Knowing more than one language

[Deleted]

Yeah, I grew up with english pretty much, swedish being first language. Could already speak english to a somewhat understandable degree when we started with it in school. Got TV to thank for that, lol. Can speak some german as well but by no means would I be able to hold a proper conversation in german.

[Deleted]

As most Belgians: dutch,french, english and german. I had latin too although I wouldn't say I know the language well

And then I have norwegian since I live there and with that comes a small understanding of swedish and danish.

[Deleted]

I know swedish, english and french and ofc I understand the norweigan and danish neighbours due to language similarities (and ofc the swedish speaking finns, moomin accent ftw). Swedish mother tongue, we start learning english early in sweden and we have it everywhere on tv, music, books and nowadays ofc internet, french I started learning at a bit later age in school and also took university course and I worked in Paris one summer. It's harder to keep the french going, not very much surrounded by it here in sweden, so Im happy in games when french people every now and then show up so I get to practise. I can speak and write it fluently, but since I don't speak it very often it takes a while to get back into it. I should go to France more often :P

[randomnamegenerator16]

Silesian as my first native language (and I probably know it better than my parents and grandparents), polish as a second one. C1 in english and maybe A2 in french. I also have no problem in reading russian and ukrainian cyryllic alphabet.

[haxartus]

I did give room for some specific areas in it that do require a degree of creativity and understanding, but most of it?

Yeah, most of it. What you learn in school and college is pretty much nothing. The school part is 1600 years old, the college part is roughly from the year 1600 to the year 1800. Nothing above that is taught in any level but specialized scientific majors like pure mathematics, so pretty much anyone is missing about 200 years of mathematics development.
Current top level math research is actually dealing with the fact that several mathematical fields seem to be interconnected on an unknown level and when a theory is constructed to unify them, this theory is starting to give new information about the physical reality without having any direct connection to any discoveries in physics whatsoever.

[Incarnia]

Swedish and English. But I also do read Norwegian and Danish without a problem, can't speak it though.
In School I did study both Spanish and Italian, but I can say that I've forgotten most of it by now. Haven't been surrounded by neither language since I was done with school. I'm sure a lot of it would come back though, if I lets say were to go on a vacation to those countries, or start studying the langauge again.

[Random010203]

english and really bad french. probably better than most people in canada who dont live east but thats not saying much. learning chinese, hindi, punjabi, tagalog or even spanish would have been more beneficial than the mandatory french classes we had for all of school. supposedly bilingual country and yet no french people anywhere out here and we still somehow have to learn their language???

Tagalog is actually a beautiful language in my experience, it's essentially a blend of chinese and spanish, which makes sense considering where the Philippines are located and their history. It has some actual uses as well here in the US considering many cities have Filipino towns

[Chiquihuite]

Protip: dont waste money in schools, their methods are bad.
You dont need to learn grammar, ever, it just confuses you, as you learn a language it all becomes intuitive.
Also, if you can, learn to speak/listen before you bother with writing if its an odd language that uses different characters, its a lot easier to learn to write/read once you have a decent grasp of the language.
if it uses same writing system, go ahead.

Agree with skipping the "school" approach. They only teach you academically "about" language so you can pass tests, rather than focusing on how to actually use language. I did 5 years of Spanish in Middle/High School and we weren't exposed to even a single native book, movie, etc during that time. Our immersion consisted of textbooks and a couple recorded songs. Complete waste of time.

However, I'd argue that a basic foundation in grammar is important and will save you time later. I don't think you need an academic level of knowledge ("this is the reflexive passive form of the blah blah..."), but IMO it's highly efficient to invest a lot of effort into internalizing basic grammar principles before you start worrying about building a substantial vocabulary.

I'd also argue that (at least for Japanese) it's very important to learn the writing system *first* over speaking/listening. This is partly because reading is the most flexible and widely available form of immersion, and partly because (at least for Japanese) there are many things that just make way more sense when you see them written down. To illustrate my point, I present this Twitter account- https://twitter.com/nihomophones (all of the words in caps have similar or identical pronunciation, and for learners are hard to distinguish without seeing their written form)

[pateuvasiliu]

Do you know more than one language?
How/when did you learn it/them?
Is it something common for your area or something for a personal reason? (I'm thinking of trying Filipino in the future, as a fair amount of my neighbors speak it.)

1. I know Romanian ( native ), English ( fluent ), French ( so-so ). I can understand Spanish and Italian, though that's because they're fairly close to french and romanian.

2. Every kid starts learning English when he's 8, in the second grade. From then on you'll be learning English until you're 18. I learned French in Secondary/High School, about 8 years.

3. It's common. What with us joining the EU it's pretty much expected in any job that you know English. And for good reason. A person that's under 40 and doesn't know English strikes me as uneducated. I would not hire someone like that.

[Deleted]

Simple if you're not english man or not american. In these days you simply must learn english language. I'm from Poland. So I'm still learning english, german. Life is brutal.