying to stay on top of my language skills because I figure I spent all that time learning it, I don't want to lose it. Also, I like the language, the culture and the food so it just makes sense to keep it up (even if that means spending my free time in study groups or online courses). In the future I will be going on trips - work related and not - that will allow me to use Arabic. I can't wait!
Now that I am living in Germany I should learn German but I haven't even started. Of course I have picked up a few things here or there but I doubt I will ever learn it well enough to have conversations. I'd like to learn French in the future because I think it sounds pretty and a lot of the Northern African countries speak a mix between Arabic and French so that would help me if I was to ever go to those locations.
I am all for children learning another language early on in life. I wish I had! At around 3rd or 4th grade all German children begin learning English. With how well they speak English (especially compared with my lack of German skills), it obviously works. My only issue is that I want my children to learn another language but I'll feel bad if they can't practice it at home because mom or dad don't know it well enough (such as Spanish). I suppose I could always learn it beforehand or with them...that's always an idea... but I don't know if my brain will be able to handle all these different languages.
Lisa - WOW. That's ridiculous - it's definitely best to start your language acquisitions as early as possible. Yes, children who learn two languages at the same time are initially slower at developing vocab in both languages, but the end result more than makes up for those first few years of interchanging words, grammatical pathways.
As for me:
I speak English & French (almost) fluently, but I'm not going to call French a foreign language, because it's a national language here. I started learning core French in elementary school, and then in grade 7 started doing French Immersion (which is considered late here). So 75% of my classes, with the exception of English and drama were in French. I continued at the university level, studied away during the summer's at a French language program in Nova Scotia. I'm close to being perfectly bilingual, but not bang on in French. The idiomatic expressions still bog me down sometimes.
As for my two years in Japan, I very successfully DIDN'T learn the language, which I'm totally embarassed about.
Can I add one thing on? A nestie I'm facebook friends with (as opposed to real friends) from my club board just joined a group called In America, We Speak English ONLY! and I though that was so sad. I live in Koreatown, and the national bank that's there is trilingual - English, French and Korean. I happen to love that the Korean is in bigger letters than the English! I love hearing so many languages around me. One of the things that many Canadian high school sociology textbooks teach is that if America is a melting pot of cultures, then Canada is a tossed salad. That in America you're expected to melt into the dominant culture while in Canada you remain whatever your cultural background is and still become part of the whole flavour. Now, I think that's a fairly optimistic (and probably unrealistic) view of ethnicity in Canada, and having never lived in the States, I can't compare. Any thoughts on that?
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog
I do agree that is sad that people feel that way. I certainly would never expect people to abandon their home language and/or culture. Neither does anyone else I know or work with (I work in a very diverse school....we have many families that are from Mexico, Poland, Puerto Rico, Philippines, Korea, Ukraine, amongst others). I love listening to people speak their native language (especially little ones!), and I love learning about their cultures from my students.
That said, however (I'm about to probably be controversial!), I do have a problem with people living somewhere for 10+ years, and not even attempting to learn the local language. I am very patient with parents who are learning English, and as long as they are trying to, in fact, learn a little bit! I feel that they do their children such a disservice when they expect the school to constantly provide translation of every single thing that is sent home. They come into the school office, and helplessly won't even try to express what they need until the secretary scrambles to find an appropriate translator. Personally, I can't imagine living somewhere for a decade and not wanting to learn at least a little bit in the local language. This is, of course, not all the families (many of them really want to help their kids learn, and learn along with them, and become fairly fluent within a year or so). But there are a few that I get annoyed with sometimes. Please don't flame.....it's just how I feel!
(sheez, sorry this is SO long...)
so many interesting thoughts here!
