Who wants cheese?
Feb. 18th, 2011 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apple_pathwaysThe POLL to accompany my post about languages. As usual, I cut myself off because I ran out of time, and not necessarily because I finished asking everything I wanted. So take note: there may be follow-up questions! XD
For the purposes of this poll, we will use the following definitions from Wikipedia, that bastion of academic rigor and accuracy: (Also see this article on multilingualism.)
Language fluency is used informally to denote broadly a high level of language proficiency, most typically foreign language or another learned language, and more narrowly to denote fluid language use, as opposed to slow, halting use.
Conversational means able to carry on a casual conversation, but not necessarily without halts in speech, or gaps in vocabulary.
Skip any questions that don't apply. Pretend that it's not weird I spend so much of my free time coming up with meaningless LJ Polls written in unneccessarily-academic language.
[Poll #1706752]
Please leave any details you're willing to share about your language abilities and experiences learning foreign languages in the comments below!
For the purposes of this poll, we will use the following definitions from Wikipedia, that bastion of academic rigor and accuracy: (Also see this article on multilingualism.)
Language fluency is used informally to denote broadly a high level of language proficiency, most typically foreign language or another learned language, and more narrowly to denote fluid language use, as opposed to slow, halting use.
Conversational means able to carry on a casual conversation, but not necessarily without halts in speech, or gaps in vocabulary.
Skip any questions that don't apply. Pretend that it's not weird I spend so much of my free time coming up with meaningless LJ Polls written in unneccessarily-academic language.
[Poll #1706752]
Please leave any details you're willing to share about your language abilities and experiences learning foreign languages in the comments below!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-02-18 11:30 pm (UTC)In a friendly context :D I like to say I can hold a conversation in Spanish. If it revolves around subjects I'm a nerd for and have picked up words by reading the Spanish newspaper El Pais, I can ramble about ghosts and monsters and scifi and some traces of technology.
I've watched tons of anime so I was exposed to lots of Japanese from damn near the very beginning. I like to watch them in the original language unless the dubs are good (if the series is good or not all that long, I'll watch both!) and I've been working on actually /remembering/ some of the words I find. Seems important, you know?
I listen to lots of gothic and symphonic German music, so I've picked up a bit of it.
I want to learn more and more languages, but it isn't always easy to find the time. When I find scifi/fantasy/techno/metal in the languages I have a slight idea of I try to keep my hand in. I watch so many Hong Kong movies Cantonese is starting to sound extremely cool to my ears, too. :D
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Date: 2011-02-19 03:29 pm (UTC)Me too! I especially like to hear from Americans who are fluent in a language other than English who didn't grow up in a bi/multilingual household. (Which is the case for the vast majority of bi/multilingual Americans I know!)
Growing up in such close proximity to the Detroit auto industry, I grew up having quite a few Japanese friends whose parents came over here for work. I was exposed to anime and Japanese cartoons/characters through them, but...it just never caught on with me! (To be honest, I'm not one for cartoons to begin with.)
I also have several friends I grew up with whose parents immigrated from China/Taiwan/Hong Kong, and a few whose parents came from India. In college, I had a Filipino roommate who was very involved in the Filipino American Students' Association, as well as several pan-Asian groups; plus my childhoo friends who also got involved in Asian-American student orgs.
As a result, aspects of many Asian cultures are very familiar to me! I can't say I speak much Japanese/Cantonese/Tagalog, but I can certainly hold my own in an asian restaurant! XD
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Date: 2011-02-19 11:39 pm (UTC)I'm vaguely envious of all your Asian friends, but that's a bizarre thing to feel because things like that just shake out to chance! The sooner I move, the sooner I figure (half-joking, half-not) I'll probably spend all of my time in Little Tokyos anyway. ;)
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Date: 2011-02-20 12:05 am (UTC)That's a huge incentive to move! Ready access to Asian grocery stores is pretty much essential to my existence. What would I do without a nearby supplier of fish sauce and lichi candy? :P
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Date: 2011-02-20 01:35 am (UTC)If I was in a weird mood, that would be an odd juxtaposition! O_O
I keep working on the move but it doesn't seem to happen. Damn jobs.
