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Do/did your parents learn languages? | ||
Tags: Family | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4868 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 9 of 28 24 December 2011 at 7:50pm | IP Logged |
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My mother knows three Romance languages: French, Italian and Spanish. My father knows two
languages. My father decided not to learn English because he didn't like how it sounded. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Neutrino Newbie Russian Federation Joined 4531 days ago 13 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Russian* Studies: English, Dutch | Message 10 of 28 24 December 2011 at 8:31pm | IP Logged |
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My dad reads books in English, using dictionaries. Kindle is very useful device for that. And he writes unknown English words out of all labels he sees, news tickers on TV etc. (thank heavens not words from fences). It’s really amazing :)
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| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5461 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 11 of 28 24 December 2011 at 8:45pm | IP Logged |
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My mom is a native Korean speaker and had to improve her English when she came to the US.
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| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5937 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 12 of 28 24 December 2011 at 11:25pm | IP Logged |
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I asked my father about this, and says he entered grammar school in the USA knowing only Japanese. So he learned English as a child.
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| Rivso Diglot Groupie FranceRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4689 days ago 41 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Dutch, Japanese | Message 13 of 28 24 December 2011 at 11:30pm | IP Logged |
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My mum grew up in south africa speaking mainly afrikaans but has forgoten almost all of
it since then, though now speaks french. My dad is monolingual. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 14 of 28 25 December 2011 at 12:12am | IP Logged |
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My mum studied English at school, one where it was taught at a decent level. she even used to have some penpals but now she's forgotten a lot and she can hardly get by alone while travelling.
my dad and my aunt (his sis) studied French at school, for like 8-9 years i think. aunt went on to become a translator/language teacher, dad entered a physics/technical university where they had one year of basic English and then technical English only. he could read technical texts without a dictionary (and still can I think) but although he gets by better while travelling, overall my mum's English is better. he also taught himself quite decent Japanese because he's fascinated with the culture. he used to work as an interpreter/translator (mostly technical or business) and i think that's basically why he got around to learning it in the tough 90s, to earn more money. both dad and aunt were born in Belarus (and aunt moved to Minsk to go to uni and still lives there) so they also had Belarusian at school, and they often use it to txt their mum - my grandma. she's basically the only person in the family who finds it cool and special that I want to study Belarusian. she learned it as an adult and at some point even worked as a news announcer @ local TV channel. she also studied German at some point somewhere. Aunt tried to teach me basic French and I didn't like it, mum taught me basic English and i liked:) I learned the Western alphabet at an early age. However, i think what matters most is that i knew it's possible to learn a language to a high level. I went to the same school that my mum attended and in my free time i translated songs by britney spears etc, I did well at school and the teachers were surprised that i wasn't taking any private English classes or something (it's quite common here to take them in addition to the ones at school). At about 11 i heard Rammestein and really liked what German sounds like and I was fascinated by the similarities between it and English so I wanted to learn it but i'm still struggling. i remember asking some girl who studied it: "how many tenses does German have?" :))))) I was yet to realize that tenses aren't necessarily the most complicated thing in the grammar. now that i think of it, that's so funny. I was good at Russian at school, including the theoretical stuff. When I was 12 a teacher recommended me to take the entrance exams at the lyceum that belongs to Moscow States Linguistics University. That was the only time in my life when I did take some private language classes. Not many, mostly to improve my grammar and learn some things that we hadn't learned at school (like future perfect). I passed with a good grade and oh god, i love my lyceum :') i guess that's where i realized that it's possible to learn ANY language - i had friends who learned French, Spanish, Italian and many of my groupmates had better German skills than I did. I also saw that even Japanese wasn't impossible, though those who learned it just seemed to be overloaded compared to others. At the age of 15 i took the plunge and started learning Finnish on my own as i loved it so much (and still do). And omg. Now I see the logic of the events, wow. Finally. I've always wondered why I started learning it exactly then, after flirting for like three years. I linked it to meeting a girl from St Petersburg who had reached basic fluency, mostly on her own. I was always puzzled remembering how I mentioned that I wanted to learn Finnish and she said something and I didn't understand though I knew some basic frases. Okay, so what? Now I finally understand. I now knew personally someone who spoke fluent Finnish! My desire had always been immense and now I knew it was possible! And also for learning on my own, it must've given me confidence that i was the only one who did well at English classes despite not having had (many) private lessons or gone to an English-speaking country (i still haven't, lol). However, during the first year i always planned to attend courses eventually. it was only when i found this forum, learned about shadowing and reached basic fluency that I realized it's in fact possible to learn a language on your own. I still went to Portuguese courses for a couple of months though, to be more confident about my pronunciation. apart from Esperanto and Belarusian, i think Italian was the first language I started learning on my own with the intention of eventually reaching fluency on my own. Now that I think of it, I admire those of you here who dared to start learning your first foreign language on your own and didn't give up. I hope now people who know me are more willing to believe it's possible to learn a language on your own. Now that I think of it, I often mention my Finnish certificate just so that people didn't doubt that I learned more than just a phrasebook or something. Edited by Serpent on 25 December 2011 at 12:50am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 15 of 28 25 December 2011 at 12:59am | IP Logged |
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My father learned English, German and French at school, spent 18 months in Germany and a couple of months in France, and then studied those three languages at the university and became a high school teacher. After he passed away I found newspaper articles from the 50ies, where he was fighting to introduce English at school at a much earlier age than what was common at that time. He was close to fluent in all three, but with an accent in English and French.
My mother spoke German almost without any accent, a passable English and enough French and Spanish to get by on holiday. My older sister is fluent in English and French, as she has worked as a high school teacher in those languages, and she speaks a fair amount of Italian and German. As far as inspiration goes, I got that mainly from my mother who had a strong wish that I learn languages, and therefore sent me to Spain alone for 6 months when I was 11, and to France for a year alone when I was 14. She also encouraged me to learn German and Italian when I showed an interest for those languages. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 25 December 2011 at 8:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5193 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 16 of 28 25 December 2011 at 8:00am | IP Logged |
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Mom's monolingual. Dad knows enough English to read magazines, but struggles to speak it. No one
around me was a polyglot growing up. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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