Friday 17 May 2013

cla$$


i figured out the other day why i'm immediately drawn to people who speak multiple languages. their world — who they can communicate with, who they can share secrets with, who they can experience life together with — is much bigger, much grander. 

imagine all the stories you can hear first hand if you spoke another language. you speak arabic? that's an extra 300 million people who can now hear you out. you speak mandarin? literally, another billion people can now understand you. (!!)

just the thought makes my heart soar.

can you please tell me what you speak?

25 comments

  1. Anonymous12:58

    finnish, turkish and english
    and trying to learn some swedish

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  2. native finnish, fluent english, basics of swedish and spanish :) i'd love to learn more of spanish and also french, for example. i think speaking multiple languages fluently is such a richness!

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  3. Anonymous16:46

    Native English, Spanish, basic French, German and some Polish.

    I also love multilinguals!

    http://ruby-in-the-smoke.blogspot.com/

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  4. English and French...and yeah :(

    Attempting to learn Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Hindi (Hindi I can understand somewhat/have a very basic conversation).

    You're spot on about the multilingual though. Besides the communication being amplified, they hold more power in a way and with that experience life in a grander way. Reminds me of my former math tutor's grandson who by the age of 1 knew Tamil, English and German and was learning French on the side. Sigh.

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    Replies
    1. 1??????????????????????? *LE! SIGH!*

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    2. I KNOW RIGHT!??! I wonder what he's up to now..probably being a child prodigy. -_-

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  5. Anonymous09:24

    Agreed with the above commenter, for the past year I've taught 8 year olds who speak Spanish (native), English (fluent) and very very high levels of French and Mandarin. (1 speaks Korean and another German too). Quite jealous!

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  6. Native in Spanish and French...plus English, and can understand and speak a bit of Flemish (variant of Dutch). I am also learning Korean... but veeerry slowly.
    Knowing more than one language is so cool.I study English literature and linguistics, so I'm quite interested in languages in general and how they are representative of a particular culture. Which is why it's so hard for me to learn Korean!

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    Replies
    1. I attempted to learn some Korean before I went to Korea, and when I got there I tried using it—nope. No one understood anything I said. And when I asked them how to say a certain thing, it would be completely different (grammatically and phonetically) to what I remembered learning. In short: don't learn languages from mobile apps. AKA: I'm probably not very good (and is just trying to shift the blame).

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  7. Beautifuuul! I speak french and english but I think that was already pretty obvious so ok bye

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    Replies
    1. I have no clue what language we have been communicating in.

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  8. Michelle13:32

    I speak Norwegian, English and a bit French! I also understand everything in Swedish and Danish, but I don't speak it )i can speak in Norwegian and they will understand, and they can speak Swedish/Danish and i will understand) :D

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    Replies
    1. Oh my Swedish roommate told me about that. She's currently working in Oslo and she tells me she just speaks Swedish while everyone responds in Norwegian and it took me a while to wrap my head around that one...

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  9. Sweetie~embarrassingly I shall share my "knowledge" of languages : English and Japanese (fluently), Mandarin (sosososososo BEGINEER level), and Korean (speaking Japanese makes it easier to acquire Korean, I'm still getting there though).
    Languages where I've picked up a few words or would love to speak: Hawai'in, Gaelic, Swedish, Italian. My professor last term made us learn the russian alphabet, so I can't speak/understand Russian but could get my way through some reading...if that helps.
    <3 so many so many

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    Replies
    1. Haha, we should just cut English out of our communications. Only second languages allowed!

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  10. Native English, Mandarin and Singlish (if that even counts), some Cantonese and Teochew, a bit of Hokkien and in midst of learning French (so, so tough). Wish I could speak some Korean (not sure why but I'm frequently mistaken to be Korean, must be my glasses), Japanese or Mongolian.

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    Replies
    1. Are you Singaporean? You guys understand EVERYTHING.

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  11. Hi! French is my native language, and I'm so glad it is. It has the perfect combination of languor and serious, if that make sense. But its so complicated to learn as second language, I'd never have the courage to do so, so congrats to anyone who's picking it up! I mostly enjoy speaking in English with my friends -and the internet. I'm also learning German and Mandarin and I can't help but imagine myself mastering the last two and being (one day maybe) mistaken for a native as I stroll the city of Berlin/Beijing like a cool kid!

    -long message, apologies, i'm just really enthusiastic when talking about the languages I'm learning

    Btw, I'm going off to Uni next year, and I won't be able to continue learning any of them, any tips on how not to lose them along the way?

    x Laure

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    Replies
    1. I love long comments! (Extra reading, woot!)

      Mm, just because you are going to Uni doesn't mean you can't continue learning them, but if you think you'll be short on time *studying* them, the easiest way to practice would be joining those specific clubs at Uni. Also make lots of friends with exchange students, and go on exchange yourself! And: watch movies in those languages.

      xx

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  12. Native Slovenian, English, Italian and currently learning Norwegian.

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  13. Anonymous16:59

    Native finnish, english, french, swedish and now learning some chinese.

    Your blog is gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete

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