Job Discussion Forums

[naturegirl321]

For those of you who have married foriegners, what language do you speak in your house? English? Their native language? Another language that is foreign for you both? Or a combination of the above?

As for me, we speak Spanish at home.

[MELEE]

When I first met my husband, he didn't speak English, so we spoke his language, Spanish. But since then, he's reached a CAE level of English. And we've become parents. We try to speak as much English as possible in the home, since Spanish is the community language. We are also all learning Mixteco, which is my mother-in-law's native langauge, but I've not gotten beyound the nouns and stock phrases stage yet.


I do know of at least one couple of this board, who are "foriegners": they are from different countries, but they are both native English speakers. So they speak both partners' native language in the home. But I don't think they are married.

[naturegirl321]

[MELEE]

He's American and she's British. They would just speak English, but your poll seemed to assume that if your spouce if of another nationality, then he or she must speak another language. That is not always the case.

[naturegirl321]

[Guy Courchesne]

My wife and I speak both English and Spanish at home, interchangeably, sometimes switching mid-sentence. It's sort of strange, and neither of us even thinks about it...just communication with someone I know well enough to finish her sentences.

[chiquitita]

I'm a native English speaker and my husband is Dutch. We speak a mixture of both languages nowadays although the first few years of our relationship was in English. Now we're living in the Netherlands it's become much easier for me to learn his native language, which is really important to us both.

[Justin Trullinger]

Ya talking about me, MELEE?

If you're not, you could be. My partner is British, I'm American, and, strangely, we speak a mix of languages at home.

Probably 90% English, but there are some things neither one of us can be bothered to translate. If we're talking about work (we both talk way to much about work), for example, we tend to describe whatever happened in the language it happened in. No mysteries there.

Best,
Justin

[rusmeister]

[Pavel]

6 out of the 7 of us living in this house speak Czech as the primary language. English is a distant second followed by Russian.

[soapdodger]

The primary language of communication is English; between my wife and the children, Slovak, but interestingly both my children went to Hungarian kindergarten....could be a little worrying that one: having a language that the wife and kids can speak but which is totally incomprehensible to Dad!My daughter is also currently learning German and wants to do Spanish too, so there's going to be no end of linguistic fun!

[basiltherat]

With my wife --- Indonesian
With our children -- Mainly English with occassional Indonesian / Malay

My wife and children speak Indonesian/Malay to each other.

The two children speak English to each other.

Kinda messy but it has at least kept our children bi-lingual

basil

[william wallace]

My wife and I speak Esperanto with each other.

[gaijinalways]

Mostly English at home, with Japanese and French thrown into the mix and sometimes Chinese.

[Glenski]

My wife speaks 97% English to me.
She speaks 90% English to our child when I'm home, but 95% Japanese when I'm not home.
I speak 97% English at home to both of them.