I can speak 5 languages. It's not really fun when you forget words and only remember it in a certain language Edit: Wow I forgot I even made this comment but it's great that so many people can relate to it. Yet it seems that 15 year old me that wrote this comment 3 years ago did not learn her lesson of how confusing keeping languages apart can be because I then went on to learn 3 more languages lol.
I speak English, French, Swedish, Lingala and Spanish but I'm not really fluent on spanish. I live in Sweden so I'm constantly speaking and learning Swedish. I come from a Belgium colonised country, that's why I can speak French and Lingala but I only speak in French or Lingala to my grand parents uncles and aunts from Congo. I used to live in South Africa and that's where I learned English and I have been speaking English fluently ever since I was maybe 5 or 6. It's the only language I speak to my siblings in. As for Spanish. I just thought myself the language for fun. I was hoping to go to a Spanish speaking country this summer to test how good I really was but instead I'm going to France.
samee...finally someone understands me..it happens to me a lot of times especially with people who speak only one language, it means I have to remember it in that exact language :( downloading dictionary app on your phone will really help you.
***** In Sweden you can choose which language you want to learn at school. You can learn, spanish, portugese, french, english or german. The students can choose which language they want to learn but you have to know english and swedish in school to be able to finish middleschool or highschool
Jesse V I may have a little piece of advice for you. Before trying to express what you are going to say, give yourself a few seconds, two or three would be largely enough, to think of the proper and appropriate words you are going to use and quickly picture it in your mind into a simple but sophisticated language. If my advice doesn't work on you go consult a psychiatrist and tell him about your problem. This issue of having difficulty responding to simple and casual questions may be due to stress that unables you from thinking right or properly! Well, good luck mate!
I speak english, french and spanish fluently and can speak pretty good portuguese, but sometimes the word is like in my head and is easy but i cant find it or say it, then i feel dumb for not remembering, that s annoying
+Rapidz “Rapidz557” Bro Same for me, I also speak English, Spanish and French and sometimes it can be frustrating not being able to find the word I'm looking for in the moment because all that comes to my mind is the expression in the other language :P
+Rapidz Bro “Rapidz557” Yeah I know how's that, I also speak spanish, english and french (I can also understand a little bit of portuguese). Sometimes i feel ashamed because of these situations.
leo pard You need to make a little research to see what they're talking about, this video was very brief.. the studies suggest that when learning two languages your brain will have more activity, for example when you see an object you will automatically think of its name in both languages, this also makes you better at retrieving information because your brain makes much more connections, however studies haven't shown that knowing more than two languages will improve those abilities, someone who knows 5 languages will have those abilities at the same level of someone who knows 2 languages.
I speak Mongolian, Russian and English and I mix words a lot, it makes me feel uncomfortable when I speak someone who speaks only one language, I choose words carefully.
no it's not. At least most people in Spani learn English but never become bilingual (spanish-english). Their competence in English is suuuuuuuuuper low so not good news for those people
Having French as my native tongue, speaking English and currently learning Japanese. I've found that i can be very different depending in which language i think. I tend to think deeply about stuff and have easiest complex decision making it is also easy and more natural for me to talk about personal or intimate subject in English than in French but that's because of the different nature of these languages i guess. On the downside, i suffer a lot from delayed lexical access principally because i have no social life and other people to talk to. What is awesome about being bilingual is the understanding of the nuances of languages that give so much more in everyday life while interacting with people and different type of humor. You can laugh so much more about anything with your multicultural mind, it give a better insight of the world and if bilingual people react less emotionally it's because they take a step back and look at things with more perspective resulting in better decision making.
It's funny how I'm just like you (yes, I am French too), also I do not have the problem of speaking the languages I'm practicing (being French and English) most of my friends also speak English but finding people to interact with to increase my Japanese level is way harder
Actually yeah, learning and speaking english has actually ruined my swedish.. I have a really hard time making sense in swedish in the same way that I am able to in english. >_
The same thing kind of happened to me, except I don't speak Swedish. I speak Finnish. When I speak in Finnish, especially about science, school, things I've learned about, but only in English etc., I don't know a lot of the words I need to be able to say what I want to say.
same here, but with german. it happens multiple times a day, where i just stand in front of family and friends and they are waiting for me to find the right word in german^^
***** The problem is not making errors, but rather that you throw in anglicisms, because you only can think of the english word, for example. And that you start pausing in a sentence to think of the correct word, also is somewhat problematic. I experience both things more often than not.
It's a pain in the ass. I never find any words in any language when I speak. It's easier when I write (even though I almost never write in my first language), but still horrible.
Totally true about being slow at finding my words sometimes XD I even go as far as express some thoughts in a different language than the one that I am speaking
me tooo! I am Greek and I speak English too (Obviously) and sometimes while I am talking to others I can't find a word in Greek and I end up saying it in English :P
XD yeap, and at firs I thought that was because of using to much English on the internet but I read a lot on my mother language too so, but now I have a better explanation
AsgarorHammer In my case I beleive it is the far too much use of english... Besides the Internet, I read a lot of English Books because I like reading books on the language they were originally written and I have read the whole Trilogy of The Hunger Games and Divergent
My name is german but i've spoken more french than i've been to Germany. J'écris des livres means i write (some) books. Je suis désolé means i am sorry.
I suppose it's gotta get confusing when you have to say 'exterminate' in hundreds if not thousands of languages across the universe (maybe that's why Daleks seek genocide; to reduce the number of languages they have to learn).
Neion8 There are currently 6 768 412 612 languages known to this day by Daleks. And it's not why we exterminate this much. It's because other species are not Daleks, so they have to die.
Knowing both English and Spanish allows me to understand context. Even if I don't understand a language, I can still sort-of tell what they're saying. Even though my native language is Spanish I think in English and mostly find writing in English more comfortable. I also sometimes fail to tell if I'm watching a show or movie in English or Spanish, sometimes half through hearing what they're saying or reading subtitles is where I think about what language I'm reading, I simply understand both so well it's hard to sometimes think about which one I'm looking at, since I understand both. I can also tell a few languages apart without knowing them, like French, Portuguese, Russian, German and Japanese. I think the key to learn another language is simple, pay attention to context, look at the words and understand why they are used the way they are used, try and understand in depth every word, practice and repeat those words, have conversations with yourself using that language or find someone who knows it to practice. It's all about practice and paying attention to context.
I'm Portuguese and last year i visited my family in Colorado and then we spent a week in a resort in Mexico, there were a lot of European there and i realize that, even tho i can only speak Portuguese and English, i could understand Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian ... i guess its because that Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian comes from Latin ... a death language.
Ruben Marinho Yeah, all languages derived from Latin are easier to understand to us. Now and then I hear a word in Portuguese that is similar in Spanish.
haha, it reminds me that one time I looked up a video and thought I saw it in French ( my first language) but I watched it in english, so when I searched what it was I couldn't find it anymore because I was searching it in french.
Miroslav Erdelyi cheers man. :) and so ive noticed. XD learning the words and sentence structure isnt TOO hard so far; but the speaking and listening to it is so confusing.... ;_; it makes me long for japanese's simple pronunciation. hahaha
I don't know Japanese, but the grammar is the worst part of French, in my opinion. It took me 3 year in school to learn it, but now I'm ok at it. I can keep a conversation and all, but it's hard to be grammatically correct in it. Je ne parle pas Japonais, mais je pense que le grammaire est le plus difficile partie de français. Il m'a pris 3 ans pour le apprendre, main maintenant je peaux le parle bon. Je pouvais fait de conversation, mais c'est difficile d'être grammaticalement correct.
Miroslav Erdelyi yeah... thats probably because ive been going through the basics. :P i jut admit it the grammar is starting to get alot harder (and looking at your translation it seems its going to keep doing that XD). ah well; ill get there. and japanese is really easy is that respect. they pretty much break down their words into syllables/sounds that you just read/spoken by stringing them together; and how they are spoken is very rarely affected by context. for instance: ありがとう is broken down to a-ri-ga-to-u, which is the same way you speak it; with the only complexity being that the 'u' at the end extends the 'to' sound (though you still really say the 'u', its just more subtle because it becomes part of the syllable). i hope that was educational? XD of course im only talking about pronunciation here; the grammar isn't too difficult either, though it does take awhile to get used to. i wont get into it here; or this comment is gonna be way too massive. :P EDIT: OH BTW; do you know of any good resources for french, particularly with learning pronunciation? that'd be greatly appreciated. :)
I had a funny situation related to the 'activates multiple languages' note toward the end. I studied Spanish in high school for three years. Then I went to college and took Japanese for two years. I went back to visit my high school at one point and had a chat with my 3rd year Spanish teacher. I could totally understand her, but I could only come up with answers in Japanese. Eventually I told her in the best Spanish I could muster at the time we'd have to continue in English because she just wasn't going to be able to understand all the Japanese in my head. Since then my Japanese has gotten a little stale which I hope to remedy. But I've been using Duolingo to keep my Spanish and pick up a few others. Portuguese was tough at first due to strong similarities with Spanish, but over time that got a lot better. If anyone reading this video plans to pick up new languages I'd highly recommend one that's very different from your native language. It's a lot more challenging, but it really changes the way you think about the world. Japanese was an awesome experience and I'm now enjoying the struggle of Vietnamese, Russian, and Irish Gaelic, among others. I'll never be fluent or even conversational in most of them, but it's just awesome to be able to look at a mess of Cyrillic or Japanese text and get a rough idea of what's being said.
I speak dutch,cantonese,madarine and english. My goals is to learn every language on earth. So i'm planning to rise the whole world,and it only takes me 3 years to speak another language fluently.
Grace 夢幻專家 i have a question for you, if it only takes you three years to be fluent in any language so are you planing to learn many languages at the same time? 'cause you may live for 100 years (just an example) so you'd learn something like 30 languages(more or less).
Think about it... and it's possible for you to learn many languages at the same time, there are many polyglots who do that but i don't know how they manage to do it... do you know how many languages are on earth?
I can say I started learning English a couple of years ago and it's beeb the best decision I could have made. My world is bigger now. Once you learn a new language you get interested in learning others and then you realize that it gets easier to learn a new one since you can apply many of the knowledge you've gotten with the second language plus the first one. My next goal is Portuguese and I'm getting better in it day after day.
