I am not talking about multilingual thing (learnt by parents who speak different languages, or something else). I am simply asking you if you’ve learnt a foreign language by studying it! Not by living in a foreign country.
Specify your level if you can. I, for one, just can speak one foreign language, having learnt it by studying.
I’ve studied French all my life and can speak it.
I chose 1 in the poll (I assume that the poll is meant for you to choose how many languages you’ve learned through studying - it was a little unclear.)
Yes.
I answered “five or more”. I learned French in the public school system. I was interested, and I kept up with it so it didn’t atrophy. I am pretty fluent in French in that I can read without a dictionary, watch a film without subtitles, and hold a conversation on most subjects. No one would mistake me for a native speaker, though. I would say “lowest level of fluency.” The skills I practiced with studying French I’ve been able to apply to several other languages. I think besides English, I have three other languages where I’m fluent (again, at a low level and with rather a thick accent), and three more where I’m just below fluent. I could be overestimating, since there’s not a lot of chance to practice speaking and listening.
For me, this is a combination of a talent and a willingness to put the time into it. It’s my hobby. I think anybody could do the same if they hadn’t been spoiled by bad teachers (both Native Language, for grammatical terms and structure, and Second Language) and if they were willing / able to spend the time on it.
Three years of German in high school. I’ve forgotten a lot, and I understand it better than I speak it (there are words I couldn’t come up with if I tried all day, but I recognise them when I see or hear them), but it shouldn’t take too much to get me back up to speed.
I picked 1, but would have chosen 1/2 if it had been offered. Good old internet and Rosetta Stone. I can read if it is not too complex. My comfort zone rests at a very rudimentary level. Anything beyond grammar school language escapes me completely, except for some technical engineering terms and concepts related to my job. Conversationally I suck. The examples I learned from were high German and proper pronunciation. If I speak
v-e-r-y slowly someone in the North may get the gist of what I am trying to convey. However if I speak in more than 3 word phrases to my colleagues in the Southwest I am met with quizzical stares and concerns for my mental health. In my defense they describe themselves as the rednecks of Germany and admit their regional dialect is quite difficult and different from proper German.
I picked 2: Can speak quasi-passable German and near-passable Dutch, learned in college at various levels (incl. intensive study abroad situations). Can also speak and read French and Spanish badly, and Italian very badly. Read/comprehend basics of a smattering of other things. Humanities research has a lot of peripheral accidental learning.
For some reason I pick up accents pretty easily.
I studied Spanish in High School and then figured I’d forgotten it. My wife’s coworkers had a party last summer and I was dragged along. We discovered there are a lot of relatives of Mexican descent amongst those friends and I found myself absent-mindedly listening to conversations in both English and Spanish. Later, I asked a child if she wanted milk or lemonade with her meal and the kid’s mother remarked that she didn’t know I spoke Spanish. Well, it wasn’t a deep conversation, but I honestly hadn’t realized I was speaking Spanish to the kid until the mother pointed it out.
I studied Japanese in College and it was years before I went to Japan to teach English. Again, I picked up the local dialect quickly and my formal study provided a lot of grammatical help. Vocabulary was tougher, but a lot of modern stuff in my town could be identified either with foreign cognates or Japanglish or Japanese terms, so I did fine. Again, I thought I’d forgotten it, but when a little old Japanese lady was recently having trouble in the local Walmart, I stepped in and offered help with her selections.
I studied Russian in Jr. College and it was a long time before I even had a chance to use it. One of my coworkers is from the Ukraine and I happened to say, “Good morning. How are you feeling? I heard you were sick last week.” and I guess I said it in Russian just because I was remembering at the time that she had told me where she grew up. She was amazed that I spoke Russian and I was amazed that I got so much out. But I’ve never been able to remember more than salutations in Russian so I only counted 2 in my response.
–G!
The bag on the plane includes writing in three languages
Aramaic, Sumerian, and Sanskrit
Nevertheless, the meaning is clear: In here, slob!
…Shelly Berman [comedian]
…Stage Monologue: The Telephone Hour
What if you learned partly by studying, and then gained fluency by living in-country for a while?
I only speak two languages. The second I studied for 4.5 years.
I speak 13 languages, to different levels of fluency. Of those…
Spanish is my mother tongue.
French I studied at school (I am fluent)
English I studied by myself (I am fluent)
Catalan I “absorbed” when I was living in Barcelona (I am fluent)
Russian I studied by myself (I can use it at a day-to-day level)
Japanese I studied in a language school when I went to live in Japan (day-to-day level)
Italian, Portuguese and Romanian I studied by myself (It. & P. day-to-day level, Romanian at a basic level; I learned the latter for a bet)
German I learned by myself (good that I did; I use it at my work. Can use it at a basic-to-mid level)
Dutch I learned by “osmosis” by living in the Netherlands (day-to-day level)
Arabic and Mandarin Chinese (currently learning by myself; basic level)
So, the total of languages I learned by studying would be 9. I don’t know if Japanese would count or not (I was living in Japan when I took those language classes; I arrived in Japan with literally zero knowledge of Japanese). If it does, then the total is 10.
