How many languages are you fluent in?

[crawjo]

I am only fluent in English. I took French in high school and German in college, but never became immersed in either and so have lost most of my knowledge and understanding of each language. I imagine that the situation is similar for many Americans.

I'm starting this thread because I'm interested to know the stories of people who have successfully picked up languages during the course of their life. How difficult was it to do, how long did it take, etc...I guess I'd just like to hear whatever stories people have to share.

My ulterior motive for asking this question is that I am contemplating a shift in emphasis in my studies, which would require me to learn new languages.

[Tom Storer]

English and French. I took French all through high school and continued in college, but I would certainly have never become fluent if I hadn't moved to France. I think learning a language is ten times easier when you live where it's spoken. To be fluent at all, you have to spend a lot of time with native speakers no matter where you are. Some people pick up languages very easily, others are terrible at it no matter how hard they try, and most people are somewhere in the middle. The older you are, the harder it gets. There, my two cents.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Originally Posted by crawjo

I am only fluent in English. I took French in high school and German in college, but never became immersed in either and so have lost most of my knowledge and understanding of each language. I imagine that the situation is similar for many Americans.

The situation is identical for this American, same languages at the same levels.

Because of the large amount of rote memorization involved in learning languages, it always had little appeal for me.

[Pete C]

I've studied a lot of French, a moderate amount of Spanish, and tiny bits of Italian & Mandarin.

I'm fluent in English.

[Jazzooo]

None.

I'm pretty good with English. The more time I spend in Mexico, the better my high school Spanish serves me. I'm learning through osmosis at this point--band rehearsals down there are great lessons. I throw out a suggestion, the guitarist translates it to the bassist and drummer who speak more Spanish than English, and then I'm pretty much able to follow the ensuing discussions.

I've been told throughout my life that I have excellent pronunciation. I learned a few key phrases of Arabic while in Morroco and surprised a lot of people. I learned how to say "I'm sorry--I don't speak French, can we talk in English?" when I was visiting Quebec a while back. The trouble was that I actually sounded like I spoke a little French, so people would often respond in simple French, leaving me scratching my head. Once they realized that they had already heard all the French I could speak, we switched to English.

[Sergio Zamora]

Two. I picked up English at around age 4 simply by watching hours and hours of TV. By the time I was in kindergarten, I could read in English even though no one had taught me. I don't say that to brag, but to demonstrate how incredibly fast very young children can learn a language. My little brother was born in the US but didn't really live here until he was in the second grade (we went back to Mexico before he was old enough to learn it, but came back about five or six years later), and he nevertheless learned the language in less than a year and speaks as it was well as any native speaker.

My dad, on the other hand, has lived in the US since 1974 (a year before the rest of the family) when he was in his early 30s, with only a somewhat briefer interlude than the rest of the family back in Mexico, and he still speaks with a thick accent and has difficulty expressing himself at times. He still has to think of what he wants to say before he starts saying it. He understands it as well as me or my siblings, though.

Just shows to go ya

[vibes]

I consider myself fluent in English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Spanish and Portuguese. Have also studied some French, Latin and Korean. I majored in Mandarin in college. I picked up Cantonese during the two years I lived in Hong Kong, and am more comfortable with it than any of the other languages I speak, as a result. I have no trouble switching between languages as long as I'm starting from English. I have done translation between some odd combinations, like Cantonese to Spanish, and when that happens, I sometimes mix up words for the first few minutes, but then I'm OK.

[Sand]

None.

No formal studies of English (7 years), German (4 years) and French (3 years) beyond high school. Formal studies of Norwegian at College or University level.

French was generally not taken seriously in high school at the time. The teachers were qualified, but there was nothing beyond reading a text and translating it. Since then I've lived in France for 7 months on one occation and had a 2 month stay more recently. Now I am very slowly starting to work on my spoken French in very modest ways and not systematically. I've mainly been into reading and understanding.

In 1983 I studied I Italian for about three weeks, that is, I read one book, did the exercises,etc. It was very useful.

German was my best subject in school and a language I excelled in then. It would have been easy to develop that further, but I did not. It was, however, very useful when we imported stuff from Germany. It's also amazing to think about that I did translate a number of personal letters from a neighbor to her German-speaking father.

With my background (age, geography,family, education, attitude) I feel that I understand most official languages in Scandinavia and most dialects, but close languages like Faroese and much more so, Icelandic, are not immediately accessible. Forget about Uralic languages. That's Greek to me!
Now and then I've been fluent in Norwegian.

English? It feels akward. I was into Bristish English once.

Edit: Bristish?

[jaka]

I'm only fluent in French, try my best to be intelligible in English.
There's one language I'd love to learn though and it's sign-language. Always been attracted to it, maybe it comes from my deep fear of deafness.

[Nefertiti]

I have Luxemburgish as a mother tongue and I'm fluent in German, French, English, like most people in my country

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_Luxembourg

[Rob C]

I'm fluent in one language, if that.

In school, I took a bit of German, Spanish, and French at various times. But foreign languages were always my worst subjects, by far. I chalk up my difficulties to my study methodology, known as "cramming". You just can't cram foreign languages.

