Bi/Multi-linguals...Answer me this:

[bicentennial_baby]

Ok, I haven't spoken French on a regular basis in well over a year, after speaking it consistently for 2-3 years. I feel as if I've forgotten so much of it...BUT, I can still read it perfectly fine. Sure, I don't know every word, but I understand it quite well. I realized this this afternoon when I picked up my screenplay of Au Revoir Les Enfants, and just plunged right in with no problem.

Is it just a memory thing? :shrug:

[no name no slogan]

1. I noticed that when I went to Mexico

I hadn't used my Spanish in a decade, but within a few days I was able to have basic conversations again.

The same thing happened when I was in France-- when people would speak to me in French, I'd find myself trying to speak Spanish to them. Yeah, I think they thought I was crazy.

[bicentennial_baby]

2. Did you like France?

Where did you go? I spent a month in Paris in 05...

I say...You, Me, Sniffa, and SugarSmack...Trip to Paris! :bounce:

We'll spread the glory of Lee Mercer everywhere!! :rofl:

[no name no slogan]

4. Damn, that would be serious fun!

I was only in Paris for a few days. I went there for a while after my 6-month UK work visa expired. I didn't get to see nearly enough while I was there, sadly, but hope to get back again. :D

Because France needs to have Jeb Bush up in its house with disease

[bicentennial_baby]

5. We would rawk that city!!

I gotta get Sug in on this! :bounce:

Heehee...what fun we would have! :rofl:

[zanne]

3. I grew up in a French-speaking family...

Spoke only French until I was six, forgot the French once I started speaking English. Learned a little Spanish, now I speak Spanish with a French accent. Go figure.

[sniffa]

30. Ah, I think my family has an affiliation for you.

French Canadien American family here. :hi:

my last name used to end EAUX before my branch of the family dropped the X because they were sick of getting our cousins' mail (all my great-great-etc uncles/aunts/etc had the same first names). :D

Oh, and I'm guessing this based on your NH avatar. :hi:

[Rising Phoenix]

6. I spoke fluent spanish

as my best friends parents were from Mexico

I moved away and forgot it all.... I was 5-6 years old

I failed Spanish in High School

[bicentennial_baby]

7. Hehe...I knew the last part, but

not the first!

I remember your stories about HS Spanish... :rofl:

[Rising Phoenix]

8. don't laugh

I'm a genius.....in all ways....:rofl:

[bicentennial_baby]

9. You're S-M-R-T en Espanol...

:rofl:

:hi: Hope you are well.

:)

[Rising Phoenix]

11. grrrrr

Dadno el Bano?...... I am well thanks....really well

[bicentennial_baby]

12. Un cerveza por favor?

Excellent, happy to hear it :)

:pals:

[Rising Phoenix]

14. Sam Adams, I suppose

Boston Ale?

[bicentennial_baby]

15. Ha! You know me too well!!

:rofl:

:toast:

[Rising Phoenix]

16. cheers

:toast:

[applegrove]

10. I find that when I am immersed it all comes back to me. When I'm in

an english only situation..I loose it pretty quick.

[bicentennial_baby]

13. Hmmm...I have noticed that for the last week

I've been thinking in French, which is odd. Maybe that has *something* to do with it. Odd.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. It's the difference between passive and active knowledge

You can probably read sentences in English that are more complicated than anything you can say.

Furthermore, you don't necessarily have to understand every single word to get the gist of a conversation in a foreign language that you know a little bit of. I took two years of Chinese in graduate school, and when I was a student in Japan, I could understand much of what the Taiwanese students were talking about, not necessary the details, but the general topic. For example, once I overheard them talking about a room being too small and dark, and I said in Japanese, "Nani ka, heya ni tsuite no hanashi na no ne." ("The conversation is something about a room, isn't it?") They confirmed that they were talking about an apartment that one of them had looked at. But I couldn't really carry on a conversation in Chinese with the Taiwanese students.

After my stint as a student in Japan, I didn't go back for eight years. I thought I had forgotten all my spoken Japanese, but during that time, I read Japanese mystery novels frequently. When I returned, the people I had known when I lived there commented that my speech was more sophisticated than before. I guess I must have unconsciously absorbed a lot of vocabulary from eight years of reading.

Languages that you learn after puberty never disappear completely. (Pre-pubescent children learn languages rapidly--it's a survival mechanism, because they have to blend in with whoever takes care of them--but they also forget them just as quickly if they're not exposed to them.) They're in your head somewhere waiting to be revived.

