Are you bilingual? Trilingual? Do you have some high school or college French, but you've forgotten it all? How important do you think it is to study other languages?

I've taken Spanish (four years), French (two years), and German (one year). German was the easiest for me -- I found the pronunciation very easy and the grammar kind of fun -- but I took it last, and I was burned out on daily homework, so I quit after one year.

I used to read and write quite well in Spanish, although my accent is and always will be just terrible -- I can't really roll my R's, to the point where I suspect I'd have had a speech impediment if I'd grown up in a Spanish-speaking household.

(I had a friend like that; he was from Germany, and in German he had a "lazy tongue." In English he was just fine.)

Anyway, I find it rather embarrassing when I have to use a translation service for Spanish-speaking clients (although I can usually read their letters, I'm not confident enough to trust my reading), and I've always thought that it was pretty obnoxious to live in a border state without speaking the language of the people on the other side of the border. So, I'm going to see if I can do this.

How about you? Are you good with languages? Think they're a waste of time? Horrified by the fact that so many Americans only speak English? Discuss.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

Answers

... without speaking the language of the people on the other side of the border ...

And, of course, the language of a good number of people on this side of the border. Sorry about that.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I have two years of high school Latin, one year of spanish, and four years of German under my belt.

You know what I can say? "Es is nicht bewolkt."

I wish I spoke Spanish and Portuguese, two common languages to hear back in Providence.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I can make myself understood in Quebecois French, and understand when it is flung at me, and because the late SO was Italian, I can speak enough not to starve and otherwise take care of life's necessities. Speaking Quebecois in France is an invitation to derision and sarcastic responses, so I don't usually speak it there, but it is fun to listen to what people say about you when they think you can't understand.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I speak French. First I spoke it properly, i.e. the French way; then Quebecqois after a stint with Canadian Broadcasting; now - heaven forbid - Guinean French from Peace Corps. You wanna talk about derision? I learned French the long, hard, painful way - via high school, college and Parisian mockery.

I learned some Italian for a trip there to visit a friend. I learned more Italian in two weeks than I had French over several years. It's all about how you feel when you're speaking it, and how people react to you.

I also speak an African language called Fulani (from PCorps). This was the single most wonderful thing about my service - the never-ending astonishment of Guineans, especially in small villages, when you would move beyond common greetings and get to the good stuff.

I'm a bit ashamed that Americans don't speak more languages, although without living abroad it's almost impossible to master one to any great degree.

Now I have to learn Spanish so I can understand what the guys in my 'hood are saying as I leave the 7-Eleven, and so I can say more than "Hola" to the women at the grocery store.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I speak Spanish fluently.

I taught myself French as a kid through a Berlitz book and record program of Little Red Riding Hood. "Comment allez-vous se sentant aujourd'hui, grand-mère?" is stuck in my head for all eternity.

I would like to learn Japanese and Russian, and Japanese is offered at my school. I think learning either of these will be a huge challenge, but it would also be extremely useful.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

Briefly, I spoke Spanish, but in a highly colloquial, crack-headed way. Horrid accent, and not very fluid, but with lots of colorful expressions and funky vocabulary. Picked it up from an ex-boyfriend's family.

Every time I tried to speak properly, there was a lot of self- consciousness in having to pause for a few moments, every couple of words, to dig up the correct verb tense, or the right adjective form. I'd get frustrated when I'd get it wrong, as well. I was always pretty damn good at writing it, and got rather good at reading, if I concentrated and gave myself a month or two, with a Spanish-English dictionary by my side.

In college, I aced all my Spanish classes, but I was just memorizing word lists.

I've forgotten just about all of it now, and it pisses me off.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

Apparently, I speak Southern. As in, drawling, strange sayings and totally spastic articulations of words that I've read, never heard and then put throught the southern-speak filter. I honestly didn't think I spoke differently, but everywhere I go, people seem rather astounded.

