[Arjay Bee]

Had French and Latin classes in High School, growing up in NZ was exposed to Maori, and acquired rudimentary phrases. As a young adult I lived in Japan for 6 years, 6 months of which were homestay. I have maintained intermediate level fluency. My children at that time attended Japanese elementary school and were fluent in Japanese and English, but have lost Japanese now. My daughter has grown up, become a mum, resides in Hong Kong and has a daughter who is now bilingual English and Mandarin.
Interesting how life cycles around.

[robgski]

I worked with the ANZACs a few years ago, it was interesting to see the blend of English and Maori I saw on official documents, and in ceremonies. Somewhat related, it is interesting how military forces often adopt local words and phrases from countries they operate in.

[Arjay Bee]

"I worked with the ANZACs a few years ago, it was interesting to see the blend of English and Maori I saw on official documents, and in ceremonies."
As an expat revisiting NZ from time to time I enjoy the increasing bilingualism to be experienced over time. The official embracing of Maori language into documents, titles, instution names and so on is more than tokenism, it has a life and identity of its own.
Living in Australia, this is yet to be seen. The lack of a single alternate language as is the case in NZ, is a major impediment.

[JensE]

Growing up in East Germany, my compulsory foreign language for 8 years in school was Russian, and I indeed became a fluent speaker. But it's been only a handful of conversations since 1990 and thus I have forgotten most of the vocabulary. It's still tremendously useful, because the Slavonic languages are rather close to each other. Two years later I had the chance to start English (not all schools had English), and that's what I've been using extensively since professionally. I've acquired some French and Norwegian as well, but definitely not enough for a full conversation.


Our kids are raised monolingually, everything else would have been contrived. They all pick up languages differently. My daughter was brave enough for a year at high school in the US, with Spanish immersion next on her list, whereas the boys are happy with the exposure they get in school.

[termy]

Able to speak, listen, read and write
English language, Chinese language, Vietnamese language
(In varying degree and competence, of course).
With Vietnamese, the compentency level is much lower.

Able to speak n listen Cantonese, the Fukien dialect.

A couple of languages would love to learn how to speak and listen, will be Spanish and Thai.
But doubt will ever get to.
Learning Vietnamese and eventually grasping it, was already very tough for me.

[lesmore49]

I know a few words here and there in German and French and could probably get by not well, but be able to communicate enough to be understood at a very basic level.

My wife can speak reasonable French and our son is fairly proficient...speaking/writing in German and he and our daughter can get by in French.

I find in North America ...particularly in the part I have lived/live....the western Canadian prairies...that there has not been much opportunity to speak in a language other than English. It may well be that I need to get out more.

[i_trax]

born in Krakow / Poland, now 40 years in Australia

[newmikey]

I'm Dutch so that's my mother tongue. But I've also lived and worked in Israel, Luxembourg mostly for multinational companies so I'm fluent in English and Hebrew and can keep up a conversation in French and German. Of course, Dutch schools have mandatory foreign-language classes in 3 languages up to the age of 15 and our TV brings foreign language programs subtitled, not synchronized or "voice-over"ed so that must have helped as well.

[savoche]

I was somewhat surprised that if three or more people from various parts of the world met, English was often the common language they shared.

I think English has become the "world lingua franca" in two stages; first through the British colonising a quarter of the world, then through the vastly increased influence of the United States all over the world after WWII. The sheer amount of American movies and then TV series has helped spreading the language.

I have worked in several businesses who're operating across borders, and even though they have their HQ in Norway or Sweden they employ English as the company language to ease the flow of information. I don't really think about it when I switch any more, and when discussing stuff like photography or computers I have a better vocabulary in English than in Norwegian. In most other domains it's the other way around, of course.

I can understand Dutch when spoken but not speak it myself.

That's how I'm with Swedish and Danish. I know them well enough to modify my Norwegian with Swedish or Danish terms to make it more understandable if I speak with Swedes or Danes who're not very familiar with Norwegian. I do notice a difference between young people and us 40+, though. The youngsters tend to switch to English more quickly when speaking to other Scandinavians. Us older folks put a bit more effort in to keep to our native languages. I guess we see more of a value in it.