I majored in German and minored in French in college, and they're way down in the deep recesses of my brain, because I haven't used them for over thirty years. However, if I see a German or French movie, I start understanding it pretty well after about half an hour, at least enough to tell what the subtitles are leaving out. Much the same would happen if I went to a French- or German-speaking country, I'm sure.

[bicentennial_baby]

18. Thank you so much for your input!

I was hoping that you would see this! Thanks so much! :hi:

[dpbrown]

21. I went to Europe with my parents 25 years after studying German

And I ended up doing some translating for the people on the tour.

One interesting thing I noticed when I was studying Chinese was that sometimes when I didn't know the Chinese word the German word would pop up in my head.

I think language is imprinted on a person's perception, since it's a mechanism for interacting with the world around us.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

33. When I was a student in Japan,

my great uncle was dying back in the States. He was friends with a German monk who had been transferred to Japan, so my mom wrote and asked me to try to trace this monk and let him know.

Well, how do you find a German monk in Japan? Aha! I knew there was an English-speaking Catholic church in Tokyo, so I called them. They told me there was also a German Catholic church and gave me the phone number. So I called. At that point, it had been only five years since my graduation from college as a German major, but I had been speaking Japanese almost full time for six months. Every time I tried to form a German sentence, a Japanese word would pop into my head.

After a while, the priest sighed and asked, "Sind Sie Japanerin?" ("Are you Japanese?")

Well, anyway, after some struggle, we figured out that the priest knew this monk and had the phone number for his monastery. It was a very international monastery, he said, with monks from all over the world.

So I dialed the monastery, wondering what language I was going to hear when someone picked up the phone. (Mind you, I had no phone in my apartment and was calling from a phone booth, dropping 10 yen coins in every three minutes, this being in the days before cell phones and even before prepaid phone cards.)

To my great relief, the monk who answered the phone was American, and the monk I was looking for spoke very good English, so I was able to convey the message about my great-uncle. The monk promised to write to him and pray for him.

Mission accomplished, and I learned how much the Japanese language had taken over my brain.

[Ellen Forradalom]

19. Getting your active vocabulary back takes time & practice

Passive vocabulary comes back a lot faster. It's just as with little children: they understand a lot sooner than they can speak.

BTW I'm reading 'Comme si de rien n'etait' by Marie Cardinal. Read any of her stuff? I read 'Les mots pour le dire' when it came out in '83 and loved it. (Yes, I've held onto my French for 25 years!)

[bicentennial_baby]

22. No, I'll have to check that out!

Where can I get it? :hi:

[Ellen Forradalom]

20. Can you get TV5MONDE on your cable system?

It's an extra fifteen bucks a month. The programming can be a wee bit insipid sometimes but it's a great way to keep up on your French.

[bicentennial_baby]

23. Actually, I think I can get it, but...

It might be part of a bigger International package...I'll have to check, I haven't looked since I lived on the other side of the state. Good idea, thank you! :)

[bicentennial_baby]

32. Yay!! I now have TV5!!!

:woohoo:

And, I got NFL Network for us too... :woohoo:

I loves 24-7 Comcast Chat Operators.... :D

[RevolutionaryActs]

24. You know, for x-mas my mom got me a page-a-day callendar

that has French phrases.

I shit you not, the first one was:
Jai une de ces gueules de bois.


She knows me too well. :rofl:

[bicentennial_baby]

25. Gueule de bois! OMG!!

:rofl:

[RevolutionaryActs]

26. Todays is random and weird...

La peur ne se commande pas.



Now if only I could pronounce this stuff....

[bicentennial_baby]

27. We SO need phone time...

:D

[RevolutionaryActs]

28. But I can barely speak intelligibly in English...

how the hell will I get French?


:rofl:


I do like to think I have pretty good pronunciation in Japanese...... I could be very wrong on that one though.

[Meshuga]

29. It's all about practice

My wife came from Brazil to the US 7 years ago. She was always proud that her Portuguese was perfect and now she has trouble with the language after not using it on a regular basis. We never forget our native language since we can read it and understand it. But you start having trouble speaking it when you use another language in your daily life. It is a matter of practice.

[eyesroll]

31. I'm by no means a polyglot...

...but I studied Spanish in high school, and went to Costa Rica in college and did OK...haven't really used Spanish since other than to order food...

But I sat in on a meeting at work that was conducted in Spanish and I understood just about everything. Not 100% (complex legal stuff) but enough that I knew what we were doing for the client and what my boss wanted me to do.

Children understand more words than they can say (and adults do too, to a certain extent: You might be able to figure out the meaning of a new word from context, but you wouldn't use that word on your own); perhaps it works that way on a bigger scale for other languages, too?