Oh, and imagine French as puried via the above filter. It wasn't pretty, though I thoroughly enjoyed the four years learning it. I'm not entirely sure if my profs tears of joy were at my mastery, finally, when I graduated, or from relief that she'd never hear me butcher another phrase.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I took four years of high school French and two semesters in college. I'm going to France for most of this coming summer, and I suspect that I might be close to fluent (I'm being generous, I suppose) by the end of the summer.

I also took two years of high school German and I'm in my third semester of college.

It wasn't confusing to learn both at the same time once I got used to it, but on the first day of French my senior year of HS (after I'd spent the entire summer doing German I), she asked if our summers were good, and I said "Oh, Ja!"

After that, it wasn't so bad.

I adore languages. Simply love them. I love the complexities in English, and the fact that things just click with me in other languages. I love being able to explain a concept to somebody else in terms of how it would be in English.

(I want to learn Russian really badly.. maybe this fall. Graduate in four years? Pih.)

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I only speak English. I can understand a tiny bit of Spanish.

Languages are very hard for me - I loathed taking them in high school. I don't really have any interest in or use for another.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I have always wanted to speak another language, but apparently I lack the gift. I can read French fairly well, and enough Latin and Greek to qualify for graduate studies, but damn, I wish I spoke something.

The closest I came to speaking a language was when I attended seminary in Italy, and picked up a tiny, tiny bit of spoken Italian. I spent some time in Brazil and learned a little Portugese, and in college a friend of mine tried to teach me Vietnamese. (I learned enough to say hello and order a beer.) My mother tried to teach me German and Ukrainian when I was little. Maybe I diversified too early, I don't know.

French is my big frustration, because I did spend time on it. I took it for four years of high school and five years of college and I have read a bunch of serious books in French, but I still can't understand a word those people say. I did better on six months of Italian -- because that language LOOKS like it sounds. Sigh.

About all you can say for me is that I've hung in there. I keep my little bit of French and Italian fairly current (gave up on Latin & Greek when I dropped out of seminary). And I still remember how to order a beer in Vietnamese.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

This is partly in answer to this question, and partly in asnwer to the "picking up accents" thread. I grew up in the Middle East and, as a result, I speak, read and write both Farsi and Arabic. Where I lived, English was a second language, taught from junior high through high school. However, I have always been fluent in English-- partly because I have a genetic knack(i.e. runs in the family) for picking up languages, and partly because I have a very good ear for accents (and, incidentally, music). I was born in England and lived there until I was about 9 months--but that was too young to have started speaking the lanuguage properly. However, I think for the language must have been somehow etched in my subconscious--that's the only way I can explain my comfort level with the language. (I lived in the Middle East until I was 18--with a one year break to live in Spain--and came to the US for college.) I don't have the faintest trace of a "foreign" accent, and I have never considered English a second language, since my sister taught me how to speack and read and write English before I could read or write Farsi. The year in Spain I picked up Spanish. I started to learn French and German in junior high. Two summers (post high school) in each country has pretty much fine tuned my accent. I can read and write French fluently. German, I can only read (and speak, of course), but I lack the patience to really get the writing down. I'm learning/picking up Polish now (b/c of bf) and Tagalog (b/c of sister's bf). This is nothing compared to my cousin, who is completely fluent (i.e speaking, reading and writing) in English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Farsi; semi-fluent (reading and speaking) in Russian; and partially fluent (speaking only) in Japanese and Arabic. You bet I envy her!

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I studied French for ten years - from seventh grade until my senior year of college (I ended up minoring in it) and consider myself fluent. I spent a couple of weeks in France in the 10th grade, and then spent a month in an immersion course in the US. After the month of intensive study, I was thinking in French.

That particular experience paved the way for me to study German for four years - two in high school and two in college. If I were to be suddenly tossed from an airplane into Berlin, I'd survive, but just barely. Learning French - the mindset, etc. - helped me learn German easier, plus the fact that the language is similar in structure to English.

I speak Mandarin Chinese fluently but I'm illiterate in the language. My family is Chinese, and that's what we spoke - that was my main language until kindergarten where I started English. In fact, if you ask my gran, she'll tell you that my level of mastery of spoken Mandarin is that of a five year old's - cos that's when I stopped speaking Chinese regularly.