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Date: 2011-02-18 11:48 pm (UTC)When I was at school and maybe particularly in my school it was considered very uncool to do well at languages, even the real swotty kids didn't boast about it. I did well in my exams but didn't keep it up and I wish I had. I have one real life friend who is Finnish, lived in Sweden and now in the US, she speaks Finnish, Swedish, English and German fluently and at one point was learning Spanish. I was always fascinated how she could switch easily between them! My BFF is married to a Palestinian and they are bringing their kids up to be fluent in both English and Arabic which I think is amazing! To hear English and Arabic words coming out of a two year old is fabulous!
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Date: 2011-02-19 03:35 pm (UTC)When I was at school and maybe particularly in my school it was considered very uncool to do well at languages, even the real swotty kids didn't boast about it.
Wow, that's really interesting! I wonder why that was? It certainly wasn't considered "cool" to do well at languages in my school, but it wasn't something that was "uncool" either--like other subjects, whether it was considered socially acceptable to get good grades depended largely on your friends and the social cirlces you ran in. (I was part of the "obnoxiously smart good girls" and "slightly strange artistic nerds" groups, and was therefore allowed to do well in any subject I pleased. XD)
I am always fascinated by people who speak multiple languages! And I have all kinds of secret fantasies about marrying someone from another country/culture and raising my children to be bilingual. ;)
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Date: 2011-02-19 12:26 am (UTC)Also, I was exposed to many, many different languages because missionaries would often stay in our home and they usually loved me. As a child, since I had a fascination with learning and asked loads of questions, adults usually found my presence tolerable. My mom used to say I was five going on thirty.
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Date: 2011-02-19 03:37 pm (UTC)I'm sure you were an adorably precocious child--of course the adults would have wanted you around! :D
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Date: 2011-02-19 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 01:44 am (UTC)Good night :)
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Date: 2011-02-19 03:39 pm (UTC)I saw that for one of the questions, you responded that you were exposed to other languages at home from parents or other relatives. What language was that, and were you conversational/fluent as a child, or did that not come until later when you studied in school/university?
I don't remember your poll on Doctor Who and languages! I can't believe I missed it--that's right up my alley! I'll have to do some digging for it.
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Date: 2011-02-19 05:00 pm (UTC)Here's the link to the DW language poll. http://alt-universe-me.livejournal.com/30760.html
I always love to hear people's thoughts on languages :)
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Date: 2011-02-19 05:41 pm (UTC)I am very impressed, as you're one of the few bilingual Americans I know who didn't pick up her second language from a fluent parent.
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Date: 2011-02-19 03:47 am (UTC)I will say that, while I adore Latin, taking it in high school in lieu of a modern language was a huge mistake.
All I remember from a year and a half of Arabic is the alphabet. (Which is TOTALLY BEAUTIFUL.)
Current project is Spanish. SO finally made me buy $50 work of materials to study with, said it'll help me stick with it. So far he's right. It also helps that I'm actually interacting with Spanish speakers a lot these days now that I've moved to work in a school in Southern California. There was never any incentive except intellectual fun before, and apparently I'm not as pure Ravenclaw as I thought. ;)
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Date: 2011-02-19 03:42 pm (UTC)Interacting with Spanish speakers is key! A few years ago, I had a little girl from Mexico in one of my programs, and though her English was a little better than my Spanish, I was happy to see how well I could communicate with her after not practicing the language for years!
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Date: 2011-02-19 03:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 03:44 pm (UTC)Did you achieve fluency in German through school? If so, color me impressed!
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Date: 2011-02-19 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 04:14 am (UTC)It actually makes me sad that it's so easy to get by on English in the world. I mean, people in Paris automatically switch to English as soon as they notice your accent (and I think it's probably the same in a lot of other big/touristy cities), so there's not even enough of an impetus to learn other languages if you're travelling. In fact, one of my friends at work was telling me about her trip to Hong Kong, and how she got away with never having to deal with anything in Chinese and ate nothing but American food the entire time (I forgave her for that only because she was there as part of her job and couldn't afford to get herself sick). I mean, Hong Kong is especially English-oriented since it only recently was given back to China, but still... everyone hates American tourists, yet they refuse to make our lives more difficult!
