Foreign Language Education

I'm fluent in German, thanks initially to the USAF.
Just returned from Germany last week.

 

I speak English and Alabamian. My moms side of the family can be hard to understand if you aren’t fluent in errrs, aaaars, auuuuughs.

My oldest took Spanish since middle school and has stayed in Spanish speaking countries for school abroad opportunities - he does well. My youngest just simply took Spanish in HS and can maybe tell time. Using a foreign language seems best way to learn.

 

Had one year of German at UF. Did very well but never got the chance to use it. Can read a little bit of Hebrew.

Younger brother is fluent in French and Arabic from his time in the Special Forces and foreign service. Part of that came from his time at UF working on his masters in African history. His wife is even more fluent in those languages. They met when she was his Arabic tutor at UF. He had tons of job opportunities offered to him when he retired, mostly because of his mastery of those languages. Turned them all down to sell insurance.

Spent last weekend in Kalamazoo Michigan with my freshman year girlfriend at UF for her daughter's commencement at Kalamazoo College. We've been driving her daughter, Kanase back and forth between Chicago and Kalamazoo on her way to and from Tokyo. She's fluent in Japanese, French and Arabic and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship where she'll be teaching English in Jordan. Her twin sister finishes UF at the end of summer B.

 

Living just 80 miles from the border, I used to speak Alabaman but my fluency fell off after living 30 years outside of the south. I can still understand it but choose to speak English in the presence of Alabamans.

 

Three years Spanish from HS and then two at UF.
I cannot speak it but I’ve retained many words and phrases and occasionally I can conjugate a verb or two.
My two regrets in life are:
Wish I had stuck with piano.
Wish I stuck with espanol so I could converse with people.
Oh well, maybe next time around.

 

Had a client couple a few years ago. (Banruptcy, ch. 13 joint--hence couple).
Hard core, deep rooted bammers. Always wore roll tide attire. I had to ask the husband to repeat himself, ofter more than once, just about every other sentence. And im no stranger to the southern accent. But damn, i guess some are thicker than others....

 

C'mon man...that's just not true.

Spanish is still a rare novelty in Tampa.

I have to go to specifically targeted areas/locales like Columbus dr, La Terresita, Fla bakery...the Columbia... to get to practice my Spanish in Tampa.

And Miami--certainly a lot more Spanish spoken there, but even in Miami English is holding strong, and has held strong for decades.

If anything, in both cases, Spanish has given ground--and continues to. For all the Latinos that have made it to Miami--first the Cubans, then from all over latin America--Miami has also enjoyed a massive influx of northerners, and the Spanish speakers almost inevitably yield to the English far more than vice versa, with the passage of time. Tampa even way more yankee influx vis a vis Latin Am. growth.

 

I have met many people fluent in 2-3 languages who are from Europe. They have to be because if you drive 2-3 hrs in any direction, you will need another language.

I was raised somewhat by my German grandmother, so I know how to yell at kids in German. I studied German for 2 years in high school. We only got past what I already knew by the end of the 2nd year.

Studied Russian for 2 years in college. I can still slowly read aloud anything in the Cyrillic alphabet, but would not know what I was saying. It's completely phonetic. They don't mix letters to make new sounds. For example, one letter is the "schah" which looks like a w with a j attached at the end. It makes the sound "shch".

 

I've never learned a second language but my GF and I were thinking about learning Spanish.

How hard is it to remember? Like, if I don't use it for a year, will I remember any of it? I know it's very subjective, but any insight is appreciated.

 

I had to memorize Erlkoenig in my German class. Beautiful poem.

 

Been speaking it since i learned to talk, but still need to practice regularly to keep on top of it.

You will lose it, if you don't use it.

Thats just fact.

Or, IOW...like anything else.

So if you aim to learn it, know you'll need to be determined, and need to stay on it.

Dont deceive yourself otherwise ( as i hope i have not done so here).

The upside is that it's a lot easier than most languages, and there are enough Spanish speakers around to be able to engage and practice with.

Fwiw.

 

Thanks!

 

I worked on a vineyard in Bordeaux for a summer and I was fluent in French upon graduation from college 20 years ago. But as the old idiom goes - if you don’t use it you lose it. I can still read at a fairly high level.

 

Google Translate will be my friend in France. I’ll learn the basic tourist stuff but after that I’ll be lost

 

I was never very good with languages--I was always more of a numbers person. I studied French in elementary school, and Latin and Spanish in high school. I forced myself to learn 80-90 words in Mandarin when I was working in Taiwan many years ago. I learned a few words in Korean, Bahasa (Malaysia), and Arabic. I can order pizza in German. One of my favorite memories is speaking Mandarin in front of people who had never seen a white person speak their language. Their reaction was to first be speechless and stare with their jaw open, and then fall on the floor laughing. I once shocked a plant manager from Asia when he came to the U.S. during a training program, arriving 3 weeks after his workers arrived. He took his lead engineer out back to chew him out for something in Mandarin (loudly enough that we could hear him inside), assuming (correctly) that none of us knew what he was saying. (We think that he might have wanted technology that his company had not paid for, and his engineer did not secure it.) As they all filed out that day, I used one of the words my wife taught me, "zide-zi-en", which means goodbye. All the workers walked out giving me the same response, like they did every day. The boss took one step out the door as I said zide zi-en to him, and then jumped back in with a wild-eyed look of panic in his eyes, saying, "ZIDE ZI-EN?!!!" At that point, he seems to have remembered that I have a wife from Taiwan, and he believed that she taught me Chinese and I understood every word he said. We just smiled and waved. He didn't cause any more trouble that trip.

 

One thing that frequently gets glossed over in these discussions is that learning a foreign language is a lifelong endeavor. You never completely learn English for example.

Being able to conduct a tour in German is going to be a different endeavor than a conducting a intense business negotiation. Reading a newspaper is a different endeavor than reading a classic novel.

Not many people ever make it to that advanced level, simply because it takes so much work and it's not going magically happen by living there for a certain amount of time either. And certain people are going to be better than others, regardless of IQ. I get nervous in social situations and struggle with small talk even in English. Anglos who proport to know Japanese or Mandarin are frequently the subject of derision because when push comes to shove, they often can't even order off a menu in Asia.

This is why I'm skeptical of foreign languge education as some magic key that unlocks the universe. Yes it's a great thing to do to expand your mind. But no, it doesn't mean you are going to be anything close to a functioning member of a foreign culture any time soon.

 

It's very easy to navigate France with only English. I doubt you will need google
translate. The younger generation doesn't even care if you greet them in French but it's better to do it that way.