I love learning foreign languages. I would have majored in French except I couldn't stand the literature part of it. French has 17 verb tenses, half of which are only "active" in literature. Yuck.

I know random phrases in Arabic, Russian, and Spanish, but none that are perhaps appropriate :) I can pick up a guy in Russian, though. I'll let you know how that line goes if I ever end up in Moscow.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I speak English (first language) and Slovenian - which is my family's language. My mother emigrated to Canada when she was 18, and then sent me back to Slovenia for my summer vacation every year. So at age four, I found myself in my grandparents house, not understanding a *word* anyone was saying. It didn't take long for me to pick up the language. Of course, it would have been nice if they'd taught me to speak it PROPERLY or if anyone had bothered to sit down with me and a newspaper every now and then. In English, I'm a voracious reader, and having to spend three months without being able to do more then stumble through articles was intensely frustrating. I'm fluent, but it's very ... uh... slangified. If you get what I'm sayin'.

I grew up in Toronto and French was mandatory from grade 3 through to grade 9. I took it right through to grade 13. The grammer was an absolute wall for me, and really hampered my learning the language. I really wish they taught french as a *speaking* language and then moved into the other stuff. However, I can fake the accent rather well, I can read it pretty well, although in a very basic way - I'll get the gist of something but the details are pretty far out there. And when someone speaks to me... well sometimes I can figure out what they're saying and sometimes it's a dipping weaving blur of mumbling.

I'd like to learn Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and of course, Spanish. And get better at my French. Maybe some Italian as well? I don't know if I'm any good at languages... but I can sound like I know what I'm saying... (I don't think that counts). I did have a friend teach me some rather dirty Japanese words/phrases. I forgot them pretty quickly.

-- Anonymous, March 13, 2001

I enjoy being an exception to the general rule that English speakers can't or don't learn languages. I speak Finnish fluently (or as fluently as one can, having it as a second language) and am a licensed translator from Finnish to English; French almost as well (main gap being that I've never spent more than a week actually in France, but mostly use it for reading and for speaking to Francophones outside France); my school German turned out to be surprisingly solid when I visited there earlier this year; I have a reasonable knowledge of Swedish which is the second official language in Finland; I've been working on Russian for years, can get along when I'm a tourist there, same with Bulgarian.

I get the same enjoyment from these skills that computer geeks get from being able to use their languages. And once I go back to the United States, it'll all be useless again, which is a good reason not to go back.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

Because i live in Montreal, speaking French fluently is practically a ncessity. Friends of mine are packing up and leaving for Toronto just because they can't take the French anymore - he was born in Toronto and only ever learned the very bare minimum in French, and she's from Ireland, so getting work has been tough for both of them.

People are often surprised to hear that i'm from Montreal but that i'm English. English is my primary language and French is what i started learning at the age of 4 (yay Sesame Street, that's where i got my start). However, just because i've been speaking it for 22 years, it doesn't feel special. That's why i wish i could speak another language well too.

I did take Spanish but i was all thrown off because i wanted to learn the Latin American dialect and the course was the Spain dialect which just got confusing. In any case, i forgot most of it, but when i went to Mexico several years ago, i had remembered enough to have conversations that were terrible as far as grammar (or the lack thereof) went, but were successful as long as both parties were patient.

I would also love to be able to speak Russian, Italian, German, Chinese (either Cantonese or Mandarin), Gaelic, etc. I think it's hard to start with a language at the age of 26 though.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

I am wondering if any of the multilingual people have the same problem with language that I have. When switching from one language to another, it takes a minute or two for my brain to switch. What I mean is someone is talking to me in one language, I understand them perfectly, but I keep answering in another language until I conciously notice what I am doing. Causes much consertation with the people I am trying to talk to. At family dinners, not a big problem, as we are all babbling away in French, English and some Cantonese. But with non family members, it causes some distress. Is this common or am I just a big lingually challenged freak?