Tanya - haha! love the reason you want to learn japanese
Re Lisa's friend hating Dora - agreed, very ignorant. even if adults could learn spanish from watching dora (i've never seen it!), i wouldn't worry about this at all. as long as you're living in the US, children will learn english when they start going to school, period. As for what's spoken at home, my understanding is that as long as each person is consistent, the child doesn't get confused by which language is which - for example, if one parent only spoke english to the kid, and the other only french, the child has no problem learning that there are both english and french words for everything, and doesn't tend to jumble them up (much? at all?). However, if the french-speaking parent switched between english and french, the kid is much more likely to get confused about which is which.
i sometimes joke that english is my second language (especially when i pronounce a word totally wrong, or can't think of the word i'm trying to say). i learned when i started going to preschool at 3 - i think the first english phrase i learned was "i need to go to the bathroom" b/c the first day, i had a little accident - i couldn't communicate with the teacher. I imagine it was pretty traumatic then, but i certainly don't remember it now. so my mom taught me, and sent me back to school the next day. prior to that, i had had chinese baby sitters/in-home daycare providers, and my parents speak chinese at home. my grandparents moved to the US/our neighborhood when i was 6, and never learned english (beyond very, very simple phrases - hello, thank you) and helped look after me and my sister after school, so i grew up speaking chinese at home. my sister, i'm not sure i would consider her fluent. she can understand when other people speak (conversational chinese), but has a harder time speaking herself. she can get her point across, but it's strained, and she has a huge accent
she's 6 years younger than me, and she and i always spoke english with each other, so her chinese is markedly worse than mine. i wonder if those 6 years of chinese-only at home really gave me that much of an edge. i would consider myself fluent, though i also don't understand non-everyday vocabulary (eg: what you'd see on the news, or in soap operas). but i could go live in taiwan or (the mandarin-speaking parts of) china and get around okay. my chinese has gone downhill a lot since after college, since i just don't use it very much anymore - rarely ever, really, unless i'm on the phone with my parents or grandparents. but a few years ago, i went to taiwan for 2 weeks, and was as fluent as ever by the end of it - so i know it comes back quickly when i'm immersed. shopkeepers were always impressed when they found out i was from the US, b/c i didn't have an accent - but they may just have been flattering me in hopes that i'd spend more money, hah. over time though, i've definitely noticed a big decline in how easily i can switch between the two languages. i guess i'm just not that worried (yet) b/c i think i can get it back pretty easily.
i am not, however, able to read or write chinese. i'm almost completely illiterate, even after years and years of chinese school as a child, and almost 2 years of chinese in college. at the end of those 2 years, my chinese was at its best - i had learned a ton of vocabulary, and had to memorize writing new words almost every day. but as soon as you don't use it, it's gone. when i see a chinese sign now, i can say, "gee, i used to be able to read about half of those words at some point, but i have no idea what it says now
. it's just straight memorization, so it's not even like i can sound out the words or anything like that.
i did take 4 years of french in high school, and pretty much forgot all of it by now. i can string together some very basic sentences, but it takes a lot of effort, definitely couldn't communicate with anyone, no matter how patient they are. one of my classmates did live in france, with a french family, for a year, and she said that she felt pretty fluent after about 6 months. so i think immersion is really the fastest way to learn, if you force yourself to and don't give yourself an "out" by getting around in english.
MH and i talk about what we want to do with our kids, but we haven't come to any conclusions yet. we usually just end up saying "they'll learn chinese from their grandparents!" i really want them to be able to speak the language - i've always felt fortunate that i can. but i'm not sure how they'll learn, given that based on my own experiences, they need to be around it and have ample opportunities to use it to be fluent - unless they work really hard at it later. we've considered maybe having me speak only chinese to our kids, at least when they're young, since MH's chinese is worse than my sister's. I figure it'd be good for both MH and the kids
but...i'm not sure i can commit to that! that severely limit the conversations i can have with MH, at least when the baby is around... 
and if i slip up, and end up speaking both chinese and english, i do think that may be bad for the baby. so...no idea.
anyhow, i would love to learn another language now (or relearn french), but have the same questions you do - how do i pick which one, and also, how will i keep it up? i'm sad my 2 years of really studying chinese in college (i worked hard for that class!) are completely wasted now. so i think i may have given up
oops, couple more things -
this really irritates me
i think everyone should at least try to learn english when living here - it's in your best interest to do so afterall - but that doesn't mean you should throw away your own culture or suppress it. what happened to sharing and learning about others?
maybe i just haven't seen it, or i've been brainwashed by an old canadian boyfriend, but i feel like there are more close-minded people in this country, and that racism is much less of an issue in Canada.