Totally agree on the losing words when speaking thing.. I speak 3 languages and sometimes It's hard to not mix words of other languages into the conversation I am having in a particular language. Finding the best words to use in a particular situation gets relatively hard too sometimes.
Sometimes for me, the problem is not finding the right word : I have the perfect word, but it's in my second language (English) and I can't find an equivalent in my first language (French). When that happens, my brain just freezes and I have to build a whole sentence to replace that word.
The whole time I was thinking... "Who is this awkward girl? I feel uncomfortable watching..." Then you got to the delayed lexical access and I understood that even though she has a really good accent, she is not a native speaker. I get that quite often in all the languages I speak (including my mother tongue T__T )... It's awful when you want to get a point across and you just get stuck because you mix up all the words in your head! My boyfriend knows when I really, really, am upset because I start mixing in Spanish or French words into the argument! xp
I think it's so cool and I grew up speaking English and hearing Spanish, I spoke Spanish ocassionly but now I want to be fluent in Spanish because it's a great language. I also live in Arizona were being Biligual is highly desiered and you get paid more. I have the accent ingrained in me and understand it pretty well. I need to take a class on top of my Associates in Business Degree. This is my next goal!
I totally agree with the research, sometimes I find it difficult to recall a word in my native language. And yeah, I prefer English to Spanish. As well I'm amazed, I don't have to think anymore to try to understand English, it flows naturally. I've been studying it since age 6 now I'm 22, at first it was a subject in school, the it became a hobby. Since I've nobody to practice with, listening to American radio stations is what keeps my English always improving. P.S. I love Country Music
Since starting to learn Korean a couple years back, I agree with this. Such different languages bring with them different perspectives which is great for exercising the mind, and also I now have hiccups in my English speaking at times where I want to say things in a more Korean-structured way.
I think unless you live a english speaking country... you basically have to speak more than one language, and of those languages being English. There's and old joke who goes sort like this: There are people who speak multiple languages, we call them multilingual. There are people who speak two languages, we call them bilingual. There are people who speak one language, we call them Americans.
Russians had the same problems, english speakers have, (and frenchs to a certain degree), They were dominant countries ... so they speak their language. The other countries have to adjust. Often, in a country of immigration, locals speak their language and immigrants speak their native language + the local language, and since they opened the door, children would tend to have more ease in learning a third language ... and another language. So in Russia, Russians spoke only Russian, the Tatar, Georgians, Armenians ... talk their language + Russian. But Russia has changed and many learn English. Or German. Frenchs have the same problem ... . the worst are the Anglo-saxons. Switzerland is a small country ... nobody adapts to us, we have to adapt to the others = everyone is at least bilingual, most speak 3 languages. Many speak 4, I speak 6 + 2 badly + 1 learning.
Very proud to be bilingual, and very happy that it has lots of benefits. My first language is Spanish, and I learned English thanks to school and, most importantly, my own will. I honestly think it's one of the best things I've ever done, it has given access to tons of information, resources and entertainment I couldn't have accessed otherwise. It was a tremendous advantage in college when I needed to do research for a paper. Maybe someday I'll get on with learning a third language.
I love learning languages. Although I do occasionally need a moment to pull up a word (I'm not sure if it's gotten worse though, since bilingualism) it's usually a word that people rarely use anyway. I believe that people who intentionally learn a language noticably improve their articulation and fluidity of their native language, even if they occasionally need a second to find that perfect word.
Well most of us non native English speakers that are watching this are bilingual to some extent at least. And yes it's really true that people that talk two languages can be slower in picking words, I know that because more often than not I can't remember a word in my native language that i know in English for instance. Simply you learn different stuff in different languages, and sometimes I know what something means in English but I cant translate it instantly to my language.
That happens to me all the time, the problem is I'm a salesman and I need to express my thoughts easily, which I can't do all the time. Today I gave a price to a costumer half in Arabic half in English. that sux.
I speak Brazilian Portuguese native, Fluent English, Intermediate French, Beginner Japanese. And it feels awesome :) Aw and i understand Spanish cause of my Portuguese although i dont speak Spanish cause i dont like it ;)
Depends which Spanish you want to learn. The Latin American is pretty acceptable, I dont survive the Spain spanish though. Its as if the whole country has a constant lisp.
lol, hate that guys, I can't understand brazilian portuguese either. I'm from the next champion of the nation world cup, Uruguay, so I speak spanish as well as english. Don't learn portuguese, is useless :_
Learning languages is a fun hobby. My biggest tip is once you understand some grammar (wiki) and some of the top used verbs and nouns (wiki) then watch things in English with subtitles in another language. You'll add to the vocabulary while enjoying a show that has basic conversations in it. I would say Spanish and French would be the most useful and easiest as well. You'll start to notice it all around you and you can nit pick words to find their ancient roots. RUclips will help you on listening and getting lectures. Russian is cool because of how similar it is to Latin. It is my favorite language right now. Arabic is the best to write because of how it feels to write and because of its super short words ;). I imagine Chinese will be the easiest to read, but I'm nowhere near that level now. A good book to help with the characters is "Remembering the Kanji". I wish I lived in Europe because there you can find so many languages wherever you go; on the street, in games, and on the tube.
About that research with old men from Edinburgh - it shows correlation between the test results and bilingualism, but not causation. It's equally possible that those who were intellectually gifted decided to learn a second language or managed to learn a language enforced by school or parents (e.g. Gaelic) to a level that it became useful.
MiranUT A ton of Americans speak two languages because a lot of us come from Mexico. It would be best if everyone spoke English and learned a second language like Spanish.
Love it!... Nowadays I have to read and speak three languages: English, portuguese and spanish, and I am having a looooot of "delay lexical access" when switching from one to another, it is funny but kind of annoying at the same time.... Eu acho que leio muito mais rapido que quando nao falaba as treis linguas.... Personalmente me identifico con los resultados de los estudios! Gracias por compartir de una forma tan fresca.
I'm learning three languages now Spanish, Turkish, and German. The first two because those are parts of my culture and the other because I'm fascinated with the German language. My main point in bringing this up though is to mention that since I have been learning these I do feel a higher sense of awareness and an enhanced ability to think critically with a concise fashion. So with that I do recommend to others the enriching hobby of language learning!
I can fluently speak 3 languages (plus a few more).. And can actively switch or alternatingly swap/shuffle languages at will... But am not the sharpest tool in the shed...
I speak both swedish and english fluidly. im not that good at the english grammar but its good enough. i learned german for about 3 years but i cant speak or understand it, i understand and can say some small phrases. The way many learn language is kinda wrong according to me, many learn languages as a extension of the language they already speak, the best way of learning a language according to me is watching youtube, Thats where i learned almost all my english.
***** That is mainly how i tried to learn it after about a year of study. i cant learn more than 2 languages, the main reason why i stopped learning german is becouse my english became worse.
JohannesLazorFREETIME Well, bilingual is quite common so there could be a threshold going to 3 languages. Probably useful to have a strong motivation. I can't spell German very good but I can read it. I can understand it so so but I don't have a full accessible vocabulary so I'm slow. But I can at least visit a German speaking country: Has du ein zimmer für mich? Ja, Ich habe aber das ist ... gelt. Very basic.. According to scientific research you mental capacity will grow if you tackle a third language so that could be a good motivation though.
I am one of thise people who know multiple languages. I speak all fluently dutch, french, Spanish and english and I amcurrently going for a 5th one (Japanese). I can definetly confirm from my personal experience that knowing different languages helps like a LOT! And from personal experience, cannit confirm whether that disadvantage is real or not {nzver really thought of it}. But, I can confirm that ecen if it is true in my opinion it has more advantages then disadvantages. I am only 20 years old but what I can confirm is that knowing a ne language opens your mind so much, it majes you more tolerant and it also happens to open up many doors! There's nothing more amazing then being at an airport and being able to communicate with essentially anyone making new friends for example, it makes visiting a country easier, it gives you better jobs etc. What I mean with all this is it is never too late to learn a new language. And a lot of people say it is not needed and that's where they are wrong knowing a new language has so many advantages that there will always be a reason to learn it.
I am trilingual of Chinese madarin (growing up speaking it), Japanese (started learning at 12), English (Picked it up since elementary school as 2nd language, and graduated from a US high school and currently doing college in us) I do find difficulty to think of the proper words and mix them up sometimes. Nice video BTW
At least you can talk to lots of people. Even if your ONLY skill is foreign language, it's enough to consider you well educated, which to many, is the same thing as smart.
I REALLY want to become bilingual, it seems like it has so many benefits. I've studied Latin in school (although it's quite hard to have a conversation considering not many speak it, especially considering I was only taught how to read & write it), and I've tried teaching myself French and Swedish with little progress. I just don't have the time, resources or need to learn a second language. At least not yet. To all the multilingual people in the comments, kudos to you! I have deep respect for anyone who's smart enough and passionate enough to master two or more languages. Keep it up (and maybe share some of your tips with me :P)!
I started learning Spanish when I was in kindergarten and it has inspired me ever since. I learned French (though not fluently), I speak Spanish well, of course English, and most recently started learning Swedish. I wish to be a very fluent polyglot in the future. If it helps look up the app Duolingo, it helps a TON.
MegaSupernova888 I'm learning French at the moment. And then I'm going to start Spanish. I guess the main thing is to just have a deep appreciation for the language itself - the feel and bounce of the words, the history of the language as well as the people who speak it.
Utilisez FluentU améliorer votre français; c'est très utile. Il y a des courses pour apprendre le chinois, le français (bien sûr), allemand, espagnol, et japonais.
I DEFINETELY have this delayed lexical access thing(even with my mother tongue!)! I've never known that might be common thought. makes me feel better. :)
Your right about having difficulty thinking of a word when speaking. I learnt Greek and English growing up. Now I am learning Italian in my sixties and I do exhibit that phenomena "delayed lexical access" as well as a few other problems :-).
I've always been smarter than other people in my entire life, in both street and school smarts. My first language that I learned was Russian. As soon as I turned 3 I knew my abcs in English and spoke Russian. I started kindergarden a year latter. I'm now learning French in school, and I'm also learning Japanese with my cousin. It's fun to learn different languages, but I need to start brushing up on my Russian because I've started to think in English ( you know that little voice in your head that you hear when thinking about something, or even reading something like this ). And because of that I've started to have an American accent in my Russian and a slight Russian accent in my English. New Years resolution? I think yes.
