Languages

[susandennis]

I am just in awe of anyone who can speak more than one language. I don't understand how it works and I think it's just the most amazing thing.

I have a pretty good grasp of American English. And I'm fairly fluent in Canadian English. The only other country I have spent any substantial amount of time in is New Zealand where I am pretty much at a loss a lot of the time. (Sure I know now that I don't need to duck and cover when I see a sign that says WARNING!!! JUDDER BARS!!! But, who, in the U.S. would know immediately that they mean speed bumps?!)

My friend, Kenny, who sits next to me is Chinese. He is very fluent in English and has a pretty good grasp of idioms and is good about asking when he doesn't understand. (There was the time last year when he came to me in a really whispered voice and asked me to explain what it meant to come out of the closet... Turned out to be a little trickier than you would think, that explaination...) He has this cool little PDA thing that is is Chinese to English and English to Chinese dictionary.

I told him yesterday that I was so intimidated and impressed that he could speak more than one language. He was really shocked. He's so young. He thinks he's not impressive because his English isn't perfect. He was embarrassed, too, so I dropped it.

But, I do wonder. If you speak more than one language how do you know what language to think in? What language do you dream in? I don't know how you would keep all the words straight but I do think it would be wonderful to have so many more to chose from. Imagine being able to swear in more than one language - what if you know several languages and you stub your toe - which version of fuck! comes out first?

I was required to pass two years of Latin in high school and I'm proud to say that it only took me three years to do it. I also had French in high school and college. I got so I could read it fairly easily, but my feeble attempts at speech were painful for even me to hear. To paraphrase - Me never going to talk pretty one day. But me really impressed with everyone who do.

Comments

hear! hear!

[waning-estrogen.livejournal.com]

I have nothing but admiration for multi-lingual people.

[thalamic.livejournal.com]

I am at least bilingual. I can ask for the restroom in two more. I can understand a few others. Although, I am very self-conscious speaking anything other than the first two.

From this brief experience, I can tell you that you never translate. You think and speak in the language. If you are fluent enough, you can even mix your thinking language and the right words come out, no matter which language you choose to utter them in. It becomes second nature and the speaking load is transfered to the primal brain therefore the cerebral cortex is free for other processes...or something. ;)

[susandennis]

You think and speak in the language.

You mean you don't think in one language while thinking in another? See I can't even understand the explaination! I'm pathetic!

Re:

[thalamic.livejournal.com]

It means that if I am having a conversation in English, I turn the English Mode on in my head. The words just flow afterwards. There's no thinking involved.

What I was also trying to say was, if say a person is fluent in English as well as Chinese, he can think in Chinese and speak his thought in English without ever translating a single word ... and vice versa. He will instinctively know what to say in that other language...again without thinking about it.

[susandennis]

Wow. I cannot even imagine how that works in the brain. I had no idea. Thanks for the insight!

[kyrielle]

About the same way driving does - or word-association games. You start to associate both words with the concept and, just as with any skill, when you've learned it to a certain level, it drops below conscious thought. I can say a lot of things without really thinking about it in any way I recognize, it just happens - the thought is there but below the threshold. Then again, if it's a word or a concept I use rarely, I'll falter and have to think about it consciously. (Tell me, honestly, that you never have to do that in English as well, for topics/words you rarely use!)

[rillifane.livejournal.com]

Americans traditionally have had little use for any language other than English and they are therefore not in the habit of learning more than one. You've been brought up in that milieu and therefore see it as difficult to speak more than one language. But its really no big deal so long as the habit of having more than one language begins in childhood.

Even when that is not the case, all it takes is the right incentive and even people who think they have no facility for language can pick up another. My father tells me he had a devil of a time learning German in college but managed to pick up Chinese when he found himself stationed there during WWII.

Since I grew up in a household in which both English and Chinese were spoken I saw it as natural to speak more than one language. Given that many of my neighbors in New York were multilingual it even seemed the norm.

[susandennis]

Yeah, I have a flabby American brain for sure. Both my grandfathers spoke German as their first language until they hit school age but the DNA must of gotten filtered.

Re:

[rillifane.livejournal.com]

Pop yourself down in the middle of China and you'd be speaking Chinese in a few months.

[kyrielle]

It actually depends. You can speak a foreign language, without truly thinking in it - only fragments, or even outright translation. I'd say you're not bilingual when you're still translating, but I know a few people who can only "think" the language when they're trying to speak it.

I'll share my experience from college - I'd had four years of Spanish in high school, and was a CS/Spanish major. Our school did one-course-at-a-time, so for three and a half weeks at a time, I'd be taking Spanish literature for 3-5 hours a day, plus homework and study time. It got so that I would start speaking to my friends in Spanish, because it sounded as natural to me as English, and I wouldn't catch myself until someone pointed it out. Or I'd speak a mish-mash of the two, swapping off at sentence changes (the grammer thankfully kept me from doing it mid-sentence). (Even funnier, it got so that one of my friends, who had only studied Latin and Japanese, could understand me most of the time and respond in English. We would have these mixed conversations.)

If I hear it as a separate language, and listen to the different-ness, I can't speak it more than haltingly, if that makes sense. I have to stop and let it be as natural as the first. But it took years before I could do that.

(My conversational Spanish is still iffy - my accent's really good, but I never had the immersion, and I'm missing a fair bit of the idiom. Literature courses are good for making you sound like a puffed-up critic, but that's about it.)

[susandennis]

This is the thing that is so amazing to me. I was thinking it was as you state it isn't - translation. The only thing I can compare it to is searching in my brain for synonyms. And that is clearly the wrong analogy!

Wild and fascinating.

[kyrielle]

How does your brain know what word it wants, when you are going to ask someone for a coffee cup? Same thing. The concepts become tied. You know the two language equivalents in part because they tie in to the same concept.

That doesn't mean it doesn't start out as translating. Until you've created and cemented that tie, it sure is translating. The translation phase is the 'training wheels' for the bike of the other language. It's very necessary and does exist - and many people (at least in America) never go beyond it. But there is a stage where, if you keep pursuing it and using it enough, it does start to tie in.

It's kind of fun, really. :)

[pheon.livejournal.com]

My major prof in grad school was born in Austria and came to this country when he was about 12. He said he always did arithmetic in his head in German, but algebra in English.

[miss-hand.livejournal.com]

Hi Susan,
Just reading your diary a bit and was interested in this thread. It factinates me too, as I only know one language. My kids are in French Immersion at school (all courses are taught in French, although they knew no French going into school). It amazes me how they learn it.

My daughter is now in grade 2, and will, without thinking, sometimes speak her sentences in half English, half French...the other day she said "I have to remember to bring home my duotang jaune". My son who is five, is very verbal, counts out loud backwards in French...it all just seems perfectly natural to them.

[susandennis]

That is totally amazing!! Wow. You are growing your own translators!! Excellent.