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Date: 2011-02-19 04:01 pm (UTC)I, too, wish it were harder to get by on English! I haven't done any foreign travelling, but any time I'm in a situation to use my Spanish skills, the person I'm speaking with is almost always better with English than I am with Spanish, and makes the switch pretty early on. It just contributes to how self-conscious I am about speaking the language.
I was incredibly surprised by the responses to the most and least difficult aspects of foreign language question--I expected most people to answer the way I did: understanding spoken language is the easiest, and speaking is the hardest. While I can follow a conversation in Spanish pretty well, it takes me so long to come up with my response that it makes participating incredibly frustrating! (My OCD and obsession with 'perfection' probably gets in the way here!)
What I find funny is that, like most white Americans (I'm sure)--no one ever expects me to speak another language. Once, when I worked as a cashier in a clothing store, a mother and daughter were up at the register and I was ringing them up. The mother spoke mostly Spanish, and was talking to her daughter while the daughter dealt with me in English. The mother started asking the daughter (in Spanish) what I'd done with the sunglasses they were buying. I had set them aside in their own bag, and so when I heard her ask, I picked them up to show her and said, "Here they are." (When caught off-guard, I'm likely to respond to Spanish in English.) I smiled at her, and she smiled back at me--and then it hit her that she'd asked the question in Spanish, and that probably meant I'd been listening to the entire conversation she'd been carrying on with her daughter. (It wasn't anything bad--at one point, she did ask why our clothes were so expensive, a question I'd often asked myself.) The look on her face! Priceless...
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Date: 2011-02-19 05:02 pm (UTC)I always find it amusing when people have conversations in their first language expecting you not to understand. I learned to recognize a lot of Mandarin insults just for that purpose. (I also know a lot of cursing, from listening to one of my roommates shout at her mom for an entire school year. Funny thing is, the bits of Mandarin I know from her doesn't translate at all to what my friend from Shanghai shouts at his parents, because Shanghai has its own special dialect, complete with a fifth tone that no one else uses).
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Date: 2011-02-19 05:47 pm (UTC)I need to come to Chicago. In fact, I'm thinking about planning a trip! When I come, we'll have to find a way to throw me into a Spanish-only situation: sort of a Rapid Exposure to get me over my hangups! XD
Shouting in Chinese is scary. When I visit my friend's parents' restaurant, her mom is always shouting at everyone. It's especially terrifying where there's just a long string of Cantonese and then my name! 0_o
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Date: 2011-02-19 05:59 pm (UTC)Hmm... I'll see what I can do to engineer a Spanish-only situation. Most of my Spanish pseudo-immersion comes from the fact that all our temps in the office right now speak Spanish, so I overhear a lot of it. Though there are a few restaurants I've been to where the waitstaff would've been much more comfortable in Spanish (there was one place in particular where the waiter and I were incomprehensible to each other, so we had to do the pointing-at-the-menu thing, but that was waaay out on the west side where my friends and I simply were not expected to turn up. Great restaurant, though. We had alligator and goat.)
Chinese shouting always sounds angry, even when it's not. At least you keep your name, though. One of my friends, her mom can't remember anyone's English name, so they get homophone Chinese names. Apparently my name sounds like the word for "shoelace," so that's who I am now.
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Date: 2011-02-19 06:02 pm (UTC)That is pretty fucking fantastic! I would gladly trade my name in for a monicker like "shoelace"!
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Date: 2011-02-19 09:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-19 04:55 am (UTC)In secondary school I did Dutch, English, German, French, Latin and Greek, being already fluent in the first three.
I grew up five minutes from the Dutch/German border, so German came easily.
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Date: 2011-02-19 04:12 pm (UTC)Wow, that is a lot of languages--how did you have time for other classes?! ;)
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Date: 2011-02-19 06:14 pm (UTC)Most Dutch people are bilingual. We have to be, because it's a small country with big aspirations. I mean, we founded New York for goodness sake! We boast the biggest port in Europe; we pumped water away to make new land (google "afsluitdijk" or "zuiderzee"); we have an international reputation for tolerance; we had the East India Company.... etc etc etc.
