can you believe there are people out there who speak MULTIPLE languages and then APOLOGIZE for not having perfect grammar in their third or fourth language?????? like do you know how incredible you are???
when i was really little, my babysitter only spoke spanish with me so i became bilingual but i never knew when i was speaking spanish or english. one time i told my mom i wanted an avocado & she understood but then when i said the same thing to my babysitter later that day, she burst into tears with laughter because i was saying “quiero abogado” which means “i want a lawyer.”
imagine a two year old repeatedly saying “i want a lawyer!” as an adult laughs at her.
Reminding me of also funny story: So my piano teacher of many years when I was a kid had a baby when I was in my teens. This little girl was super bright, and also bilingual in Mandarin and English from her first word.
I do not speak Mandarin. At all.
One day as I’m waiting for my mom to pick me up after the lesson, Baby Girl is playing in the kitchen and hears me sneeze! And she runs over and says, “You need [incomprehensible]?”
Now here’s the thing: I knew she was not speaking Mandarin. I don’t speak it, but my aunt and uncle both do, and a close family friend’s family growing up would code-switch quite comfortably around us. I was old enough and it was sufficiently different from English that because there was no formal teaching, I never derived anything from it? But I was very familiar with how it sounds to an uncomprehending ear.
What she said did not sound like Mandarin at all. It sounded like gibberish. Like English baby gibberish.
As I clearly didn’t understand, Baby Girl repeats, “You need [gibberish]!” and then, when I still don’t understand, she stamps her foot and makes Angry Noise at me, which attracts her mother’s attention.
Bewildered, I relate what’s going on. Her mother covers her face and says, “She wants to know if you want a kleenex.”
And then my piano teacher explained that Baby Girl had figured out that some people didn’t speak English and some people didn’t speak Mandarin and she needed to confine herself to one language around them.
But sometimes, as is very natural especially for quite young children, she’d run up against realizing she didn’t know the word for something - and sometimes she knew the word in one language, but not in the other!
And it seemed intuitive to her that the way to fix this was to say the word from the other language … with the right accent.
So what she’d been doing was taking the word for “tissue” or “kleenex” in Mandarin and saying it like an Anglophone would: no tone-change and different vowel shapes and all. And it made Baby Girl VERY FRUSTRATED when this did not solve the problem, and at that point she seemed to believe that the adults around her were being stupid on purpose.
children are amazing
My mom told me about a family friend’s kid who was swimming in the pool and kept repeating a Spanish word she learned from watching Dora. None of the adults paid her any attention because they didn’t know Spanish, but her older sister jumped in and pulled her out, explaining that she was calling for help (because that’s a Very common word on the show). Her parents were pretty embarrassed and annoyed.
The evidence for bilingualism having cognitive benefits beyond the ability to speak another language is very poor, but I’ll tell you this: I’ve never ever met anyone who regretted being bilingual. I’ve met many people, however, who regret that they’re not. –Gareth Roberts on twitter
I have only recently heard about this method to improve your listening comprehension alongside your speaking skills. It’s called shadowing.
The concept is that you listen to your target language recording whether it be radio, samples, a podcast…
And you repeat immediately. Without stopping, simultaneously, as if you were an interpreter and had to belt out a translation right away.
This helps you to truly sharpen your hearing skills since you have to say everything immediately afterwards. If you find it too had at first, try listening with a transcript.
Do any fellow native English speakers get really worried about messing up the formal/informal you distinction in most languages?
Like generally I get it, but my brain is like “well what if you meet someone for the first time but they’re you’re age but they may be a year older than you but they might also be younger” like sis calm down
Fellow Andrew Keener searched through annotated dictionaries, language manuals, plays from Renaissance England to learn about multilingual readers in Shakespeare’s England.
Un libro lleno de poesía y pequeñas fantasías de amor, locura y pasión que le permitirán evadirse por un instante de la realidad. Un abanico de poemas que le harán disfrutar del juego interminable de la rima y su melodía en varias lenguas: castellano, catalán, francés, alemán… simplemente déjese llevar por la imaginación.
Aquí le dejo el enlace para obtener el libro en formato eBook (disponible en todas las tiendas Amazon). ¡Espero que lo disfrute!
I haven’t been the same since I was allowed to sit on the throne of Mirkwood for @tkwrtrilogy. Now, I have to rule them all. I get rule France as Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV. My co-author gets the privilege of being my little brothers; Gaston Duc d’Orléans and Philippe I, Duc d'Orléans (Monsieur) respectively.
