Multilingual

[happycc]

I spoke Cantonese as child and it was my first language. Aunt and Uncle spoke Mandarin. Grandma spoke Toisun. Father spoke Shanghainese. We also lived in Mission Potrero in SF(Spanish Speaking neighborhood and ghetto speak--Yes I had shooo at the end of my sentences sometimes...). I went to a private school that required French in Kindergarten through 6th. My best friend (3rd grade to college) was a German Jew and I spent A LOT of time living at her house and going to temple as a child. Had to learn Latin in 7th and 8th grade. Back to French for High School. Last year of high school I went to some kind of International high school and there I was exposed to Japanese and Arabic. Spanish in college. Had a deaf boyfriend in High School.

 

I am a very very confused person! Sometimes when I go to restaurants and feel like I am eavesdropping in people's conversations. I am carrying on a conversation with someone at my table and then words/phrases and sentences are slipped in from another table. It is hard to focus on the original conversation. People who I am with think I am rude because I can't seem to focus on what they are saying but truly I am just translating all the conversations around me and trying to make sense of it all.

 

Or when I am working with my kids with school work. I am speaking English to them but then suddenly Chinese/French/Spanish phrases pop out here and there. I may not even know it and sometimes my kids look at me crazy and other times they just go along with it.

 

Will my kids be ok?

 

 

Any other multilingual people here? Have you found that learning other language is easier once you are bilingual?

[Jean in Newcastle]

I only know two languages from infancy - English and Japanese. I learned a smattering of Latin in high school (I did poorly). I learned a smattering of French in college (none of which I have retained). I somehow picked up a smattering of Spanish. I tutored deaf students in college and learned ASL from them. I know a few words (mostly related to food) in Tagalog. I learned koine Greek in seminary and the smallest smattering of Hebrew. The only languages that I actually think in are English and Japanese. I sometimes dream in Japanese. There are some words that cannot be translated from Japanese to English or vice versa and if I'm talking, those words come to mind when they fit best. The "language" that I speak best is "chanpon" - meaning a random mix of language (specifically Japanese and English). My kids have learned to respond to certain questions I ask in chanpon like "Were there any denwa?" meaning "Were there any phone calls?"

 

Your kids will be ok.

 

Yes, language learning is easier once you are bilingual. But I had a difficult time with Chinese when I tried to learn it a long time ago since none of my previous language learning was tonal.

[Mabelen]

Haha! It sounds rather fun at your place.

 

I grew up monolingual and monocultural in Spain's 60s and 70s. I then learned English, mostly at college and then in the UK. I also took Italian in college and then kept it up in the UK thorugh lots of conversation exchanges with Italian work mates.

 

I met my Sri Lankan dh in the UK, then we relocated to the US. We are raising our kids Spanish/English bilingual with the One Parent One Language Method. My dh decided not to teach Tamil, his mother tongue, but Tamil words have made their way into our family's vocabulary, in particular terms of endearment and kinship plus food!

 

My kids will randomly ask me to talk to them in Italian, just for the sake of it! And I always tease my youngest that her real mother tongue is neither English or Spanish but Spanglish.

[Arcadia]

Will my kids be ok?

 

Any other multilingual people here? Have you found that learning other language is easier once you are bilingual?

 

Your kids will be okay. We grew up multilingual and speak the correct language to the "correct" relative. We have to translate sometimes :)

Hubby learn english, chinese and cantonese simultaneously before preschool. I learn english, chinese and three dialects. So we skip the bilingual phase. My kids did benefit from hearing us talking in different languages. They did not have any resistance to picking up more languages and are curious to learn.

[happycc]

Being bilingual/multilingual....

Do you ever get tongue tied?

You are speaking in one language and boom you forget a word in that language for whatever reason....but then you can't even remember that word in the other language? Or maybe I am getting Alzheimer's?

 

Do you have an accent? In what language do you have an accent in?

My primary first language is Cantonese and I believe I have an American accent. I am not sure of it though. My mom makes fun of it but other people say I don't. I have a question about Cantonese. When I meet people and speak to them I generally understand what they are saying but when I watch Chinese TV/ new or even cartoons I don't always understand. Why is that? It seems like they are using some kind of different dialect when on TV.