When I was a flight attendant I was working a flight once (Cleveland or Detroit to Chicago) and I was the one doing the announcements from the front of the plane. When I finished my opening announcement, I started down the aisle closing the overhead bins. I got to about the 3rd row and this African American woman (traveling with her 2 young children) said to me, "You speak very good English." AYKM? I was stunned and all I could think to say (with major attitude) was, "Well, I should. It's the only language I know." And I kept on walking. UGH! Talk about ignorant. And it'll be perpetuated because she says that $hit in front of her kids.
That being said, I'm 4th generation Japanese American so my parents and grandparents spoke English. Neither of my parents know any Japanese. I have no accent, not even pidgin, because I lived in LA for most of my childhood. My grandparents all spoke broken Japanese and I know a few words but that's it. I really wish I could speak Japanese, though.
I took Spanish in HS (& college) because at my HS all they offered was Spanish and French and I figured Spanish would be more useful. It would be if I remembered any of it! I remember enough that I can kinda get by but I'm sure I sound like a total retard to native speakers.
I totally wanna buy the Rosetta Stone to learn Japanese but it's EXPENSIVE. Before we went to Japan we borrowed some CDs and learned some phrases that way.
very interesting post.
I only speak English. I took the minimum requirements of foreign language (chose Spanish) in HS and undergrad, sadly I just think it was too late. I was good at memorizing and could pass a written test with 100% but could never speak very well. Class presentations were traumatizing and I could never understand much of what the teacher said when we made it to the "spanish only" class level. I know a few words but that is all.
I do know quite a few Native American songs from my own Tribe and make it a point to listen and try to learn "the word of the day" from my Tribe's website and know enough to basically introduce myself and say where/what Tribe I am from. It is important to me and I try to sing the songs to Jack as much as possible. The language was mostly lost for many years thanks to required assimilation and forced boarding schools by the Federal gov't. My Great Grandpa was ashamed that he knew the language probably until the day he died because he had been beaten for attempting to speak it at boarding school as a small child. My other Great Grandparents were the same but did allow themselves to be recorded back in the 1980's. Thanks to them and others like them we were able to piece some of it back together - hence the word of the day and other programs to learn songs and words.
i bartended in seattle at a pretty touristy place and EVERYDAY someone would ask me, what i was??? or i speak GOOD english...really, you mean i speak english well. or my favorite, what part of mexico are you from? i used to tell them, california
it really amazes me how ignorant people are. okay, i get it, you are curious what ethnicity i am because i have brown skin and hair but there are polite and tactful ways to ask and i'll be more than happy to elaborate. after awhile, i used to make up ethnicities...it really used to make people look like this 
Jesus. That's awful.
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog
I speak both English & Filipino (Tagalog) fluently. I was born in Manila and was schooled there. It's interesting because in schools, we were taught using English language so English is just second nature to us. Spanish is very similar to the Filipino (Philippines was under the Spanish colony for hundreds of years) language so I eventhough I cannot speak, I can understand a lot of words. DH and I took basic Spanish class. He felt like I was cheating because a lot of words mean the same in Filipino lol.
I am highly in favor of having kids learn a different language. Kids' brains are like sponges. They adapt to other languages very easily than adults do. I want to teach our LO the Filipino language & culture. DH & I have talked about this. As much as possible, I'll talk to her in Filipino and DH can talk to her in English. We are also planning to put her in a bilingual Spanish daycare. I am not worried about her getting confused with the languages. Whether we like it or not, she will learn English in school. I have a friend whose mom only talked to her in Spanish when she was a kid. She speaks both Spanish and English very fluently now. It also made it easier for her to speak and learn Italian since she has knowledge of Spanish.
Here is a good article about bilingual babies.
