How many languages do you speak fluently ?

[C R]

If I forget a word it often blanks in both languages, but increasingly I realise I can explain my job better when speaking German than English.

All my professional life has been in English. In a previous job I would get asked to review technical translations into Spanish and I struggled to do a good job, as I had no feel for what the technical Spanish was as I had never used it.

Fluency in an adopted language is an interesting thing. I learnt both Galician and Spanish growing up, but Spanish was only used at school or heard on TV, no one around me spoke it in every day life. As a consequence, if I speak Spanish what ends up happening is that I mostly speak Galician with Spanish words, if that makes sense. I think that's the case for most people starting to use the adopted language, and it takes a long time to move beyond that. I've been trying for 25 years with English, and it is really hard work.

 

[bluenotebob]

I mostly speak Galician with Spanish words, if that makes sense.

Yes - that makes perfect sense.

My "French" is English but using French words, ie I translate my thoughts into French as I speak - and in an English word order. I think I would have needed to have been a child in France to speak French as a French person does.

Of course you pick up phrases and idioms all the time, you store them and re-use them .. but it's not the same.

The other point (which @All uphill alluded to upthread) is the cultural aspect. It's simply not possible as an incomer to have a lifetime's worth of cultural references to hand when you're having a conversation.

None of which worries me .. I'm happy speaking in French to a French person and if they choose not to understand me, then it's really not my problem.

 

[Gwylan]

We saw this with our children.
They were English mother tongue but absent from the culture for their formative years.
They came to England to university thinking they were English. Suddenly the chasm in their cultural experience from about 7 to 19 became evident. The jokes, slang, catch phrases were not part of their vocabulary
Equally in Belgium they were obviously not Vlaams or Waloon, despite being fluent in both languages.

Equally so I could pass for German until you discussed almost anything outside the weather and my narrow technical zone.

Discovering, courtesy of a chum, what Tripper meant in German put me in my place.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Yes - that makes perfect sense.

My "French" is English but using French words, ie I translate my thoughts into French as I speak - and in an English word order. I think I would have needed to have been a child in France to speak French as a French person does.

Of course you pick up phrases and idioms all the time, you store them and re-use them .. but it's not the same.

The other point (which @All uphill alluded to upthread) is the cultural aspect. It's simply not possible as an incomer to have a lifetime's worth of cultural references to hand when you're having a conversation.

None of which worries me .. I'm happy speaking in French to a French person and if they choose not to understand me, then it's really not my problem.

I recognise a lot of this, although my word order is improving as I think more and more in German, so when I'm speaking I'm not having to translate. In fact now I increasingly use German words for concepts when I can't remember the English word, which is fine with family but not so useful with my non German speaking parents.

Responses from other people are generally positive, though: Germans seem to appreciate the effort. In my early years, people would listen to my bad German phrases then answer in English: it took a year or two before people answered in German all the time.

 

[markemark]

Now she's free of me she's a cabinet minister.

She works in Ikea??

 

[Drago]

She was pretty good at putting Peg B in Hole A...

 

[stephec]

I pretend to be a German speaking poor French and have no problems.

I remember when your English was really poor.

 

[Gwylan]

it took a year or two before people answered in German all the time.

That's when you know that you've cracked it

Then my wife and children would complain about me coming home and using German word order, or french verbs in English. It was known as "Eurospeak"

 

[Andy in Germany]

That's when you know that you've cracked it

Then my wife and children would complain about me coming home and using German word order, or french verbs in English. It was known as "Eurospeak"

Here it's called "Denglish"

 

[Profpointy]

English and Welsh, though my Welsh has likely stagnated at child level. Also not fluent but schoolboy ( O level) French followed up decades later by evening classes. I can get by in France for everday stuff but couldn't do a business meeting or similar.

Also picked up a few words of Spanish, so can make an attempt to order a meal.

As an aside, at school I wanted to do tech drawing for O level,being interested in architecture and engineering but it clashed with Welsh. The headmaster rather bullied me into doing Welsh because TD was seen as a duffer's subject and being a swotty kid I was supposed to do proper subjects. Anyhow I gave in thinking "no worries, 96% in the exam, easy A, no work". No, because I was a native Welsh speaker I had to do a harder paper, essentially self-taught, study some of the most turgid and outright poor literature, and had to work hard to scrape a C. The extra work possible cost me grades elsewhere too. TD might have been a useful skill too.

