Do you speak 2+ languages?

I’ve been living in Italy now for about a year and I’ve taken a couple college courses for Italian…I have to say that I have never racked my brain so hard or studied so much for one thing. Now that I have a decent grasp on it though my knowledge of how the english language has gotten a lot better and it seems that if I wanted to start on a third language that would be a lot easier also.

Does anyone else have experience with this? Does this become an addiction where you are studying languages for the rest of your life? Sometimes its hella fun…but sometimes I just want to shoot myself in the foot. :smack:

:smiley:

I’m a English speaking Canadian, so I was forced to take French lessons for many years (it’s the law here). Never actually learned it though. I’ve since spend some time in Germany, and can now speak German - well I can speak well enough to get by anyways. Learning German did actually help my French strangely enough, maybe I’ve started to notice the differences in languages or something.

I know precisely what you mean, alterego. As I was learning Spanish, it certainly made me aware of my English grammar and how much work it needed (even though it’s my first language). Also, once you learn a second language, to simplify a bit, one can use this set of guidelines and methods to assist with and make it easier to learn yet another language. Did that make sense? Didn’t think so…

I’m currently taking a beginner’s course in German. So, at the moment, I just speak English and acceptable Spanish.

I found that taking a foreign language definitely helped me with english grammar. However, it didn’t neccessarily help me learn a different, third language. I suspect it would help you learn a related language, but I took German first, then Russian so there was no “crossover effect” for me. I’m pretty terrible with both languages now, since I haven’t used them in years. It’s definitely “use it or lose it” in my case.

Well I grew up with French and polish grand parents who hated to speak english in their house. so I had to learn polish and french. it’s funny when I go up to Montreal people tell me I speak waaay to fast, but when I’m in Brussels they tell me I speak waay to slow…I guess I can’t win.

I was learning how to speak Flemmish for a while in college. But I stopped when life sped up to Mach 10!

I’m an English native speaker who speaks French as a second language.

My boyfriend is also an English NS, but he learned Cajun French in the cradle and is currently studying Italian.

My friend Courtney speaks English (NS), Russian and French.

But the winner is my friend’s boyfriend, who speaks English, Russian, German and Spanish!

Various friends of mine have Arabic, Bosnian, and ancient Greek as second languages, and one can still read Sanskrit thanks to childhood lessons.

I had issues with my third language. I spoke French pretty well – seven years of it in school.

Then I learned Chinese. Now, when I speak French I keep mixing in all kinds of chinese vocab. I never mix French vocab with Chinese.

Also, there were a few words in Chinese I kept on trying to pronounce in a french way. Suibian, I kept on saying “sway beYON”.

OK. Yes, it becomes an addiction. I learnt Gujerati and Kuchhi (Indian sub-continent languages) as a very young girl, then I learnt English, then German, then French and Hindi. I understand Dutch, Swedish, Norse, and Danish. I can also understand Latin.

I’m starting Polish classes tonight. This is getting ridiculous, it even gets to the point that if I’m slightly tipsy, I lapse into speaking fluent German! :slight_smile:

The first time I went to Barcelona I have to admit that my long held belief that I could get by in Spanish was completely shattered.*

I have been to various Spanish-speaking places, mostly, funnily enough, in Spain, although one or two in central America - where they were most amused by my lisping Castillian s - and have had no trouble. I even used it in Portugal with no problems whatsoever.

In Barcelona, though, any time I ask anyone anything in Spanish, they reply in English, apart from one man who answered in French. In the ensuing French conversation he ended up asking me what part of Basle I was from.
My English friends tell me I speak English with an Irish accent, I know I speak Spanish with an English accent and now I find I speak French with a Swiss-German accent. No wonder I’m confused.

*A nice Andalusian gentleman did, of course remind me a few years ago that the as the Catalunyans are Basque and speak Euskara, they are not big fans of Spanish and so prefer to speak in English, when addressing foreigners, eschewing all things Spanish, but I still find Euskara a fascinating looking language.

Absolutely. Although it does only seem to work with languages that are of the same family; my experience with Indo-European languages didn’t help much with studying the grammar of Basque or Japanese. Within the IE family, however, the more familiar I was with the terrain of grammar, the easier the study of those languages got to be.

Oh God, you have no idea. I caught myself looking up Maori language and grammar sites the other day after watching an episode of Michael Palin’s Full Circle on Bravo.

There are plenty of worse addictions out there, to be sure. :smiley:

curlychick, the Catalunyans most certainly do not speak Basque. They live in a different region entirely, and speak Catalan, which is a Romance language. See this map for illustration. Aturem el feixisme!

Yes, learning one (Indo-European) language helps with learning another. But not with other languages, in my experience.

I spoke German with my grandmother, and studied it in school (eight years). I also took two years of high-school French, and I found it much easier since I knew the parts of grammar, etc.

Same when I learned Koine Greek. But with Hebrew, all my previous languages were no help at all. I never did get much beyond aleph, beth, gimel, daleth, etc.

