#6

Also thank you for your answers :slight_smile:

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#7

  1. No but English is my only native language

  2. I speak Spanish with an Argentinian accent, French with an English/Spanish accent and Portuguese with a generic Portugal accent

  3. Dunno really, I know some really dumb multilingual people

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#9

  1. Yes. I usually think in the language that applies to the situation, people, etc, that I’m dealing with, if that makes sense. My most personal thoughts are almost always in English. Dreams can be bilingual. There are some words that are exclusive to one language and so my inner monologue becomes a bit of a smörgåsbord (wey)

  2. Yes, speaking in a different accent is a must because letters and words are pronounced differently. Funnily enough my first name is pronounced differently in English, Spanish and Swedish. If I pronounce my name in English to someone in Sweden they struggle to understand what I’m saying.

  3. I don’t think it makes you more or less intelligent. I think there’s a huge argument for making language acquisition mandatory for children in the UK because it’s so clearly easier to acquire a foreign language when you’re young and have a sponge-like brain. I tried learning Japanese once and it was obscenely difficult, probably due to my adult brain, not at all influenced by being bilingual. Someone who’s hyper-articulate in one language is objectively probably way smarter than someone who’s a simpleton in 5 languages

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#10

I’m an Indian guy born in The UK.

My first language is Gujarati (an Indian dialect). English was my second language. My Gujarati is now roughly 50% fluent. I speak it with my parents and no one else.

(Actually it’s now currently 30% as I’m at a pub and drunk.)

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#11

Woah bilingual dreams sound amazing!

#12

Never not going to be in awe of you folks, you’re like superheroes of the language world

#13

they often say a clear signpost that you’re becoming fluent at a language is that you start to dream in it!

#14

Reckon I could make up my own fake language of say 50-100 simple words and dream in that?

Definitely would be a great use of my time

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#15

this would be a fine experiment to test the relationship between internalising new language vs. the limits of self-deception; await the results with fascination

it’s worth remembering that English is a very complicated and difficult language to learn and you’ve already learnt that so what’s stopping you from getting a few more under your wing eh. I work with a Korean guy and this week alone I’ve had to try to explain to him a) when it’s appropriate to refer to someone as ‘geezer’ (absolutely baffled as to why he asked but that’s a whole new sub-thread) and b) what the phrase ‘whole new kettle of fish’ means. English can be a brutal language to acquire. imagine reading textbooks, translation dictionaries, websites, etc, trying to decode the phrase ‘whole new kettle of fish’.

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#16

I’m pretty sure I don’t understand why “kettle of fish” means what it means tbh

#17

I can’t even speak in english very well

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#18

are there any really good ways to learn a language without having to leave the house?

#19

i got quite into Duolingo for a while but then i stopped opening it ever and eventually deleted it cos i needed the space. if i get a better phone at some point i might try to get back into it

#20

I’ve tried learning a few languages but one thing that’s always puzzled me is whether you should or shouldn’t pronounce words in a relevant accent. My mate who speaks a few languages says you should and not doing’s disrespectful, but i feel really awkward aping pronounciations and feel more comfortable learning the words (where possible) even if they’re not phonetically accurate.

This is me being stupid, isn’t it? I’ve been thinking about trying to learn Catalan. I’ve been watching a couple of programmes and it seems an incredible language, but so far out of my comfort zone. Guess it’s a case of…ignorance vs embarrassment, eh. If i teach foreign mates English words they’d pronounce in their own accent, but as an English-speaker i’m wary of doing that.

What’s correct? Do accents not develop over time? Does it depend on the language? Is it just a matter of pronouncing words correctly versus not doing? Would, say, a Catalan person not be offended by a monosyllabic Brit butchering their mother tongue?

#21

El gato blanco bebe leche

#22

Surely an accent is an important part of thise words being understood? I think knowing a language gets you a free pass on doing otherwise potentially racist impersonations.

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#24

I got quite into it as well, but the problem is they’ve now changed the format so you have to buy more credits if you ‘lose a life’, similar to a jewel game. Flipping rubbish…

#25

I find this fascinating, particularly the internal mechanics of it all. I didn’t know any bilingual people until my 20s really, so the concept that you think in your language never really occurred to me until then. And I still find it incredible that people with a primary language other than English can think in that language while almost instantly translating it to English during a conversation.

I used to know a Swedish person. When she would drink too much that would fail, and she’d say things in English but with (I guess) a Swedish sentence structure, so they wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense :smiley:

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#26

interestingly i’ve read that a lot of the sentence structure in Hiberno-English comes from directly translating from Irish and keeping that sentence structure, which i’d never really thought about before. can’t think of many examples now though. i guess something like “I’ve got a fierce hunger on me”, which would come from the fact that the Irish for “I’m hungry” is “Tá ocras orm”, directly translated as “Hunger is on me”. Probably quite boring this but I found it interesting.

would love to learn Irish properly but it’s fucking difficult. i always default to learning French as i find it much more intuitive (but end up losing interest in that too eventually)

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#27

that sounds like they’ve ruined it entirely. is losing a life when you don’t log on for a day or something? i guess it’s always been an app that struggles with the fact that people are busy sometimes

this is still one of my favourite ever Clickhole articles

1 Like