[quark]

He he, I learned basic Cantonese (can't speak it anymore now...out of practice) the other way around...by watching HK movies and learning along with English subtitles. I learned Hindi (also beginner level only but enough to understand parts of Bollywood movies now) the same way.

 

I agree that your kids will be fine. I sometimes mix up several languages when speaking with my kid and he finds it funny. I forget words too and not only in other languages...the other day I forgot the words "effervescent tablets" when referring to Airborne Vitamin C tablets and said "the good stuff" instead and now my son keeps using that and it's funny in a way. It's also nice to have terms of endearment in different languages. I find myself reverting to some languages I learned as a kid when showing affection to my son. It makes the words sound more endearing some how.

[quark]

I met my Sri Lankan dh in the UK, then we relocated to the US. We are raising our kids Spanish/English bilingual with the One Parent One Language Method. My dh decided not to teach Tamil, his mother tongue, but Tamil words have made their way into our family's vocabulary, in particular terms of endearment and kinship plus food!

 

Yummm...Sri Lankan food is superb! Lucky you! :)

[Arcadia]

I learn my cantonese from watching Hong Kong TVB and ATV dramas on videotapes. My in-laws are cantonese so they can speak cantonese to me and I answer in chinese. I don't have an accent though my kids have an american accent. Older has an american accent when speaking chinese. Younger does not have an accent when speaking chinese. They don't have an accent when speaking german.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I have an American accent when speaking English. I have a Japanese accent when speaking Japanese (I know this because people do not know that I am American when I am talking on the telephone). I have a Japanese accent when speaking French! (My French teacher thought that was so funny.) Latin, koine Greek and ASL aren't spoken so I have no accent. I do forget words sometimes. Often I will just go for a synonym.

[ebunny]

I am multilingual. I speak 5 languages and read/write in 4 of them.

Yes, it does get confusing now.:-) maybe my ability to compartmentalise is worse, now that I'm in my early 30s.

As a child, I would speak a language without any dilution. As in, My thought processes were in the same language as I spoke.

 

Fwiw, my DD isn't confused and has picked up a smattering of vocabulary in most of the languages I speak. (She is bilingual)

Yes, learning a foreign language is relatively easier for bi/multilingual

[nutella08]

I'm sure you're kids will be fine. From what I understand, in rest of the world, being multilingual is fairly common. My father is a professional translator and many of my cousins speak on average 6-7 languages fluently including various Chinese "dialects".

 

Mandarin is technically my first language but English is by far my dominant. I can "get by" in Japanese & Spanish. I majored in Linguistics and being bilingual/multilingual definitely made picking other languages easier.

 

I have a question about Cantonese. When I meet people and speak to them I generally understand what they are saying but when I watch Chinese TV/ new or even cartoons I don't always understand. Why is that? It seems like they are using some kind of different dialect when on TV.

 

I don't think it's necessarily dialect, although languages do evolve so the Cantonese spoken in the bay area may have different accent & word usage from HK, which is still different from that spoken in the mainland or SE Asia. However more likely, I find colloquial Chinese is significantly different from "literate" speak of someone with higher education in Chinese. I can carry a basic conversation in Mandarin fairly comfortably but it took awhile to get used to the vocabulary & idioms used in news and other media. Reading bedtime stories and watching cartoons with the kids through the years helped improve my comprehension.

[Neige]

I forget words all the time.

 

I was raised bilingually (mostly English at home, all French at school). I learned to read/write in French, so there are still words I'll sometimes instinctively mispronounce (emphasis on the wrong syllable) when I read aloud in English.

 

My mother speaks German, my grandmother speaks Latvian. I was sent to German school on the weekends when I was younger and there was always a smattering of Latvian words thrown in whenever we were around my extended family.

 

I learned Spanish in high school, and Mandarin in university. Oddly, the "go to" language my brain reaches for when I can't think of a word in Mandarin or German is Spanish. No idea why.

 

At home, I speak French and Mandarin with DS. DH speaks to him in English and Arabic. Our babysitter speaks Mandarin, and my mother speaks to him in German. We also sign to him still, which I think helps as it acts as a sort of "bridge" between the languages. I hope he turns out alright :)

[Rosie_0801]

Latin, koine Greek and ASL aren't spoken so I have no accent.

