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A bit of anything - living languages | ||
Tags: Using Foreign Languages | Living Language | Catalan | Romance Languages | Latin | Russian | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4637 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 97 of 109 25 June 2015 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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The multilingual everyday life
After some hesitation I have decided to write about my everyday multilingual experience on the forum, not to boast or brag, but to share an experience which maybe someone will find interesting. Norwegian is my native language, but I left Norway 20 years ago, and since then my main working language has been English. It is also almost 20 years ago since I married a Spanish girl, so the family language during this same period has been Spanish. Since I moved to France seven years ago, my second working language and my “street” language” is French. Now this may seem like a nice “compartmentalisation”, but it is not as straightforward. I don’t use only Spanish at home, or only English when writing documents at work, or only French when I do my shopping. Life is more complex, and to illustrate it, here is what could be described as a typical day in my life: I usually walk to work listening to the radio, either BBC4 or France Info, to get an overview of the news. Arriving at work, I order a coffee and croissant (in French), and have breakfast, sometimes with an English-speaking colleague.If I arrive early at work, I spend the first twenty minutes checking out the news on websites in French, English, Spanish, Catalan and Norwegian. Then I might have a meeting, where we will mostly speak French, although both working languages may be used indistinctively. After that I spend some time answering e-mails, again in both English and French, I may draft a memo for my Director in French and (as I work in HR) do a vacancy notice in English. With a few colleagues I speak Spanish, but mostly we stick to the two official languages. If the phone rings and I don’t recognise the number, I never know whether I will be talking French or English. In the lunch break, if I have time, I normally spend half an hour reading something on the web in Russian or revising some grammar point. I spend quite a number of days in a year interviewing candidates, and again it will be in both English and French. At least twice a week we go shopping across the border in Germany, so then I speak German, although it is limited to interaction with shop attendants, and with waiters if we stop for a drink or a meal before heading home. Then there is the time I study Russian, and I mostly read two or three books in parallel, always in different languages. So this means that in the evening I may read a few pages of Russian, a couple of chapters in Catalan and some pages of German or Romansh. All this sounds great, right, a dream come through for any polyglot? Yes, it is mostly a positive experience, but it is also challenging and sometimes frustrating. Challenging because switching between at least three languages regularly throughout the day, every day, actually takes a lot of energy – I have no idea what goes on in the brain in such a situation, but clearly some sort of “rewiring” must happen every time you go from one language to another. The frustrating part is that I use two of my languages professionally, and this means ideally working at a C2 level both in oral and written communication. I think I am at that level in both French and English on a good day, but sometimes, like in the afternoon when I am getting tired, especially my French suffers and suddenly I am no longer able to express an idea with the clarity that I want. This is frustrating, especially if it is an important conversation where you want your arguments to be listened to. Speaking Spanish with my wife comes automatically and without any effort, after so many years it is natural. However, what all this means is that I hardly use my native language, except for the occasional phone call to relatives back in Norway and the few times I go back to visit. I don’t think that my Norwegian has “declined”, but sometimes I actually have to make an effort to speak Norwegian well. A curiosity in that regard is that I can have difficulty finding the right vocabulary to describe what my job is about, as all my job-related terminology is in English and French. Still, when I speak Norwegian, most of the time the effort involved is much less than when I juggle between two or three languages at the same time. I have the opportunity to live this multilingual life partly by choice, partly by chance. I would not want to switch it for a monolingual (or bilingual) life in Norway, but on occasion I’ve felt that I’ve really been on vacation when I have spent a day or two with childhood friends speaking only Norwegian. And sometimes the only language I want to hear is the sound of silence. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Anya Pentaglot Senior Member France Joined 5791 days ago 636 posts - 708 votes Speaks: Russian*, FrenchC1, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: German, Japanese, Hungarian, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Turkish, Mandarin Studies: Ancient Greek, Hindi | Message 98 of 109 25 June 2015 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have a similar experience with job-related terminology: English and French became easier than Russian (I spent 11
years working in France). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5164 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 99 of 109 26 June 2015 at 2:14am | IP Logged | ||
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What a nice report, Ogrim! I can't help but feel sorry about you not getting the chance to speak your native language, since I'm a big fan of that language myself.