I think this is awesome. Close to 80% of my students were ELLs at some point in their lives, and many are going through a phase where they reject their parents' heritages in favour of North Americanization. Culture & history are so important... so it's always great to see the kids go back to their home countries during the summer and to feel re-energized by it.
Alyson & Phil | Planning Bio | Married Bio!
Dates & Quinces Blog
This is so sad! I hate it that stuff like this happened.
I've been thinking more about my friend (the Dora the Explorer hater), and about language learning in general, and I've come to the conclusion that many Aussies simply don't prize learning a second language (and Tina, if you read this, feel free to disagree with me because obviously I haven't been everywhere in Australia or know every Aussie out there!).
I don't mean that they're all Dora haters lol, but when I think about it, they don't seem to have the same "it's a good thing to learn a foreign language" attitude that Americans or Europeans have. I don't think they necessarily think it's a bad thing either, but they don't seem to value it as highly as Americans or Europeans do (and I could never see something like a language immersion school working here). That's just the impression I get, anyway.
Racism and ignorance makes me so angry. I hate that this happened to both of you....
I took German in high school and college. My grandmother was first generation German-American.I studied abroad twice and that is when my skills soared. Nowadays, my speaking abilities have plummeted but I can still write and read fairly well. And I still have dreams in German!
My hubby is near-fluent in Japanese. He was raised speaking it in his home and he spent his summers in Japan. His parents are first generation Japanese-American and they both speak English with thick accents. If we have children, we want them to learn Japanese and English. I think the ability to speak multiple languages is such a helpful skill later in life and it keeps cultural traditions alive. I am jealous of my friends who were lucky enough to be raised bilingual. What a gift!
Hey! We're language twins! =P I had the SAME EXACT traumatic bathroom experience in kindergarten (why is "bathroom" so hard to pronounce?)! Except I was able to (but barely) make it to the bathroom in time by grabbing my crotch, pointing in the direction of the bathroom, and jumping up and down =P Unfortunately, my parents' English were worse, so no one was able to teach me how to say the word "bathroom". The teachers tried, but I just couldn't do it. Finally, my mom consulted my aunt (her sister, who lived here before we moved here) and she said that her kids said "peepee poopoo" to their teachers, so my mom taught us to say that. So we used "peepee poopoo" until our teachers had enough and said "No more peepee poopoo! Say bathroom."
So like Sandra, I spoke Chinese at home. It's my first language even though I was born in America. My parents moved back when I when I was 1 and we didn't move back until I was 4. Eventually, English became my strongest language (and still is). I speak Chinese fairly fluently and I can recognize enough words to get me around (usually about half of the words on a sign) and can write even less than I can read, but I speak Chinese with some English accent (but not super strong--because when ppl hear my talking, those in China think I'm from Taiwan, those from Taiwan thinks I'm from Hong Kong, and those from HK think I'm from China =P). But a lot of people say that they can tell that I'm from the US just by looking at me because I *look* American.
But I also pronounce some English words incorrectly. MH makes fun of me when I say "thorough"...he says I say "throw" =P There are some other words too--but I can't think of them right now...
I took Spanish in high school for three years. I went to Mexico when I was in college to teach English VBS at a church in Ensenada and the kids would laugh at my poor English and if they spoke slowly and repeated themselves a lot, I could communicate with them =P I would say that my Spanish skills are extremely limited. I can order milk and ask where the bathroom is, but I can't really carry on a real conversation.
And oh, I also know how to read Korean (although I'm really rusty now). But I can't understand it. It's phonetic, like English, so I know how to pronounce the words when I see the characters, but I wouldn't know what they mean. The reason for this is because I used to be a Korean teenybopper. When everybody liked N'Sync and Blackstreet Boys, I liked Korean boy bands, so I learned how to read Korean so I can karaoke Korean songs =P
MH is using Rosetta Stone for Chinese and he likes it but he has barely started. He hasn't kept up with it recently though and can only pick out certain words in a conversation but not enough to help him understand even what the topic of conversation is about.