 

Ha ha ha, I bet you do.

 

 

 

Yeah, I forget words all the time, have a Hearing accent with a hint of Latrobe Uni and stutter in both English and Auslan. Learning Auslan does not make it any easier to learn another spoken language, but it would another signed language.

[OSUBuckeye]

Rosie, thanks for introducing me to Auslan. I mean, now that I think about it, it makes sense that it being called *American* Sign Language would imply the existence of sign languages of other English speaking countries, but I was taken aback for a moment (plus the name is cool, "Auslan", like the Narnia lion).

 

What was most surprising is that even the basics, like finger spelling, is completely different. In that way, it seems learning ASL and then learning Auslan (even though both are loosely based off of English) would be more difficult than learning English and then learning Spanish, because at least English and Spanish share the same alphabet and many words are easily adjusted or are even identical once you accent the syllables differently.

 

After watching countless ASL-translated music videos and all of Switched at Birth (an American family-show with many deaf characters and 'hearies' who make the attempt to communicate through ASL signing), I thought I was pretty well-exposed to this subculture and now I'm amazed to learn about the existence of added communication barriers across country lines for people who are deaf. America just aired its first hour-long TV episode entirely in sign, and yet a deaf Australian wouldn't be able to comprehend the signed dialogue - Crazy.

[Rosie_0801]

What was most surprising is that even the basics, like finger spelling, is completely different. In that way, it seems learning ASL and then learning Auslan (even though both are loosely based off of English) would be more difficult than learning English and then learning Spanish, because at least English and Spanish share the same alphabet and many words are easily adjusted or are even identical once you accent the syllables differently.

 

Uh, yes and no. Both ASL and Auslan are affected by English through borrowing, just as spoken languages borrow off each other. However, Auslan is descended from British Sign Language whereas ASL is descended from French Sign Language. We have quite a bit of borrowing from ASL though, as one would expect considering America's cultural dominance. Some of my old teachers would go out of their way to borrow from the Brits to try and stem the tide of language change coming from the youth, lol. You are incorrect about it being easier to transfer from English to Spanish than one signed language to another. The vocab of signed languages may vary a lot, but the syntax doesn't much. When one considers the amount of initialised signs in ASL (signs based on the fingerspelling handshakes) it's not all that difficult for a proficient user of Auslan to pick up the gist of an ASL conversation.

[Nan in Mass]

II learned Spanish in high school, and Mandarin in university. Oddly, the "go to" language my brain reaches for when I can't think of a word in Mandarin or German is Spanish. No idea why.

 

Neige - This is interesting. I am an English speaker who learned French in high school and have worked on it every since. I am far from fluent, and yet, when my sons and I were learning Latin for school together, when I couldn't think of the Latin for something, what popped into my head was the French word, not my native English. The same thing happened when I was working on Spanish. I would be fishing for a Spanish word, and all I could think of was the French. It was really annoying when I was trying to ask the professor what the word for blank was and had to translate through the French into the English. It happened when I was working on the German Pimsleur tapes, too. With those, you have to answer fast and I substituted French for any German words I forgot. That didn't matter because nobody else was involved. I always thought that my brain got the message that it was not supposed to be using English and as a result, substituted something else, in my case French, that being my other language with any size vocabulary. I only know a smattering of Spanish and German.

 

I bet there is an official name for the phenomenon and that it is well known among people who study how languages are learned. : )

 

Nan

[SeaConquest]

I can relate. I learned Spanish in middle school, French in high school, Russian in the Army, lived in rural Germany for two years, studied Biblical Hebrew, married a French-Canadian, and now have a 4 year old who has been in French/Spanish/Hebrew preschools for the past two years and asks me when he gets to learn Russian. And, we are moving to Mexico in less than two months. We are a pu pu platter of languages in our home. And yes, I am constantly eavesdropping.

[Sahamamama]

Your children will not only be okay, they will be blessed. They will know that the world is full of languages and cultures and wonderful words.

 

My husband grew up bilingual (Arabic & English). He says it's a blessing to be able to think, dream, and communicate in more than one language.