We've always been a nation of slightly quixotic adventurers: "Who says we cannot do this? Let's try anyway."
For that, you need at least one other language other than Dutch with which to communicate.
Also, the Dutch know that they live on a small, insignificant piece of land. Couple that with Protestant modesty and you understand why no Dutch person expects a foreigner to speak Dutch, but will instead happily display his own language ability.
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Date: 2011-02-19 06:47 pm (UTC)See, now I'm really tempted to do a comprehensive poll on school systems! :P I'm so used to the American system that insists you do a little bit of everything, that the more subject-intensive courses of other countries really fascinate me! (As a naturally curious person, I like that I took advanced courses in English Lit, American Government, European History, Chemistry, and Spanish--but I also recognize that the level of intensity wasn't so great, and I wasn't as prepared for a course of advanced study at the university level as students of other countries.)
You're right: the Dutch are pretty bad-ass. ;) Someday I'm going to visit, and perhaps you can give me the Dutch World Tour! I think a desire to learn other languages in order to branch out is incredibly admirable. (Also, speaking of my wanting to purchase foreign foods unavailable in the US: I have to get my hands on some of that tea you sent me! I'm going to PM you with a request you are more than free to decline!)
At first, "afsluitdijk" looked like a confusing string of gibberish to me, but does "dijk" roughly correspond to "dike"?
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Date: 2011-02-19 07:44 pm (UTC)'Afsluiten' means 'to lock'.
In Holland, the kind of school determines where you're headed, as opposed to college in the US. At the age of 12, in your last year of elementary school, everyone is subjected to a Standard Aptitude Test, that measures your IQ etc. This determines your school. If you go to 'gymnasium', as I did, you're automatically bound for University (only about 7% of young people go to Uni). You're specifically groomed for Uni, so you are taught Classics and do really in-depth studies of your chosen path. For me, it was languages because numbers scare me. If you choose all languages you are not allowed to choose, say, chemistry as well, because it doesn't fit in with the path you're headed down. Languages = alpha; sciences = bèta; economics = gamma. That is what I put on my resumé as well: 'gymnasium alpha', so that future employers know at a glance it's useless to have me work in the finance department.
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Date: 2011-02-19 06:08 am (UTC)When we were in primary school, German was required, because a second language was required at the time in all state schools. When I was about 10-11, I was fluent in German, but they changed over to Japanese, I never used the German again, and now I sort of... remember bits of it. I can read it, basically, and understand what people are talking about, but I wouldn't trust myself to actually formulate a sentence.
In highschool I took French for... well, one and a half years, and then I tried to get into the class in the third year, but they didn't run one because no-one else wanted to learn it, because the Italian teacher was a complete idiot and let the class run riot. I had to take Italian for six months and the little of it that I speak comes straight from Latin. French I can just about muddle through, provided I am in Paris (because the regional differences are a very real language barrier).
Latin I can read. That was all by myself. I can't see me going much further with it, and I'm far from conversant in it (who would I even converse with?).
I can read Swedish, too. Mostly. I intend to become completely fluent in it. It's a pretty language. I'd actually take classes, if I could find one (sadly the Swedish population of Australia is itty bitty, since they've never fled their country en masse).
Does Old English count as a separate language? Can I count it? (Also self-taught because dammit Beowulf is prettier in the original).
All that said, I suspect that they don't make you take another language in America as a child? It's always seemed natural to me to have other languages floating around (if I went out to the shopping centre now, I would expect a solid 25% of the people there with me to have a different first language than I do), but I suppose there are places in America that are recent-immigrant-heavy and place that just aren't (here there kind of isn't. There are recent immigrants everywhere - my mum included).
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Date: 2011-02-19 04:37 pm (UTC)This is what pissed me off about the Spanish program at my school. My school offered a choice of French or Spanish for language study. (They also offered German and Japanese, but only the first two levels of each. Conversely, I took Spanish 1-5 and then Advanced Placement Spanish.)
French was considered the more rigorous, prestige language, and Spanish was considered "easy" and a blowoff. (Racist, if you ask me...) While I don't think one language is particularly easy compared to the other (they're both Romance languages, for Christ's sake!), people chose their language according to that stereotype. Therefore the French students got to do cool things like take field trips to Toronto to see Phantom of the Opera, and the Spanish classes were packed with idiots who disrupted learning for everyone else.
