Who wants cheese?

[apple_pathways]

The 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!

Comments

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

I used to be mortified by having to speak another language, but my university classes pretty much drilled that out of me. In practice I find it way harder to get my head around casual speech than to come up with a response (at least in French, which is the only other language I'm passable in). That may be because I'm very much out of practice, though. I don't come across much French in the wild in Chicago. (In fact, I probably have a better grasp of casual, idiomatic Spanish than I do French, just because I hear Spanish every day.)

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).

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

I think what keeps me from formulating a quick response is my fear of mis-conjugating or using the wrong word. (That, and being just incredibly out of practice!) However, I find it much easier to get the gist of a conversation listening to someone speak.

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

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

I can get the gist of conversations, but I rely really heavily on context. If someone says something random to me I just kind of sit there and stare helplessly.

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.

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

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.

That is pretty fucking fantastic! I would gladly trade my name in for a monicker like "shoelace"!

[evilhippo.livejournal.com]

I'm actually a little more proud of it than I should be. While I was on the train this afternoon I remembered that it's actually even better than just a straight homophone. My friend had tried to help her remember my name by reminding her of the verb "to carry". So she took a homophone for my name, translated that to Chinese, and then picked another homophone (携带 and 鞋带, both xiédài, as confirmed by the google). ...I love really complicated multi-lingual punning.