Are you multi-lingual?

French is my native language. I learned Spanish and English after that. Spanish was very easy for me, English was much more challenging for me. I am fluent in both, but I really never speak Spanish so I know I am slowly becoming more rusty. I actually never speak French anymore really now that my older relatives are all dead.

OP it's never too late. If you can find a local tutor, just pay them to have conversations with you.

No I’ve actually managed to fogey a language. I was born in Quebec to an anglophone family and learned French in kindergarten and grade one. Then I moved to BC and didn’t take French until I was a teenager and forgot how to speak it

Learned español at home then started learning English at school.

No, and I took French for 6 years. For some reason, though, I seem to be able to pick up Italian and understand it somewhat. I’m part Italian but never heard it spoken at home.

Yep. Native English speaker, moved to Sweden in high school, then got a PhD in Russian. Current "Superior" ratings in each, but Swedish is slipping and will probably be "Advanced" next time I test. I guess I should go spend a year in Stockholm soon to avoid that.

I can carry a basic conversation in Japanese but don't consider myself fluent due to my reading of kana not being up to par. I unofficially started learning the language 22 years ago with a Japanese pen pal and then took actual classes in college. I rarely get an opportunity to practice speaking so I watch a lot of NHK to keep my ears trained, at least.

My great-grandmother spoke Louisiana French Creole, but only spoke it amongst her siblings who never taught their kids how to speak it because, according to my grandmother, "they only spoke Creole when they were having 'grown folks conversation' and didn't want us kids to know what they were talking about." Kinda pissed they let the language die like that, it's basically French and would've made my French classes in high school a lot easier to pass.

I studied German off and on for a good 40 years. I can read a book in it, but I can't speak it (never had practice) and writing is difficult. I recently went through a German grammar book again and realized my memory isn't what it used to be and I "allowed" myself to stop studying it. After this long, I'll never be fluent in it. Life is too short to memorize what gender inanimate objects are.

[quote] I can carry a basic conversation in Japanese but don't consider myself fluent due to my reading of kana not being up to par.

Hiragana and katakana (kana, phonetic characters) should be a lot easier than kanji (Chinese characters). Can you read kanji?

r8 That's what I meant. My kanji vocabulary leaves much to be desired. I can usually only figure it out (somewhat) by reading the surrounding kana.

One thing I am grateful for with regard to Japanese programming is the fact that they subtitle nearly every broadcast. Hearing Japanese helps with reading, especially with kanji that look the same but are completely different words depending on the context.

Yep. Seven.

English, French, German, Swiss German, Russian, Italian, and a little Portuguese. I can also do tourist-level Spanish and Japanese.

I speak four languages. They came relatively easily to me because I started out very young, at 5. The earlier you start the more your brain seems to be able to learn new languages and the easier it is to lose your accent. As I get older, the ones I use the least are getting a bit rusty but I can still watch movies in those languages without subtitles, or read books and magazine articles.

But the best part is not the languages per se, but the fact that they open the doors to culture and that's the richest part of being able to communicate in a foreign tongue. My life has been immensely richer because of that.

I speak English, French, and German. Both of my parents were American, and both were Francophiles. We spoke French at home on weekends, and my brother and I had conversation classes at the Alliance Francaise in Los Angeles. Our housekeeper of many years, Hulda,, was from Finland, but she had a German husband (“Mein Mann ist tot in Stalingrad.”) and lived in Germany when she was a young woman. Our father also spoke German, so he, Hulda, my brother, and I spoke German on Monday and Tuesday. Hulda taught us a few phrases and names of foods in Finnish, but that’s mainly forgotten now.

Spanish is my native language but english might as well be, I learned it at age 6 in the summer before starting school after moving from Argentina...I think all I did was watch reruns of Gilligan's Island and The Bionic woman and after a few months BOOM I knew english. It is INCREDIBLE how fast your brain absorbs languages when you're young.

I can speak basic German. I would need to practice a lot and find a native-speaking practice partner to increase my vocabulary and grammar to talk about more advanced topics. Accents in different languages are pretty easy for me. I'm a professional musician, and I think it's just a matter of listening and, in some cases, practicing to get your mouth and tongue to do different things that they aren't required to do in English. As a person above mentioned, at my advanced stage in life I'm not going to waste time memorizing correct genders of nouns, or trying to make the noun and adjective endings agree. German people will still understand. I don't know enough languages to cite examples, but I know that lots of nouns that are masculine in French or Spanish are feminine in German and vice-versa, so almost all foreigners probably just have to guess. Americans listen to foreigners butcher English all the time and we don't judge them for it. We understand that English is not their native language.

