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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4586 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 9 of 13 02 October 2014 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I fell in love with a German when my level was only about A2. When he was calm he spoke English at C1 but for some reason whenever he got even slightly emotional he was utterly incapable of speaking English at all. This was quite trying at the time as it meant every time we fell out it had to be in German, but it gave me a lot of motivation to learn and by the time we split up I think I had definitely achieved C2 in German arguments :D
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| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4865 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 10 of 13 02 October 2014 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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You can be at any level, it depends mostly on the personality of your partner. I spoke
100% English with my girlfriend in the beginning, but then I started to speak Finnish here and there, and now we speak 100% in Finnish. I think I'm at a high B2 or even C1 level, but it was mostly her willingness to accept my childish attempts at Finnish while I was developing my skills that brought us were we are. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5768 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 11 of 13 06 November 2014 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Pursuing a relationship is different from maintaining one. I agree you can pursue one at
any level, but have you ever tried having a row with a bilingual dictionary in hand? I have... That said, the one relationship I had where there was a significant language barrier is the source of my fondest memories and I'd recommend it to anyone. You learn a lot about yourself when you can't hide behind clever words and you have to state your feelings clearly and to the point :-) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4536 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 12 of 13 06 November 2014 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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We are talking about more than sex, right?
In which case you probably need to be at a solid B2 level before you can really have a meaningful relationship. Since before B2 you won't be able to say so many meaningful things. I'm married to a German and it took me a long time to learn German (to my regret). My impression of other relationships like this is that they tend to work almost 100% in the strong language, especially if the strong language is the dominant language of country they live in. Of course the other person will make efforts to learn other languages, but when you actually want to communicate you'll always switch back to the stronger language as they want to talk about stuff, not do language lessons. Unless you are in a relationship with a couple of HTLAL-polyglots where who knows what language they'll choose to communicate in. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5768 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 13 of 13 06 November 2014 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | ||
I strongly disagree with this. I had a relationship where we had an A2/B1 level *at best* in our respective languages, and it was very meaningful. Our conversations were of course full of long pauses, searching for words, demands for repetitions or explanations, and atrocious grammar and pronunciation, but that doesn't mean we couldn't speak in this way about a wide range of topics, and it certainly doesn't make it less emotionally meaningful. When you love somebody you don't really care if they conjugate their verbs properly or if you have to speak more slowly than usual (although granted, that last one is difficult when having an argument). We basically ended up speaking a strange hybrid all of our own :-) On the other hand, I've shared highbrow, intellectual conversations with fellow English native speaker exes, with whom I'd say the relationship was ultimately very superficial and meaningless. There are some practical problems, that's for sure. And from the stage where you move in together, one of you will have to make a lot more effort in the other's language. But I don't think you need to wait until you meet a particular set of CEFR descriptors before you get involved. If anything the relationship will speed up the language learning process. Edited by Dark_Sunshine on 06 November 2014 at 11:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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