WTF DID I JUST FIND THE STORY OF MY LIFE!? everything you wrote there same with me x.x Russian was my first language I learned my abcs and proper English by the age of 3 from the result of moving to Canada and that was a necessity I have majored in French and im learning Japanese! I have always had a accent in every language I have ever spoken but no one can figure out what accent it is :/
My native language is Slovak, I guess it'd be the most closely attributed to Polish and Czech to those who don't know it. I'm 15 and have adopted the English language at about age 14 I think, by adopting I mean getting to the point of thinking in the language instead of having to translate sentences in my head, speaking fluently and getting rid of the obnoxious Slovak accent. English is practically my primary language now. And honestly it's fucked my Slovak over nicely, I often have to throw english words into my language mid-sentence because I can't remember the correct phrase. Many people get extremely annoyed at this, seeing as it's technically the same thing as a weeaboo saying 'kawaii desu arigatou onii-chan' mid-sentence. Except I have little to no choice of course. This is extremely painful around older teachers who don't understand what I'm saying when bieng quizzed half the time, I even had a teacher who despised me for it. :^) Being bilingual can be fun, just remember you'll be put into even funnier situations thanks to your certain words from one language screaming for attention in your brain whilst you're looking for their synonyms in a different language.
Im slovak too and know exactly how you feel. also had to learn fluent polish as i work with them every day in uk. once you know a language as your own you will think in them all. basicaly you start a sentence and in English then skip to slovak then back to polish and over again without realizing it.
My first language is Faroese, second is Danish and third is English. I was proficient in all of them before the age of 18, and now I'm fluent in all of them at the age of 24. :) I definitely feel like the languages have changed the way my brain works, and skills I learn in one language help me get a deeper proficiency in the others. I recommend you get at least one extra language over your native one. :)
languages are a tool of communication. the more tools you can manage the more abilities you have to learn, read and communicate. plus it opens a brand new section of the brain and exercises the muscles within. yes i do believe it makes you not only smarter but more able to see different perspective and speak a brand new language called franglais.
So true my Indian brother..i can definetely relate since im an indian too! infact most well educated indians know 3 LANGUAGES : English (International Lang.) Hindi (Medium of communication among Indians) and the language of the state they belong to! ;) i personally know 4 languages : English (Duh!) Hindi (naturally being an Indian) Malayalam (derived from my state) and French (learned Foreign language at Highschool yaay!)
I think that what you said is correct when thinking about myself, I speak Swedish, English and a little bit of French. Since Swedish is my native language, I still "think" in Swedish even though I am in ex. the US. Sometimes I have to search for words as well, and sometimes I get a bit irritated on myself for knowing the English word but that I have to think for a few seconds to remember the Swedish word in a conversation.
But multilingualism can mean that either someone either consciously tried to learn another language, or naturally grew up with multiple languages, or a combination of the two. That can make a big difference in intelligence and should have been noted here.
As a Canadian, therefore having two official languages (English and French), I feel like a bad Canadian for only knowing English. Trying to learn though, just hard to learn new language at 24
I'm from quebec and have always wondered: do they teach french up to highschool secondary 5( grade11 ?), or only up to grade 6 ? cause here in quebec they teach english up to secondary 5 ( also where are you from?)
Ha, one of my students is 81 and is learning just fine a second language.... Age is not as a big factor as many believe - and certainly not with twenty-friggin-four!
I am in Saskatchewan, and they teach French up to grade 12, but you can drop out in grade 10 (taking a spare instead). Unfortunately my one French teacher who taught every grade was not a very good teacher. Pretty sure she was an English speaker with grade 12 and went to France once, other than that she just made us translate elementary sentences no matter the higher years. We also talked exclusively in English expect in two line presentations.
German natively and English. I had French at school but I can hardly formulate a sentence anymore. I can confirm that thinking in 2 languages makes it harder sometimes to find the correct word... sometimes I can only think of the English word as I used to learn about something in English speaking media.
I can fluently speak 12 languages, and I'm pissed off that the innovation technique called "machine learning" will eventually advance so much that instant and accurate translations will be everywhere, so I've wasted my life for nothing. I better advocate how smart I'm, before I become completely useless for the society with my hundreds languages and die from hunger
I seriously doubt a person can speak 12 languages "fluently". I have read studies that suggest people brag they speak several languages albeit they're actually just overestimating themselves. I don't question that you speak 12 languages, but I dare say you're not really fluent in every single one of them.
No language will ever help you if you tend to whine about things like that.:) Seriously, did you decide that it's a "problem" worth complaining about or did you just want to brag? Even if you are really smart, you should be modest about it or you risk embarrassing yourself.
Yes you shoud've spent your time on something that's more "employable"..It's rare for ANY job requirement to be able to speak several languages.. other than an interpreter & or a college professor that specializes in a certain language.And you have to have a doctorate B-4 you can be a professor.
The switch is mostly difficult if it is not your native tongue. if you primarily speak spanish, english 2nd.. it will be harder to turn off the spanish when speaking english (since it is not your 1st taught language) vice versa. when i was born, my parents taught me spanish FIRST. when i reached the age of 4/5 i began learning more english. English then took over as my primary language since I was raised in the States (Spanish isn't usually taught to children/students until they're 12 or 13 - junior high school) so i lost the ability to make basic sentences in spanish. This makes it harder for me to switch off my ENGLISH when I speak spanish in public. The same for my mother. Who has difficulty switching off Spanish when she tries to speak English. In my opinion, it's based on your native tongue. Trilingual is another subject. I learned German & a bit of French, I find no difficulty switching off my other languages. Except, when I speak French I do tend to get urges to speak Spanish because the accent is so similar.
math is a language like any other, in fact it is universal, you can only learn it by practicing just like you learn any other language, if you practice continuously you’ll become better, this is coming from me a guy who didn’t know algebra until college, i literally master algebra completely in 4 months by studying everyday
I speak fluid German and pretty good amount of English. But I´d like to learn Dutch, I dunno why. So to the Dutch guys out there: Is Dutch hard to learn when being a native German speaker?
Not if you already speak German, Dutch will be one of the easiest languages out there for you to learn. The syntax is very similar and so is the vocabulary. If a word in Dutch isn't similar in German, it probably is in English. The grammar is easier as it's less inflected (neuter and genitive nouns) but there are a lot more exceptions in terms of verbs. There are a lot of irregular verbs. But overall, it will be very easy for you when compared to nearly every other language (except perhaps Esperanto or Low Saxon). I'm self-taught in Dutch.
Normally, people with a germanic language as their native language can learn dutch in about 2 months (duration of summer courses). I am portuguese and I took a little longer than that, but I have meet many german people in the Netherlands and they all learned pretty fast.
If you speak German and English I don't think Dutch will be a big problem to learn to speak. Writing in Dutch however is really hard. Even native Dutch speakers like myself sometimes have problems with spelling. I myself mostly prefer writing in English though my mother tongue is Dutch.
I'm from the Philippines and our default second language is English and I grew up in China so I can also speak Mandarin Chinese. Spanish and Korean is also very familiar to my ears (I can understand common words) and my hometown in the Philippines uses a different dialect which is called Bikol (different from the one used commonly for all Filipinos).
I grew up in Canada with French as my second language then in 1964 we moved to Egypt where I picked up basic Arabic and then to Colombia where I finished high school and started to learn Spanish from my French. My wife is Honduran and I've been speaking Spanish fluently for over 20 years and in the process have lost most of my French speaking (but not understanding). When I first learned Spanish, I would often blurt out French words or phrases in place of the Spanish as my French was learned in school and my Spanish purely by listening/repeating. I dream fluently in all three languages and feel that my English has improved by being able to relate it to other languages. Portugese and Italian are understandable if I listen carefully. Sometimes when I'm thinking/speaking in Spanish and someone starts speaking English to me I'll hear Spanish coming out of their mouths for a moment until my brain realizes that it needs to switch over. Is that strange or am I a little bit crazy?
Why not? If you are half way there and already understand it a bit you should finish learning it. It could be pretty useful in the future especially since it is such a hard language.
Awesome, I just started learning spoken and written Chinese about a year ago (did you learn written Chinese too?) what spoken dialect did you learn? I went with Mandarin hoping more people would at least speak a bit of it! Would love to go to China :)
LizTiddington Im only in high school and have been learning since 6th grade, mandarin is the way to go in my book cause its the main dialect and i know quite a bit but not as much as i could. I know maybe only 50 characters by heart so i need lots of improvement
***** english is the hardest language to learn i have hear, probably because of all the crazy grammar rules and word types, but in my opinion Chinese is easier than Spanish, the difficult things are the characters and tones
Within the past (school) year as a foreign exchange student I've gone from only knowing how to say "pizza" and "ciao" in Italian to being completely fluent, to the point that my teacher told me the essay I wrote for psychology was the best in my class, and people in Sardinia complemented me on my Milanese accent. I've definitely noticed some differences in how I think. There's the obvious fact that my thoughts are in both Italian and English now, sometimes switching back and forth in a single sentence. I've also felt like I can think a lot more clearly, though; whereas before my thought process was like doodles on a piece of paper, it's now like a bullet pointed list. Based on my own experiences, I'd say this video is spot on.
It is true, I need to think more when I am talking, I am a little slow and the people usually interrupt me. I don't know if being a bilingual made me smarter, but I have sure that I have a great memory and I think is because of that.
Kyriakos Constantinou Bosnian mother language, German better then bosnian because i lived in germany my first 7 years of life, English learned in school since 13 (now im 21), japanses can talk but don't know to write or read, Well Serbian, Croatian, included.. and i know some computer languages C++, C#, Java Etc xd
I speak fluent English, German, Swiss German and semi-fluent french. I can speak a wee bit of Italian and am learning Latin very rapidly. I find it a lot easier to pick up a language once you have learnt multiple. In the future I will attempt to learn Swedish, Russian and Japanese.
