What languages do you speak? read? write?

[hanster]

Chinese is my first language and my English is just as fluent, if not better, than my Chinese. I can speak/read/write well in both languages.

I have always wanted to pick up a third language, but instead I just focused on improving the two languages that I'm fluent with. What's everyone's thoughts on that?

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I don't have a second language. However, I have always wondered about the thought process of people who are fluent in more than one language. Specifically, when you speak a foreign language do you think in your own language and then translate or do you think and speak in that language?

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People have asked me that question many times, and in the beginning, I would say the first 4 years of learning English in America, I was still translating stuff into Chinese in my mind process during a conversation. As time progresses the process becomes faster and eventually it reaches a point where I can process in both languages, where my Chinese level fell to meet the rising level of English. As of now I would give myself a 7 in both languages, a 10 being a great writer, grammatically correct in everything and perfect pronunciation.

[Big Poppa Smurf]

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I don't have a second language. However, I have always wondered about the thought process of people who are fluent in more than one language. Specifically, when you speak a foreign language do you think in your own language and then translate or do you think and speak in that language?


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People have asked me that question many times, and in the beginning, I would say the first 4 years of learning English in America, I was still translating stuff into Chinese in my mind process during a conversation. As time progresses the process becomes faster and eventually it reaches a point where I can process in both languages, where my Chinese level fell to meet the rising level of English.

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There was a period of time where I started having dreams in spanish, which was both really cool and really weird. I also somehow managed to speak english in epic hexameter once but I think that was just a fluke.

[RoundTower]

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CTS,

I have both the Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone for every language I know. Completing both of these programs will not get you remotely near being able to actually speak, read, or write these languages. It will give you perhaps the most basic of understandings, but you won't be close to conversational or able to read/write anything more advanced than a child in kindergarten at best.

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I don't know much about either of these programs but this really sounds like all you need to get started. Once you understand the basics you can start trying to puzzle your way through a newspaper or a novel or watch a film in the foreign language. Watching a German film with German subtitles will actually help you a lot if you can read better than you can understand, it is much better for you than a German film with English subtitles where it is too easy to tune out and not really listen.

Unless you are lucky enough to know some German people you won't get much conversational practice outside the German-speaking countries. Although I did strike up a conversation with two old ladies who had lived in Argentina almost all their lives, in a Buenos Aires hospital waiting room.

[RoundTower]

As for me:

English - native speaker
Irish - speak/read/write OK, learnt it in school
French - read it well, speak and understand and write it moderately well. I learnt it in school and spent 6 weeks in a school in Paris. Also some of my family lives in France, I've been back there a few times since.
German - probably a little bit better than French. Learnt it in school and spent 4 weeks in a school in Konstanz. I've been there once since.
Latin - studied it for 3 years in school. Used to be able to read it pretty well and struggle through writing it. With a bit of practice I could pick it up again.
Spanish - due to so much Latin and French I could read a little, and had read a few newspaper/magazine articles before this year. Went travelling in South America this year and picked up a little conversational Spanish, not much more than phrasebook standard. Can't really write it at all. Can read a tiny bit of Portuguese and Italian as well, but coming from French and Latin I found Spanish much easier.

I've thought of trying to learn another language (Spanish/Chinese/Russian), but I've got so lazy and unmotivated in recent years.

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

pimsleur is way over priced for what you get. they have 30 lessons for $250 and they repeat the same thing over and over again in each lesson. 1/2 of lesson 3 is lesson 2 repeated. depending on the language you are learning, you might not be able to find any other resources, but for the main languages, I would shop around.

[JoeDimaggio]

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why ya gotta bust my bubble Metetron pfft

lol, anyways these programs seem like a good start at least and I've been using them/reading 1 German newspaper article and looking up the words each day. Then hopefully a trip to Octoberfest or something. Any other suggestions?

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Whats up CTS This website helped me a lot because I tried basically the same approach to German as you Http://dict.cc or you could just listen to this guy :
http://youtube.com/watch?v=P3mK1tNDZys

[jeffnc]

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Mandarin Chinese: speak, poor; can't read or write.

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Same here. Speaking and reading/writing are COMPLETELY different in this language. But for anyone wanting to learn something, speaking is highly learnable. The grammar is quite simple. No verb tenses. The subtle pronunciation is not easy, but so much is context-based that you will always understand and be understood. One problem is that Chinese people as a whole tend to be very shy about speaking the language with you, don't know why, it's just my experience. Difficult to gain experience with it. But it's exotic, easy, and fun. Pinyin (the English alphabet translation of Chinese) is a help, but there are stupid parts to it too (use of X and Q to sound noises that are nothing like X or Q). Wah shwaw jong wun. Wah she-hwan pai. (That is not the actual pinyin but I think it's closer.)

[jeffnc]

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All,

This will be more interesting if you explain how/why you know these languages.

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Went to grad school with a bunch of Chinese math students. I still remember some of our crazy conversations in our office on campus. I was the funny guy because I tried hard and got my point across but said things in a funny way with a funny accent. Dated a girl who was American but whose parents were Chinese and she helped me along.

[jeffnc]

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Although I have never tried, I understand that Spanish is close enough to Portuguese

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My impressio was the opposite. Played soccer with Spanish speakers and could understand half of what they were talking about. Played with 2 Brazilian brothers, never understood a single word they said. Visited Spain and could understand half of what they were talking about. Visited Portugal and never understood a single word they said.

[sirtimo]

I speak jive