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

Don, that is common. Also common is having your native language and one other loaded into your brain, and finding that you can't switch to (producing) a third on the same day. I'm sure there's a good reason for this but haven't read enough neurolinguistics to know what it is. Simultaneous interpreters are said to be retrained in such a way that they rewire their brains to allow better simultaneous access (by keeping the two languages in use in different hemispheres).

Sherry, I started seriously studying Finnish at 29. I will never be quite as good as the people who learned it on high school exchange or at the kitchen table, but then again, my achievement is more impressive than theirs because I didn't get the language for free.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

Don... I have the same problem. I took 2 yrs of high school french and 2 semesters of college french, but during that time also learned enough slang Spanish to get by (I'm in Houston, Texas - you can't escape it!) Problem? Now I'm taking my second year of university Spanish and all over my papers, my teacher writes "No french!"

Comes very naturally for me to mix the two, as that's how I originally got by in Spanish. My boyfriend at the time and his parents were very good to teach me all they did - I have a great accent (if I do say so myself) - but I think about the language in "Frenish."

The weirdest is right now I regularly dream in Spanish. Periodically, I get frustrated because there's a word I don't understand (how'd it get in my dream?) and can't translate out of the situation. ...Or when I use "y" instead of "and" in my English writing. I'm taking intensive Spanish right now, so it happens more than I'd like.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

Ooh, I envy you people who easily learn languages. I have no ear for accents, and a terrible memory for vocab. All I have now is a smattering of local Spanish (from growing up in So Cal) and the ability to count to ten in French and German (all that is left of two years of each in high school.)

However, I'm planning an all-out assault on basic Italian - using the fact that I'm visiting Italy next winter as an excuse. First, an immersion course over two weekends in May, then a conversational Italian class in the fall. I'm hoping to be able to at least have the basics after all of that, but with my lack of facility, I have my doubts. I realize this isn't necessary for a three-week visit, but it seems like a good excuse to wake up that part of my brain.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

I took Spanish for 5 years in school and two additional semesters in college. I went on a trip to Spain my junior year of high school and I was able to get along just fine. I took American Sign Language (yes it is a foreign language) for three years in high school. I always found Spanish easy but found ASL to be a lot harder. I think sometime Ill try French..

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

I've had 6 years of Latin and 2 of (Ancient) Greek. Can you tell I was a Classics major? In high school I also had 2 years of French, but the Latin kept getting in the way. Whenever I blanked on something, my brain would fill it in with Latin. I took about 2 years of Italian in college and I've been trying to learn Georgian (as in "Former Soviet Republic of") for the past few years because my best friend moved there a couple years ago. It is too damn hard though. I wish I could be fluent in something...

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

I took five years of Spanish, haven't used it much since. I can read it fairly well, still, and could probably pick it up again if I was dropped there with zero English. I'd like to take an immersion course and get up to the fluent level, so I could at least hack Portuguese, Italian, and French. I still think about taking off for Brazil for a couple of years, even without the ex that started the gears turning.

I'm starting a Latin class next month, and it goes for two years. At the end of it, I should at least be able to read it easily, and can work more on the speaking of it. After that, German is really the only other language I truly want to learn.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

I used to speak Spanish rather well. (It's practically all gone now since I almost never use it.) When I went to college I started taking German & more than once I would notice the class looking at me as if I had gone mad. It took me a second to realize that I had been speaking Deutschpan~ol.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

I *wish* I could speak another language. I've studied Spanish (3 years), French (1 year) and ASL (sign language, 1 1/2 years). With the first two, I could remember the vocabulary, manage to get along with writing (although grammar has always been difficult for me), but on oral exams I swear the mouth/brain cord was just CUT. I would go numb and blank and get F's for stupidity. Which is why I've given up on my plan to learn four languages. As for sign language, we didn't really do grammar there so much as learn random signs. I'd really like to take the sign language course here (maybe I'd do better if my mouth wasn't involved with the language), but I don't need yet another workload piled onto my shoulders these days.

