5 ms·

Speaking in tongues

7 points by __ 19y ago

kajecounterhack 19y ago
I'm a second generation chinese-american. My father once told me this joke to get me to learn chinese because he thought I was becoming "too american" - "What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?" - A: Thats easy, trilingual. - "What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?" - A: Thats easy too! Bilingual. - - "That being true, what if someone speaks only 1 language?" A: They're....just people. - WRONG. They're American.
- yters 19y ago
  Have you noticed whether being bilingual has affected the way you think? This is a claim I often hear from multilingual people, and I'm interested in specific examples.
  - pchristensen 19y ago
    I speak Swedish and English (learned Swedish in college years when I lived there). Now obviously I know English better, but Swedish has a smaller vocabulary and so it was actually easier to express myself sometimes. In English, there's a tendency to be wordy because it's such a rich language. Communication in Swedish was much more direct and to the point. This wasn't because of a limited proficiency on my part - I noticed the same thing in newspapers and listening to native Swedes talk to each other.
  - pmjordan 19y ago
    I grew up bilingual German/English pretty much from birth. (my mother is Austrian, my father British) There is an (awful) home video of me in which I speak both languages fluently, roughly age 2. Comparing the way you think to other people's thought processes is not so easy, putting differences down to some particular influence is impossible, especially as there's no before & after to compare. That said, I don't generally think in terms of words unless I'm actively trying to express a thought. I don't know whether this is why I'm very quick to pick up new concepts in maths and computing, of if those observations are unrelated. Interestingly, I did have a noticeable Germanic accent when speaking English as I lived in Austria for the first 18 years of my life. I then went to study and work in England, and within less than 3 years my accent had disappeared sufficiently for strangers to be unable to distinguish me from natives. Kids learn English at school in most of Europe from about age 9 - I knew some German students at university and their accent stuck, even after 4 years. That head start of a few years obviously makes a hell of a difference. Learning French (at age 14) and Spanish (at age 16) was still hard for me. Not in terms of grammar however, which is what most people struggle with most. YMMV.
  - kajecounterhack 19y ago
    Not at all...it doesn't seem to have any affect on how I think. Then again, how am I supposed to tell if I only know how I feel as a bilingual person? I spoke chinese and english as long as I can remember.
    - yters 19y ago
      Based on my limited exposure to different languages, there seem to be different thought patterns inherent in each language. I'm wondering if you notice this, and if you yourself capable of a wider range of thought patterns than those who can only speak a single language.

7 points by __ 19y ago

I'm a second generation chinese-american. My father once told me this joke to get me to learn chinese because he thought I was becoming "too american" - "What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?" - A: Thats easy, trilingual. - "What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?" - A: Thats easy too! Bilingual. - - "That being true, what if someone speaks only 1 language?" A: They're....just people. - WRONG. They're American.

yters 19y ago
Have you noticed whether being bilingual has affected the way you think? This is a claim I often hear from multilingual people, and I'm interested in specific examples.
- pchristensen 19y ago
  I speak Swedish and English (learned Swedish in college years when I lived there). Now obviously I know English better, but Swedish has a smaller vocabulary and so it was actually easier to express myself sometimes. In English, there's a tendency to be wordy because it's such a rich language. Communication in Swedish was much more direct and to the point. This wasn't because of a limited proficiency on my part - I noticed the same thing in newspapers and listening to native Swedes talk to each other.
- pmjordan 19y ago
  I grew up bilingual German/English pretty much from birth. (my mother is Austrian, my father British) There is an (awful) home video of me in which I speak both languages fluently, roughly age 2. Comparing the way you think to other people's thought processes is not so easy, putting differences down to some particular influence is impossible, especially as there's no before & after to compare. That said, I don't generally think in terms of words unless I'm actively trying to express a thought. I don't know whether this is why I'm very quick to pick up new concepts in maths and computing, of if those observations are unrelated. Interestingly, I did have a noticeable Germanic accent when speaking English as I lived in Austria for the first 18 years of my life. I then went to study and work in England, and within less than 3 years my accent had disappeared sufficiently for strangers to be unable to distinguish me from natives. Kids learn English at school in most of Europe from about age 9 - I knew some German students at university and their accent stuck, even after 4 years. That head start of a few years obviously makes a hell of a difference. Learning French (at age 14) and Spanish (at age 16) was still hard for me. Not in terms of grammar however, which is what most people struggle with most. YMMV.
- kajecounterhack 19y ago
  Not at all...it doesn't seem to have any affect on how I think. Then again, how am I supposed to tell if I only know how I feel as a bilingual person? I spoke chinese and english as long as I can remember.
  - yters 19y ago
    Based on my limited exposure to different languages, there seem to be different thought patterns inherent in each language. I'm wondering if you notice this, and if you yourself capable of a wider range of thought patterns than those who can only speak a single language.