It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
I assume his brain was wired up in an unusual way
I do the same with my children.
I lost contact with my mate, so can't ask him
I've seen Norwegians revive their English skills over an hour of listening (in the 80s in France, before English was ubiquitous)
I've seen a Spaniard develop good written English into fully fluent over a few months, that was lovely to see, I worked with her and her Spanish fiancé, who had fluent English. He told me that she was a very chatty person, and it was killing her to have things translated and struggle when talking to me and other colleagues. One day it just "popped", and it was a torrent of conversation and high speed.
From this I assume that it takes quite an effort to make that full switch into fluency, and that it can become dormant, I don't know the more efficient way to revive it.
Funniest thing I saw was a charming drunk Swede I met who had been hanging out with English speakers for a month or two, another Swede turned up and he could understand him, but could not respond in Swedish, his brain had forgotten how to compose sentences in Swedish (plus the beer!), I'm sure he was OK after an hour, but I did not know this was even possible
he did also say once you have 4 down pretty well others become easier as you find similarities etc
My cousin is English but she lived in Spain, married a Spanish guy, and all her kids grew up there, although they all went to uni over here.
As others have said, I think I’d find it more weird not raising your children as bilingual, if you have the chance to do so.
My uncle was a strange one. His dad’s family were all Italian. His paternal grandmother could only speak Italian, so always spoke to him in Italian. He couldn’t respond, but understood what she was saying perfectly. He retained that his whole life. He’d go to Italy on holiday and be able to understand what was being said, but could never respond. I don’t really understand how that works.
I can't help about the shape I'm in, I can't sing I ain't pretty and my legs are thin
But don't ask me what I think of you, I might not give the answer that you want me to
When you are not constraint to proper structure and grammar, and the idea is purely get your point across in a day to day conversation. Learning languages becomes a totally different ball game. You should be able to understand the other person and they with you by the context that you are speaking about and with some hand gestures and the rest with the words that you know. And the more you do this, the more you pick up and better the grammar.
Also, in a different scenario: I had a German friend who grew up in England, and decided to do German joint honours with electronics or some other engineering subject, with the idea of making it easier to get a good degree result. The Uni decided that since her and the chap also doing the same thing were from native speaker families, they would require a higher standard of fluency before awarding a degree, so they had to do extra certifications on top of what you'd do if you were not from a German family.
Ive always thought Russian was a very hard language to learn and he would give up after a few months but he stuck with it and is fluent even married a Russian girl.a few years later.
To be honest my goals are a little loftier than being able to order food and drinks and general "getting around without seeming a total idiot".
I've never met my girlfriend's family. Firstly a French traffic controller strike scuppered my first trip in Xmas 2019, and then obviously Covid buggered all international travel for me last year. Her family are very rural people in the Ardèche region and, unlike in the big cosmopolitan cities, the rural French barely speak a word of English. My goal is to be able to understand and converse with them in full French by the time i (hopefully!) go there this summer!
My current method is using the brilliant Duolingo app on my phone - https://www.duolingo.com/ - VERY highly recommended!
I'm also trying to binge watch whatever French language films and TV series I can find on Netflix. I initially started with English subtitles, but have now progressed to watching them with French sous-titres. I do have to pause every now and then to fire up Google Translate for certain words and phrases, but it's definitely helping!
@CHRISB50 That is the difference between active and passive language. I said earlier that my wife only speaks to our kids (now in their mid-20s) in her native language. I've been hearing that language for 25+ years and can understand it really well, but because I never speak it, the words won't come. You have to use a language regularly to build an active vocabulary.
At uni I dated a girl that was raised tri-lingual (french and polish parent but English school) and she basically did an entire degree using stuff she already knew naturally.
Yiddish is a useful second language as, being based on several languages, it seems to have no coherent grammatical rules if its own. And it's great for swearing.