***** Kannada ? dude it's my mother tongue , Derived from Devanagari Script from SANSKRIT , if you don't know what Sanskrit is , google it , it's the basic foundation of all compute programming , it's as far from arabic as it can get
***** The closest language to Arabic today (by origin) is Hebrew, then there are several languages that blended with Arabic due to Islamic conquests in the middle ages like Turkish, Persian and Urdu (they use Arabic alphabet except for Turkish which switched to Latin alphabet in the last century)
I am a native English speaker and I am on my way to being bilingual. I am at a functional level with my French, and it really feels great. Understanding French has also allowed me to catch on a bit more to other languages, like Spanish, because many of the words are similar. I would like to learn more languages in the future once I've mastered French... Spanish and German are at the top of my list. :)
I once spent a lot of time watching and reading things in English and Japanese. After that I turned on the TV which was in Turkish(my main language) and for a moment I literally couldn't understand what they were saying. My point is: it can be possible to swtich off a language even though it's not intentional or for a long time.
+Rushil Dua Just go to google and type in 1st grade kanji, there are pretty good websites. Just take a notebook and study them one by one. A lot of them have different sounds based on context. Like this. 震 or shinn (シン) But if you see this. ふる•う It means it says furu istead of shinn. if used before う。Because of this. Kanjis take a while to learn. So keep flashcards handy. Or get an app for them. I learn 10 new kanjis a week. -As do most of my Japanese friends (I think). Anyway. First grade kanji only contains 80 kanjis. And are easier to learn, and very basic. So you should be able to take them all out in a week or two. Or At Least I did. Anyway, there your go.
I'm half Swedish half Turkish and I speak both languages. I speak English fluently and I have learned Italian and German in school, not so fluent in both of them. I'm 14, and I really do have hard times finding words, mainly in Swedish because I have recently moved here. Being bilingual from the start also helps learning other languages a little easier too I would guess.
I received my AAS in American Sign Language after the age of 50 and I wonder what effect knowing how to speak in a 3D language improves my mentality. It for sure improved my motor skills.
***** he probably is as am i i droped every extra languages exept english becouse of dislexia and appart form that wat if you are dyslectic does that change the results of learning more languages
6 languages, come at me bro! :D (and I'm not even counting swiss german as a language, it isn't one, is it? No idea.) Languages are awesome, keep up the good work! :D
Sara K no swiss german would be a dialect/accent even if it is sometimes hard to understand you, but i am from north germany without much of an accent. i guess bavarians and svabians have an easier time =) btw the schweiz is really awesome especially for someone who lives near the ocean on flat land ;)
La lengua de Español es mi lengua segundo, y he ido al país de España y estudiaba alla. Comprendiendo una otra lengua es muy importante para mi, especialmente en el sur de Califórnia. I probably made some mistakes in there, but I think that it is very beneficial to be able to speak a second or more languages, because it means that you will be able to communicate with other people more easily and appreciate the cultural differences and similarities between those that you speak.
I demand that the US government forces its right-wingers to learn a 2nd language! AND I DEMAND IT NOW! Probably won't help too much, though, but every little bit helps. And a small step for a normal person is still a giant leap for those hillbillies.
In my opinion since you have already ENGLISH as your native language . and it is an international language , this does not mean you have to keep just this language , but try to learn GERMAN since YOU can not live in peace there if you can not even know basic GERMAN !!!! and also Spanish is good for making friendship from latino america and spain !! I think People have to learn KOREAN language because they have the latest technology and it is another culture and it is SO STRONG!!!
They don't teach 2nd languages in America? O_O WTF I live in Portugal, and here you have to learn English, and then you have the choice to learn German, Spanish or French, and then later you can choose to study another language or study your previous choice in more depth.
just for the record, i am learning a 3rd language and i am 16, my mom knows 5 languages, my dad... well he knows 2, but most of my family knows 3 or four languages, also one of my uncles knows 9 languages and none of my family (except my dad) ever got iq test below 110 and most of us are right wingers, so yeah. being a right wing doesn't mean you are stupid, i assure you many right wingers think you are stupid. even though i'm not sure i know what it means being a right wing in america, don't act all high and mighty. now that i think about it maybe our conception of who is a right winger is different, but i still assure you there are right wingers that are much smarter then you.
MrBaimgarbaim It just so happens that the majority of the overly religious idiots (creationists), deniers of manmade climate change, gun maniacs and corrupt politicians happen to be Republicans. I'm not implying that all right wingers are stupid or that it doesn't happen on all political fronts in the US, but there are obvious trends supported by enough statistics. Also: IQ tests aren't really valid, if you want to judge the intelligence of a person, in my opinion. (And just for the record - I took part in a Germany-wide test on schools and placed among the top 8% in logical thinking, which was basically a test, which also included an IQ test [next to testing mathematical, technical understanding and your talent in handling languages] - exact figures, like a specific IQ value, weren't named, though.) IQ tests just test you how good you are at solving that test. True intelligence is the ability to transfer knowledge, though, and I even would consider highly talented musicians as intelligent, for example. Even though those people might only have average results in IQ tests, they are very intelligent, when it comes to their field of expertise.
I was raised bilingual speaking on my second language was a problem til I was 13. Switching languages could happen alot if you're not paying attention especially now I speak five languages sometimes you tend to forget your language. But it's fun as I progress that's only a bit of a problem. Talking with people is rewarding too.
My first language is spanish (I'm mexican), I speak english and since two and a half years I've been studying french. I love to know that all that effort worths beyond the cultural advantages ;)
I can speak 5 languages. It's not really fun when you forget words and only remember it in a certain language
Edit: Wow I forgot I even made this comment but it's great that so many people can relate to it. Yet it seems that 15 year old me that wrote this comment 3 years ago did not learn her lesson of how confusing keeping languages apart can be because I then went on to learn 3 more languages lol.
I understan you and I just speak 2(portuguese and English) what do you speak?
How many do you use regularly?
I speak English, French, Swedish, Lingala and Spanish but I'm not really fluent on spanish. I live in Sweden so I'm constantly speaking and learning Swedish.
I come from a Belgium colonised country, that's why I can speak French and Lingala but I only speak in French or Lingala to my grand parents uncles and aunts from Congo. I used to live in South Africa and that's where I learned English and I have been speaking English fluently ever since I was maybe 5 or 6. It's the only language I speak to my siblings in.
As for Spanish. I just thought myself the language for fun. I was hoping to go to a Spanish speaking country this summer to test how good I really was but instead I'm going to France.
samee...finally someone understands me..it happens to me a lot of times especially with people who speak only one language, it means I have to remember it in that exact language :(
downloading dictionary app on your phone will really help you.
***** In Sweden you can choose which language you want to learn at school. You can learn, spanish, portugese, french, english or german. The students can choose which language they want to learn but you have to know english and swedish in school to be able to finish middleschool or highschool
Explains why I have such a hard time finding the right words to say.
Jesse V I may have a little piece of advice for you. Before trying to express what you are going to say, give yourself a few seconds, two or three would be largely enough, to think of the proper and appropriate words you are going to use and quickly picture it in your mind into a simple but sophisticated language. If my advice doesn't work on you go consult a psychiatrist and tell him about your problem.
This issue of having difficulty responding to simple and casual questions may be due to stress that unables you from thinking right or properly! Well, good luck mate!
I speak english, french and spanish fluently and can speak pretty good portuguese, but sometimes the word is like in my head and is easy but i cant find it or say it, then i feel dumb for not remembering, that s annoying
I know exactly what you're talking about. T_T
+Rapidz “Rapidz557” Bro
Same for me, I also speak English, Spanish and French and sometimes it can be frustrating not being able to find the word I'm looking for in the moment because all that comes to my mind is the expression in the other language :P
wow dude, you beat me, I only know English and Spanish ✋
+Rapidz Bro “Rapidz557” Yeah I know how's that, I also speak spanish, english and french (I can also understand a little bit of portuguese). Sometimes i feel ashamed because of these situations.
+Rapidz “Rapidz557” Bro SAME!
any trilinguals here?
+Abdulrahman Shaaban Me.
+Alyssa the Trashcan yaaay
+Abdulrahman Shaaban Me (Portuguese, English and Spanish)
Привет!
Español. English. Русский.
Me... But on my way to the fourth lol
What about being trilingual?
What about being centolingual?
trilingual masterrace
Trilingual reporting in
Learning more than 2 languages won't change a thing, the maximum results can be basically achieved with just 2 languages
leo pard You need to make a little research to see what they're talking about, this video was very brief.. the studies suggest that when learning two languages your brain will have more activity, for example when you see an object you will automatically think of its name in both languages, this also makes you better at retrieving information because your brain makes much more connections, however studies haven't shown that knowing more than two languages will improve those abilities, someone who knows 5 languages will have those abilities at the same level of someone who knows 2 languages.
I speak Mongolian, Russian and English and I mix words a lot, it makes me feel uncomfortable when I speak someone who speaks only one language, I choose words carefully.
Belle Blanch ikr i speak german Spanish and english so its annoying when i mix words and people don’t understand
Here I thought I had an issue 😂😂😂
thats why its best to learn 2 languages than 5 of them!
good news for nearly everybody who does not live in a country where english is an official language...
*****
why latin?
India? We have like 20+ thriving languages and the official languages are English and Hindi.
same
no it's not. At least most people in Spani learn English but never become bilingual (spanish-english). Their competence in English is suuuuuuuuuper low so not good news for those people
Finally! A good explanation. I have delayed lexical access:(
Does C++ count as a language?
No but if you can read the binary and translate that efficiently into words then that would be different
Knowing C++ doesn't make you smarter, but programming and solving problems sure does!
Gammelgäddan hahahahahah lolololol
i can count to
#define __cppislanguage true
No matter what. I would say learning another language is never a bad thing.
I speak 4 languages. I don't find it overwhelming at all.
Same here
Ade ka
It's all about hard work and focus. There's nothing special about it.
Speaking Bengali, English, Spanish and French, it's not overwhelming at all.
Having French as my native tongue, speaking English and currently learning Japanese. I've found that i can be very different depending in which language i think.
I tend to think deeply about stuff and have easiest complex decision making it is also easy and more natural for me to talk about personal or intimate subject in English than in French but that's because of the different nature of these languages i guess. On the downside, i suffer a lot from delayed lexical access principally because i have no social life and other people to talk to.
What is awesome about being bilingual is the understanding of the nuances of languages that give so much more in everyday life while interacting with people and different type of humor. You can laugh so much more about anything with your multicultural mind, it give a better insight of the world and if bilingual people react less emotionally it's because they take a step back and look at things with more perspective resulting in better decision making.
