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What does it feel like to be multilingual? | ||
Tags: Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages |  | |
| Bill_Sage667 Groupie United States Joined 5205 days ago 62 posts - 71 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 20 27 August 2010 at 11:37am | IP Logged | ||
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For example, you and your friends are shopping in a mall, and suddenly you come across this Russian girl that you met at a party, and start in an engaging conversation in Russian, you make the girl laugh with your wittiness, etc......would your friends stare at you in amazement, or would they simply wave it off as something that can be accomplished with working with Teach Yourself Courses for a few weeks?
I believe it's different with each country (Americans usually will be impressed), and also with the individual himself. After showing to one of my friends a video of the polyglot from Italy, he thought it was just skill that could easily be accomplished by buying Rosetta Stone, (I admit that it was a really big turnoff for me especially when he said that '3 years studying Russian is too long')....by the way that guy only knows how to speak English. On the other hand, I showed the same video to another friend of mine, and was..well.his eyes bulged out. He immediately assumed that the Italian was some kind of supergenius, or a savant, that it's only possible to learn a language through university, or through immersion in a country, unless you're a genius, etc. (better reaction, but not entirely accurate). Rarely do I find people who see learning several languages as a result of a lot of hard work. Most often it's either 'it's damn easy, just get a 1-month course, or some language software and you'll be fluent in no time (usually people who think that all you need is to learn the vocabulary belongs to this group)........' OR 'You're insane and a genius with an IQ of 195 (ironically I find that almost all physics students whom I personally know belong to this group'), while there's also 'It's so simple, just immerse yourself in a country for a few months, and you'll be indistiguishible from a native' (my mom thinks like that hehe) How about you? How do people perceive you when they find out, or when they see you speaking in the languages that you know? Are they indifferent? Or do they perceive you as a genius? Nerd? Hobbyist/Amateur? Cultured? Hard-working? Do they overestimate (more common where I live, fortunately hehe) or underestimate what it takes to learn a language to fluency? P.S. I know that learning a language does not mean trying to impress someone (or convince someone that it's worthy of admiration). Just curious as to other people's experiences. Edited by Bill_Sage667 on 27 August 2010 at 12:43pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 20 27 August 2010 at 3:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I fail to be impressed by people who grew up with several languages as it essentially required no conscious effort on their part. I remember meeting several perfectly bilingual trisomic people in Montréal. I also took language classes with people who spoke 3 or 4 languages from childhood and they were no better at learning a new one than monolinguals.
However, anyone who learns other languages later on deserves my respect. Such people are either hard working, smart or both, and I have yet to meet such a multilingual person that didn't fit that description. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bill_Sage667 Groupie United States Joined 5205 days ago 62 posts - 71 votes Speaks: English* | Message 3 of 20 28 August 2010 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, seeing that so far there's only been two people who have posted here (including me), I might add that this thread can also include experiences about how your friends or family treated you as a result of learning several languages, and seeing you speak in those languages. Did you become more chic? Were they still indifferent?
In short, how do people in the 'outside circle'of language-learners treat you? Everytime you spoke in different languages, did it feel like as if you were about to play some kind of incredible piano symphony to your friends (they talked with admiration while staring at you), or is it merely comparable to being able to solve a rubiks cube fast (very uncool, but genius)? Or just plain indifference? Do you have some kind of aura of 'coolness', or just 'drab nerdness'? And how do YOU see other language-leaners (male or female, friends, etc.)? You may also include the reaction of the speaker/s of the foreign languages(and maybe of the opposite sex). I believe there was a similar thread to this (but it was only for men impressing girls with languages). This one is much more general, and any gender, straight or not, is welcome to post here. Edited by Bill_Sage667 on 28 August 2010 at 4:29am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6142 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 4 of 20 28 August 2010 at 7:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting topic.
I'm a high school student, so the fact that I spend my precious free time outside of school and homework on studying foreign languages is a concept that is apparently incomprehensible to most of my peers. I get the feeling that most people either think that I am a complete genius because of it (since when you do have to be a genius to try to learn something?) or just weird and crazy…or both. It’s a little bit of a reputation that I am stuck with now. People at school greet me after the summer vacation with “Which languages did you learn over the summer?” or “How many languages are you up to now?” I actually think this attention is very annoying. It gets very tiresome to have to ask person after person what they mean by “speak” or what their definition of fluency is, and blah, blah, blah. My family is both supportive and criticizing of this hobby of mine. They always seem to brag about it to other adults (again, to my annoyance), and especially so when for some reason I have demonstrated even a little competency in a language. This summer, for example, I was in Tanzania on vacation with my family, and I was trying to speak a good deal of Swahili (which I had been studying for several months) with the locals. My parents were very impressed and proud, and I just found out tonight that my father even took a video of me speaking Swahili with villagers in a Maasai village. However, my parents also think that it is not necessarily a positive thing and try to subtly criticize and limit my ability to work on my studies. From natives of a language, I usually get a very surprised reaction, as though it is something abnormal and bizarre to want to learn someone’s language. People in Tanzania this summer were incredulous that an mzungu had bothered to learn more Swahili than jambo (hi) and asante (thanks). This same reaction is what I have gotten from LOTS of different people. At my school, there is an exchange student from Tajikistan who speaks Russian natively, so I tried out my (very poor) Russian on her, and she simple couldn’t believe that I was learning Russian on my own