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What does it feel like to be multilingual?

  Tags: Multilingual
 Language Learning Forum : Cultural Experiences in Foreign Languages Post Reply
20 messages over 3 pages: 1 2
Liface
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
youtube.com/user/Lif
Joined 5667 days ago

150 posts - 237 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish
Studies: Dutch, French

 
 Message 17 of 20
22 September 2010 at 8:40am | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
Bill_Sage667 wrote:
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?


How often does this happen in the real world?

Personally I once in a while meet a tourist who asks for information, and then mostly in English. If I can hear or know from eavesdropping that he/she/they come from a country whose language I can speak then I sometimes answer in their own language just for fun - and mostly it is appreciated, sometimes with some degree of astonishment. Twice this year I have met people in connection with my job who spoke other languages than Danish or English. And that's two times more than last year.

So social contacts at home in person is evidently a thing that happens so rarely to me that it can't motivate the amount of time and effort I put into language learning.

For me the important things are 1) to have an entertaining hobby on which I can spend an unlimited amount of time, and 2) to be able to use my languages during travels (or here in this forum).


Happens all the time for me, but I work in the tourist district of a major US city. Tons of opportunities to speak German, I've even been able to speak Dutch a couple times with Dutch tourists. And then of course all the immigrants we get from Latin America.

It may sound conceited, but the reaction I get from being multi-lingual is one of the motivating factors behind my language learning. I love to learn uncommon languages like Dutch because no other Americans do it. The Dutch people I talk with are always so amazed, it's like they can't fathom that their language is actually learnable because they've never met an American who speaks it. It's a really cool feeling.

Edited by Liface on 22 September 2010 at 8:40am

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jdmoncada
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4843 days ago

470 posts - 741 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish
Studies: Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 18 of 20
03 March 2011 at 7:38pm | IP Logged 
Bill_Sage667 wrote:
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.


This reminds me very much about music and dance, and any other arts that, like languages, take consistent practice to get results.

***Someone who is VERY good at doing something makes it look easy.
That is why your friend thought it easily accomplishable. But those who know how to do the skill/art, as your 2nd friend, realize the amount of work that went behind the "smooth performance."

For example, I really like this piano part to a Paul McCartney song I recently heard. (Old song, but new to me.) I got the sheet music to learn to play it. While not difficult, it's going to take much time to make it as smooth and easy as Paul already makes it sound.
1 person has voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5190 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 19 of 20
03 March 2011 at 8:18pm | IP Logged 
jdmoncada wrote:
For example, I really like this piano part to a Paul McCartney song I recently heard. (Old song, but new to me.) I got the sheet music to learn to play it. While not difficult, it's going to take much time to make it as smooth and easy as Paul already makes it sound.

I'd just like to add that Paul writes for himself, in ways that feel natural to him. Replicating someone else's style is harder than if you were playing something of equal difficulty written by yourself.
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Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6512 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
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 Message 20 of 20
04 March 2011 at 12:04am | IP Logged 
Learning to play a musical instrument is actually a good comparison to learning to speak a language - it can take for ever if you want to be really good, which in my opinion is achieved when you don't even think about technique when you play. In linguistic terms this would be the moment where you stop thinking about words, expressions and grammar, but just write or speak.



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