It's funny how I'm just like you (yes, I am French too), also I do not have the problem of speaking the languages I'm practicing (being French and English) most of my friends also speak English but finding people to interact with to increase my Japanese level is way harder
Actually yeah, learning and speaking english has actually ruined my swedish.. I have a really hard time making sense in swedish in the same way that I am able to in english. >_
The same thing kind of happened to me, except I don't speak Swedish. I speak Finnish. When I speak in Finnish, especially about science, school, things I've learned about, but only in English etc., I don't know a lot of the words I need to be able to say what I want to say.
same here, but with german. it happens multiple times a day, where i just stand in front of family and friends and they are waiting for me to find the right word in german^^
***** The problem is not making errors, but rather that you throw in anglicisms, because you only can think of the english word, for example.
And that you start pausing in a sentence to think of the correct word, also is somewhat problematic.
I experience both things more often than not.
Yeah, thats exactly what I mean! The knowledge is general, but not the way you learn or present them..
It's a pain in the ass. I never find any words in any language when I speak.
It's easier when I write (even though I almost never write in my first language), but still horrible.
Totally true about being slow at finding my words sometimes XD I even go as far as express some thoughts in a different language than the one that I am speaking
Funny, sometimes I need to describe things in English when I couldn't in my native language.
me tooo! I am Greek and I speak English too (Obviously) and sometimes while I am talking to others I can't find a word in Greek and I end up saying it in English :P
XD yeap, and at firs I thought that was because of using to much English on the internet but I read a lot on my mother language too so, but now I have a better explanation
AsgarorHammer In my case I beleive it is the far too much use of english... Besides the Internet, I read a lot of English Books because I like reading books on the language they were originally written and I have read the whole Trilogy of The Hunger Games and Divergent
AsgarorHammer + I am half Australian but this doesn't mean anything because I was not taught English as a little kid
I'm trilingual but I am a really forgetful person and I'm horrible at Maths. :/
Same, but I'm not forgetful and I'm great at math :/
ltschmrz. same, but my math teachers always told me they were bad at languages
I'm very good at maths and I am horrible at languages
Wait, his last name is Dominguez but he cannot speak Spanish? DAFQ...
+Oscar Davila I was born with the last name Echeverria but I don't speak Spanish lol, English and French :)
Patrick Noren
Echeverria? Is that a Spanish last name?
Oscar Davila It's Basque but lots of Spanish people use it
My family is of Colombia and the name is common in our commune
Patrick Noren
Oh I see. Yeah because It sounds more Italian than Spanish.
My name is german but i've spoken more french than i've been to Germany.
J'écris des livres means i write (some) books.
Je suis désolé means i am sorry.
"Searching for words"
This! A thousand times this! Exactly. Since I learned English, I never find words in any language I speak.
I suppose it's gotta get confusing when you have to say 'exterminate' in hundreds if not thousands of languages across the universe (maybe that's why Daleks seek genocide; to reduce the number of languages they have to learn).
Neion8 There are currently 6 768 412 612 languages known to this day by Daleks.
And it's not why we exterminate this much. It's because other species are not Daleks, so they have to die.
Knowing both English and Spanish allows me to understand context. Even if I don't understand a language, I can still sort-of tell what they're saying.
Even though my native language is Spanish I think in English and mostly find writing in English more comfortable.
I also sometimes fail to tell if I'm watching a show or movie in English or Spanish, sometimes half through hearing what they're saying or reading subtitles is where I think about what language I'm reading, I simply understand both so well it's hard to sometimes think about which one I'm looking at, since I understand both.
I can also tell a few languages apart without knowing them, like French, Portuguese, Russian, German and Japanese.
I think the key to learn another language is simple, pay attention to context, look at the words and understand why they are used the way they are used, try and understand in depth every word, practice and repeat those words, have conversations with yourself using that language or find someone who knows it to practice. It's all about practice and paying attention to context.
totally agree with you. same thing happens to me too. And context can probably be the most important thing in Spanish
I'm Portuguese and last year i visited my family in Colorado and then we spent a week in a resort in Mexico, there were a lot of European there and i realize that, even tho i can only speak Portuguese and English, i could understand Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian ... i guess its because that Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian comes from Latin ... a death language.
Ruben Marinho
Yeah, all languages derived from Latin are easier to understand to us. Now and then I hear a word in Portuguese that is similar in Spanish.
yeah, that's something I've noticed too.
haha, it reminds me that one time I looked up a video and thought I saw it in French ( my first language) but I watched it in english, so when I searched what it was I couldn't find it anymore because I was searching it in french.
I actually started learning french about a month ago; and picked up the first few words of what the girl said at the start...
PROGRESS! XD
Good luck! French is a very hard language
Miroslav Erdelyi cheers man. :)
and so ive noticed. XD learning the words and sentence structure isnt TOO hard so far; but the speaking and listening to it is so confusing.... ;_; it makes me long for japanese's simple pronunciation. hahaha
I don't know Japanese, but the grammar is the worst part of French, in my opinion. It took me 3 year in school to learn it, but now I'm ok at it. I can keep a conversation and all, but it's hard to be grammatically correct in it.
Je ne parle pas Japonais, mais je pense que le grammaire est le plus difficile partie de français. Il m'a pris 3 ans pour le apprendre, main maintenant je peaux le parle bon. Je pouvais fait de conversation, mais c'est difficile d'être grammaticalement correct.
Miroslav Erdelyi yeah... thats probably because ive been going through the basics. :P i jut admit it the grammar is starting to get alot harder (and looking at your translation it seems its going to keep doing that XD). ah well; ill get there.
and japanese is really easy is that respect. they pretty much break down their words into syllables/sounds that you just read/spoken by stringing them together; and how they are spoken is very rarely affected by context. for instance:
ありがとう is broken down to a-ri-ga-to-u, which is the same way you speak it; with the only complexity being that the 'u' at the end extends the 'to' sound (though you still really say the 'u', its just more subtle because it becomes part of the syllable).
i hope that was educational? XD of course im only talking about pronunciation here; the grammar isn't too difficult either, though it does take awhile to get used to. i wont get into it here; or this comment is gonna be way too massive. :P
EDIT: OH BTW; do you know of any good resources for french, particularly with learning pronunciation? that'd be greatly appreciated. :)
American concept of being fluent in a language: know a few words.
I had a funny situation related to the 'activates multiple languages' note toward the end. I studied Spanish in high school for three years. Then I went to college and took Japanese for two years. I went back to visit my high school at one point and had a chat with my 3rd year Spanish teacher. I could totally understand her, but I could only come up with answers in Japanese. Eventually I told her in the best Spanish I could muster at the time we'd have to continue in English because she just wasn't going to be able to understand all the Japanese in my head.
Since then my Japanese has gotten a little stale which I hope to remedy. But I've been using Duolingo to keep my Spanish and pick up a few others. Portuguese was tough at first due to strong similarities with Spanish, but over time that got a lot better. If anyone reading this video plans to pick up new languages I'd highly recommend one that's very different from your native language. It's a lot more challenging, but it really changes the way you think about the world. Japanese was an awesome experience and I'm now enjoying the struggle of Vietnamese, Russian, and Irish Gaelic, among others. I'll never be fluent or even conversational in most of them, but it's just awesome to be able to look at a mess of Cyrillic or Japanese text and get a rough idea of what's being said.
Mi vidis la flagon en via bildo, sed vi ne menciis ĝin en via respondo.
Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?
My native language is spanish, también hablo inglés, un poco de francés y entiendo algo de italiano y portugués.
I speak dutch,cantonese,madarine and english.
My goals is to learn every language on earth. So i'm planning to rise the whole world,and it only takes me 3 years to speak another language fluently.
Grace 夢幻專家 wonderful :)
Grace 夢幻專家 i have a question for you, if it only takes you three years to be fluent in any language so are you planing to learn many languages at the same time? 'cause you may live for 100 years (just an example) so you'd learn something like 30 languages(more or less).
Wow xd never thought of that!
Think about it... and it's possible for you to learn many languages at the same time, there are many polyglots who do that but i don't know how they manage to do it... do you know how many languages are on earth?
Grace 夢幻專家
I can say I started learning English a couple of years ago and it's beeb the best decision I could have made. My world is bigger now. Once you learn a new language you get interested in learning others and then you realize that it gets easier to learn a new one since you can apply many of the knowledge you've gotten with the second language plus the first one. My next goal is Portuguese and I'm getting better in it day after day.
this is so true guys ! thanks a lot i have now prove of what i ve been telling my son's speech therapist ! we are a franco-french family
Totally agree on the losing words when speaking thing.. I speak 3 languages and sometimes It's hard to not mix words of other languages into the conversation I am having in a particular language. Finding the best words to use in a particular situation gets relatively hard too sometimes.
Happens the same to me
Sometimes for me, the problem is not finding the right word : I have the perfect word, but it's in my second language (English) and I can't find an equivalent in my first language (French). When that happens, my brain just freezes and I have to build a whole sentence to replace that word.
The whole time I was thinking... "Who is this awkward girl? I feel uncomfortable watching..." Then you got to the delayed lexical access and I understood that even though she has a really good accent, she is not a native speaker. I get that quite often in all the languages I speak (including my mother tongue T__T )... It's awful when you want to get a point across and you just get stuck because you mix up all the words in your head! My boyfriend knows when I really, really, am upset because I start mixing in Spanish or French words into the argument! xp
Knowing Spanish and English fluently is completely awesome for me, it's opened up so many opportunities !
I think it's so cool and I grew up speaking English and hearing Spanish, I spoke Spanish ocassionly but now I want to be fluent in Spanish because it's a great language. I also live in Arizona were being Biligual is highly desiered and you get paid more. I have the accent ingrained in me and understand it pretty well. I need to take a class on top of my Associates in Business Degree. This is my next goal!
Almost everybody in Europe are bilingual. We kinda have to be because english is everywhere!
I would give it 100% to: "Learning a new language, makes you smarter."
I totally agree with the research, sometimes I find it difficult to recall a word in my native language. And yeah, I prefer English to Spanish.
As well I'm amazed, I don't have to think anymore to try to understand English, it flows naturally.
I've been studying it since age 6 now I'm 22, at first it was a subject in school, the it became a hobby.
Since I've nobody to practice with, listening to American radio stations is what keeps my English always improving.