I was generally a good student, but I regularly felt very dumb in my language classes, and still remember the dull panic I often felt when the teacher would ask me a question, and I would just not have a clue as to how to respond (or what the question was).

[chuckyd4]

English. That's it.

I'm trying my best with French, but far from fluent at the moment (my reading and oral comprehension are good, my writing is not quite as good, and my speaking is quite often painful).

I also took something like 3+ years of Russian in high school, but can hardly remember 5 words of it. I have a very basic knowledge of conversational Twi, which is spoken in Ghana. I also studied a lot of Latin and ancient Greek in high school, but most of that has disappeared except for a very subconscious word-root thing.

[RedJazz]

None. I speak and write English, though everytime I see something exceptionally well written or run across a word the definition of which I do not know, I'm humbled that I'm not especially fluent even in English, despite having 18 undergraduate credits in English and being ABD in history.

[steve(thelil)]

I dabble in English. I'm fluent in Stinch.

[picsou]

My daughter was born in England, so she first spoke English. At 1.5 she moved to Sweden. First weeks at kindergarten were a bit difficult, but within half a year she spoke Swedish like a native (and still does). 2 years ago, we moved to Switzerland (French part, fortunately ). Again, the first weeks were a bit difficult, although I had spoken French to her. Now, she is 10, and better in French than many of her classmates. Her mom (my wife) was born in Romania, but moved to Sweden a long time ago. She learned Swedish, German (international school), now manages in French, and understands Italian. Her father's family came from Hungary, and he speaks Hungarian and Russian. Poor me, I am only useful in this family with my French. I do manage English and Swedish, but have problems with Norwegians, and even more so with spoken Danish. And do not mention Swiss German .

[Brian Olewnick]

Four years of French. Hardly fluent but I can make myself understood enough to get around (and I pronounce decently). I can generally follow a conversation in Tagalog.

[Monte Smith]

I've studied Spanish, French, and Russian, all of which I deploy in varying degrees of incompetency, except for Russian, which I can't speak at all. Or rather, I can say "Hello" (or maybe its "Pardon me"), "Thanks," and "I am unable to stand on the floor." I speak the same amount of Korean, except for the standing on the floor part. At one point in a bar in San Antonio (Dick's, if you know it), I was taught the Navajo word for "beautiful" by a troupe of Native American teachers on sabbatical, but the word ultimately got lost in a shuffle of beers and jalapeno poppers. No wait a second--it might be "Nihani." Anyway, I consider myself a citizen of the world and a master linguist because I can order off a menu in any time zone on any hemisphere. Plus I speak English, like most people.

[Enforcer]

I studied four years of German in high school. I rarely use it anymore. My younger brother studied German in college and lived in Germany for a year. One of our kids has been in the exchange student program where she spends a month in Germany and we take in a German student for a month in return. We've done this the past two years. Also, she tutors other students in German, so I'm around it all the time. I can usually tell when they're making fun of me.

[Mike Goodbar]

Originally Posted by Larry Nagel

Also, she tutors other students in German, so I'm around it all the time. I can usually tell when they're making fun of me.

Whenever I hear somebody speaking a foreign language in my vicinity, I automatically assume that they're making fun of me, or plotting something evil against me. That's why everyone should talk English. I mean, this is America for chrissake.

[John L]

Originally Posted by Tom Storer

English and French. I took French all through high school and continued in college, but I would certainly have never become fluent if I hadn't moved to France. I think learning a language is ten times easier when you live where it's spoken. To be fluent at all, you have to spend a lot of time with native speakers no matter where you are. Some people pick up languages very easily, others are terrible at it no matter how hard they try, and most people are somewhere in the middle. The older you are, the harder it gets. There, my two cents.

Seven years of living as your neighbor in Paris didn't make me fluent in French.

[Jazzzoline]

Originally Posted by picsou

My daughter was born in England, so she first spoke English. At 1.5 she moved to Sweden. First weeks at kindergarten were a bit difficult, but within half a year she spoke Swedish like a native .

There's no accent for a language learnt before the age of 8

[Vince Kargatis]

Originally Posted by Jazzooo

I've been told throughout my life that I have excellent pronunciation. I learned a few key phrases of Arabic while in Morroco and surprised a lot of people. I learned how to say "I'm sorry--I don't speak French, can we talk in English?" when I was visiting Quebec a while back. The trouble was that I actually sounded like I spoke a little French, so people would often respond in simple French, leaving me scratching my head. Once they realized that they had already heard all the French I could speak, we switched to English.

I had the same problem with Greek in Greece. I learned a moderate amount, but couldn't understand worth a damn (never learned to process the language naturally, at all). Had good pronunciation, and tried to speak as much as possible, but the listeners always assumed significant fluency when responding, and I was always left with this dumb apologetic look on my face. "I'm sorry, I didn't understand" was probably my most-used Greek phrase.