-- Anonymous, March 14, 2001

What I have found out is that a language gets rusty fast (the same thing happens with ones native language. After spending a year in Moscow, and the last three months without any possibility to use Estonian, I met my countryman and started to talk to him enthusiastically ... only to see his face turn incredibly sour. Only then did I understand that I had spoken in Russian to him. And this - using Russian when talking to another Estonian - was not only politically incorrect, but a worst kind of insult to boot. Fortunately he forgave me and did not spread the tale )

So, even if understanding Russian is no problem to me, my speech is halting and I have to stop to search for words right now.

I also am unable to speak English (why do you, guys, insist on writing Mary and then pronouncing it John?) even if writing and reading English is no problem to me.

-- Anonymous, March 15, 2001

i speak passable german; my spoken german is much better than my written german (spoken you can gloss over some of the finer grammatical points) and i understand spoken german fabulously. my brain doesn't retain the vocabulary i need to be fluent, but i wish it could. i just don't have a brain for languages - i've tried and tried and tried and it's just too hard for me. even when i was little, it was useless and that's supposedly the best time to learn them.

i've finally met someone else with this problem; everyone i know at school breezed through their language requirements and i barely survived mine. however, my friend A and i both speak enough bad german to converse and he barely survived latin this term. we're language retarded, we tell people. and go back to talking in our bad english-german mix.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

I speak English, of course, and French, living in France and all, and I am still passable in German, though I can no longer pass as German as I once did, lo these many years ago. I can understand Yiddish and respond in German at my grandfather-in-law's retirement place. I like knowing languages, though learning them is a bitch.

French has definitely been the toughest for me, but I know I'm not alone -- my husband studied it from first grade through college, and he's definitely got the language gift, but he's still not really fluent. Native French people can't identify his accent, he works at a French company, he gossips with co-workers at lunch, he writes papers in French, he understands television and movies and the repair guy talking about faucets and pipes, but he still has occasional "duh" moments, and is required to give his business presentations in English. This is a man who learned Norwegian in less than six months, and was completely fluent in it after less than a year. Thanks to watching a lot of television in Norway, he can also pass in Swedish and Danish. French is hard. When I took it in the US, I thought I was getting pretty good. When I moved to France, I realized how deeply wrong I was.

And you know, Parisians never let you forget you really don't know their language because you haven't spoken it since birth. It's not like other places, where they'll pretend you're doing well or try to help out (sure, you're "fluent!") For weeks I played this miserable game at the local bakery, where I asked for a baguette, and was sneered at for not asking for a flute, and then returned the next day and asked for a flute, and was sneered at and scolded because I didn't ask for a baguette. Repeat ad infinitum. Then we moved to another neighborhood, praise be.

But I still like France. A French joke: What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Tri-lingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bi-lingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American.

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2001

I'm English but live in Denmark. After four years here I was only reasonably fluent in danish ( mainly caused by the overall high standard of english and the joy the Danes have of showing it off ) last year, however, I was in Australia for ten months, amazingly when I came home, having not spoken a word in all that time, my danish was suddenly (no kidding!) 300% better and all the remaining people who were used to speaking english to me immediately switched over to danish. I wondered if anyone else had notice this phenomenon?

-- Anonymous, March 22, 2001

Yes, latency periods have propelled me to new plateaus in language learning as well. I think of it as an iterative process: you make a big effort, let it lie dormant for a while (by being outside the country or just by not deliberately studying any more), then pick it up again and are surprised by how much you already know, progress for a while, then hit another wall and stop trying, then come back, etc.

-- Anonymous, March 23, 2001

I did French, German and Latin at high school. French is the only one I've retained to any great degree, and even then I can only read it. I wouldn't trust myself to speak it or translate into it from English. As for German and Latin, they're long since gone by the wayside.

-- Anonymous, April 18, 2001

Apparently, I speak basic Spanish - well the 1st tense conjugation of the verbs. I'm currently taking certificate I level Spanish. I have found it hard yet enjoyable. The rub is that English is not my 1st language, not even my second. . .I speak my native tongue of Maori and Welsh was my grandfathers language. I learnt English at a little country school from a very authoritarian English School master. You would think I would warm to another language, not even.

-- Anonymous, June 12, 2001