Bilingual or Multi-lingual?

[leehljp]

I am surprised that more than 30% so far can speak two or more languages.
I studied Latin and hated it. Studied Hebrew and Greek too. Learned a smattering of French in So. Louisiana. Forgot all of it.

Gaijin - I use that ploy a lot by telling Japanese that I am a dumb gaijin, so please explain something to me slowly and clearly.

Shootx: Japanese is not much easier either with spoken words. Many many words (sounds) are the same:
kami - god, hair, paper, top/above
hashi - chop sticks, bridge, edge/point
hana - nose, flower, edge/point

Of course, the written form of each meaning is different, but in speaking, only the context indicates the meaning.

Japanese has its equivalent to "is, am, are, was, were," etc.


The difficulty of Japanese is that they have four basic languages (not dialect):
1. honorific used for bosses, politicians, customers, royalty, (vagueness)
2. polite used for customers, women to men, teachers, (half vague/half communication)
3. straight talk among friends (and for CLEAR communication.)
4. IN HOME (family) talk (similar to red-neck speak)

But their written form is the hardest:
The written character for "day" looks like a square on top of a square, or a blank domino standing upward. There are 7 different pronunciations for that one word, all dependent on which other character it is next to. Many characters are like this.

[Uncle Cracker]

Southern Redneck English... 'Cause ah didn't know no better.

Spanglish... To try to shop, eat and ask directions in Florida.

French... Six years of it in school (forgot everything but the words to "La Marseillaise").

Korean... From my taekwondo days (never clicked/long forgotten)

Japanese... For my Japanese arts (totally confused, frustrated, used my Rosetta Stone software for kindling)

[annunaki]

GHOTI = Fish

In demonstrating the oddities of the English Language in an effort to call for a change to phonetic spelling, the following example was given.

GHOTI using existing "flaws could spell FISH.

Here's how-
"Gh" as in the word ROUGH has an "F" sound
"O" as in WOMEN has an "I" sound
"TI" as in NATION has an "SH" sound

[leehljp]

Speaking of German . . .

(I posted this before here - some years ago. Enjoy it!)

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, 's' will replace the soft 'c'. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard 'c' will be dropped in favor of the 'k'. This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome 'ph' will be replased with the 'f'. This will make words like 'fotograf' 20% shorter!

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.

Governments will enkorage the removal of double leters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent 'e' in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing 'th' with 'z' and 'w' wiz 'v'.

During ze fifz year ze unesesary 'o' kan be dropd from vords kontaining 'ou' and similar changes vud of kurs be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After ze fifz yer ve vil hav a rali sensibl ritn styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evriun vil find it ezi tu undrstand ech ozer. Zis iz kwit funy. Sonz lik wul al bi spiken German anyvay.

[Kerf]

Something my buddy e-mailed me.... Enjoy

Spanish-English lesson

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: WATER

My wife gets mad and I don't even know water problem is!

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: MUSHROOM
Yo, when all my familia gets in the car, there's not mushroom.

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: CHICKEN
My girlfriend wanted me to go to the store, but chicken go by herself.

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: LIVER & CHEESE
Some guy tried to sweet talk my woman. I told him, yo loco, liver alone, cheese mine.

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: JULY
Ju tol me ju were goin to the store and July to me! Julyer!

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: WAFER
I wanted to go with my mom to the flea market pero she didn't wafer me!

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: HERPES
I had some cake to share with my wife, this is my piece this is herpes

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: TISSUE
I told you if you didn't know how to do it, I could tissue.

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: CASHEW
I was running after you but I couldn't cashew!

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: BISHOP
We went out to the club y mi vieja got drunk and fell down, so I had to pick the bishop.

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY: JUICY
Hey man, Im looking for Paco, tell me if juicy him!

[Bruce Cohen]

Yiddish-English Lesson (short version)

"If I remove my belt, my pencil will fall down."

When I come home form work, my wife says "Marvin statue?"