P.S. I love Country Music
Since starting to learn Korean a couple years back, I agree with this. Such different languages bring with them different perspectives which is great for exercising the mind, and also I now have hiccups in my English speaking at times where I want to say things in a more Korean-structured way.
That was a good video.
Det var en bra video.
هذا الشريط كان جيد.
Well where I'm from you kind of have to be bilingual
I think unless you live a english speaking country... you basically have to speak more than one language, and of those languages being English. There's and old joke who goes sort like this:
There are people who speak multiple languages, we call them multilingual.
There are people who speak two languages, we call them bilingual.
There are people who speak one language, we call them Americans.
+Eric P. Alvaro I know that joke and I love it. Because it's kind of really true kind of.
Many Russians only speak Russian
Where my family is from, you have to be trilingual.
Russians had the same problems, english speakers have, (and frenchs to a certain degree), They were dominant countries ... so they speak their language. The other countries have to adjust. Often, in a country of immigration, locals speak their language and immigrants speak their native language + the local language, and since they opened the door, children would tend to have more ease in learning a third language ... and another language.
So in Russia, Russians spoke only Russian, the Tatar, Georgians, Armenians ... talk their language + Russian. But Russia has changed and many learn English. Or German.
Frenchs have the same problem ... .
the worst are the Anglo-saxons.
Switzerland is a small country ... nobody adapts to us, we have to adapt to the others = everyone is at least bilingual, most speak 3 languages. Many speak 4, I speak 6 + 2 badly + 1 learning.
Very proud to be bilingual, and very happy that it has lots of benefits. My first language is Spanish, and I learned English thanks to school and, most importantly, my own will. I honestly think it's one of the best things I've ever done, it has given access to tons of information, resources and entertainment I couldn't have accessed otherwise. It was a tremendous advantage in college when I needed to do research for a paper. Maybe someday I'll get on with learning a third language.
I love learning languages. Although I do occasionally need a moment to pull up a word (I'm not sure if it's gotten worse though, since bilingualism) it's usually a word that people rarely use anyway. I believe that people who intentionally learn a language noticably improve their articulation and fluidity of their native language, even if they occasionally need a second to find that perfect word.
Well most of us non native English speakers that are watching this are bilingual to some extent at least. And yes it's really true that people that talk two languages can be slower in picking words, I know that because more often than not I can't remember a word in my native language that i know in English for instance. Simply you learn different stuff in different languages, and sometimes I know what something means in English but I cant translate it instantly to my language.
I hate when that happends to me.
That happens to me all the time, the problem is I'm a salesman and I need to express my thoughts easily, which I can't do all the time.
Today I gave a price to a costumer half in Arabic half in English. that sux.
I have the same problem and its really annoying especially when I'm talking to someone who doesn't know that other language
You feel me brotha ? :')
I speak Brazilian Portuguese native, Fluent English, Intermediate French, Beginner Japanese. And it feels awesome :) Aw and i understand Spanish cause of my Portuguese although i dont speak Spanish cause i dont like it ;)
Depends which Spanish you want to learn. The Latin American is pretty acceptable, I dont survive the Spain spanish though. Its as if the whole country has a constant lisp.
That is discrimination, spanish is cool. Está bien aprender varias lenguas, keep on learning. regardss
I speak European Portuguese, and I can understand Spanish easier than I can understand Brazilian Portuguese XD lol
lol, hate that guys, I can't understand brazilian portuguese either. I'm from the next champion of the nation world cup, Uruguay, so I speak spanish as well as english. Don't learn portuguese, is useless :_
arlanta1 USELESS???!!!!!!!! dude you're in my dark list.
(ps: importuguese)
Learning languages is a fun hobby. My biggest tip is once you understand some grammar (wiki) and some of the top used verbs and nouns (wiki) then watch things in English with subtitles in another language. You'll add to the vocabulary while enjoying a show that has basic conversations in it. I would say Spanish and French would be the most useful and easiest as well. You'll start to notice it all around you and you can nit pick words to find their ancient roots. RUclips will help you on listening and getting lectures.
Russian is cool because of how similar it is to Latin. It is my favorite language right now. Arabic is the best to write because of how it feels to write and because of its super short words ;). I imagine Chinese will be the easiest to read, but I'm nowhere near that level now. A good book to help with the characters is "Remembering the Kanji".
I wish I lived in Europe because there you can find so many languages wherever you go; on the street, in games, and on the tube.
About that research with old men from Edinburgh - it shows correlation between the test results and bilingualism, but not causation. It's equally possible that those who were intellectually gifted decided to learn a second language or managed to learn a language enforced by school or parents (e.g. Gaelic) to a level that it became useful.
How interesting that bilingualism helps with reasoning and reduces biases! A good reason for Americans to stop insisting on "English only".
MiranUT
A ton of Americans speak two languages because a lot of us come from Mexico. It would be best if everyone spoke English and learned a second language like Spanish.
What if you're trilingual?Do tu confuse palabras from distintas languages donde you write or leer?Si so,creo that i need ayuda...
Love it!... Nowadays I have to read and speak three languages: English, portuguese and spanish, and I am having a looooot of "delay lexical access" when switching from one to another, it is funny but kind of annoying at the same time....
Eu acho que leio muito mais rapido que quando nao falaba as treis linguas....
Personalmente me identifico con los resultados de los estudios! Gracias por compartir de una forma tan fresca.
I'm learning three languages now Spanish, Turkish, and German. The first two because those are parts of my culture and the other because I'm fascinated with the German language. My main point in bringing this up though is to mention that since I have been learning these I do feel a higher sense of awareness and an enhanced ability to think critically with a concise fashion. So with that I do recommend to others the enriching hobby of language learning!
I can fluently speak 3 languages (plus a few more).. And can actively switch or alternatingly swap/shuffle languages at will... But am not the sharpest tool in the shed...
That's hot
I speak both swedish and english fluidly. im not that good at the english grammar but its good enough. i learned german for about 3 years but i cant speak or understand it, i understand and can say some small phrases.
The way many learn language is kinda wrong according to me, many learn languages as a extension of the language they already speak, the best way of learning a language according to me is watching youtube, Thats where i learned almost all my english.
Watch German programs, you will learn a lot. that is basically how you learned English.
***** That is mainly how i tried to learn it after about a year of study. i cant learn more than 2 languages, the main reason why i stopped learning german is becouse my english became worse.
I am from Sweden too and learned a lot of my english from RUclips :D
JohannesLazorFREETIME
Well, bilingual is quite common so there could be a threshold going to 3 languages. Probably useful to have a strong motivation. I can't spell German very good but I can read it. I can understand it so so but I don't have a full accessible vocabulary so I'm slow. But I can at least visit a German speaking country: Has du ein zimmer für mich? Ja, Ich habe aber das ist ... gelt. Very basic.. According to scientific research you mental capacity will grow if you tackle a third language so that could be a good motivation though.
i learned english by watching south park
I am one of thise people who know multiple languages. I speak all fluently dutch, french, Spanish and english and I amcurrently going for a 5th one (Japanese). I can definetly confirm from my personal experience that knowing different languages helps like a LOT! And from personal experience, cannit confirm whether that disadvantage is real or not {nzver really thought of it}. But, I can confirm that ecen if it is true in my opinion it has more advantages then disadvantages. I am only 20 years old but what I can confirm is that knowing a ne language opens your mind so much, it majes you more tolerant and it also happens to open up many doors! There's nothing more amazing then being at an airport and being able to communicate with essentially anyone making new friends for example, it makes visiting a country easier, it gives you better jobs etc. What I mean with all this is it is never too late to learn a new language. And a lot of people say it is not needed and that's where they are wrong knowing a new language has so many advantages that there will always be a reason to learn it.
I am trilingual of Chinese madarin (growing up speaking it), Japanese (started learning at 12), English (Picked it up since elementary school as 2nd language, and graduated from a US high school and currently doing college in us)
I do find difficulty to think of the proper words and mix them up sometimes.
Nice video BTW
I dunno, I speak 4 languages but I'm pretty stupid
Gammelgäddan LOL
At least you can talk to lots of people. Even if your ONLY skill is foreign language, it's enough to consider you well educated, which to many, is the same thing as smart.
I REALLY want to become bilingual, it seems like it has so many benefits. I've studied Latin in school (although it's quite hard to have a conversation considering not many speak it, especially considering I was only taught how to read & write it), and I've tried teaching myself French and Swedish with little progress. I just don't have the time, resources or need to learn a second language. At least not yet.
To all the multilingual people in the comments, kudos to you! I have deep respect for anyone who's smart enough and passionate enough to master two or more languages. Keep it up (and maybe share some of your tips with me :P)!
I started learning Spanish when I was in kindergarten and it has inspired me ever since. I learned French (though not fluently), I speak Spanish well, of course English, and most recently started learning Swedish. I wish to be a very fluent polyglot in the future. If it helps look up the app Duolingo, it helps a TON.
Ryan Alford Cool! I'm actually on duolingo already, it's my biggest resource for learning! :)
Ryan Alford Try to learn portuguese. I speak portuguese and I can understand about 60% to 90% of spanish, without have studied it .
MegaSupernova888 I'm learning French at the moment. And then I'm going to start Spanish. I guess the main thing is to just have a deep appreciation for the language itself - the feel and bounce of the words, the history of the language as well as the people who speak it.
Utilisez FluentU améliorer votre français; c'est très utile. Il y a des courses pour apprendre le chinois, le français (bien sûr), allemand, espagnol, et japonais.
I DEFINETELY have this delayed lexical access thing(even with my mother tongue!)! I've never known that might be common thought. makes me feel better. :)
Your right about having difficulty thinking of a word when speaking. I learnt Greek and English growing up. Now I am learning Italian in my sixties and I do exhibit that phenomena "delayed lexical access" as well as a few other problems :-).
I've always been smarter than other people in my entire life, in both street and school smarts. My first language that I learned was Russian. As soon as I turned 3 I knew my abcs in English and spoke Russian. I started kindergarden a year latter. I'm now learning French in school, and I'm also learning Japanese with my cousin. It's fun to learn different languages, but I need to start brushing up on my Russian because I've started to think in English ( you know that little voice in your head that you hear when thinking about something, or even reading something like this ). And because of that I've started to have an American accent in my Russian and a slight Russian accent in my English. New Years resolution? I think yes.
the more languages you know the more voices in your head. i know 4 fluent and find myself thinking in all .
