Bilingual, Trilingual, Multilingual

[Cimmerianbloke]

The way you learn a language has a great influence on your fluency. Languages learned academically at school or in college tend to produce less fluent speakers, who sound less natural than, let's say kids of a US serviceman stationed abroad who pick up the language through regular exposure. Age is certainly a decisive factor too (I currently live in Germany and have a hard time with the vocabulary, that I cannot relate to any other language I am fluent in, while as a kid my brain was a sponge). The relative distance between 2 language groups is also a factor that can speed up or slow down the learning process, even though the brain creates and uses learning strategies and patterns to cope with storing new data. It should not be forgotten that for most of us, learning a new tongue is also (and above all...) a trial and error process.

 

[Monsieur Ennui]

Here's a question, does your native language have to be your dominant language ?

Nope! Several of my Swiss friends tell me that they "think" in English, as opposed to their native Swiss-German.

 

[Sparta]

I´m fluent in Albanian, Danish, English, German. I have no difficulties understanding swedish and norwegian. Albanian is my first language, but I´ve lived in Denmark many years. I´ve noticed that I have forgotten some Albanian and I have forgotten all Serbo-Croatian which is odd because it was the second language i learned since I went to a serbo-croatian school. But I guess it is because I´ve not been using it. However, an other odd thing is that I usually think/daydream in english partly because I study engineering and all my lecturers, books and exams are in english. The other odd thing is that when I complain to my sister about my danish boyfriend, or when I'm angry I always yell or speak in Albanian! I've noticed a few times that I've "lost" an argument with my boyfriend because I have to translate my arguments from Albanian to danish. and I usually give him compliments in ENGLISH!

I guess my question is: if you are fluent is several languages and the person you are having a conversation with is also fluent in the same languages is there a connection between the language you use and the emotions?

At this point I'm almost equally fluent in Danish and English.

 

[Moor]

I speak Berber, French, Italian, English, I'm abble to understand Spanish, and I'm learning Dutch.