and for fun. And even though I’m not technically learning Finnish (yet), an exchange student from Finland was very surprised that I even knew Finnish was a language, let alone that I knew how to say some things in it! In general, I am considered an oddity, but one which is admired. I usually don’t care what other people think about my language studying because it is an activity which is really important to me and which makes me happy, but these are just some of the side effects of multilingualism, whether you like them or think they’re a nuisance. EDIT: Something which I didn't mention but I think I should is that I'm often surprised by the low standards people set for speaking a certain language. That's why when people ask me about how many I speak, I always have to respond back inquiring as to what they consider to be "speaking a language" or what their definition of fluency is. My definition is usually very different from theirs, which I would usually classify as a low- to mid-intermediate level. Sometimes, instead of a question, I respond simply with "it depends" or "a couple." Edited by ellasevia on 28 August 2010 at 7:26am 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bill_Sage667 Groupie United States Joined 5205 days ago 62 posts - 71 votes Speaks: English* | Message 5 of 20 28 August 2010 at 10:03am | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, same thing here. When you say you can speak a language, they assume you only have to know the basic-intermediate stuff. Some 4-word sentences can impress some of my pals here (saying 'czemu mi nie wierzysz?' really surprised them....WTF? I haven't even been studying the language for more than a month, and they already think I should be considered fluent, damn annoying since they underestimate the complexity of being really fluent in a language). I guess since they never see/realise how much time&effort we spend on learning a language, they'll either assume that it must be so easy (I know one guy who's like this, he's always skeptical of my intelligence&work ethic), or so hard that it requires an extremely high IQ. Either way, they have assumed that we did it effortlessly, memorizing a dictionary and a grammar reference book. btw 'czemu mi nie wierzysz?' = how come you don't believe me? (yeah, that's right, for some of my pals, being able to talk like a 4 year old native speaker is more than enough to be considered fluent in a language) and a typical conversation.........one guy thinks learning a language is effortless and all you need to know is 1000 words to read a novel, the other thinks I must be some genius..... Friend 1: Hey, d'you know the Polish for 'I will shoot myself' Me: Hmm.....it's 'Zastrzelę się' if I'm not mistaken.....and if you wanna know, 'i'll shoot you down' is 'Zastrzelę Cię' for singular informal, while formal it's..... Friend 2: No way,dude,I think you're making these all up! No way! I'll learn this language this month to fluency, and next month German, then next month Spanish.....then we'll see who's better........(I thought 'are you serious??? so you think you'll be able to read 'Miłość to wszystko' by learning from a Lonely Planet tourist guide??.....it's all the fault of those 'Be fluent like a native in 3 months CDs' that this guy's deluded) Friend 1: Damn, I think it's impressive, actually. And you learned these for how many days? Do you even know what's Polish for 'we'll shoot you down'?.......(I like this guy lol, but he too terribly underestimates fluency in a language - I don't think he realises that idioms exist abundantly in other languages as well......) (Keep in mind, these are physics students....and they weren't being sarcastic) Edited by Bill_Sage667 on 28 August 2010 at 10:44am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5527 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 6 of 20 28 August 2010 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting topic!
I think the perception of a multilingual strongly depends on how nerdy that person looks in general. If you're still able to socialize with people, they will just accept your strange hobby. However, that doesn't mean they understand why you're doing it; a typical reaction would be something like "oh my god, I could NEVER do that!...". As for me, my family and friends are by now used to see me running around with flashcards while mumbling some polish phrases (by the way Bill, would you mind telling me what resources you use? :-) I think especially speaking polish is in some way a language equivalent to Parkour sport - it seems like magic, but it basically required just a lot of work to get there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Bill_Sage667 Groupie United States Joined 5205 days ago 62 posts - 71 votes Speaks: English* | Message 7 of 20 29 August 2010 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||
when it comes to offline materials, just the usual stuff, including anything that I can get my hands on at the nearby library.....but I'll list down some of my most-often visited sites related to learning Polish, some of which might not be on your favorites list yet (just maybe:-)). I'll write them down anyway. bloggypolish.co.uk (no transcripts though) podcast.pl (no transcripts, and way harder than above) http://www.ang.pl/slang.php http://www.univ.gda.pl/slang/ (best thing is that it's got both polish and English definitions for each word/expression) I also google 'Dwóch i pół' and find a video with polish subtitles when I get real bored. Hope, that helps:D By the way, do you, by any perchance, know of any sites where they've got Polish podcasts with transcripts (for free hehe)? Taking me ages to find one...beginning to think they don't exist:) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5527 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 8 of 20 29 August 2010 at 8:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hey Bill,
thanks for listing your bookmarks, I actually didn't know some of the sites yet :-) Unfortunately, I myself am as well still looking for some podcasts with transcripts. However, on Scola (http://www.scola.org/Scola/Default.aspx) are some news chunks in polish along with transcripts available (if you don't have an access to scola, you might want to do a google search for username and password...). Aside from that, I found a site which hosts some transcripts from films: http://www.scenariusze.stopklatka.pl/ And in case that's not enough, I recommend polish audiobooks along with a copy of the book in polish :-) As for my other favorites: http://www.tvn24.pl/fakty.html (watching news online) http://peb.pl/ (forum) http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu/~swan/beta/ (Swan's Dictionary - really, *really* great as it works with inflected forms) http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu/ (Swan's main page) transparent.com/polish http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Polish_language (talk about frustration ;-) My main source for podcasts is http://www.polskieradio.pl/podcasting/ . Just in case you listen to polish music, which bands do you like best? (Disco Polo doesn't count!) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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