No prove
WTF DID I JUST FIND THE STORY OF MY LIFE!? everything you wrote there same with me x.x
Russian was my first language I learned my abcs and proper English by the age of 3 from the result of moving to Canada and that was a necessity I have majored in French and im learning Japanese! I have always had a accent in every language I have ever spoken but no one can figure out what accent it is :/
polyglots are narcissists
My native language is Slovak, I guess it'd be the most closely attributed to Polish and Czech to those who don't know it. I'm 15 and have adopted the English language at about age 14 I think, by adopting I mean getting to the point of thinking in the language instead of having to translate sentences in my head, speaking fluently and getting rid of the obnoxious Slovak accent. English is practically my primary language now.
And honestly it's fucked my Slovak over nicely, I often have to throw english words into my language mid-sentence because I can't remember the correct phrase. Many people get extremely annoyed at this, seeing as it's technically the same thing as a weeaboo saying 'kawaii desu arigatou onii-chan' mid-sentence. Except I have little to no choice of course. This is extremely painful around older teachers who don't understand what I'm saying when bieng quizzed half the time, I even had a teacher who despised me for it. :^)
Being bilingual can be fun, just remember you'll be put into even funnier situations thanks to your certain words from one language screaming for attention in your brain whilst you're looking for their synonyms in a different language.
Im slovak too and know exactly how you feel. also had to learn fluent polish as i work with them every day in uk. once you know a language as your own you will think in them all. basicaly you start a sentence and in English then skip to slovak then back to polish and over again without realizing it.
My first language is Faroese, second is Danish and third is English. I was proficient in all of them before the age of 18, and now I'm fluent in all of them at the age of 24. :) I definitely feel like the languages have changed the way my brain works, and skills I learn in one language help me get a deeper proficiency in the others. I recommend you get at least one extra language over your native one. :)
languages are a tool of communication. the more tools you can manage the more abilities you have to learn, read and communicate. plus it opens a brand new section of the brain and exercises the muscles within. yes i do believe it makes you not only smarter but more able to see different perspective and speak a brand new language called franglais.
I speak, Read, Write 4 languages. Yepeee!
But wait, here in India Everyone is bilingual.
Is writing in English one of them?
bebobli Yes, it is.
Same! Swedish, French, Spanish and English! We are polyglots :)
So true my Indian brother..i can definetely relate since im an indian too! infact most well educated indians know 3 LANGUAGES : English (International Lang.) Hindi (Medium of communication among Indians) and the language of the state they belong to! ;) i personally know 4 languages : English (Duh!) Hindi (naturally being an Indian) Malayalam (derived from my state) and French (learned Foreign language at Highschool yaay!)
I'm learning spanish.
I have a lot of "Delayed Lexical Access" my brain is not that good thinking in more than one language. =/
I am currently learning Welsh, but I am not getting very far. Never-the-less, this video is iawn da!
I think that what you said is correct when thinking about myself, I speak Swedish, English and a little bit of French. Since Swedish is my native language, I still "think" in Swedish even though I am in ex. the US. Sometimes I have to search for words as well, and sometimes I get a bit irritated on myself for knowing the English word but that I have to think for a few seconds to remember the Swedish word in a conversation.
Quand j'essaie de parler en français j'utilise toujours les mots anglais qui m'énerve beaucoup
Moi aussi :c
Spécialement à l'école, quand j'ai un examen
But multilingualism can mean that either someone either consciously tried to learn another language, or naturally grew up with multiple languages, or a combination of the two. That can make a big difference in intelligence and should have been noted here.
This is the first video I have ever clicked on where the question in the title is answered!
Her accent is so nice! Wish mine was this nice too.
I speak English and Portuguese fluently. On my way to French now :)
:0 ohh me too! Im going to take classes for french in high school tho
Bonne chance! :)
Wolf Julia Cool! Good luck Julia!
gameu360 merci beaucoup! :)
Robert King De rien. :)
As a Canadian, therefore having two official languages (English and French), I feel like a bad Canadian for only knowing English. Trying to learn though, just hard to learn new language at 24
I'm from quebec and have always wondered: do they teach french up to highschool secondary 5( grade11 ?), or only up to grade 6 ? cause here in quebec they teach english up to secondary 5 ( also where are you from?)
Zeon7510 they teach French all the way up to High school. I am from Ontario xD
Ha, one of my students is 81 and is learning just fine a second language....
Age is not as a big factor as many believe - and certainly not with twenty-friggin-four!
I am in Saskatchewan, and they teach French up to grade 12, but you can drop out in grade 10 (taking a spare instead). Unfortunately my one French teacher who taught every grade was not a very good teacher. Pretty sure she was an English speaker with grade 12 and went to France once, other than that she just made us translate elementary sentences no matter the higher years. We also talked exclusively in English expect in two line presentations.
It's certainly harder than if I was 2, but yes, still young. Plenty of time to learn, I just prefer math over languages.
Knowing English, French, understand Spanish a little is awesome. Thanks guys for making this video because now I won't feel useless:)
German natively and English. I had French at school but I can hardly formulate a sentence anymore. I can confirm that thinking in 2 languages makes it harder sometimes to find the correct word... sometimes I can only think of the English word as I used to learn about something in English speaking media.
And that's why there is Spanglish
I can fluently speak 12 languages, and I'm pissed off that the innovation technique called "machine learning" will eventually advance so much that instant and accurate translations will be everywhere, so I've wasted my life for nothing. I better advocate how smart I'm, before I become completely useless for the society with my hundreds languages and die from hunger
Not yet, with 12 languages, you have a MAJOR advantage over others when it comes to getting a job, also travelling will be much easier.
I seriously doubt a person can speak 12 languages "fluently". I have read studies that suggest people brag they speak several languages albeit they're actually just overestimating themselves. I don't question that you speak 12 languages, but I dare say you're not really fluent in every single one of them.
No language will ever help you if you tend to whine about things like that.:) Seriously, did you decide that it's a "problem" worth complaining about or did you just want to brag? Even if you are really smart, you should be modest about it or you risk embarrassing yourself.
you speak 12 Languages?
I am wondering wich ones you speak and how old or how long did it take you to learn them all
Yes you shoud've spent your time on something that's more "employable"..It's rare for ANY job requirement to be able to speak several languages.. other than an interpreter & or a college professor that specializes in a certain language.And you have to have a doctorate B-4 you can be a professor.
The switch is mostly difficult if it is not your native tongue. if you primarily speak spanish, english 2nd.. it will be harder to turn off the spanish when speaking english (since it is not your 1st taught language) vice versa.
when i was born, my parents taught me spanish FIRST. when i reached the age of 4/5 i began learning more english. English then took over as my primary language since I was raised in the States (Spanish isn't usually taught to children/students until they're 12 or 13 - junior high school) so i lost the ability to make basic sentences in spanish. This makes it harder for me to switch off my ENGLISH when I speak spanish in public. The same for my mother. Who has difficulty switching off Spanish when she tries to speak English. In my opinion, it's based on your native tongue. Trilingual is another subject. I learned German & a bit of French, I find no difficulty switching off my other languages. Except, when I speak French I do tend to get urges to speak Spanish because the accent is so similar.
I speak 4 : Arabic Hebrew English Spanish ! and I can understand Latin & Portuguese ..., but I dont have a problem with words nor delayed thing !
I was raised bilingual and I'm pretty average. I do score above average in reading and writing in intelligence/placement tests but I suck at math
おめでと。。。
+Diana Mora Same/
math is a language like any other, in fact it is universal, you can only learn it by practicing just like you learn any other language, if you practice continuously you’ll become better, this is coming from me a guy who didn’t know algebra until college, i literally master algebra completely in 4 months by studying everyday
I speak fluid German and pretty good amount of English. But I´d like to learn Dutch, I dunno why. So to the Dutch guys out there: Is Dutch hard to learn when being a native German speaker?
Not if you already speak German, Dutch will be one of the easiest languages out there for you to learn. The syntax is very similar and so is the vocabulary. If a word in Dutch isn't similar in German, it probably is in English. The grammar is easier as it's less inflected (neuter and genitive nouns) but there are a lot more exceptions in terms of verbs. There are a lot of irregular verbs. But overall, it will be very easy for you when compared to nearly every other language (except perhaps Esperanto or Low Saxon). I'm self-taught in Dutch.
Normally, people with a germanic language as their native language can learn dutch in about 2 months (duration of summer courses). I am portuguese and I took a little longer than that, but I have meet many german people in the Netherlands and they all learned pretty fast.
Oiled Gazelles Rita Ferreira Thanks :D
No problem, also, I suggest you looking into Assimil. It's the course I've been using for Dutch and it's very good.
If you speak German and English I don't think Dutch will be a big problem to learn to speak. Writing in Dutch however is really hard. Even native Dutch speakers like myself sometimes have problems with spelling. I myself mostly prefer writing in English though my mother tongue is Dutch.
I'm from the Philippines and our default second language is English and I grew up in China so I can also speak Mandarin Chinese. Spanish and Korean is also very familiar to my ears (I can understand common words) and my hometown in the Philippines uses a different dialect which is called Bikol (different from the one used commonly for all Filipinos).
I grew up in Canada with French as my second language then in 1964 we moved to Egypt where I picked up basic Arabic and then to Colombia where I finished high school and started to learn Spanish from my French. My wife is Honduran and I've been speaking Spanish fluently for over 20 years and in the process have lost most of my French speaking (but not understanding). When I first learned Spanish, I would often blurt out French words or phrases in place of the Spanish as my French was learned in school and my Spanish purely by listening/repeating. I dream fluently in all three languages and feel that my English has improved by being able to relate it to other languages. Portugese and Italian are understandable if I listen carefully. Sometimes when I'm thinking/speaking in Spanish and someone starts speaking English to me I'll hear Spanish coming out of their mouths for a moment until my brain realizes that it needs to switch over. Is that strange or am I a little bit crazy?
I have been learning Chinese for a few years and have been to china it was great, wondering if i should go all the way and become fully fluent?
