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Your earliest foreign language memory | ||
Tags: Children | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5967 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 98 02 November 2009 at 3:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I have just started reading a book about the natural history of human language, The Power of Babel by the linguist John McWhorter. So far, it's an easy read with good information about how languages change over time. What interests me for the purposes of forum discussion, though, is the beginning. He describes the first time that he suddenly realized, as a young child, that other languages existed and they were not like his native English. He describes it as shocking, fascinating, and frightening to hear another language spoken for the first time, when he heard a classmate speak Hebrew. He gives this as the reason for beginning his own independent study of languages, which would later become his profession.
Do you remember a moment like this? Obviously, people will differ in their memories according to whether they grew up in a multilingual family or culture. I come from a monolingual home, but I don't remember having any such sudden revelation that languages other than English existed. My paternal grandparents sometimes spoke in Polish, but for some reason, I did not perceive this as strange. It was simply "the-way-they-talk-when-I-have-been-very-bad-and-they-don't- want-me-to-understand." It didn't cause any curiosity; actually, it was a reliable sign that it was time to hide behind the curtains. If you can remember, what is your first memory of hearing a foreign language? Did it cause you to want to learn other languages, or did that desire arrive later? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 2 of 98 02 November 2009 at 3:56am | IP Logged | ||
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My earliest foreign language memories all have to do with French. One time I can remember being in a parking lot and seeing a Quebec license plate which read "Je me souviens", and my mother told me that meant "I remember". On another occasion, I tuned into a Quebec radio station and I couldn't understand any of the French, but my father told me if I listened to enough of it I would come to understand it. Turns out he was right about that.
Living so close to Quebec and having these types of encounters with the French language definitely made me want to learn French at a young age. I dabbled in it a bit, mostly by looking at phrasebooks and dictionaries, but didn't know at that point anything about how to teach myself a language. Then in the 7th grade when the school finally let us take foreign languages I took French and started to seriously learn it. From there I developed a love for other languages, and it became kind of an obsession. I eventually majored in linguistics at college simply because I couldn't dream of studying anything else, even though I take interest in many fields besides languages. Languages and linguistics are my main intellectual passion, and have been for as long as I can remember. Edited by Levi on 02 November 2009 at 4:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6034 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 3 of 98 02 November 2009 at 4:55am | IP Logged | ||
When I was a kid they used to show a lot of Russian films on the telly. Most of them were boring but I really liked some of the cartoons, like "Ну, погоди!" ( the Russian version of Tom and Jerry). They don't speak much in ну погоди but it's really cool. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 98 02 November 2009 at 10:27am | IP Logged | ||
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In my family we didn't get a TV set before I was 7 years old, and we only got it because I complained at home about not being able to discuss TV programs with my classmates - so the first time I distinctly remember having heard anything other than Danish must be when I watched Flintstones in stone age English with subtitles - Yabadabadooo!
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5847 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 5 of 98 02 November 2009 at 10:33am | IP Logged | ||
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When I was about 6 years old my parents told me that we would move to the United States and that I would have to learn English to attend school there. So I wasn't confronted with any foreign language in Germany at that young age.
Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ulrike Tetraglot Newbie Germany Joined 5561 days ago 23 posts - 27 votes Speaks: German*, Latin, English, French Studies: Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 6 of 98 02 November 2009 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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My earliest foreign language memories all refer to Swedish as I have relatives in Sweden who are Swedish. Being unable to understand anything of it I heard the Swedish (if it is really Swedish and not Danish) spoken in the province of Skåne at least once a year and became familiar with its sound.
When a German teacher at my school read the Lord´s Prayer in Gothic aloud I thought that the sounds were quite familiar to me and I started to wish to learn Swedish myself. Later, at University, and after a stay with my relatives without learning more Swedish than the equivalents of "dangerous", "forbidden", "closed", "to the trains" "open" and similar expressions I attended Swedish language courses and liked it 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5838 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 7 of 98 02 November 2009 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Watching some German kids programmes on TV that were over-dubbed in such a way that you first heard the German, then the Swedish...
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| XGargoyle Bilingual Triglot Groupie Spain Joined 5956 days ago 42 posts - 93 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, EnglishB2 Studies: GermanA2, Japanese, Russian | Message 8 of 98 02 November 2009 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was born in a bilingual region and my family was also bilingual. When I was a little kid (about 5 years old), both Catalan and Spanish were the same language to me, just that I used one to speak to my father and the other one to speak to my mother. In fact, I thought the difference was just about being formal/showing respect, rather than being a different language.
I realized they were different languages when I saw a speech from a Catalan politician being subbed on a Spanish TV channel. I then asked my mother, "why are they writing what that man says? It's silly, everybody understands it!" Then my mother told me, "there are people in our country who can only speak Spanish, and they can't understand Catalan. This is why his words are written on the screen" 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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