After our conversations I’d say your still nearly fluent in Swedish. Only thing I’ve noticed is that you sometimes write sentences backwords. Like how they get when they are directly translated from another language. But I claim I’m fluent/native in Swedish and do the same thing most of the time.
I might wrote correctly (mostly) but you should hear me speak. My husband usually jokes about sending me on an SFI class. (It’s for people from other countries so they can learn Swedish) and he is Serbian. It’s very common when you’re having more than one language to handle in everyday life.
That together with forgetting words and just grab whatever replacement word you come up with at the moment. In the language that first get in your head.
They do that in a heartbeat here.
Now when my hair is red and I’m out with my husband it doesn’t happen that often.
But sometimes before when I had my natural hair (nearly black) was out and about, having just a little bit of a problem with some words or hanging out with friends who speaks another language, or even answered the phone in something else but Swedish. People just switched into English immediately.
I think it’s either because they are afraid of not understanding/being understood or just don’t take their time to listen and try to understand properly.
English - fluent, my main language since moving to Britain 2005
French - 4 years in school, can’t remember a thing. While English came easy to me in school, with French I had to work hard just to pass the minimum grade. I hated it, still do. Apologies to all the French people on here.
Spanish - I started learning on duolingo during lockdown, out of boredom really. I can order food and ask for directions, that’ll do for some holiday help.
I do forget words in German though and at home we switch back and forth between German and English. Sometimes mid sentence. I keep up reading in German from certain authors. But I have to admit, that when watching German telly, the language sounds harsh to me.
Was just wondering around on here while taking a short break and found this thread. Since I’m a linguist and slightly obsessed with languages I was glad to read through what other languages other people know on here!
English - native language
Kyrgyz (Karakalpak mutually intelligible dialect) - C2
Uzbek - C1
Kazakh - C2
Tajik (mutually intelligible dialect of Farsi/ Dari) -C1
Turkish - B2
Turkman -B1
Thai - B1 (unfortunately I’ve not spoken this language regularly in so long I’m afraid it will regress)
I really am wanting to learn Pashto but haven’t been able to focus on this. Fortunately I travel withon Central Asia so often I am able to regularly use all the languages I’ve learned with the exception of Thai. And sometimes will change languages in the middle of a sentence when speaking with someone who speaks two overlapping languages with me. I don’t really notice how much I do that. And when dreaming it is almost always in Kyrgyz, Uzbek or Tajik. Occasionally I’ll dream in Turkman but I can’t remember the last time I ever dreamt in English. It’s my native language but the language I speak the least.
Dutch - near native (it has worn off a bit after 25 years of living abroad)
English - near native
German - fluent
French - intermediate
Spanish - basic
Mandarin - basic
I can also understand a reasonable amount of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish but speaking it is a much bigger challenge!
Polish: Native
German: Native
English: pretty good
French: tourist level of getting along and chatting, better at reading
Latin: been a while, but I still can read Cicero and that’s what counts for me
Japanese: starting out
I’m a native speaker of Spanish, but my degree was in something called English Philology, mostly the study of English linguistics and literature. Then I went to the UK to get an MA and a PhD in a linguistics-related field, came back to Spain and got a job lecturing in that field, mostly in English too. So, even though my mother tongue is Spanish, my professional language is definitely English, and I can sometimes struggle to find the terminology and concepts of the field in Spanish, as I don’t use it that much in that area of my life.
So:
Spanish, native speaker
English, near native
French, pretty advanced
Italian, LOVE the language, and have studied here and there. Probably higher intermediate.
Latin, studied it for five years and loved it, but forgot most of it. We didn’t learn to speak it (does anyone learn that?), but we could read it and translate it.
I love languages.
@Laner, I’m curious how related are all those central Asian languages? Are they in the same family? Your knowledge is really impressive!
Really interesting to read about your linguistic feild and how you teach this. Really cool! I don’t do any teaching in this area but use these skills for translating needed materials and resources in underprivileged areas. I live full time in Kyrgyzstan but travel all over Central Asia and parts of the Middle East on a fairly regular basis for work and knowing the local languages makes my job so much easier and travel much smoother.
Kyrgyz, Karakalpak, Uzbek, Kazakh, Turkman and Turkish fall under the category of Turkic languages. All of which use the Cyrillic alphabet with the exception of Turkish and Turkman which uses the Latin alphabet. However Kyrgyz has 8 additional letters not existing in the other languages listed. Kyrgyz, Karakalpak and Kazakh are the most similar to each other with some minor grammatical and vocabulary differences. Uzbek has some major differences in grammar and vocabulary. What’s fun about these languages is that they follow the law of harmony.
Tajik is a Persian language which uses the Cyrillic alphabet however I also learned the traditional Persian writing style. I can have a conversation with friends speaking Farsi or Dari and easily understand without difficulty. These languages are so similar when spoken it is more dialects of each other.
And Thai…thats in a whole other category but the tonal aspect if it is fascinating and rather beautiful.
Spanish - I thought the Air Force would put me in that because I knew it so well.
Russian - That’s where they put me.
I stopped a lot of Russian. Though I still understand when I listen to it, in Mexico I used to speak in sentences of Spanish and Russian together, not knowing. I don’t translate in my mind. I probably do now with Russian. It’s been a minute.
Yes, I learned how to speak, read and write Latin and Greek in high school! Mind you, how we pronounced Greek had nothing to do with how modern Greek sounds. I have also forgotten pretty much everything other than a few famous quotes/texts in both languages.
It’s very common when you’re having more than one language to handle in everyday life.
