Can You Speak Or Understand More Than One Language?

If you wanted or needed to understand a different language, would you be able to do it?
I currently do not. I have known some who have mastered 3-5 other languages. You'd have a great gift or talent if you can do that.

 

Good morning Radar,

At one time I could speak basic Chinese.

Now, I can no longer hear well enough even to deal with English.

 

I know just enough of several languages to get into trouble, let me share an example. Flying out of North Africa they was a French speaking muslin lady traveling with two small children. She was struggling to keep her veil in place because of one of the children. I offered to help with the child while she got herself squared away. She proceeded to talk to me in French for the next four hours non stop. I understood maybe 19% of it, enough to make polite conversational noises.

I can read enough of several European languages to get the gist of what Iam reading, if it isn’t too technical.

In terms of fluency, I am barely fluent in English.

 

I might be able to muddle through Spanish. Truthfully, I remembered more than I ever thought I learned, but if there was a rating system I would be barely conversant. I really did try to learn. IMHO language is a use it or lose it skill. If you don't practice all the time it won't be there when you need it.

Any venture into a foreign language would probably end up being a game of charades very quickly.

 

Or, can you help/understand broken English as delivered by speakers of other languages? Some English speakers do fine with it, others will not even try.
I can understand enough to assist and give desired outcome.

 

Now that I can do quite well. I learned very early on the necessity of being a good listener. I find that the closer I listen the better I can understand. Sometimes you miss a few things until the light bulb goes on that says " Pay Attention" . Once the focus is regained I am O.K.

One of the most difficult people I ever had to understand was a sweet older lady who had a deep Southern drawl compounded with a cleft palate. She was as nice as can be, but you had to listen with both ears. It was definitely English, but WOW, she was hard to understand.

 

I have great difficulty understanding and dealing with a language called...BS or Bravo Sierra.

It seems to be running wildly rabid all across the airways here in America. You can often tell because the people doing it most seem to be highly emotional Drama Queens...and tend towards wanting someone else to pay for them and their ideas... gratis.

I am thinking that soon enough we are going to need an interpreter for these speakers and sales persons ...sort of like those people who do the sign language on the side of our screens..but instead a BS language interpreter.


My non Ishmaelite .02,
Watcherchris


Footnote...

B. S. Interpreter...closely related to an Ishmaelite interpreter.

 

@watcherchris that's another point altogether.

Interesting how slanged-out, perverted, or accented per the geographical area the English language has become, when you consider inner cities and other locales all around the country that have a pocket of people who, if anyone of us were to visit, we would be hard pressed to understand what they're saying.

 

Disagree here a bit...Radar...

In slanged out...one can also add runaway emotions..to accent one's speech or points being made...and the truth is often lost in translation...hence one needs a BS filter...a BS language filter starting with filtering out all the emotions.

This to the effect that a huge portion of America thinks that runaway emotions determines what is Truth....when it often just covers up BS.

This is often concealed today in such scam tactics used to "Herd " unthinking people by a constant diet of "Victimization" and or emotions to the point where the Victim Dictum has now become a favorite Political Herding Tactic to prevent thinking.

If you do not know or learn how to interpret/translate this BS ...you can easily fall prey to it.

This slang or perversion/BS is all across the media now days and even into public education financed by a deceitful body politic.

Here is an example of needing a BS Filter.....





Interesting to me how many people cannot translate this herding technique..in English.

Oh...and this BS can be done in any language.....to unthinking overly emotional people.


My non Ishmaelite .02,
Watcherchris

 

Radar: I agree the English language has been bastardized beyond belief, but to some extent hasn't that always been the case? People in New York have a hard time understanding people in Alabama and vice versa. People in Appalachia still have their own language. I'm sure other places do as well.

There have always been accents and colloquialisms unique to a region. Language is a dynamic thing. It changes over time. In our opinion it doesn't always change for the better, but it does change. I don't like much of the slang. To me it is just poor English that has been accepted by common use. I think the people at Webster's are still weeping and gnashing their teeth from when they added "ain't" to the dictionary.

 

Morgan 101...there is a certain amount of truth to what you are stating in your post.

Bastardized...agree....much of our language has today been lowered to a newspaper level or below .

When I would find a book which interested me and was also over a hundred years olde...I would find that often I needed a dictionary to keep up with the ebb and flow of the author.

I learned by reading such olde books ..that my vocabulary was severely lacking and still is today.

These people who could read and write back then.....had language and abilities with the spoken/written word...which are very lacking today...and even so with college graduates.


I remember many years ago when moving from the State of Maine to Japan...we drove across this country to Fairfield, California to make our flight connection....

We stopped for directions in San Angelo, Texas and spoke with a Cowboy in a Stetson, Belt buckle, and boots....and as he spoke... all of us in silence realized we could not understand a thing this fellow was saying...

