Can you speak more than one language?

[Manchester33]

We spend 13 years over here learning Irish in school and I’d say 90% ish come out not just not having a word, but hating it also.

With my generation I can understand that the way it was beaten into you by the Christian Bros. and the likes, has a lot to do with that. But my young lad came out of school last year with barely a word also, so the teaching method hasn’t improved much.

I actually had a very good grasp of Irish and could hold a conversation, no bother.

But I lived in the Walloon part of Belgium for a year and worked and played football with a local team, through French. I had 5 years of secondary school French but picked up more in that year immersed in it. I started to think in French, which is something I used to be able to do in Irish, but have kind of lost that now, because French starts coming into my head.

Anyway, without regular use, it all gets lost.

I think schools on the whole are a terrible vehicle for teaching languages. To learn a language you have to be interested and engaged and I personally found that very difficult whilst doing GCSE Spanish and French. I spent my school years 'learning' those two and today I can probably just about get by on holiday.

With Greek (because I have family connections and a genuine interest in the language) after spending roughly a year learning I'm around A2 proficient. I can go to my family's village where around half of the people have no English whatsoever and converse with pretty much everyone. I have to ask them to slow down and often find myself asking what a particular word means, but having the ability to ask that is the best way to become fluent. Also having the balls to actually speak to someone in the language without caring if you look like a tit.

Your last sentence is bang on, if you don't use it you lose it. But if you use it frequently (daily preferably) you can learn very quickly.

 

[Man_City_Loyal]

used to speak gobbledegooch when drunk

 

[Chev Chelios]

Si

 

[BlueMoonAcrossThePond]

Nein.

 

[Marklr]

Through learning Greek I've taught myself a different alphabet. I'm interested in something like Japanese because it's completely different and more challenging. It just discourages me because I know it would be years before I'd get to a decent level.

You can do a basic Japanese course...but yeah, I'm sure to become fluent, it would take a lot of time and lessons!

 

[dronefromsector7G]

Wee

 

[ZenHalfTimeCrock]

Japanese is a good one. My daughter learnt the basics. マンチェスターシティ

It is much easier to learn how to speak Japanese than to write it, although the ‘tsu’ sound presents problems when it comes to pronunciation.

The difficulty resides with learning how to read and write kanji, the 2,000 Chinese characters that are deployed alongside the hiragana and katakana syllabaries in the writing system.

Katakana can be self-taught in three or four hours if you put your mind to it, though. And it is good to see your daughter putting her knowledge of it to good use.

It’s an awesome place to visit too and there is a superabundance of great literature, art, poetry, cinema, music culture and sport to take in, as well as exceptional food and sightseeing to be had.

 

[Semper aggressus]

Enough German to get by, and very, very rudimentary Mandarin.

 

[Tuearts right boot]

If you want a job around here with local council, hospitals etc etc you need to know 120 words of Welsh. Not sure which words they are but I know about 4 and all of those are on estate agents boards.

 

[Marklr]

It is much easier to learn how to speak Japanese than to write it, although the ‘tsu’ sound presents problems when it comes to pronunciation.

The difficulty resides with learning how to read and write kanji, the 2,000 Chinese characters that are deployed alongside the hiragana and katakana syllabaries in the writing system.

Katakana can be self-taught in three or four hours if you put your mind to it, though. And it is good to see your daughter putting her knowledge of it to good use.

It’s an awesome place to visit too and there is a superabundance of great literature, art, poetry, cinema, music culture and sport to take in, as well as exceptional food and sightseeing to be had.

She only learnt the very basics as part of her English uni course. I wanted her to take it further as, yep...I'd love to go to Japan. Everything about the place seems so fascinating. So clean too. Was it An Idiot Abroad where Karl visits the "rough" "gangster" part of town? Even that was so clean!