Of course, by the time I got to AP Spanish, there were only 7 of us who took the course. Oh, and I managed to pass out of the language requirement at university, while my friends who took french had to suffer through two more years, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. :P
So, instead of continuing with my Spanish and going for real fluency, I took two semesters of Latin and one of Middle English. *shrugs* IDEK!
(So yeah, I'd totally count Old English as a language!)
(Oh, but I hate Beowulf. It's just a personal prejudice after being forced to study it in three separate courses!)
All that said, I suspect that they don't make you take another language in America as a child?
To be honest? I couldn't tell you. It's one of those products of our crazy federalist government: education, for the most part, is one of those powers granted to the states, and is therefore different across the country. There are, nominally, national standards, but there's still a ton of variation from one place to another. (Even within states.)
I can only speak to what it was like for me, in southeast Michigan 20 years ago.
No, they didn't make us take a language. We didn't even begin any sort of foreign language class until fifth grade. (Age 10-11) That class lasted only part of the year (our academic year was divided into trimesters) and was a survey course of different languages: French, Spanish, German, and Japanese. (Students who took band didn't even have that--"band class" replaced the other electives.) We didn't begin serious study of a language--with the goal of actually speaking it--until 8th grade. (Age 13-14) Even then, it was not required, but merely strongly suggested, as most universities will want you to have language experience, and require a course of study to earn your degree.
It's not at all unusual to be surrounded by different languages where I live. I wouldn't claim 25% across the board, but depending on where you are, you could easily find yourself in the minority when speaking English.
Growing up, my school had a very large Japanese population, due to our proximity to the auto industry. (See my response to
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Date: 2011-02-19 08:05 pm (UTC)I'm not a native English speaker. In fact, I didn't speak any English till about age 5 when I started school. But tbh, I've been speaking English pretty much since that time, and arguably I speak it better than any of the other languages I speak.
I learned my native tongue via my parents (imagine that), but I also learned a couple of other Indian languages by cultural osmosis (movies, mostly). I grew up in Canada in an officially bilingual city, so I learned French in school, and later, we lived in Francophone Africa, so more cultural osmosis/immersion, lol.
At college, I learned German (because of a boy...isn't that always the reason, lol?), and I really enjoyed that. Then, because I wasn't quite done with the whole language thing, I also learned Italian. I'm not fluent by any means, however.
Finally, thanks to law school, I have a working knowledge of Latin, although again, nowhere near fluency.
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Date: 2011-02-19 08:49 pm (UTC)I grew up with lots of friends whose parents were from India and other Asian countries, and while most of them understand a great deal of their parents' native language, they're not particularly good at speaking it--and very often, they're reluctant to do so! I've worked with many bilingual children, and a lot of them seem to feel as if their parents' native tongue is some sort of special family language, and not to be spoken outside the home. Speaking to one's parents in Tagalog, or Telugu, or Cantonese in public becomes akin to having your mother address you by your childhood nickname in front of your friends!
When I worked with children who spoke Spanish at home, I was desperate to practice my language abilities! But when I would speak to them in Spanish, they'd answer me in English. Even little kids--as young as three--had a very clear definition of when Spanish is used and when English is used, and one DOES NOT speak Spanish with the white girl at school!
I find your life history, and your history of languages, to be especially fascinating! Do you think learning more than one language from an early age has helped you to pick up others?
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Date: 2011-02-20 07:50 am (UTC)I am currently taking Norwegian lessons in my free time and want desperately to learn Finnish despite my Finn friend telling me it's pretty much a lost cause.
My mom grew up hearing it. She wanted desperately to learn as a child,, as well, but her grandmother gave up trying to teach her because she couldn't make the ai sound which was the very first sound in the primer.
I used to try to persuade my grandfather to speak to me because I pick up spoken language quickly but the man only said 15 words on any given day in English and trying to get him to say extra was hard... so days of the week, numbers, and food items was pretty much as far as I got. Desperate, though, desperate.
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Date: 2011-02-21 12:02 pm (UTC)