After his pointing and speaking his directions we thanked him and drove off.....asking out loud if anyone in the vehicle could understand a word he said in his Cowboy Drawl.


It was the same in Ashville, North Carolina with their Southern Mountain Drawl....and asking for directions...same effect....as we politely thanked them and drove off...wondering what they had said!!

Back in the rivers around here there are fishermen...clam dredgers...oystermen and fishermen...called Guineaman. They speak a kind of Americanized Cockney English...
It took a bit of listening to realize what it was to which I was listening. It sounds more like a variation of Cockney English.....as if stuck in a type of time warp...time stood still for them.


Thanks,
Watcherchris
Not an Ishmaelite

 

English is my primary language, but I know a fair amount of Spanish, which helps me out living down here in the south. I was studying Finish for a short time, because the girl I was dating was Finish. I know a few sentences in Japanese, taught to me by an old foreign exchange student co-worker of mine.

 

I grew up in Micronesia and could speak Trukese (now called Chuukese) well, since I was one of the few American kids on the island. I took Latin in high school, so I can read most Romance languages with about 50% comprehension. I spent six months in Japan on a project and can stagger through a short conversation in Japanese. However, the only languages in which I am fluent now are English and Spanish.

When we moved to Arizona, I thought everyone was bilingual, so Dawn and I decided to learn Spanish by getting an English-Spanish language text and only speaking Spanish to each other one night a week. We had both kids learn Spanish in high school; after two years of Spanish my son was horrid. Then he got a job working in a restaurant with ilegales and now his Spanish is excellent.

Like it or not, we yanks live in a bilingual country. Anyone who doesn't speak both of our main languages is operating at a disadvantage. Survival is sometimes called the ability to be able to "move, shoot, and communicate"; being able to talk with and understand most people you come across in a post-SHTF scenario makes a lot of sense to me.

 

Does Pig Latin count?

 

I actually can speak a little Spanish. In Texas, it is just so common you just pick it up somewhat. I know enough to talk about what I was doing when I was working doing repairs in rent places. Lots of them have Mexican tenants and I have to let them know what I am doing there.

 

I do not understand what some of you are talking about anyway, so...
Talking about actual language skills, not brainwashing or politics.
I wasn't putting down any region of the country; I am made fun of where I live for the way I sound at times when I am being sarcastic. I lived in an area where I couldn't necessarily understand the English speaking skills of those that lived in the nearby large cities.
Kids today, they talk so fast that I usually have to ask them to repeat what they said, they are also slow on the enunciation.

 

Very few people are truly fluent in a second language, they may be very good but not really fluent

Regional dialects and slang make it difficult to learn a new language. I understand more than I can speak Welsh, German and French. I spend time in Spain but know very little as the majority of locals speak varying degrees of English I've become lazy I suppose. I've met Americans who 'speak' Spanish or Mexican Spanish but arrive in Spain and its a different ball game depending where you go, Valencian won't work for you if you only speak true Spanish for instance.

The English language is the universal language and is in a perpetual state of change and growth, its wonderful.

 

Speaking in more than 3 languages are pretty common outside Anglosphere world. About 2 decade ago I speak 5-6 languages (I never bother to count the exact figure), however due to the lack of native speaker I could talk to with some of those languages my proficiency in those languages were also diminish . Personally up until my late teen my mother tongue is Bahasa Indonesia, follow by Nederlands & English as second language, and Javanese as tertiary languages. In practice whenever I converse with my mother we use a mix of 3 languages in a single sentence, although when my father around we merely use 2 languages because my father doesn't speak Nederlands. After I grown up I've also learn other languages such as 日本語 / Nihongo, français, and Deutsch (the last one is due to my current gf), along with other languages that were believe to be near extinct by some western linguistic professor . My main obstacle to learn any languages is whenever I couldn't use the languages to speak to anyone (lack of native speaker to talk to) my proficiency is also rapidly diminish, which is the case with my proficiency in 日本語 / Nihongo & français.

 

@varuna, just curious....when you are thinking, which language do you think in?

(Leave it to me to ask oddball questions, lol.)


.

 

Believe it or not my thought language is actually English . And that give me a lot of communication problem in my last job because I need to talk & write report in Bahasa Indonesia + English throw in the mix including when addressing anyone above me, and using Bahasa Indonesia + Javanese along with another languages when addressing my subordinate, and yet the company form / paper work template is in English (it was an Australian company), so it's kinda chaotic thought process

 

Chaotic indeed! Good thing I’m not in your shoes; I would be a messy mass of confused impulses.

Wait a minute...I already am. So there’s that, lol.

It is said that the English language is one of the hardest to learn. I don’t know if that is really true or not, but I would imagine that parts of the English language can be mighty confusing to someone learning it.