My mother tongue is Norwegian. I grew up with Norwegian and Swedish television (one and two channels, respectively - I was in my teens before we got more channels than that). I had English (for 8 years) and German (for 4 years) in school, but as most Germans speak better English than I speak German... I can still understand it reasonably well, though. With more effort I can make sense of written Dutch and Afrikaans, too, but struggle quite a lot with understading them spoken. I did learn some Portuguese as well at some point, but have difficulties communicating in any meaningful way

[robgski]

Growing up in East Germany, my compulsory foreign language for 8 years in school was Russian

Interesting, but I am not surprised, considering the circumstances. Amazing how much Berlin has changed since 1989.

Living in Australia, this is yet to be seen. The lack of a single alternate language as is the case in NZ, is a major impediment.

I have read a little history of both countries, and it is interesting how the two diverged in their official language polices.

born in Krakow / Poland

Lovely city. I have tried to learn Polish, and I am still trying. I can read it a little and understand, but comprehending its spoken form is still challenging. I guess I will have to return for a longer period and get immersed. I need to go to Australia as well.

I'm Dutch so that's my mother tongue.

I was amazed at how many Dutch people spoke English, and how well. It certainly made my life much easier. At a conference last week, I had to listen to the speaker for a while, her English was very, very good, but her slight accent was mystifyingly inconsistent. It turns out she was Dutch, but she had lived in Ireland and elsewhere, and it had affected her accent accordingly.

Non-Native languages are often perishable and often forgotten if one doesn't use them regularly. I was pleased to find I could still read a public-service announcement written in Arabic without using a dictionary, but overhearing a group of Egyptians sharing small talk, I was almost lost. Guess I need to go back to the land of sand and refresh, as well.

[Sandy Hancock]

Five years of secondary school German has left a reasonable base.
I'm working on my French, Italian and Spanish. There is a long way to go, so excuses for further travel exist.
I really should embrace my ancestral Cornish as well.
Then, of course, there are Noldorin, Sindarin, High Valerian, Dothraki, and Klingon....

[ffking]

I'm another who suffers from being British - I can understand more than I can articulate in German, probbly equal amounts in French (both from 45 years ago at school with occasional needs to grapple with since) - and I can get the jist of basic spoken Afrikaans, although I wouldn't dare to make a sentence (through being married to a South African for 30 years and living their for a few years along the way). I can also understand a few words of Welsh, but not enough to know hat's being said or communicate back.. I'm not really a linguist - I left that to my brother, who's a retired French and Spanish teacher with a smattering of other European languages (ancient and modern). and currently learning Mandarin Chinese.

I am interested that there are people for whom languages seem to come easily here though, as I've always suspected that people are generally either visually or auditorily biased (people who grow up in multi-lingual societies need to speak extra languages to count ), seldom both, and we are a visual community here.

[iheiramo]

Learning vocabulary ain't easy for me and I tend to forget words easily. Also mild dyslexia isn't making foreign languages any easier and I regularly check spelling while writing to this forum. I have online dictionary always open in one tab. So thought I'm not gifted in languages I've come up with several

I'm naturally fluent in finnish and pretty good with my english.
We are forced to study swedish, our second official language, in school. I can read reasonably and can understand swedish they speak in Finland, but dialect spoken in sweden has always been beyond my skills and I my ability to speak or write are weak. I've always used english when talking with swedes.
I studie Italian quite a lot while in university and traveled a lot there at that time. Sadly I have forgotten most of it due to lack of use, but can still hold up some basic conversation. After I had studied Italian for some time I was surpriced how much I can understand written french. You can make a lot of it out as most words remind italian or english. Spoken french has always remained an unsolved mystery to me and there is no way my stiff finish tongue could ever master those soft nuances
Germany was an other language I needed to pick up while traveling around alps. Never studied much, so my skills were always pretty basic, but my ability to speak in german is better than my swedish and I can still survive with it while traveling in german speaking countrys.

It would be nice to add some spanish on top of the five languages above. I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to learn the basics. At least I've heard some italians claim that it's italian with s. Maybe someday when I have more time and motivation

[bdery]

I'm French-speaking, I can understand and be mostly understood in Spanish, and consider myself fully fluent in English.

[Jonathan Mac]

As a Scot who's lived in Madrid for a little over fourteen years I speak fluent English and pretty good Spanish. We are raising our daughter to be bilingual and as long as she gets her English from me and her Spanish from her mother, and not the other way around, she'll be fine.

I remember enough vocab from high school French to not be totally lost when looking at a menu but that's about it. My wife laughs at me when we have been in France and I try to pronounce French properly rather than like a typical British or Spanish tourist completely butchering the language.