How do those of us who learned it in school and then lived wherever count? Or those who were living in a bilingual place, spoke one language from before and understood the other, but were not able to get any practice using it until they took classes?
Cos I fall under both descriptions. The first one would include English, French (these last months of daily practice have certainly helped my fluency) and German (which I still can’t really speak); the second one is re. Catalan. Some day I expect to upgrade my Basque from “can understand stuff if given time to think” to “can speak it” too, and it will require classes… Or do Catalan and Basque not count as “foreign” if you’re from the Spanish part of the Basque Country and your mother (who never spoke to you in Catalan) is Catalan?
Picked 0. I’ve studied German and Spanish and in both cases I could pass for a native speaker…that is 3 years old and developmentally impaired.
But I recently started studying again and I’m enjoying it far more than I did at school. It’s quite inspiring that so many Dopers have become fluent through study alone.
capybara, what-cha learn Dutch for? (Just curious, it’s an odd language to want to learn.)
I’m not sure how to answer the question.
I was raised bilingually in Dutch and English, so I won’t count those. Though once you speak the languages there is still a lot of book learning you can do.
Did French and German at school and I still speak them though they are rusty. By now I’ve been in countries where I’ve used the languages so much, I learned more from speaking them in real life.
Portuguese, Spanish and Romanian are a mix. Studying, memorising vocab and verbs etc but immediately putting it into practice if you are in that country. Then when I am no longer in that country I continue to study those languages. I took some Portuguese modules at uni, I’m working on Romanian now and will be there again in summer to practice.
So OP, what do you mean? I don’t think there is proper answer unless you only want to count people who learned a language and then never used it in practice. And even then: my SO is a philosopher, so he uses Greek. He taught himself by reading the texts with translations. Obviously, he can’t learn the language by going somewhere and speaking it, but he did learn it in a practical way.
I was conversational in Spanish from jr. high and high school classes, and used it in the workplace at a few college jobs. I don’t speak it well now, not having used it much in over 15 years. I retained enough to be able to speak and understand fairly well when I went on a trip to Spain a few years back, but I wouldn’t call it fluent anymore. If I had 3–4 months of exposure, I’d be be able to have a simple conversation with someone on most day-to-day subjects again. As it was as of the trip to Spain with basically no refresher study, I can ask questions, understand answers, eavesdrop on people’s conversations and get the gist, and watch TV programs without too much trouble understanding what’s going on.
I have a Castilian accent since my teachers were all either from or educated in Spain. One of the Mexican guys I worked with (a guy from Mexico, not generic hispanic) used to call me “Professor” because my accent sounded “educated” to him. This actually carried over to my second language for a while. My teacher thought I wasn’t a native English speaker at first because I had a Spanish accent in Japanese.
I studied Japanese at university and later came to Japan. My Japanese was pretty bad, but I was able to conduct some simple business meetings and communicate well enough for living right away. I’ve been living in Japan for years now, so of course I’m pretty much fluent now, but the core was obtained from study, not exposure.
I want to learn more languages, but haven’t had time to study much. Wife, kid, work take way too much time.
I can speak mediocre French (everyone studies it in Canada), a smattering of terrible German and Hebrew (I took courses in both in university) and a few words in Esperanto (a buddy and I studied together out of a “teach yourself Esperanto” book as a lark). I don’t know if that counts as 1 or 4 or something in between.
I picked one - it’s really only Spanish that I studied and learned. I have a few languages under my belt, but those were all inherited.
I want to learn French. Montreal is only three hours away from me.
I’ve been studying Spanish since 7th grade, and I’m more or less fluent. I have a B.A. in Spanish. Outside of a two month stay in Mexico one summer, I haven’t lived abroad. In college I was part of a living language community and in order to graduate we had to speak, eat and breathe Spanish for two years and then pass a 5-hour proficiency exam followed by two literature courses. Students communicated regularly in foreign languages even outside of class time… for fun and practice. The vast majority of my skills were learned in college as a result of that program.
I use Spanish most days as I chose a career serving immigrants. I don’t speak as well as I’d like to. I don’t think I ever will. It’s this constant striving for perfection and always falling short.
The difference is, I don’t think in Spanish. I can think in Hindi and in Punjabi but I still mentally translate for Spanish. And I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s always going to be.
I’m working on German right now. Rosetta Stone. Just started really.
My Wife and I will be traveling to Germany/Austria for 20 days next September, so I figure anything will help.