The Impossible Task: 5 Languages

[Bofferbrauer2]

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.