Why not? If you are half way there and already understand it a bit you should finish learning it. It could be pretty useful in the future especially since it is such a hard language.
maximumrisk2004 true, only thing is I would have to use up a class slot, but I guess its better than anything else I can do
Awesome, I just started learning spoken and written Chinese about a year ago (did you learn written Chinese too?) what spoken dialect did you learn? I went with Mandarin hoping more people would at least speak a bit of it! Would love to go to China :)
LizTiddington Im only in high school and have been learning since 6th grade, mandarin is the way to go in my book cause its the main dialect and i know quite a bit but not as much as i could. I know maybe only 50 characters by heart so i need lots of improvement
***** english is the hardest language to learn i have hear, probably because of all the crazy grammar rules and word types, but in my opinion Chinese is easier than Spanish, the difficult things are the characters and tones
Does math or programming code count as a language?
Doperooni kinda
lol, absolutely
Within the past (school) year as a foreign exchange student I've gone from only knowing how to say "pizza" and "ciao" in Italian to being completely fluent, to the point that my teacher told me the essay I wrote for psychology was the best in my class, and people in Sardinia complemented me on my Milanese accent.
I've definitely noticed some differences in how I think. There's the obvious fact that my thoughts are in both Italian and English now, sometimes switching back and forth in a single sentence. I've also felt like I can think a lot more clearly, though; whereas before my thought process was like doodles on a piece of paper, it's now like a bullet pointed list. Based on my own experiences, I'd say this video is spot on.
It is true, I need to think more when I am talking, I am a little slow and the people usually interrupt me.
I don't know if being a bilingual made me smarter, but I have sure that I have a great memory and I think is because of that.
but.. i know 5 languages..
Fluently?
Did it take you a while to grab the rest of the sentence? :-p (I know 2)
I know a lot of languages. I wish I could speak and understand them.
Kyriakos Constantinou Bosnian mother language, German better then bosnian because i lived in germany my first 7 years of life, English learned in school since 13 (now im 21), japanses can talk but don't know to write or read, Well Serbian, Croatian, included.. and i know some computer languages C++, C#, Java Etc xd
NeoChromer i don't know how, but i knew you are Bosnian my brother :) 2 languages are enough for me.. :3 imas cevape od mene ako se ikad sretnemo..
I speak English as my main language and Japanese as my second.
you must be very patient...
HokageCoolMoonlitDew please stop
Same here
I'm on my iPad so it's harder to reply to a people but it's Konnichiwa not Kaunichiwa.
こんにちは to you! I really want to learn Japanese, but it may be harder, since I already speak Welsh and English. How hard is it to learn?
I'm trilingual and I knew what she said in the beginning, yes! I knew years of french would come in handy.
I speak fluent English, German, Swiss German and semi-fluent french. I can speak a wee bit of Italian and am learning Latin very rapidly. I find it a lot easier to pick up a language once you have learnt multiple. In the future I will attempt to learn Swedish, Russian and Japanese.
Quest-ce que la femme a dit au début?
+Amy Samuels Elle a dit "Tu manges du camembert?"
+Rachelle Etheve Ah, merci.
+Rachelle Etheve Hi. Are you francaise? I'm taking a francais class. It'd be nice to talk to native French speakers.
EdRo1900
Hi :) Yes I'm French !
Salut! Enchanté. Je m'appelle Edgar Comment vous appellez vous? Did I get that right?
all of India is smarter than , we speak atleast 4 languages here , no kiddin ,
i speak English, Hindi , kannada, telugu and can understand tamil
Don't want to offend but isn't Kannada a kinda subcategory of Arabic? Honest question because I want to know
***** Kannada ? dude it's my mother tongue , Derived from Devanagari Script from SANSKRIT , if you don't know what Sanskrit is , google it , it's the basic foundation of all compute programming , it's as far from arabic as it can get
Then*
idk if it counts if you can't actually speak/write them properly...
radil i know how to write english, hindi , kannada,and sanskrit , although i dont understand sanskrit
***** The closest language to Arabic today (by origin) is Hebrew, then there are several languages that blended with Arabic due to Islamic conquests in the middle ages like Turkish, Persian and Urdu (they use Arabic alphabet except for Turkish which switched to Latin alphabet in the last century)
I am a native English speaker and I am on my way to being bilingual. I am at a functional level with my French, and it really feels great. Understanding French has also allowed me to catch on a bit more to other languages, like Spanish, because many of the words are similar. I would like to learn more languages in the future once I've mastered French... Spanish and German are at the top of my list. :)
I once spent a lot of time watching and reading things in English and Japanese. After that I turned on the TV which was in Turkish(my main language) and for a moment I literally couldn't understand what they were saying. My point is: it can be possible to swtich off a language even though it's not intentional or for a long time.
I speak English and Japanese.
俺が英語と日本語をしゃべります。
My japanese is still a bit fuzzy.
こんにちは、私はAmyです。はじめまして。私は日本語も話します！ 私の日本語も良いじゃない。
+Sir.Alex idk how you learn kanji ;-; how do you do it
+Rushil Dua Just go to google and type in 1st grade kanji, there are pretty good websites. Just take a notebook and study them one by one. A lot of them have different sounds based on context. Like this. 震 or shinn (シン) But if you see this. ふる•う It means it says furu istead of shinn. if used before う。Because of this. Kanjis take a while to learn. So keep flashcards handy. Or get an app for them. I learn 10 new kanjis a week. -As do most of my Japanese friends (I think). Anyway. First grade kanji only contains 80 kanjis. And are easier to learn, and very basic. So you should be able to take them all out in a week or two. Or At Least I did. Anyway, there your go.
Sir.Alex thx
+Sir.Alex 僕の日本語わまだまだです。でも、少し話します。
I know 5 languages and i am 15.... what does that mean ?
It means you are wasting your time and should master them instead of learning piecemeal here and there.
i have mastered 4 of them
It probably means that you saw a lot of media in different languages as a child.
Nope where i live people talk different kinds of languages so i learned from them :P
That you are a fucking showoff, lack modesty and want random people on the internet praise your intelligence and skills.
stop being insecure.
I'm half Swedish half Turkish and I speak both languages. I speak English fluently and I have learned Italian and German in school, not so fluent in both of them. I'm 14, and I really do have hard times finding words, mainly in Swedish because I have recently moved here. Being bilingual from the start also helps learning other languages a little easier too I would guess.
I received my AAS in American Sign Language after the age of 50 and I wonder what effect knowing how to speak in a 3D language improves my mentality. It for sure improved my motor skills.
Ha, I know four languages!
me too
joshua de backer Capital letter in the beginning of a sentence and use punctuation.
just shut up
joshua de backer Exactly the same mistakes.
Just shut up!!!! Nobody likes you.
What if you know 4 languages? :D
***** he probably is as am i i droped every extra languages exept english becouse of dislexia
and appart form that wat if you are dyslectic does that change the results of learning more languages
i can almost speak 4 languages ;)
6 languages, come at me bro! :D (and I'm not even counting swiss german as a language, it isn't one, is it? No idea.)
Languages are awesome, keep up the good work! :D
Sara K no swiss german would be a dialect/accent even if it is sometimes hard to understand you, but i am from north germany without much of an accent. i guess bavarians and svabians have an easier time =)
btw the schweiz is really awesome especially for someone who lives near the ocean on flat land ;)
Ja, ik spreek ook nederlands :)
La lengua de Español es mi lengua segundo, y he ido al país de España y estudiaba alla. Comprendiendo una otra lengua es muy importante para mi, especialmente en el sur de Califórnia. I probably made some mistakes in there, but I think that it is very beneficial to be able to speak a second or more languages, because it means that you will be able to communicate with other people more easily and appreciate the cultural differences and similarities between those that you speak.
Delayed lexical access YES !!! i knew i wasn't a language freak THANK YOU
Being bilingual doesn't make you smarter... Studying does
I demand that the US government forces its right-wingers to learn a 2nd language! AND I DEMAND IT NOW!
Probably won't help too much, though, but every little bit helps.
And a small step for a normal person is still a giant leap for those hillbillies.
german language and Spanish for instance !
In my opinion since you have already ENGLISH as your native language .
and it is an international language , this does not mean you have to keep just this language , but try to learn GERMAN since YOU can not live in peace there if you can not even know basic GERMAN !!!! and also Spanish is good for making friendship from latino america and spain !! I think People have to learn KOREAN language because they have the latest technology and it is another culture and it is SO STRONG!!!
They don't teach 2nd languages in America? O_O WTF
I live in Portugal, and here you have to learn English, and then you have the choice to learn German, Spanish or French, and then later you can choose to study another language or study your previous choice in more depth.
just for the record, i am learning a 3rd language and i am 16, my mom knows 5 languages, my dad... well he knows 2, but most of my family knows 3 or four languages, also one of my uncles knows 9 languages and none of my family (except my dad) ever got iq test below 110 and most of us are right wingers,
so yeah.
being a right wing doesn't mean you are stupid, i assure you many right wingers think you are stupid.
even though i'm not sure i know what it means being a right wing in america, don't act all high and mighty.
now that i think about it maybe our conception of who is a right winger is different, but i still assure you there are right wingers that are much smarter then you.
MrBaimgarbaim It just so happens that the majority of the overly religious idiots (creationists), deniers of manmade climate change, gun maniacs and corrupt politicians happen to be Republicans. I'm not implying that all right wingers are stupid or that it doesn't happen on all political fronts in the US, but there are obvious trends supported by enough statistics.
Also: IQ tests aren't really valid, if you want to judge the intelligence of a person, in my opinion. (And just for the record - I took part in a Germany-wide test on schools and placed among the top 8% in logical thinking, which was basically a test, which also included an IQ test [next to testing mathematical, technical understanding and your talent in handling languages] - exact figures, like a specific IQ value, weren't named, though.)
IQ tests just test you how good you are at solving that test.
True intelligence is the ability to transfer knowledge, though, and I even would consider highly talented musicians as intelligent, for example. Even though those people might only have average results in IQ tests, they are very intelligent, when it comes to their field of expertise.
I was raised bilingual speaking on my second language was a problem til I was 13. Switching languages could happen alot if you're not paying attention especially now I speak five languages sometimes you tend to forget your language. But it's fun as I progress that's only a bit of a problem. Talking with people is rewarding too.
My first language is spanish (I'm mexican), I speak english and since two and a half years I've been studying french.
I love to know that all that effort worths beyond the cultural advantages ;)