Is There a Difference?

[LogGrad98]

You ain't at all creepy.

Right? That is hard to explain to someone when you wave back at them with your binoculars.

 

[PearlWatson]

Right? That is hard to explain to someone when you wave back at them with your binoculars.

Point at the birds in the sky.

 

[Stoked]

As a "half Mexican" does your wife speak Spanish?
Watching my neighbor lady speak both English and Spanish with her kids was kind of amazing.

Nope. She's kind of lame that way. I probably speak more Spanish than she does.

I am fluent in Spanish but my wife doesn't speak it at all. My kids are starting to understand words and phrases but they rearely say them themselves.

 

[LogGrad98]

I am fluent in Spanish but my wife doesn't speak it at all. My kids are starting to understand words and phrases but they rearely say them themselves.

Both my wife and I speak German, at least we did when we got married as I finding out exactly how much of it I lost over the years with my recent business trips. But teaching your kids another language is really hard and takes a level of dedication to speaking it in the home that we just did not have. We tried starting out teaching our kids German as they grew up but in the long run it just didn't work. I have a lot of respect for people who grew up speaking more than one language effectively. I have met a co-worker here who is from Holland, and grew up speaking dutch, german, english, and spanish in his home and now he is conversant in all of them. That's really awesome.

Now I will tell you about a polyglot I knew a while back. He worked for me as a supervisor. He spoke no fewer than 14 languages and that was all I could nail him down to, he never wanted to talk about it much. I personally watched him effectively use 6 or 7 languages. He spoke english, spanish, finnish (mission time there), french, chinese, polish, russian, serbian that I can remember him using with me around. He admitted to a few others and gave some demonstrations. It was a hobby of his, but he also had a mind that was just wired to work that way, and also made him a little socially backward. I'll never forget watching him switch among 3 or 4 eastern european languages to help a very flustered lost truck driver find where he needed to go before he hit on the right language, or when he got into an argument in chinese with someone at a restaurant we were at when he over heard them talking about the waitresses in an unsavory manner. Cool dude.

 

[Stoked]

Both my wife and I speak German, at least we did when we got married as I finding out exactly how much of it I lost over the years with my recent business trips. But teaching your kids another language is really hard and takes a level of dedication to speaking it in the home that we just did not have. We tried starting out teaching our kids German as they grew up but in the long run it just didn't work. I have a lot of respect for people who grew up speaking more than one language effectively. I have met a co-worker here who is from Holland, and grew up speaking dutch, german, english, and spanish in his home and now he is conversant in all of them. That's really awesome.

Now I will tell you about a polyglot I knew a while back. He worked for me as a supervisor. He spoke no fewer than 14 languages and that was all I could nail him down to, he never wanted to talk about it much. I personally watched him effectively use 6 or 7 languages. He spoke english, spanish, finnish (mission time there), french, chinese, polish, russian, serbian that I can remember him using with me around. He admitted to a few others and gave some demonstrations. It was a hobby of his, but he also had a mind that was just wired to work that way, and also made him a little socially backward. I'll never forget watching him switch among 3 or 4 eastern european languages to help a very flustered lost truck driver find where he needed to go before he hit on the right language, or when he got into an argument in chinese with someone at a restaurant we were at when he over heard them talking about the waitresses in an unsavory manner. Cool dude.

There was this hispnic guy I was in the MTC with. He was like 3rd-4th generation American and as a result he didn't speak Spanish. But he could speak English and several others like French, German, Italian and about 2-3 others. Think he knew like 6-7 languages total.

He was called to South America on a Spanish speaking mission lol.

As for myself I have English and Spanish as you all know. But I want to learn Tagolog, French, Italian and Portuguese. the problem I have is that I have no one to speak those languages with and as a result I cannot effectively learn.

 

[LogGrad98]

Just try harder. Stereotyping is easy once you get the hang of it.

That's what every home brewer says.