I can't foresee working on a multilingual environment here in this monolingual country, but I do study each of my languages each day, so I'm exposed to Portuguese, English, French, Italian, Russian, German, Georgian, Estonian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Turkmen and Papiamento on a daily basis. When I alternate languages I think of what I'm going to do next, I don't think 'I'm doing Georgian now, coming from Mandarin' but rather 'I'm going to read some pages from this novel after having read some pages from that grammar'. So, I think in terms of tasks I work on and not about languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 100 of 109 26 June 2015 at 4:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I like your lifestyle. Unfortunately your lifestyle is close to near impossible in an
Anglophone country, because languages are not valued and used. English is the king and queen here and language lovers are truly in dyp dritt, so to speak. I can not count the amount of times that I have been told by native Anglophones that I am an idiot for wasting my time and should just be content and be a monolingual Anglophone. Because apparently no one really cares about any other language. As a Norwegian, what would you say about the chances of a native Anglophone moving to Norway to have a polyglottic life/work-style like yours? Edited by 1e4e6 on 26 June 2015 at 4:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4637 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 101 of 109 26 June 2015 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Expug, you are certainly one of the members here who juggle the most languages on a daily basis, and some pretty "exotic" languages too. I find that very impressive. After all, I am well stuck in the Indo-European sphere with a strong bias on Romance and Germanic. What I wanted to express in my post was rather the fact that working all the time in languages other than your native language is great for reaching high proficiency, but it also has its negative sides.
I do read in Norwegian, I very occasionally watch some Norwegian programmes on NRK, and I communicate with relatives and friends via phone and e-mail. My point was rather that, unlike most people I know, I interact a lot less in my own language than in three other languages every day, and sometimes your need to "rest" your brain, which you do better in your native language than in other languages.
I like your Norwegian rendering of the English expression, although we would not normally say it like that:) I think it is difficult to lead a truly poliglot life in Norway. As a native Englsih speaker, you may first of all find it hard to practise your Norwegian, as most people have a decent level of English. In most work places, you would have to be able to work in Norwegian, although in certain big companies with lot of expats, like in the oil industry, the working language is de facto English, and there are expats in e.g. the "oil city" Stavanger who spend years in Norway without learning more than basic Norwegian. If you specifically work with immigrants or asylum seekers, you may be able to use various languages in your job, but overall Norway is a pretty homogeneous society. However, having lived for so long outside of Norway, I may not be the best person to answer. Solfrid Cristina would certainly have views on this, but lately it seems that she is too busy to engage actively with the forum, which is a shame. Cristina, if you read this, you should know that we miss you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4637 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 102 of 109 26 June 2015 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Russian update
I had my last Russian class before the summer yesterday, and as there are only two of us left in the class I got the chance to speak a lot. My spoken production still leaves much to desire, but the weekly classes have been a great help, and the progress I have noted in passive understanding starts showing also in the active use of the language. I now need to find more opportunities to practise, and become less lazy with regard to writing. My plan for the summer is to do a thorough review of certain grammar points. Due to little time and much work, I have not paid much attention to this over the last six months, but preferred to concentrate on comprehension and expanding vocabulary. The consequence of this is that I commit certain grammar errors far too often, and confuse certain declinations. However, learning a language should be fun as well, and as I am slowly reaching a good intermediate level, I am reading a book in Russian and the frequency of dictionary consultations is rapidly decreasing, I can enjoy Russian music and get meaning out of the words, and I can watch some TV shows with more benefit than was the case half a year ago. So as a mid-term review, I can conclude that I have made good progess, more passively than actively, but in view of the time I have had available I must be satisfied. By conincidence, searching on Youtube for something different, I came across some clips by the comedy group Уральские пельмени. If my dictionary is right, this should translate as something like "the Dumplings from Ural". On Youtube there are lot of clips with short sketches, and some of them I find quite hilarious. I don't understand every single word, some sketches are hard to follow because they speak too fast for me, but the setting and the body language of the actors contribute to the understanding. Уральские пельмени have their own Youtube channel here. Here are a couple of sketches I enjoyed watching, and which should be relatively easy to understand for anyone at an intermediate level: Курортный роман Миграционная карта I don't know if they are a typical representative of Russian humour, but if they are, then I am becoming a fan of Russian comedy. Edited by Ogrim on 26 June 2015 at 4:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5260 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 103 of 109 26 June 2015 at 7:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for sharing how your daily life goes with languages. Most of us can only dream of being able to interact with languages in that way every day, but as you say, there is an upside and a downside.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4842 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 104 of 109 26 June 2015 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the recommendation! I really enjoyed the sketches. If you like Russian comedy, Кухня would be an excellent TV show for you to watch.
By the way, пельмени aren't really dumplings, but some kind of pasta similar to Italian tortellini. They're usually served with sour cream. Here's the Wikipedia entry, which also has pictures. I don't think I'm going too far when calling them one of Russia's national dishes. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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