What IS the dirty little secret of multilingual people??

Thanks for pointing that out; I had never heard of cigarillo before now. You learn something new every day! Nevertheless, whether my misknowledge of carcinogenic substances should be against my position as a linguist is another matter.

Cigarillos are (better: used to be!) "the porrmen's/worker's cigar" here in Germany. [In my hometown, 7,000 inhabitants at that time(1910), we had 15 cigar fabrications, mostly just producing cogarillos.]

Wow... that is a huge amount of cigarillos, especially amongst such a small immediate circle of people! (Though the factories must've exported their wares) I once spent a night in Lippstadt: I was travelling from Duisburg to Berlin and I had tp stay overnight... it was beautiful. Do you think that smoking should be banned in public places?

In my native town, which is close to Lippstadt, there has been a cigar 'industry' as well as a significant of spirits ("Schnaps") and breweries.

Both, drinking and smoking, should be prohibited in public places.

Public should be prohibited in drinking places!

Healthy practices and other such forms of the new puritanism should be prohibited in public places.

I've heard of public places, where any public is prohibited.

Some years ago, about the time when signs reading "Thank You for Not Smoking" were popping up in such unlikely places as pubs and cocktail lounges, I stopped in at a biker's bar in...Montana, I think, although it might have been Wyoming. On the wall behind the bar was a sign which read "Thank You for Not Breathing While I Smoke."

There was an attempt to impose a city-wide no smoking ordinance in Columbus, Ohio about four or five years ago. It was thrown out, by the environmental judge of all people. He held that while he approved of the measure as salutory, the board of health lacked any such authority, unless and until city council ammended the charter. No takers on that one in city hall.

Since then, some restaurants have imposed their own ban, to accomodate a family trade, others have set up rooms with completely independent ventilation systems (the environmental judge did say that the board of health could impose a rule that a non-smoking facility must prove enforcement, or set up rooms with separate ventilation), and many of the bars have gone non-smoking to attract the new puritans, a growing crowd.

But these things have a way of adjusting themselves--one downtown club now has a cigar night, with discounts on high-end brands of cigar, and a special for cigar and cognac . . .

If you're a smoker, Set, don't go to California. The only place you can smoke there is outdoors. This finds people huddling at sidewalk tables in freezing temperatures, clutching their beers or cocktails and cigarettes.

I think California should be detached and given a good shove into the Pacific, just as a public health measure for the rest of the nation . . .

I agree with you re: Southern Cal. But I like San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada mother lode towns. That's like a totally different state.

Not to get back on topic or anything, but there's also a bit of a difference between just speaking a language or learning it and using it in contexts and writing essays in it and so forth. When learning to write essays in English, I learned a variety of stylistic rules that had nothing to do with spelling or grammar, such as "whenever possible, use active verbs" and "don't split infinitives" and "don't use general pronouns like 'he' or 'she' so much." However, these days I'm writing more essays in Spanish, and there's a completely different set of rules to memorize - "whenever possible, always use passive constructions," for instance. There's no eqivalent to splitting infinitives, and general pronouns are not only prefered when talking about people, but objects and even situations are routinely referred to as "he" or "she." I think that's probably the most difficult part of becoming bilingual - relearning all the style rules.

rufio, you are right about the cultural context.
A language is of little use if you don't "live" it somehow.
As for essays, I remember I had a problem with my thesis, written in Italian. My style was deemed as "too coloquial" and "too sarcastic" by my mentors. I was into the language and into popular, political and "street" culture, but not quite into Italian academic culture.

BTW, what's your mother tongue?
... and welcome to A2K!

Thanks, it looks pretty interesting here! I speak English natively. I've studied Spanish, Hebrew, and Quenya (a language from LOTR). I don't think I'm quite fluent in Spanish yet, I'm definitely not fluent in Hebrew, and you can't really be fluent in Quenya because it's missing a great deal of words. I hope to study Latin, German, and Russian eventually, in that order, and possibly Swahili - but I'll have to see how much opportunity I get to do that.

Most people have gotten the theories right. Children automatically "learn" a langauge at a certain age via immersion. If you stick a kid from say Hong Kong and put him in school in Canada when he is six, he will most likely be fluent by the age of eight. As one gets older though, they move from "learning" to "studying," which is what most people now do.

I live in Hong Kong and it is actually very interesting here. Virtually everyone is bilingual; they speak Cantonese, and some English; it is taught in schools. Yet very few are in a fluent or native speakers level. Many government officials are fluent in English, but not native like many of my friends in International schools.

Another interesting point is that it is very easy to forget languages; this is where the whole "immersion" concept many people have mentioned comes in. I was fluent in Putonghua (Mandarin) when I was around five when I lived in Hong Kong, since I studied in a school that used that language of medium. However when I moved to Canada, I eventually forgot all of my putonghua but learnt to be fluent in a year or two. I do not recall actually learning english; the rules such as grammar and structure just appeared.

This is a good contrast to now. I had to learn French in school, yet they placed this towards Junior High; when my language learning frame was starting to end. By then "learning" French was very different, due to the lack of immersion and outgrowing that developmental phase. Even though I have studied French for six years, I am still nowhere near fluent level (although it is also due to my slacking off.) Unlike English, I actually had to "study" rules such as tense and grammar.

However there is another interesting point; I find it somewhat easier to learn certain languages than others. Languages such as French or German were harder than Languages such as Korean or Japanese. Arabic just made me cry. The system of the language as well as similarities plays an important factor. People who speak Cantonese will definately find learning Putonghua easier than say, English because of the similarities. People who speak French as their first language will find learning German or Spanish easier, whilst German native speakers will find Dutch easier.

English is unique (I think.) It is a somewhat different language since I do not know any langauges that are similar to it. Many European languages have concepts such as gender appropiation for nouns, as well as wide usage of conjugation for verbs. An English speaker learning an Asian language will obviously find it significantly harder, than say, French or Italian.

Being multilingual at an early age may have an effect, as one polygots at a young age have "adapted" to learning languages subconciously. Although harder, they may find learning languages easier than people who speak only one language. IQ may also have a factor, in which it is used for determining patterns, spatial recognition etc.

There's a guy who travels with the World Motorcycle grand prix group. I've heard him translate to English from Italian, Portugese, Spanish, German, French, and possibly a couple of others. That's at least six languages. Even guys I know at work who speak 2 languages (and there's plenty of those) are amazed by him.

I forgot to mention Hungarian. That's seven. I know there's some commonalities between some, but jesus.

I started learning English at school when I was 7 or 8 and by the time I was 15 my English was much better than my friend's. I think this only happened because I realised from an early age that English was useful and I needed to speak it.
We always managed to go on holiday to places where there were no Spanish kids to play with + I've always loved music and I hated not being able to sing along to the Beatles lol

Wilso, I started this thread because of a certain country where everyone speaks that many languages.