What IS the dirty little secret of multilingual people??

Re: MULTULINGUAL PEOPLE


That was thaught as a joke, hamburger, because Pete's favourite club only draw in Trondheim :wink:

Re: MULTULINGUAL PEOPLE
Pete's favourite club is namely Arsenal London-the Gunners. ;-)

Meine Deutschschprachende Freunde,

Yes - the mighty Gunners (in our own league "Untouchable" - a record number of games unbeaten - could not break down the 11-year reigning champions of Norway.

Still doing OK, though. I'll be watching them play the illustrious Charlton tomorrow...I hope our run won't come to an end at that point.

Drueken mir die Daumen!

i just thought pete might enjoy a drink in the trondheim 'drom' on his next stopover. they keep the beer nice and cool there. hbg

As of this weekend, 13-year reigning champions, actually. Beat the second placed team by having scored more goals. (Soooooooooo close!)

Anyhoo, I learn new languages by listening to other people using them, and using them myself as much as I can. This only works for languages "related" to those I already know, though...

Wow, reading 19 pages of posts took a while!

Well, I was born and raised in the US and English is of course my native language. In high school, I took a year of Spanish, but it wasn't until age 20 (3 1/2 years ago) that I really took a liking to learning foreign languages.

Short trips to Mexico and Brasil (and Western Europe) led me to a love affair with romance languages. So I started to learn Portuguese little by little or sometimes intensely for months at a time. In the middle of doing this, I decided to take up Spanish again, and to an extent, they help each other (except that Portuguese is more nasal and has different rules of pronounciation such as quen-chee for quen-tay, unless you come from the state of Paraná).

Anyways, I'm not just into languages, I also feel that it's imperitave to learn the history, politics, geography, cuisine, and various arts of the place that uses the language you're learning. My goal is to become fluent in all the main romance languages by thirty. I figure if it took three years to learn to read, write, and understand two languages, then learning two more won't be so hard. I left out speaking because it's not at the same level as the other factors. I'm sure some of you can relate, if you learned a language without classes or tutors.

In this day and age, it's no longer acceptable to be an idiot (a person who doesn't like, nor want, to learn). My opinion, of course.

In closing, I guess I should take a stab at answering the inital question of this thread. If another language wasn't learned at a young age, our dirty little secret is simply dedication.

welcome, and a nice post...bien hecho

The dirty little secret on learning foreign languages
I am quadra-lingual and agree with most of the comments made about language acquisition. Generally, the earlier the better. One additional point should be made. The learner needs to have a powerful reason or incentive to learn the additional tongue.

Djibouti is located at the cross-roads of many countries. It is small and without many natural resources. Trade and personal selling probably play a major role in the economic life of the country. If one can converse well in three or more languages the chances for economic survival is higher than if one is monolingual.

Ethiopian tribal members apparently do not need to converse outside their tribe in order to be economically viable.

Americans and Brits as a rule do not need to learn foreign languages to prosper. People in Luxembourg and in the Scandinavian countries do.
The Spanish and Italians do not. Only professionals in Germany and France do. There are many more examples.

Americans and Brits will only learn foreign languages when it becomes an economic or social imperative.

And what about learning a language because you are in love?...

Good point, Francis . . . i had to learn Canadian to talk to my Lovey . . .

Dont you think the language of love is much more easier to learn?

Oh yes, especially when accompanied by inappropriate hilarity . . . and small dogs . . .

Inappropriate hilarity - Is that the way you feel Hillary's behavior?

I'd never try to feel Hillary . . . she's too old for me.

I refused and refuse to learn Rhinelaendish.

Only, because I can't speak it ("sounded funyy"), Mrs. Walter asks me to add.
(And it is really more 'bergish'.)

walter : we have some friends that came almost 50 years ago from "bergischen land" (solingen) to canada and still seem to speak a reasonable "bergisch". there are such expressions as : kabbes (for cabbage) and "henkelmaennchen" (for lunchpail) and "blahgen (?)"( for small children ) that they throw in while speaking "canadian". hbg

Mrs. Walter is from ... you guess it: Solingen. ('Blagen' is Westphalian as well, btw.) :wink:

(Ask your friends, if they have 'Kürmel' at home and if they would like a 'Kottenbuotter')

secret of multi-lingual people
My great-grandad spoke eight languages apart from his native french, but then he had a classic nineteenth century education where Latin Greek and Hebrew were expected - he picked up/learned the other languages because he could. My grandmother spoke bad english besides her French and my parents only English. I speak/have spoken six langages apart from English. I'm certain that there's a genetic predisposition somewhere (I feel it) but I also know that age plays a part (I feel that as well) and necessity (ditto). But some I'm convinced that some temperaments are more conducive to picking up a foreign language than others (from observation) and thus national temperaments as well. English and Americans often have a very hard time learning another language because they simply can't remove themselves from their native mindset. Likewise with picking up a foreign accent. Even if they master the grammar, the pronunication is usually (not always) attrocious. Sounds a bit generalised but that's what I've seen over many decades of observation.

The problem with the Brits, Americans and most other Anglophones is that there is little incentive to learn another language. Nowadays, even if one travels widely, English has become the universal world language. Why go to the trouble of learning another tongue when there's no real need? (The question, obviously, is rhetorical.)