Se, I said it was going to be short. Most people (except for New Yorkers' don't understand Yiddish.

Bruce

[Stytooner]

I am or was fluent in german. I can still understand and speak it fairly well. I can read it with only minimal need for the dictionary.
I no longer think in German as I used to though. It did get a little difficult at times with my english when I was working for a german company. You pick it back up with use though.
Like anything, you have to keep practicing to stay proficient.

[dbhost]

Fluent is a mighty flexible word...

American English, specifically Texas twang, and Pacific Northwestern variations. Combined with collegiate nonsense. Hence the reason such utterances as that is too spendy y'all have been heard coming from my mouth...

German, however Mein Deutscher ist in den Jahren geglitten.

Spanish to a much lesser extent. Picking it up here and there, accelerating the picking up that particular language...

[leehljp]

Fluent is a mighty flexible word...

Agreed! Nothing against my fellow Americans (USA) but I find this loose / flexible trait of Americans that gets them in big trouble over here more than any other group.

It is a strong Japanese cultural trait to downplay one's abilities to a level far lower than it actually is.

I have found a similar trait, but not as much so, among other Asians.

Europeans (and Canadians) are generally more straight on with their personal analysis and critiquing of their own ability.

The Aussies that I know or have known here - are in between Europeans and US in their own fluency judgements.

USA Americans in general, love diving into the deep end to learn to swim, only to find out they often can't. I can't tell you the times I have guided people around who thought they could speak or communicate on their own because they knew a few words or sentences - only to discover that they can't.

These are my own opinions gathered from years of personal observation and experience.

A funny on the "Fluency" issue:

During the World Series back in '94 in SF or Oakland, a Japanese news team was there doing interviews of people going into the ball park. One fellow heard a few words in Japanese and walked over to the reporter. The reporter asked a question in English and the fellow replied: I can speak Japanese. The reporter quickly responded with a quick question in Japanese. The fellow looked like a deer in headlights! All he did was babble with eyes opened wide! It was funny. Both were let off the hook as another bystander who could speak Japanese jumped in with an answer to the question.


OTHER ASPECTS TO FLUENCY:

On a level of 10 being the best, I am about a 7 and can quickly get lost in a conversation if the Japanese assumes too much of my abilities and goes into technical wording.

My strength in languages is the Cultural aspect and hidden meanings. In my studies of Hebrew and Greek in graduate work, my professors would tell me that my grade of mid "C" was overcome by my ability to read between the lines for cultural value in an ability far above that of most "B" and "A" students. (Still didn't help my grammatical test grades!)

In Japanese, often when someone goes into a discussion that I have only a little clue about, - if LOML is there and tells me what the person said, I will reply with what they meant. This sometimes drives LOML up the wall with my "understanding the meaning" without knowing all the words. Reading between the lines, assessing cultural values on words has always been a strength way above vocabulary size for me. "Enthusiastic" in Japanese is "nesshin". It didn't take me long to figure out that "nesshin" was considered as a "negative cultural value" among older Japanese and teachers. So I settled down, quit being "nesshin" outwardly in class and became one of the many.

[Stytooner]

Dialects and slang play a large roll in the ability to become or be called fluent. You may be fluent with the King's English, but then not understand American as well. New York, Boston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Dallas etc sometimes have very distinct dialects and can be difficult for a King's English speaker to understand. England and parts of it, Scotland, Ireland Australia etc can all have distinct dialects.

A little story. My Ex wife is German. She speaks American nearly as well as I do and writes it fairly well too. She reads it faster and better than me though, so I do consider her fluent.
We took a trip to London a week after Lady Di and Charles were married.

For the most part, I was having to translate English to American for her. She simply could not grasp the dialect. To be honest, I sometimes said Hunh? Could you please repeat that, but a little slower?

When I traveled around in Germany, some people would comment to me that they knew where I had learned my German just from the dialect. I got so proficient with it that some didn't even believe I was American.