I'm another monolingual American. :-/

[claude]

Strangely I spoke French and knew very little english before I started school in a completely english part of Ontario. Within two years I had pretty well stopped speaking French and even now, though I understand French very well, I don't speak it very well and am not comfortable carrying on a conversation in French. I guess this is another way that I am wierd.

[Al in NYC]

Yet another unilingual American here.

Except:

Did 3 years of French in high school and spent the summer mornings of my youth perusing the French copy on Canadian cereal boxes. After I'm there for a couple of days I can manage to not embarrass myself too badly in Quebec. My trips to France, on the other hand, have been linguistic near-disasters.

I spent a couple weeks of several winters in southern Mexico when I was a teenager. Also had some Spanish instruction for a couple of years when I was a little kid and a grad school roommate who was from Ecuador. My best friend's wife is Costa Rican and whenever I spend time at their house the Spanish TV is blaring unignorably. Combine that with the fact that Spanish is a relatively logical and simple language, and that I've spent several years in NYC neighborhoods with significant Hispanic populations, and it's a real shame that my Spanish doesn't go very much beyond "no se apoye contra la puerta."

I did 3+ years of Japanese as a grad student. Then I lived in the country for several months out of several years, and I almost got good enough so that people could kind of understand me. They didn't even laugh much anymore when I spoke, just gave me a tolerant, only slightly bothered, smile. I could even read a fair amount,and write some of the characters well enough that they could occasinally be read (something I can't really do in my native alphabet). Then I came back to this country where I work with Japanese people and Japanese language pretty much every day and promptly forgot most of what I learned. Except for the mistakes -- those I know, which is a good thing, since much of my business consists of correcting those mistakes.

At the same time I have friends who started out speaking two languages or more and just go around picking up others and happily chatting away in slightly-accented versions of them. But not I. So, I've come to the conclusion that I'm one of those people Tom talks about who is just plain terrible at learning languages. Except for English, of course, that I do good.

[crawjo]

Interesting responses. My reason for asking the question is that I'm thinking of switching my concentration in my history program. Up till now I had planned to do American cultural history, which obviously doesn't raise any concerns about foreign language.

But now I'm thinking seriously about doing African history, which is a whole other situation. From what I gather you have to learn multiple languages, because you usually have to know the colonial language of whatever area you are studying (French, Portuguese, etc.) and then the native language as well. You have to live in Africa for awhile to do field work, so knowing the language and being able to get by is very important.

The prospect is frightening to me because what if I just can't pick up the languages? As I said in the first post, I dabbled in French and German but nothing stuck. What I'm hoping is that even if I'm on the wrong end of the spectrum Tom proposed, if I work hard enough at it eventually I'll figure it out, even though I've passed through the first 28 years of my life in a unilingual, parochial environment.

That's my biggest concern about doing African history.

[Rob C]

"In how many languages are you fluent?"

[Douglas]

Essentially a monoglot, despite considerable exposure to French, Russian, and intermittently for the last couple of years Japanese. In a very passive sort of way I bumble along happily living in France. I dropped French at school as soon as it was possible; I should have paid more attention.

Having just seen Crawjo's second post. I'm pretty hopeless, but I managed to pick up some Russian while at graduate school. Nowhere near the proficiency of John L, but better than Monte

[jazzy mary]

Originally Posted by crawjo

Interesting responses. My reason for asking the question is that I'm thinking of switching my concentration in my history program. Up till now I had planned to do American cultural history, which obviously doesn't raise any concerns about foreign language.

But now I'm thinking seriously about doing African history, which is a whole other situation. From what I gather you have to learn multiple languages, because you usually have to know the colonial language of whatever area you are studying (French, Portuguese, etc.) and then the native language as well. You have to live in Africa for awhile to do field work, so knowing the language and being able to get by is very important.

The prospect is frightening to me because what if I just can't pick up the languages? As I said in the first post, I dabbled in French and German but nothing stuck. What I'm hoping is that even if I'm on the wrong end of the spectrum Tom proposed, if I work hard enough at it eventually I'll figure it out, even though I've passed through the first 28 years of my life in a unilingual, parochial environment.

That's my biggest concern about doing African history.

crawjo, If you're interested in African history, I would say learn French. Most Africans I know are fluent in French, English and the native tribal language. Portuguese is good too, but I think French will be more useful. It is the international language, still. For example, for the Rwanda war crimes tribunal the proceedings were conducted in French.

[John L]

Crawjo: Quite a number of African countries don't have a single native language. Different communities speak different native languages, while English or French is used for general communication. Swahili might be useful in some areas. But if you work on an anglophone African country, you will probably not need to gain real fluency in any foreign language. In francophone Africa, you need to know French.

[Felix]

Originally Posted by claude

Strangely I spoke French and knew very little english before I started school in a completely english part of Ontario. Within two years I had pretty well stopped speaking French and even now, though I understand French very well, I don't speak it very well and am not comfortable carrying on a conversation in French. I guess this is another way that I am wierd.

You`re not weird, claude, you`re just another proof that bilinguism in Canada is, well, problematic.

I`d say I`m not fluent in any language, although my French is definitely better than my English (as you`ve certainly witnessed from my posts before...).