 

If you think that was chaotic, try linking Russian missile into NATO standard tracking & targeting system (making them talk to one another). It was a freaking NIGHTMARE and disaster waiting to happen (luckily it doesn't happen). Looking at those technical documentation in Cyrillic script already giving me a serious headache

For day to day conversational it's not difficult at all, but then again I had been raise in multilingual environment since early age. In fact I found it's difficult to learn Mexican. I mean back in the early 90's when I went to Disneyland Florida everybody still speak English, however looking at those Youtube videos it seem everybody there speaking Mexican these days and I don't have the slightest clue what was being spoken

 

I had to look that up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_script OUCH.

Your poor adrenals must have gone through serious depletion over that. Congratulations. You have survived SHTF school, and are ready for the next grade!

Mexican? I would have never thought that, but I am not in a position to judge because I know very little of the language.


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Being an American allows you to get by speaking only one language where in Europe you can drive a few miles and encounter several different languages. The US is probably about the only place where a person can be considered well-educated and still only speak one language.

With that said, American English is one of a thousand dialects. Depending on where you are raised you will speak and use a language form that is very specific to that area. I was raised in South EAST Texas and in my native tongue, there are all sorts of words that are not English in origins. I was raised with people that spoke some Spanish and also a lot of Cajuns that spoke a lot of Cajon French. To some extent, this local has a sort of pidgin mixed dialect that uses words from all three languages in common conversation. My wife's family comes from an area that is very Germanic and they use a lot of German words even when speaking English and to some extent often use a lot of more guttural accents even on the English words.

You would never mistake a Texan for being from Boston. We have our own version of English. When speaking among ourselves if you actually listen to the sounds and not only hear the meanings you wonder how people ever communicate with us. "I don't know" can be fully communicated by a tonal hum that is made with the lips closed. Even when spoken it can come out as I-on't-owe. In the deep south, a plural for a group of people is you-all, in Texas, it is y'all and if you are from Boston it might be youse-guise. (Had a girlfriend from Boston and loved he accents). My wife can get three syllables out of star with her long southern drawl.

The thing is that the US is huge and made up of people from all over the world. A Brookland Yankey may have almost as much trouble understanding a Mississippian as a French person talking to an Italian. Most educated Americans can speak a sort of Midwestern accented form of English. This is what the people use on TV unless they are specifically and intentionally speaking in dialect. Some educated ignorant people look down on these dialects but to me, it adds spice to language and I love to hear the different sounds from other places.

 

Good evening TexDanm,

Do all y'all Texans still use those ice pick style awls in the crank case of your vehicles ?

 

I used to be partially conversational in Spanish and Khmer, but it's been so long since I had the opportunity, I don't know if I still am. Knew the "Bad words" in Korean, Thai, Filipino and a couple others to know when I was being cussed. LOL! Most GI's do.

Dale

 

Most brits don't have second language skills that are useful. Here in Wales children learn some Welsh, all learn some French or German but don't follow on after leaving School. Some Schools are now teaching Spanish which makes sense given its the fourth most spoken language on the planet.

For those of you who've not heard Welsh being spoken

 

Beautiful sounds, but I couldn't catch a single word.

 

I just notice this video. Pls correct me if wrong, but it sound a bit like Occitan

 

It's Welsh, Wales. Part of U.K.
Funny, I thought it sounded Russian. My daughter thought it sounded German, but you can still here the lilt of Celtic, Scottish, Irish, English.

 

I am Welsh on my Mother's side, (her father/my grandfather was 100% Welsh) but have never heard it spoken. Thank you for sharing. Any idea on the translation?

I will still stand by the fact that language is a use it or lose it skill. You can learn, but if you have no way to practice and keep up you will forget. I have always had a good ear, and was able to learn and pronounce correctly and quickly, but never had the opportunity to sustain the learning process. JMHO, but I always thought if I could be immersed in a culture for three months or so I could be proficient.

 

That is the main reason I lose my proficiency in 3 languages ( Nederlands, 日本語 / Nihongo, français)

It's depend in the languages / culture. 3 months is extremely short amount of time to gain comprehensive understanding of language if your not familiar with the root of the language or their native culture.

 

Maybe "conversant" is a better term. I may not fully understand it, but I could speak/converse and understand what was being said. I agree it does depend on the language. I think having to learn an entirely new alphabet would compound the problem, and lengthen the process.

 

In the video they are talking about the importance of keeping the Welsh language (Cymraeg) alive and in use. I'm hopeless with the language but the wife speaks it well. Its a good thing to keep alive, its part of our heritage. All road signes are in English and Welsh. Towns often have a different name in Welsh.

 

Thank you. I think before this the only things I knew about Wales were where it was and Ian Woosnam.

 

Five of the first six Presidents were of Welsh stock

http://hisdoryan.co.uk/american-presidents-of-welsh-descent