Polyglots!
I'm inordinately interested in this, which seems counterintuitive for someone who can barely stand, or manage, speaking English. I've been watching videos where polyglots - someone who speaks three languages or more - can speak up to 21 languages. Not flawlessly, and certainly not knowing every word in each language, but there was some crazy statistic that you really need only 200 words to be able to communicate in any language.
Not sure of the truth of that claim.
I'm interested in all languages, but foremostly in sign, Japanese/Nihongo, Hindi, Swahili, and Gaeilge.
Very much interested in learning formally, but its one of those things I just haven't had the money or opportunity to do with regularity.
Anyone here speak more than one language? Multiples? How well do you speak each? Where and why did you learn? Do you use them on a daily basis?
Anyone want to learn a second (or third, or fourth ...) language? Which languages would you want to learn, and why? How would you go about it?
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Alexithymia - 147 points.
Low-Verbal.
BirdInFlight
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Joined: 8 Jun 2013
Age: 62
Gender: Female
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I'm always awed by people who have mastered more than one other second language, I struggle to master one. French is mine but I'm stuck in that limbo where I understand more that is spoken to me than I can speak myself. I can also read French with greater ease and comprehension than I can speak it.
So if you hand me a book in French (I own some too) or a newspaper, I do actually manage to understand it, bar a few terms and words. If you give me a French speaking person who speaks clearly and precisely, I can catch quite a good amount of what they're saying. But if I myself have to find the words, I can speak imperfectly, not fluently.
They say this is one of the stages to learning a language, that you start understanding more fluently when it's "delivered" first, before the stage when you start to be fluent speaking it yourself. I'm stuck in the understanding more stage.
My mother spoke French fluently. She learned during World War 2. I learned from her as we would try speaking it to each other around the house. Then we got taught in school but didn't learn much there.
Later in my adult life I bought a box set course on cassette (it was the 1990s...) and followed it into stage 3 of 5 levels, I think it had.
I have an American friend who can speak maybe three other languages fluently.
I also at one time years ago wanted to learn to speak Japanese. I bought books to teach myself. I didn't tackle much of the written form but it's advised to learn to speak it first so I set to. I know a few words and terms but I never mastered it.
My brother is fluent in Swedish as he lives there; I learned a few sentences but otherwise I cannot speak or understand it.