Our daughter (2 1/2) mainly speaks Japanese, but also understands Chinese and English in that order. The only problem is getting enough time in the language.
English and Japanese. Your poll said “speak” not read and write. I’m now studying Latin, I can’t claim to be able to do more than understand the words one at a time. I refuse to speak Spanish, but I can understand a of the spoken tongue as well as read a lot of it.
Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, English, German, French, and Hindi (enough to survive on, at least). I read Sanskrit quite well; I suppose that should count in the same category as Latin.
English and Italian fluently, I get by in Spanish due to a) my knowledge of Italian and b) it was my first language, though I moved from Madrid to the U.S. at four years old.
I have an online friend who is Polish. We chat at least 4 hours a week and he’s a really interesting guy. He always types English. We tried using a translator and he said that the syntax and grammer made it totally horrible for him. I was able to understand everything that was translated for me.
So, my question is how hard is he working to chat with me? He makes some errors on a regular basis, like “in a morning” instead of “in the morning”. Most of his errors are easy to parse for me. Is mentally translating from Polish to English harder than the other way around?
I’ve known him for a couple of years and have always wondered about that. And, no…I’m not going to learn Polish. His second language is Latin. He’s been wonderfully helpful with my Latin studies.
So…stroke my ego and tell me that he’s suffering terribly because he thinks I’m such an awesome person and a great conversationalist. Or deflate me by saying that he’s just using me for English practice. I just wondered.
And who says he is mentally translating? Have you asked him whether he does?
Most of the time I do not translate from one of my languages to another: I think in English, I think in Spanish, I think in Catalan. When I am too tired and translating, believe me, it shows!
Yeah, translating is really hard work. I’m a native English speaker, but pretty fluent in Spanish. But I’m not fluent enough that I don’t ever have to mentally translate sometimes, and that’s tiring business. I prefer just to think in Spanish. Or my coworkers want me to translate. I can perfectly understand the Spanish, and I’ll have perfect comprehension of what’s being said or what’s written, but turning it around and expressing it in English is a real job.
Forgot to check English, my mother tongue.
Fluent in French, but even though I took it in HS, for how ever many years, I didn’t really learn it until living there and drinking lots of beer with the locals and reading a ton of things, attending free lectures, and so forth.
German, I learned to read before I could speak at all – not so fluent, but I can follow the gist of most conversations and make simple contributions. I learned the aural aspects from the Michel Thomas courses (all of them including the vocabulary builder adjuncts) and the Pimsleur series. Not fluent, but a bit more than tourist or business crash-course competence.
I can order breakfast in Italian and have a simple conversation, having studied it a year as an undergraduate and visited now and then. Pretty much tourist-level at this point, but I don’t doubt I’d pick it back up pretty quickly over there.
Latin? Seriously? I could follow when they spoke Latin on “Lost,” and could string together some sentences I’m sure off the cuff, but I’m not going to be talking to the pope anytime soon.
Nava and Balthisar, I think you have just shown me the reason I am having problems connecting the written words to the spoken ones.
I don’t think in Japanese. A lot of the routine sentences flow easily, i.e. How was your day? May I please have a fork? Can you show me on the map where xxx is?, etc.
When I’m in a conversation, I always have to think the sentence in English, mentally translate it into Japanese, double check to be sure I’ve got the sentence structure right while mentally listening to the words and then open my mouth.
I guess I just assumed that my Polish friend was doing the same thing. Our chat goes very fast when we first meet up, but his responses slow down when we get into the meat of the night’s conversation. I DO know better than to assume. I’m expecting him to IM me tonight, so I’ll ask him.
After English, I speak conversational Japanese. I am in the huge grey area between competency and fluency. I can talk about almost anything and get my point across, but it won’t be totally natural and the conversation will often be stilted as I ask how to express various words succintly. I’m improving daily though. Honestly, my main focus really needs to be reading and writing.
I don’t think in Japanese yet, but neither do I really think in English. If I’m totally flummoxed, I’ll think in English, but usually the words just seem to flow directly from concepts like some sort of proto-language.
Ummm, I also speak a smidgen of Spanish…sparsely. I can ask directions, order food, find the bathroom, introduce myself, etc etc. 101 level stuff basically.
Says the guy who’s s/n is Hungarian for “Turkey Breast.” Love it. 
Grew up listening to English and Hungarian. French Immersion in High school. Minor in German in my undergrad, plus a year of Italian. Finishing up a year of Latin now. Then perhaps go back and make my Hungarian better, or do more French in Law school. But I don’t really want to; I don’t care about French as much as I do learning Hungarian or Latin. Maybe even Arabic.
Spanish - native tongue. English - learned in Canada at age 12. I can’t say that I speak Italian, Portuguese or French, but when you speak Spanish you are able to understand much of each.
My friend and I have a goal to travel to Italy together and eat and drink our way through some beautiful country side. I plan on becoming fluent before our departure. Salute!