 

[Profpointy]

I'm sure speakers of other languages do this too, but the French do often seem to claim not to understand French spoken badly. I once asked a friend of mine, who is French, "Do the French really not understand bad French or do they just pretend not to?" The other people we were with reacted with horror - "You can't ask that!" I said I'm not being anti-French, I'm honestly interested to know.

I mean, if a French person walked up to you on the street in the UK and said something like "Excuse, I am wanting train to go", you would understand that they meant they were looking for the station. But in a similar situation the other way round you would likely be met with a blank look and a Gallic shrug.

Her response was "I've never really thought about it". That was the end of that, but then a year or two later she messaged me out of the blue with a screenshot of a book she'd been reading which was saying exactly the same thing - "the French do not like to hear their language spoken badly". She said "It seems you were right"!

I have never experience that in France. Whilst I can get by in France I only got a C at O level and did some adult lessons decades later, but am by no means fluent, but have always been treated politely.

There was one rather charming anecdote where I was a a quite posh, but unpretentious restaurant. In my best schoolboy French I'd ordered charcuterie, an andouillette (a quit challenging offal haggis type thing), then deciding that was enough adventure chose "agnieux" for the main course. The waiter, up till this point answering in French, switched to English and ever so politely enquired "You do know it's brains sir?". Whilst I knew the word for lamb as it happened I did't know the word for brains, but obviously I couldn't lose face, so said "yes that's fine" and three whole lambs' brains were subsequently served. Whilst they were perfectly OK don't think I'd choose them again

 

[gbb]

To my mild regret, only English.
I did have a fair go at learning Spanish but probably didn't do it properly, DIY fashion. Working with Spanish equipment, dealing with Spanish companies and their engineers, plus work in S America, it would have been really useful.
I picked up some !(perhaps a fair bit) then lost it through lack of practice and use, that's my main problem, retaining info in the brain, I need to do stuff regularly for it to imprint, so's to speak.

 

[All uphill]

That's when you know that you've cracked it

Then my wife and children would complain about me coming home and using German word order, or french verbs in English. It was known as "Eurospeak"

Albert Costa studied this and discovered it is harder,and takes longer, to switch from your second language back to your first than the other way, counter-intuitively.

This is because, when speaking in our second language we have to work hard to suppress our first, and that it takes time to turn off that suppression. When speaking in our first language we don't have to suppress our second in the same way.

 

[Dogtrousers]

The wufey

I have never experience that in France. Whilst I can get by in France I only got a C at O level and did some adult lessons decades later, but am by no means fluent, but have always been treated politely.

There was one rather charming anecdote where I was a a quite posh, but unpretentious restaurant. In my best schoolboy French I'd ordered charcuterie, an andouillette (a quit challenging offal haggis type thing), then deciding that was enough adventure chose "agnieux" for the main course. The waiter, up till this point answering in French, switched to English and ever so politely enquired "You do know it's brains sir?". Whilst I knew the word for lamb as it happened I did't know the word for brains, but obviously I couldn't lose face, so said "yes that's fine" and three whole lambs' brains were subsequently served. Whilst they were perfectly OK don't think I'd choose them again

Brains AND Andouiette! That's some meal. Bravo.

Maybe you should have taken the cassette-based self study course I had in about 1985. It seemed to have been built on the premise that the French will always be trying to force you to eat awful things, and the most important language skills you need are those that will help you to foil such attempts. One particular lesson had someone in a restaurant fending off various dishes. I distinctly remember the English voiceover at the end of the lesson "So, it's not the calves' brains or the pig's head pate that's bothering him. He's allergic to garlic!" I think there was a lesson on avoiding horse meat too.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Albert Costa studied this and discovered it is harder,and takes longer, to switch from your second language back to your first than the other way, counter-intuitively.

This is because, when speaking in our second language we have to work hard to suppress our first, and that it takes time to turn off that suppression. When speaking in our first language we don't have to suppress our second in the same way.

THat makes sense. I have to concentrate on speaking English when I'm in the UK, it's like the automatic language switch has to be maually reset every conversation for the first few days.

My kids don't have this problem: they speak the language people use when speaking with them and aren't always aware they've done it. Beautiful Daughter does this in Engllish, German and Japanese without thinking twice; speaking and writing.

All three of my sons slip into Swabian when they get annoyed with each other.