 

His cousin lived in North Carolina (Southern US) as an exchange student. When she went to California to visit her relatives there, her Arabic had a Southern accent. They still just about die laughing when they talk about this, it sounded so funny to them. Imagine, Arabic with a drawl.

 

I have a French Canadian friend who learned English at school -- from a teacher from Germany. Her English has a German accent. When I first met her, I thought she was from Germany! :)

 

I had a professor who had lived in the Middle East so long that when he came back to the US, he would sometimes start teaching in English and then change over to Arabic -- without knowing it! He would write something on the board in English, then change his writing to Arabic. He was so accustomed to teaching in Arabic, he often could not think of the English word for what he wanted to say. And he was born and raised in the US. ;)

[Neige]

Neige - This is interesting. I am an English speaker who learned French in high school and have worked on it every since. I am far from fluent, and yet, when my sons and I were learning Latin for school together, when I couldn't think of the Latin for something, what popped into my head was the French word, not my native English. The same thing happened when I was working on Spanish. I would be fishing for a Spanish word, and all I could think of was the French. It was really annoying when I was trying to ask the professor what the word for blank was and had to translate through the French into the English. It happened when I was working on the German Pimsleur tapes, too. With those, you have to answer fast and I substituted French for any German words I forgot. That didn't matter because nobody else was involved. I always thought that my brain got the message that it was not supposed to be using English and as a result, substituted something else, in my case French, that being my other language with any size vocabulary. I only know a smattering of Spanish and German.

 

I bet there is an official name for the phenomenon and that it is well known among people who study how languages are learned. : )

 

Nan

 

 

Nan - Interesting! I'm glad I'm not the only one! :)

[4KookieKids]

I always thought that my brain got the message that it was not supposed to be using English and as a result, substituted something else, in my case French, that being my other language with any size vocabulary. I only know a smattering of Spanish and German.

 

I bet there is an official name for the phenomenon and that it is well known among people who study how languages are learned. : )

 

 

I had a similar experience but with a different background. I grew up bilingual German-English in Germany until I was 11, but then moved to Colorado and spoke exclusively English from that point on (minus the last two years where I've been trying to "recover" my German and pass it on to my kids! :D) By the time I was in high school, I could understand most any German still, but was hard pressed if actually asked to speak it. Nonetheless, I usually spoke German in place of Spanish when I couldn't recall Spanish words. It took us two years to figure that out -- until I got a Spanish teacher who also spoke German -- because I never registered that I was doing it, and my first few Spanish teachers just assumed I was butchering parts of my oral presentations or mis-remembering words. (The latter, of course, was more accurate than they realized!)

 

It was suggested to me that maybe German and Spanish were "living in the same place" in my brain, but that never settled quite right with me, since my German is mainly instinctual (even if weak), just like my English. I really thought it was what you suggested above, Nan, in that my brain just operated on a "not English" mode when I was learning Spanish. Once I realized what was happening, I think I just changed my thinking to "not English and not German," and I no longer had issues with mixing Spanish and German. But I really think that may have only worked because both English and German were so instinctual (I don't really mean that, but don't know what other word to use) for me.

[happycc]

I remember in college when I was writing essays in French (3rd language) and Spanish(4th language) words would pop up in my writing and vice versa. I don't think it happened when writing English essay-my second language. However my Latin essays (5th language) had a smattering of English, French and Spanish thrown in there I think. My first language Chinese never popped up in any of my other language writing because I can't read and write in Chinese plus Chinese writing is so so different than Romanized letters.

 

So what are the perks of being multilingual?

 

I know one: You know when someone is saying poo poo about you.

[Arcadia]

So what are the perks of being multilingual?

 

 

Employment prospects are better. We were at a bank in Fremont and the tellers and mortgage officers were at least bilingual. Hubby's Germany's colleagues writes their email in both english and Deutsch when communicating with their US counterparts. He has fun reading both languages. I was paid more for being bilingual. I could do technical marketing in both languages.

 

When we are at the mall we can converse in a lesser known Chinese dialect and not worry about unintentional eavesdroppers. Not a perk but my kids can complain in three languages.