I find it's easy to do when you live and work with them. It's a sink or swim type thing. My goal was to be able to sit and understand the nachrichten on TV. (news) That was the most difficult, because they would use high German instead of the dialect or slang I was used to.

[poolhound]

I speak pretty fluent English, American, Canadian, Australian ...

I guess I should add that I can get by in French and German. I mean tourist/ biz traveller stuff.

[leehljp]

Dialects and slang play a large roll in the ability to become or be called fluent.

When I traveled around in Germany, some people would comment to me that they knew where I had learned my German just from the dialect. I got so proficient with it that some didn't even believe I was American.

I find it's easy to do when you live and work with them. It's a sink or swim type thing. My goal was to be able to sit and understand the nachrichten on TV. (news) That was the most difficult, because they would use high German instead of the dialect or slang I was used to.

My youngest daughter went to Brazil in '01 for three weeks. She was able to communicate fairly well from her Spanish studies and having been raised in a multi language environment. While in Brazil, she overheard two people speaking Japanese and went to them and asked very simply (In Japanese of course):
"Excuse me, Are you Japanese?"
They looked at her and laughed "You are from Osaka!"
Osaka dialect has a similar connotation throughout Japan as a "red neck" like language.

When she returned home, she asked us: "Mom, dad, Do I speak Osaka-ben?" We said: "Of course!" She replied "I thought I spoke normal Japanese."

"High Japanese, Queens English equivalent" - is considered polite here but very vague. Most people in formal Japanese language schools think they are learning "communicative Japanese", but in reality are learning the more polite and vague Japanese. For most language learners here, it takes some time before they realize that the specific points of their discussions are NOT being communicated even though they are using the right words.

[jziegler]

I really wish that I could say I speak more than one language, but I don't. I had two years each of Latin and French in high school, and forgot almost all of both of them. When I have traveled in France, I have relied on my wife to translate, as she had much more French in school, and as a classically trained singer, uses French (as well as German and Italian, which she doesn't know as well) professionally. I have tried to refresh and learn more French before trips, and it doesn't work. Before going to Austria a couple years ago, I was working to learn some German using Pimsleur tapes. The method is pretty good, better than any other self learning method I have tried, but it didn't quite work for me. First, they really need to create a series for pleasure travelers, as their tapes use far more business language than I needed. I don't need to know about setting up appointments at the office. I understand that business people are a large target market for them (maybe their primary one, buying new is so expensive, we got the tapes used), but tourists like to use the system too, and need somewhat different vocabulary. I also would do better with a method that has a visual element as well as the spoken one. It didn't help me with the written language, and some of the trouble I had distinguishing words on the tapes would have been better had I seen the words as well. Learning a language is really a challenge for me.

I will try German or French again sometime (and there are a number of other resources out there that I will try sometime). But for now I have to just deal with being a "stupid American" that can't be bothered to know a l;anguage other than English.

Jim

[dbhost]

Yeah, I won't say fluent aside from the derivatives of English I am familiar with. I won't even say I am 100% fluent in the King's English as I am certain my education, and exposure to the mish mash of languages that create the various regional dialects of American English most likely have me off kilter...

My German fluency is pretty much in the toilet. My ex in laws were German nationals, so I had plenty of opportunity to use the language. But it has been so long now, I couldn't get by without a pocket dictionary and asking the speaker to SLOW DOWN.

LOML, or as I like to say, the wife that should have been from the start, comes from a Spanish / Mexico background. Her family was a mere 1 generation in Mexico prior to coming to the states though... So the language there is proper Spanish, and not Mexican Spanish... I have learned enough to get by in the important situations...

Necesito un cuarto de baño. Esas frijoles hicieron algo malo.

¿Seniora, podría conseguir más cerveza por favor?

¿Qué manera a la playa?

See, I know the important phrases!

What is embarassing, is that I have lived in border states for 20 years, surrounded by men and women that speak only Spanish and I have learned so little...

[Alex Franke]

Me spiekez fwelve langvages of differnets, und Inglishes ez mine bestest.