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Second Language Comfort | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 27 08 May 2011 at 11:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I feel as comfortable in English and Spanish as I do in Norwegian, That does not mean that I know all the words or never make mistakes, just that I can go on for hours without thinking twice.
I do remember settings were I would get head aches though, I have been to business meetings were French, German and a little English were used as official languages during the meeting, and outside the meetings I would speak Norwegian with my Swedish and Danish colleagues (and listen to Swedish and Danish), Spanish and Italian with my colleagues from these countries, and German with my Croatian colleague who claimed not to understand any other Western European language. (When I after knowing him for 2 years discovered that he spoke French I was furious, but he just smiled and said that it made him happy that I would speak German just for him. Given the state of my German at the time, I found that very hard to belive, but that is another story). I remember coming out of those meetings with a 5 star head ache. I do not know whether that was because of the language mix or because I was nervous about entering into difficult negotiations - it might have been a bit of both. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 08 May 2011 at 7:47pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 27 08 May 2011 at 12:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Now I am jealous!!! I would love to be in such an environment where I could use several languages with different people in one single day. This would give me the kick as it would be the real-life situation of my multilingual conversations I practice with my polyglot Skypies on Skype. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 27 08 May 2011 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think this highlights an interesting issue: you can be differeently comfortable in different languages on different topics. If called upon to discuss topics like astronomy or typography, topics where most of my knowledge comes from reading, I'll feel most comfortable in English, as most of my reading is in that language. Talking about martial arts, I'll be most comfortable in Swedish, since most of my knowledge comes from instruction and discussion with training partners. Same goes for engineering topics, which I talk about in Swedish at work. Some aspects of Wing Chun I might even feel most comfortable talking about in Mandarin, despite my grasp of that language being less firm than Swedish, because I've spent many hours discussing them with my sifu before I learned Cantonese. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 27 08 May 2011 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
Don't be. I am not kidding when I talk about those head aches. When I started out I was 30 years younger than most of the others, I was almost the only girl, I had very little knowledge about railways (which they were all experts in) and I came from an insignificant country whose representatives had not spoken up for 10 years. I used to be so scared that every time I had to say something in the meeting you could use my fingertips as ice cubes. It took years before I actually started to enjoy myself. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5848 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 13 of 27 08 May 2011 at 8:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I can recommend anybody who has to deal with real-life situations where he / she has to switch foreign languages in meetings or other situations where he / she has contact with people from foreign countries to train this by talking in different languages to people on Skype. In real life I almost never have native speaker contacts (besides in Dutch) but on Skype I can compensate this by speaking with polylgots who have native level capacities in several of their foreign languages.
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 27 08 May 2011 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
Very. I feel tempted to say all the other countries. Most of them were men in their 60ies, who had started working for the railways when they were still in their teens. The meetings were at the Union International de Chemin de fer (the one that decides the rules concerning Inter Rail tickets). Hence the large concentration of railway experts. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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