Bilinguals of the world unite

[Ryosuke]

This is the thread where people like Phil, maarts, RocDoc, Layla (who speaks Spanish I presume?) and myself talk about what it's like to have a seondary language, and maybe even make fun of lame monolinguals during the process.

How often do you guys have the chance to utilize your non-main language? I use English pretty extensively at work, but because of nasty time zones, most of my communications are via email or fax. I don't really get to actually "speak" English that much, and as a consequence, I'm still a bit diffident about my English, especially oral English. Having said that though, I do find myself blurting out stuff like "oh shit" and "fucking hell" in English at work, like when my computer freezes, for instance. I would never, ever, ever, ever do that before, and was actually pretty self-conscious about not saying things in English unless the other person was an anglophone, because that's just lame. But ever since I started my current job, all such inhibitions have gone out the window.

If I went back to America now, I can easily see myself saying "God what an annoying dick" in Japanese if I should encounter such a person. Never would've done that before either...

[Galactus]

I wsih I spoke a second language...I took French in high school and I remember some but not enough to be usefull in a anyway. I actually know more spanish but again not enough to really matter. Japanese would be cool to learn but I don't think I'd ever have the opportunity to use it.

[Fuzznuts]

I'm thinking about trying to learn German. I actually DL'ed a program the other day, I just need to get motivated.

[luke]

I speak really shitty German, but I can write pretty well in it. My wife speaks French and Cajun French. We can both order drinks in Spanish but that's about it.

[Thorngrub]

I get to utilize my fluent Spanish every single day where I work (a hospital).

ANd that rocks.

[rockysigman]

I took 3 years of Spanish in high school and two years of high school Japanese, followed by two years of college Japanese. And I can't speak either language.

[Thorngrub]

Well you can always pretend.

[rockysigman]

Hai.

[phil]

The only Japanese words I know
come from reading James Clavell's Shogun ... !!

Arigato very much ...


Since there are only a little more than 6 million francophone Quebecers
plus another million French-Canadians and probably 99 old-timers Cajuns living in North-America, it makes a lot of sense to learn english ASAP ...

Thirty years ago, I could have a basic conversation in Spanish
but those days are long gone but I can still "decipher" a spanish newspaper ...

15 y/o Eldest son is alresdy bilingual which allowed him
to get a job in a museum nearby ...

I wish he would read more books in English
so he could write it as well as he speaks ...

And learn spanish too !!



One day, I'll ask RocDoc for his phone number
so I can prove to him that I have no accent at all
(if only an american one) when I speak english ...

[maarts]

Don't have too much opportunities to speak Dutch outside in contact with my parents do meet the odd Dutch speaking person in the store and usually I can pick anyone out who speaks English with a Dutch accent. One of my colleagues is German though and we regularly converse in German which obviously alienates all the Aussies around us who don't understand what the hell we are talking about...

[phil]

How often do you guys have the chance to utilize your non-main language?

Well Québec city and Ste-Anne de Beaupré being both tourist destinations,
you get to meet many tourists asking for directions or other informations.

Much of cable TV is also english !

[kmc]

Portuguese is my first language, and I speak it all the time to my mom and cousins.

[kmc]

Also to women, especially if they don't believe I speak it.

[RocDoc]

I'm totally Chicago-born and Lithuanian was my first language simply because my folks settled into one of MANY Lithuanian 'colonies' (ghettos, if you like) where so much of life was self-sufficient within a community which made it so you didn't really require English to go to church, schools and to make a living.
Kindergarten at the local Roman Catholic parish which Liths established in 1911...this was where I first began to learn to speak English.
Local Italian and Polish families also sent their kids there because the educational level was condiered to be better than their very own Italian and Polish parishes, which also were within a few blocks of us.

Honestly not wanting to bore you with the details of the 'keeping alive the Lithuanian Dream' with the Russians squatting their asses down hard on Eastern Europe...BUT we went through the motions of cultural preservation while thinking to ourselves

'WTF are we doing this for? The country's LOST. This isn't a widely spoken useful language like perhaps German or French...and we're never going to see our uncles and cousins there, ever. Forget this shit'

And honestly it DID begin to wind down as my generation went to college and began to join 'American Society'.

We quit Scouts. We quit folk-dancing and choirs. We quit most of thepother organizations because we didn't have the time nor much interest amymore.

Then the rumblings of 1987-88 changed ALL of that...

_{More later...gotta go.}

[Ryosuke]

rockysigman said:

I took 3 years of Spanish in high school and two years of high school Japanese, followed by two years of college Japanese. And I can't speak either language.

Don't worry, we study English for six years in Japan (usually more if they go to college), and most people still can't speak it. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. The more we suck at English, the more special I become.