Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedKing]

Heh, my kids have a hard time of it. They are both bilingual, and being young technically still learning both English and Welsh. I am first language English with Welsh as a learned second, and thier mother is first language Welsh with English as a learned second. To the credit of my kids they switch seamlessly between both depending despite the very different sentence forms.

That's awesome. I would love to raise my kids bilingual, but I'd need to be more fluent in a second language myself. And it would help if my wife were co-fluent in something that I'm even partially fluent in (like German and Mandarin). Instead she just knows a smattering of Spanish, French and Finnish.

My daughter gets once-a-week Spanish instruction in preschool for the last year or so...so she's already more fluent than me. >_<

[MonkeyHead]

It probably helps that bilingualism is more or less the norm in this part of the world, especially within our schools. Road signs in Wales are the best things ever.

Spoiler: see? (click to show/hide)

[RedKing]

....and if I came down from another planet and was told that's bilingual in English and Welsh, I think I'd assume that the Welsh aren't even the same species as the English, nevermind culturally related. 

That or somebody's been trolling Welsh road signs by mixing up all the letters. 

[MonkeyHead]

After a while, you stop seeing both languages, and simply see the same statement twice.

The Welsh alphabet confuses the hell out of people - we have extra letters ("Ch", "Ll", "Ng" "Ff" "Ph", "Rh" "Th"and "Dd"), and "f" takes the role of "v" seeing as we dont have one. We also lack "k", "q" "x" and "z".

The language has remained very different from English (Welsh is very similar to the ancient Celtic tounges in pre-Roman Britain, and hasnt changed anywhere near as much as English over the last 200 to 300 years), seeing as our "cultural links" mainly consist of centuries of conflict and opression. Its one way of reinforcing our natural identiy I suppose.

[DJ]

I find the whole code switching mid-sentence quite weird. When I'm speaking Croatian, my mind goes into Croatian mode, and when I'm speaking English it goes into English mode. And it takes a bit of time to switch between the two. The only time I can see myself doing it is when one language has a better (ie more descriptive) word, as there's quite a number of words that don't have direct translations. I think that most of the mode changing resistance comes from grammatical differences, since English has a much more rigid sentence structure.

[Reudh]

My view:

English is the Dwarf Fortress of languages.

Horribly complicated and difficult to learn, but immensely powerful.

[native english speaker of dutch/swedish/english descent]

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My view:

English is the Dwarf Fortress of languages.

Horribly complicated and difficult to learn, but immensely powerful.

And made a major language in the first place through absolute brutality from its original speakers.

[Vattic]

And made a major language in the first place through absolute brutality from its original speakers.

English has been pretty synonymous with brutality from the start.

[Reudh]

Yep.

I'm a proud English speaker, and I pride myself on being able to pronounce words like "inveigle" or "oesophagogastroduodenoscopy" correctly.

I also pride myself on knowing or having a reasonable guess at the origin of words. Etymology is pretty fascinating.

[Mr. Palau]

Yep.

I'm a proud English speaker, and I pride myself on being able to pronounce words like "inveigle" or "oesophagogastroduodenoscopy" correctly.

I also pride myself on knowing or having a reasonable guess at the origin of words. Etymology is pretty fascinating.

Let me guess
In-vei-gle and Oes-o-phago-gastro-duo-den-o-scopy.

[kaijyuu]

The only word I learned solely for the sake of learning a ridiculously convoluted word would be pneumonoultramicroscopicsilocovolcaniconiosis. One of my science teachers had it plastered on his wall and what the hell else was I gonna do during those boring lectures?

[Starver]

Etymology is pretty fascinating.

Yeah, I like insects too!

(j/k, need I say...)



Lethological. The only word you need to remember.  And if you can't, well... case in point!

[Reudh]

Heh, my kids have a hard time of it. They are both bilingual, and being young technically still learning both English and Welsh. I am first language English with Welsh as a learned second, and thier mother is first language Welsh with English as a learned second. To the credit of my kids they switch seamlessly between both depending despite the very different sentence forms.

That's awesome. I would love to raise my kids bilingual, but I'd need to be more fluent in a second language myself. And it would help if my wife were co-fluent in something that I'm even partially fluent in (like German and Mandarin). Instead she just knows a smattering of Spanish, French and Finnish.

My daughter gets once-a-week Spanish instruction in preschool for the last year or so...so she's already more fluent than me. >_<

My dad's best mate's kids are bilingual English and Japanese.
They're 3 and 2, and their Japanese is roughly on par with mine in terms of accuracy, but their skill wielding it and the ability to flit between the two is amazing. We can often hold a conversation, a basic one; but they love it; the older one said to his mum "This big red man can speak like a little person!" in japanese.
They call my siblings and I 'Older Siblings'.

[rhesusmacabre]

It probably helps that bilingualism is more or less the norm in this part of the world, especially within our schools. Road signs in Wales are the best things ever.

Of course, if the people making and installing the signs aren't fluent, it can lead to mistakes:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The welsh here reads: "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated".

[Reudh]

Casnewydd, the only welsh I know, despite being partially welsh (I have some family from Merthyr Tydfil, and some more from somewhere else, starting with a C)- that means Newport, doesn't it?