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Forums - General Discussion - The Impossible Task: 5 Languages

Bofferbrauer2 said:
It's definitely possible, though it's also easier depending on where you live..

I'm fluent in French, German, English and Luxembourgish, and I'm learning Filipino (Tagalog) since I will emigrate there soon. I also plan to take on Japanese at a later date. Additionally, I speak some dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, but nowhere near enough to be fluent in those languages.

Children from immigrant families generally have the possibility to become fluent in 5 languages here in Luxembourg since the four I'm fluent in are all taught there since our equivalent of grade school (except English, which comes a bit later on). Those who follow a classical education here additionally have the choices of Spanish, Latin and/or Greek, which means they will be fluent in at least 5 languages before going to an university (classical education doesn't prepare you for any job, which is why I choose the technical education route instead).

How well would you say that you speak English, French, German and Luxembourgish? Do you speak at a near-native level in all 4?



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VGPolyglot said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:
It's definitely possible, though it's also easier depending on where you live..

I'm fluent in French, German, English and Luxembourgish, and I'm learning Filipino (Tagalog) since I will emigrate there soon. I also plan to take on Japanese at a later date. Additionally, I speak some dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, but nowhere near enough to be fluent in those languages.

Children from immigrant families generally have the possibility to become fluent in 5 languages here in Luxembourg since the four I'm fluent in are all taught there since our equivalent of grade school (except English, which comes a bit later on). Those who follow a classical education here additionally have the choices of Spanish, Latin and/or Greek, which means they will be fluent in at least 5 languages before going to an university (classical education doesn't prepare you for any job, which is why I choose the technical education route instead).

How well would you say that you speak English, French, German and Luxembourgish? Do you speak at a near-native level in all 4?

Pretty much, yes

I had a visit from an american guy (the cousin from an half-american friend of mine) trying to pinpoint my accent once. I almost had to show him my ID to prove I'm not american. A similar thing happened in Germany during my training (there's no brewery school in Luxembourg, so I had to spend 3 months a year in Dortmund for this) where they not only failed to pinpoint my accent, I screwed around a bit with some display of regional German accents (I know a fair bit of swabian, franconian and bavarian, also some Schwiizerdütsch, aka Swiss German). I was also a mod on 2 french websites, and on the latter i made several Wii Virtual Console game reviews, with the proof reader commenting that I was the one with the least amount of errors in my reviews. And of course, Luxembourgish is my mother tongue, so naturally I'm fluent in that one, too.

With most vendors, cashiers and so on being either french or french-speaking Belgians here in Luxembourg, it's nearly impossible to go around in the country without being fluent in the language, except on the German border, where German is more prevalent. And with our big banking sector, English is often used inside the banks. Of course, this results in always having some practice in each of the different languages on almost each day here.



Ka-pi96 said:
vivster said:

Correct. I would consider myself fluent in English but I would love to be fluent in Japanese too. But that will probably only happen if I move to the country or get some Japanese friends. And if I'm done with that I'm gonna tackle a bit of Chinese but I have no desire or illusion to ever be fluent in it.

If we're going for points I'm gonna add a .3 for French because I cannot get that shit out of my head..

hmm...

I'm certainly well above what average native US speakers are capable of. Not that that's necessarily a very high bar.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that my English capabilities are already double of  whatever the requirements for a US Presidency are.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

Hmm,     Dutch/French/German/English/Chinese...And I was fluently in Japanese (as in I could read manga for like 80% most words I did not get were Names/places/magics/specialty Names.    For me fluent means, I can take a book aimed for 12 year olds and understand almost everything.  The issue is I can buy a book for adults but then it depends on the theme. 

 

For example I was reading a Chinese book this morning and I came accross the word '紫藤.    I had no idea what it meant so I translated it to Dutch 'blauwe regen' (litterally Blue Rain)  I did not get it so I translated it to french and it became 'glycine', Then I translated it to English 'Wisteria' .....honestly still had no clue so did google image...




So yeah basically every language for me has a theme I know a lot of for example, sicknesses/medicines = Chinese.....Astrology = English   and so on.

But honestly I never considered myself a Polyglot especially when I am having issues with grammar. I always considered people speaking +10 languages polyglot, the kind of people who went to South Korea/China/Japan for 6 months come back and are fluently in it with almost no effort.






Ka-pi96 said:
vivster said:

I'm certainly well above what average native US speakers are capable of. Not that that's necessarily a very high bar.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that my English capabilities are already double of  whatever the requirements for a US Presidency are.

It's true, the average level for native speakers isn't anywhere near as good as it should be.

Yet you still only consider yourself fluent rather than know that you're fluent?

Typical German humility.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

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Ka-pi96 said:
vivster said:

Typical German humility.

Germans are humble? That's not what they're usually stereotyped as...

Yeah, especially considering that there was a whole regime that thought they were the master race and needed to exterminate races in other places so they could re-populate them.



Learning a new language is on my bucket list, I want to learn Japanese but I might just end up learning Spanish as it'll probably be far more useful than learning Japanese.



NobleTeam360 said:
Learning a new language is on my bucket list, I want to learn Japanese but I might just end up learning Spanish as it'll probably be far more useful than learning Japanese.

Well, usefulness has two factors I guess, usefulness employment wise, and usefulness in terms of your interests. I am very interested in Japanese media, which is why I'm learning it, as long as you have the motivation you should be able to pull it off.



Ka-pi96 said:
vivster said:

Typical German humility.

Germans are humble? That's not what they're usually stereotyped as...

 

VGPolyglot said:
Ka-pi96 said:

Germans are humble? That's not what they're usually stereotyped as...

Yeah, especially considering that there was a whole regime that thought they were the master race and needed to exterminate races in other places so they could re-populate them.

After the War Germany really took a complete 180. Turns out killing a few million Jews makes you pretty humble on the world stage.

Except when it comes to Europe. Europe is our bitch.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.

VGPolyglot said:
Volterra_90 said:

Si quieres hablar en español, estoy dispuesto! Soy hablante nativo, así que supongo que puedo ser de utilidad .

Bueno, en realidad mi idioma nativo es el gallego, por si estás más interesado XD.

Muy bien! ¿Tienes una cuenta de Discord?

No lo tengo muy claro, pero creo que hice una hace ya bastante tiempo, sería cuestión de recuperarla. Mañana te mando un privado y te digo .