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Deicide

I was just curious; there are many TEFL folks out here and many with many years of experience (spiral78) comes to mind but the question I have is if any of the TEFLers are fluent in any other languages apart from English or have at least aquired basic fluency in several?

spiral78 · Joined: 05 Apr 2004 Posts: 11534 Location: On a Short Leash

Functional (not fluent) Czech and Dutch. Will reenter Czech study next year when current projects are completed. I aspire to fluency, and admire others who have really buckled down and achieved it, particularly those who, like me, started language study as adults.
Like you, I think, Deicide? I believe your German's probably fluent.

Deicide · Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:05 pm Post subject:

Deicide · Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:08 pm Post subject:

Speaking of which; if I ever procreate I will be raising my DNA multilingually...

denise · Joined: 23 Apr 2003 Posts: 3419 Location: finally home-ish

Spanish. I can do just about anything--read novels, watch TV, converse about any topic under the sun--but since it's been years since I formally studied it, my grammar is a bit screwy. And I STILL cannot pronounce 'rr'! Grrrrrrr...

I've just moved to Oman, and I have never studied Arabic. Yikes! Once again, there is that linguistic barrier, but everyone here seems to speak English anyway.

d

Justin Trullinger · Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 2:40 pm Post subject:

Fluent in Spanish. Semi-fluent in English.

Can get by in Italian and Catalan.

Suck at French, but when needs must can find the bathroom, order in restaurants, and make a fool of myself.

Justin

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

More or less fluent in Spanish. Embarrassingly able to understand Klingon. French is ok...

MELEE · Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 4:17 pm Post subject:

Fluent in Spanish, it's the primary language of my household.
Fear that I'm losing English, but I try to keep it up with novels, and uh Embarassed

the internet.
I can still read Portuguese, a language I studied for 2 years at uni, and used surprisingly often in Japan, but now when ever I try to speak it Spanish comes out.
I learned basic conversational Japanese, but was only in Japan 18 months, and haven't used it since. (But a team of my students is going to a programing contest next summer in Tokyo, so I've dusted off my phrase book and started tutoring them in the niceties!)
I've been meaning to study Mixteco, my mother-in-law's native language for several years, but I've only managed to learn about 15 words, most relating to food. It's tonal and has loads of nasals, which were always my downfall in Portuguese. Embarassed

Justin Trullinger · Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 4:46 pm Post subject:

rusmeister · Joined: 15 Jun 2006 Posts: 867 Location: Russia

Russian, of course - fluent with an accent.
Minored in Italian, lived there two years (ma ho dimenticato quasi tutto!) a long time ago.
Spanish & French - Intermediate-type level. German - did 2nd semester a long time ago (und ich war in Deutchland fur zwei wochen!)
The ground-level basics of maybe a dozen others.

My life-long hobby... Gonna really nail Chinese when my kids grow up a little more...

A necessity if you are to understand your students - Turkish was my latest diversion.

Hey, Guy, I've got the Klingon audio for the Easter greeting "Christ is risen!" if you're interested...

sickbag · Joined: 10 Jan 2005 Posts: 155 Location: Blighty

Spanish - intermediate on a good day, pre on a bad one.
French - I can get by
Hebrew - a handful of words

yaramaz · Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:12 pm Post subject:

French-- was completely bilingual a decade ago, but haven't actually been anywhere near French speakers for any length of time since then.

Afrikaans--- used to be quite fluent, especially in cursing, seduction, and dirty poetry after dating an Afrikaans speaker for three years and spending a lot of time in South Africa. Now quite rusty in all but the dirty poetry, seduction, and cursing aspects. Helped a lot in belgium and holland because it is like the kindergarten version of these languages. Can read historical plaques, menus, and museum pamphlets in Flemish and Dutch as a result.

Turkish--- Not as good as I had hoped after four years but pretty good considering I spend 3/4 of my life in English here, both teaching and socialising. Fluent in taxi, restaurant, dealing with bosses, casual chitchat, telling off grabby perverts in the street, and pleading with bank tellers. A much bigger passive vocabulary and knowledge of grammar than active.

And bits and pieces of Spanish, Arabic, Irish gaelic, German and Portuguese.

jonniboy · Posted: Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:30 pm Post subject:

Spanish - advanced level although I've lost a bit as Spaniards are a bit thin on the ground in the Baltic states.

Russian and Catalan pre-intermediate level.

Aside from that I'm a bit of a jack of all trades and master of none. I did study Romanian through books and tapes in preparation for a month long backpacking trip there a few years ago but after getting by okay on the trip I had no further need to use it and have forgotten most of it. Like most speakers of a latin language I can read Italian/Portugese but don't speak them.

I know a lot of vocabulary in Latvian though immersion but can barely string a sentence together. Irish we learned in school but 1988 was a long time ago.

I have ambitions to learn numerous smaller languages but find that trying to learn any more than two at a time is near impossible. Oh and I still speak all languages with a Belfast accent which causes a lot of amusement/raised eyebrows especially when I try to do things like rolled R.

gaijinalways · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 2279

Basic to low intermediate in Japanese (spoken only really, though I know some kanji)

Low intermediate Mandarin - speaking ability was higher, but don't use it much anymore, no regular Chinese friends

French - reading mostly, some speaking, but I have a dreadful accent

Teacher in Rome · Joined: 09 Jul 2003 Posts: 1286

Fluent in "standard" Italian, but not in dialect, which is what most people seem to speak around here.

I was peeved that my fluency in Italian came with the price of losing my previous fluency in French. Not only that, I have lost my almost native-speaker French accent, and acquired an Italian one. How did that happen? (And I haven't managed a native-speaker accent when I speak Italian, so the trade-off isn't fair...)

Do you think that we lose our ability to acquire fluency as we get older? Or is it linguistically impossible to have fluency in more than one related language, assuming you haven't been brought up in these languages?