Regards,
Shodan

I speak english and french natively. spanish, (from school) I can understand well when people in the elelvator speak it, but I’m beyond rusty at speaking.

I’m married to a Dane, am though I’m still learning (self-taught, so I have a fool for a teacher), after visiting his family I am now certain I can read newspapers and handle daily life in danish. Except that one shop the first day there where the worker had possibly never met a non-native danish speaker in her life, (and my husband was mean and just told her to speak more slowly instead of translating) but that’s another story…

Yup, it’s an addiction, but I don’t know what I want to learn next, so maybe I’ll wait a year or two. Or maybe I’ll take my co-worker up on his offer to teach me swahili (instead of reading the internet at lunch)

It can most certainly become an addiction! I’m a native English speaker who majored in French and Spanish at University. I have also studied German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Japanese.

I found knowing other languages to be both a help and a hinderance when learning a new language. With related languages, you can sometimes (not always!) notice similarities in structure and use that to your advantage. However, I found troubles with keeping the vocabularies separate, so I would find Spanish words slipping in when I spoke French, for example. (I’ve also found Japanese words slipping in when I’ve been speaking German, so it isn’t just related languages that this happens with.)

One thing I have found about studying languages, is it really makes me want to get into intensive study of linguistics. I now find the structures of language fascinating.

I speak English and Mandarin Chinese at home, and have studied/am studying French, Japanese, Italian, and German. I’d also like to learn Portuguese and Arabic, and maybe Esperanto.

Me? An addict? Of course not…

Being able to compartmentalize languages and recall them at will is a unique talent. I don’t have it, but I’ve known others who collect languages like others collect stamps.

I took Latin in high school for two years. Prior to Latin, I got ‘Ds’ in English. Post-Latin, I got 'A’s.

I spoke and read Portuguese, but haven’t used it for 10 years now. I spoke and read French, but haven’t conversed in it for five years. It’s easier to learn a third language that’s in the same family because you understand the cases and gender issues involved.

Oh yeah, I get by in Spanish, but haven’t had any formal training.

A test exists called the MLAT, which is an apptitude test for learning a foreign language. It should give you some indication of your ability. I always score very high on the thing.

No, Catalunyans speak Catalán, Basques up north speak Euskera (Basque). People in Barcelona speak Catalán as first language, if not Spanish.

And I beg to differ about lisping s. They just pronounce it as a “z” (and actually differentiate between s and z), while the rest of Latin Americans did away with that.

Speaks Spanish, English, Portuguese… and reads French

I speak Spanish, Catalán, Italian and French. I lived in South American for a while during college, then in Spain, so I’d consider myself nearly fluent in both Spanish and Catalán. I travelled in Italy for several months, and lived for a little while in France. Although I say I can speak them, I’m probably a whole lot rustier than I realize.

I can also speak some Portuguese, but not enough to claim fluency. I also read and speak Latin, and can read Sumerian cuneiform.

I would absolutely love to learn a non Latin-based language. And I don’t think cuneiform really applies. I don’t exactly use it. If possible, I’d like to learn Hindi or Gujarati, as my fiancé’s family is from the north of India.

I’m fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and English. I’m proficient in French. If you speak one Romance language, it becomes much easier to learn another.

I found that when I was travelling through Barcelona, I could understand Catalan when it was spoken to me.

Unlike everyone else who’s posted, I can’t claim to be fluent in anything but English. I can indeed testify to the addictive nature of studying languages. I started with German in high school, which helped me to grasp English grammar more firmly. Now I have two bookshelves of store-bought language learning material that I’m plugging through. Unfortunately, I’m in such a hurry to get to all of my desired languages that I do a rather shoddy job of studying them. I essentially lose everything the moment I stop studying the language.

I’m of the opinion that it’s one thing to be told that languages, such as the Romance languages, are related, and it’s quite a different thing to study a little bit of Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian (although there are others I’d like to study as well) and see the relationship firsthand. I would love to become fluent in at least one other language though.

An addiction? Sure, though I prefer to call it a way of life :wink:

I grew up speaking three languages (German, English, Finnish), and now I´m fluent in Spanish, too. Thanks to a year in Barcelona I can get by in Catalán (and in Gallego, the fourth language spoken in Spain), and I read Swedish, but I don´t really speak it well - I can keep up a simple conversation. And I´m trying to decide which language to learn next - Estonian, probably…

I think once you´ve learned a second language and your mind has gotten used to the idea that there is more than one way of structuring a language (grammar, expression, etc), it becomes easier to learn other languages. I think the main point is getting rid of the mental translation into and from your native language and starting to think the way the new language requires.

Go ahead and learn a third language, alterego! It´s fun!
While it is easier to learn related languages, I think you shouldn´t start learning Spanish or Portuguese until you´ve consolidated your Italian - you might start mixing them up. (Happened to me with Catalán, so I stopped learning it until I was sure of my Spanish.)