This is not a fan fiction. This is the story history never told you about. We hope you will enjoy it. If you have started reading here, please continue with Louis XIII. But The Sun King is on his way this fall.
Written in English, French, Spanish, and Italian where applicable.
I’m at home working. I prop my feet on the chair next to me as it’s more comfy. My lovely #cat Gato also loves to sit there. She’s keeping my tootsies nice and warm!
Learning a language can be a pain in the ass. I know, I’ve been there. Don’t get me started on the grammar and all its exceptions either. However, the more experienced I got with the languages, I got the hang on what works best for me. So here they are.
1. Learn vocabulary first. The first thing I did with English and Dutch was to learn as many words as possible. I didn’t bother on how I had to write them. I simply focused on how I had to pronounce them I tried to remember them. If you think about it, that’s exactly how babies learn how to speak. They start with simple words and then start to add on.
2. EXPOSURE. This is what will make the difference. For English, I listened to an unhealthy amount of music. And I watch all Friends episodes subtitled in Spanish so I could slowly pick up what was going on. This way I even learned new phrases. Like how to pick someone up with a “how you doin’?” and a wink.
3. Learn some basic sentence structure. I try not to go full on the grammar but introducing it bit by bit as I familiarize with language. And I play around with the sentences. I try asking for different things and I translate the sentences I use the most so I practice with those first.
4. Befriend a native. THIS THO. When I was learning Dutch and English I became best friends with a Dutch girl in my class and a guy that speaks English like a native. We had this thing when I made a grammar mistake I had to give them 25 cents and that 25 cents quickly piled up so I picked up my pace and I actually learned to speak proper Dutch and English in a matter of 6 to 8 months. I’m not kidding, those 25 cents were the best 25 cents I’ve ever spent because no teacher would have helped me as fast as these 2 did. Now, 8 years later, we’re still besties.
5. Study of grammar. I studied grammar properly after I was more familiarized with the language so I could definitely perfect it. And I think this was actually an advantage because most of the rules and structure of grammar suddenly came like second nature to me. There were, of course, some things that I wasn’t applying correctly, but it was actually very easy to fix them from then on. But think about it, you don’t teach a baby grammar first thing. So why would you do too?
In a nutshell, start by familiarizing yourself with the language you want to speak. Learn a lot of words, get a lot of exposure so you can get a feel of the pronunciation and culture of speaking. Befriend a native, and make it interesting so you can learn and practice. And then try to truly understand the grammar. Do you have any other tips? Feel free to share!
P.S: Spanish is my first language. I learned Papiamentu, which is the language of some of the islands of the Netherlands Antilles. And then I learned Dutch and Spanish.
This period of the year can be a little bit tough for some of us, with the pressure of shcool and the bad weather, so I made a little playlist with “stay strong” songs and songs that can always but you in a good mood :)
English:
Truce - Twenty-one pilots Missing you - All Time Low Sunrise - Our last night Hold on till may - Pierce the veil You’re not alone - Of mice and men War - Sum 41 Eye of the tiger - Survivor Stand by you - Rachel Platten Take my hand - Simple Plan OK - Robin Schulz feat James Blunt Don’t stop - 5 Seconds of Summer Little things - One direction Drag me down - One direction Just hold on - Louis Tomlinson I lived - One republic Won’t stop running - A great big world Take the world by storm - Lukas Graham
Spanish:
La vida es un carnaval - Celia Cruz A dios le pido - Juanes Musica Ligera - Soda Stereo Sonrisa - Kendji Girac Subeme la radio - Enrique Iglesias Bailando - Enrique Iglesias La Gozadera - Gente de zona Vivir mi vida - Marc Anthony Toc toc - Macaco Paraíso - Dvicio Casi humanos - Dvicio Volar - Alvaro Soler El mismo sol - Alvaro Soler
French:
Je joue de la musique - Calogero Liberta - Pep’s Mon everest - Soprano En feu - Soprano Tout le bonheur du monde - Simsémilla Ton combat - Arcadian J’ai cherché - Amir On dirait - Amir Ca va ça va - Claudio Capéo Il est où le bonheur - Christophe Maé La vie est belle - Indochine On écrit sur les murs - Kids United
Portuguese:
Quero ser feliz também - Natiruts
Italian:
L'emozione non ha voce - Adriano Celentano Occidentali’s Karma - Francesco Gabbani Roma-Bangkok - Baby K
Greek:
Mantissa - Marina Satti Το Τραγούδι Του Καιρού - Weather Song Tsolaki Μετρώ Αντίστροφα - Κωνσταντίνος Κουφός