This is very sweet. And impressive.

I'm cunni-lingual, does that count?

I don't know who can relate to this, but I've had a similar experience as a kid with an elder relative who was legally blind.

English is my native tongue, but I also speak passable Portuguese (my grandmother was from Portugal and made sure all her grandchildren who wanted to learn the language did so). I also have a working knowledge of French and Dutch (I have relative in Holland)

My languages are French, Italian, Russian, Thousand Island, and Vinaigrette.

I speak English, Spanish, Russian, German, and French, with a smattering of ASL. Language has always come easily to me.

R20 You missed an opportunity to sign your comment as "Dorothy Lynch"

I’m jealous r19, my grandmother spoke fluent Portuguese as well, but only when she was gossiping and didn’t want me to understand.

No, something I really regret.

I studied Spanish and French in HS and college (1970s). The summer before the pandemic, I started studying Italian. I don't know if it's the age difference or the fact that I was mostly online for Italian, but I find Spanish the easiest of the three to read with comprehension. I can speak all of them proficiently, vis-a-vis pronunciation, but I don't understand them when someone speaks to me.

I find it easy to translate English into Spanish or French in my mind, but I do not have this facility in Italian. There's a lot I feel I didn't learn.

R23, you were raised right.

I speak Pig Latin. And I can burp on command!

Yes, Italian and English.

My parents were Italian immigrants, and my first language was Italian.

i’d like to speak like this one day

Fluent Yiddish and Hebrew by the time I was 5. Started learning English at 6. High school Spanish. Picked up a working knowledge of French, Italian and German from watching non-English films and extensive travel. Wanted to learn Mandarin, but just couldn't quite catch the tonal aspects. Taught myself to read/write Russian, but couldn't be bothered learning basic grammar and syntax. I can say good morning, thank you and where's the toilet in at least 10 languages, including Chichewa (Nyanja).

Finnish was next on my linguistic hit parade, but then I decided that I've got so many different languages clogging up my memory banks that there are days when I blank out, can't remember what the fucking word is in any language.

Alas, no. My Pembrokeshire-born grandfather could have taught me Welsh, but died of the drink before I even started school and picked up a pen to write my name.

That’s why I’m trying to learn as an adult, it’s a cultural reclaim and an ancestral honour more than anything else. It’s fucking hard, though. All my past high school language lessons in Latin & German (in which I was never that interested or adept) are not helping much. Duolingo’s alright but not very engaging. I even live in Wales, so you’d think there’d be a lot of chance to practise and learn here, but where I am is so far South that barely anyone speaks it—not even the proper natives!

So far I find the most helpful things are either watching Welsh content spoken aloud (S4C channel is good for this), following Welsh sport, and trying to blog in the language.

I took French in school for many years. I started learning Italian in my 40s during covid ahead of a move to Rome. I think my natural ear for another language helped me pick up Italian faster. Plus it’s much easier to me than French.

Yes, you do pick up languages as a kid faster but it’s a fallacy to think that it’s exponentially harder as an adult. As an adult your brain can grasp concepts and ideas quicker and you can advance pretty fast. Of course being immersed is important. I’ve taken language courses everyday here for two years. Italian is different all over Italy with hundreds of different dialects. Roman Italian isn’t easy. But as soon as I go a little north, as close as Florence, I feel a barrier is lifted and I can understand people.

Florence is the birthplace of Standard Italian with Dante. Roman Italian sounds like Native New Yorker English - prosciutt, moozarell - mumbled and imprecise. So I am planning a move north to master the language better.

And learning a language at an older age they say staves off dementia and Alzheimer’s seven times more affectively than the best known medicines since you’re forcing your brain to make new connections with things it already knows.

Growing up my mother spoke to me in French (Swiss) and in English. My father spoke to me in German, but mostly in English. My grandparents spoke several languages, but communicated with me in German. We had a Dutch housekeeper and learned Dutch from her. I'm nowhere as proficient in Dutch as the others, but I can carry on basic conversation.

My sister married a guy from Quebec, Canada and they speak exclusively French to each other and their children. My sister and I communicate in English. If I am visiting her family, I speak French to my nephews.

{quote] A lot of Bi things, I am, but lingual ain't one of 'em...