Am I The Only One Who Speaks Multiple Languages At Once?
@danishcanadian (28955)
Canada
October 2, 2019 10:51pm CST
I was born and raised in Canada, and am fluent in English, my first language. Because this country is so vast, we don't have the emphasis on learning multiple languages the way they do in Europe, for example. I know English, a little French (Canada's other national language) and little snippets of Danish (my mother's first language), and some German, and Croatian, which i learned from listening to the radio.
I find that when I am among my friends who speak the languages in which I am not fluent, I can understand their language, but when I answer a question it will likely be with words in German, Danish, and Croatian, with English grammar structure. Anyone else do this? It seems I speak two languages; English, and not-English.
10 people like this
11 responses
@hereandthere (45645)
• Philippines
3 Oct 19
plus your own regional dialects in italy, right?
3 people like this
@danishcanadian (28955)
• Canada
3 Oct 19
@hereandthere That is absolutely incredible!!! I have a lot of friends who work at CKWR FM 98.5, our community station, doing international programming on the weekends. It's great when we all get together. Between us we speak 11 different languages, and some of them are not fluent in English yet. When we all get together we speak ith a mixture of what we know of all the languages combined. I call it CKWR dialect. They all speak English well enough to function as Canadian citizens, but there are a few who still do much better in their native language. I've learned a lot from them.
4 people like this
@LadyDuck (472024)
• Switzerland
3 Oct 19
@hereandthere 
Yes, my Milanese dialect and the one of the region where my Mom was born (Modenese).
Yes, my Milanese dialect and the one of the region where my Mom was born (Modenese).3 people like this
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@BarBaraPrz (47646)
• St. Catharines, Ontario
3 Oct 19
I speak Smattering... a few words in several different languages. 
2 people like this
@hereandthere (45645)
• Philippines
3 Oct 19
you definitely have an ear for languages. (here, we're used to mixing english and tagalog/filipino, plus our own regional dialects).
3 people like this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
3 Oct 19
I am fluent in English and French and I can understand some German.
2 people like this
@thelme55 (77168)
• Germany
3 Oct 19
I don't think you are the only one. I was born in the Philippines and speak Bisayan, my dialect which has a lot of Spanish words in it. I speak Tagalog, the national language in my home country and of course English, a must in the Philippines. Besides that, I speak German language as I am married to a German and speak this language everyday. I am already used to speaking 4 languages everyday as I have friends from different regions in the Philippines.
2 people like this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
3 Oct 19
I used to work in a second-hand bookshop and, with an interest in foreign scripts, can usually identify a language, even if I can't read it. I learnt French and Latin at school, so I can usually read enough Italian, Spanish and Portuguese to understand the gist of it.
As far as speaking goes, I can get by in French and did once have a rather limited conversation with a Spanish lady who had no English or French by trying out what French words I knew until I found ones she recognised in Spanish. That was quite fun - at least, we both laughed about it!
2 people like this
@dodo19 (47336)
• Beaconsfield, Quebec
3 Oct 19
I was born and raised in Canada too. My dad's anglophone and mom's francophone. So, my sister and I grew up speaking both. So ever since we were like teens or something, my sister and I will have conversations in both. We'll literally have a 5-minute conversation and speak both.
2 people like this
@Alexandoy (65308)
• Cainta, Philippines
3 Oct 19
I learned English as my second language in school.
@garymarsh6 (23404)
• United Kingdom
4 Oct 19
Yes it is good to have a little knowledge about other languages. I Speak English and French fluently and know a bit of Russian from my time working with a charity. Our local community here has a large Indian population and when they are speaking Hindi there are a lot of English words mixed in with it which makes it quite amusing!
1 person likes this
@Kuttu_007 (1940)
• India
3 Oct 19
It would be hard for the Listeners to understand...but when people know too many languages it happens sometimes
