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Has Anyone Experience Learning Two Languages Simultaneously?


stephania

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Hope everything is fine and okay. Your ideas is very much welcome and appreciated. Its nice to be part on this site. Members are very supportive to each and every one.

How refreshing after emerging from another thread where the same could not be said...

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I found learning a second language quite straightforward- it was Bahasa Indonesian which is very easy to pick-up - and after living there for 3 years I became quite fluent, could understand TV programmes etc..

However I did find this fluency a hindrance when trying to pick-up a third language and have now only managed to pick-up smatterings of Hindi, Mandarin, Vietnamese and Arabic along the way. Even now, I find the Indonesian words and phrases pop into my mind when trying to learn Thai and this has caused me to reply seveal time in Bahasa when staying in Thailand. Odd.

Londo Edan (which is Javanese btw - but thats another cerita).

To the above....

I have the opposite problem. I picked up Bahasa Melayu and is now trying (vainly) to learn Thai Now when I speak Malay, Thai words pop in....

Thai words pop in too when I speak mandarin and cantonese.

Now not only do I have a horrible accent when I speak these language, I sound like a retard as well.

I was taking Chinese (Mandarin) at the US Naval Academy and doing well when I was suddenly assigned to a foreign exchange program with the Japanese Navy.  So while still studying Chinese, I had to take a crash course in Japanese. I did OK with it, but I found that in formally learning two languages at the same time, it somehow broke down barriers within my thought-process, and I started interjecting words of Spanish, German, and even Russian into both my Chinese and Japanese. 

Prior to my starting on Japanese, I never interjected other words into my Chinese, but once I started the Japanese classes, the spigot was opened and I started interjecting words fairly often. I never interjected English words, though.  And many times, I never knew I had interjected, say, a Spanish word into a Chinese conversation until I saw the look of confusion on the face of the person to whom I was speaking.

Actually nothing unusual about this at all. Recall seeing some research that repoted that we use a very specific part of our brain when learning a foreign language, for my part it means Swedish (a language I learnt many years ago) is in the same filing cabinet as Thai and I've noted that if I'm struggling to find a word in Thai it is invariably its Swedish counterpart and never the English equivalent, my native language, that is interjected.

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Hello , I just want to share my international family :o

My grand parents and my dad were from Ratchaburi (they spoke Morn-Burmese+Raman or whatever) then dad he moved to Surat Thani when he was 20 and married to Southern woman (my mom), so they already spoke 3 languages : Thai+Southern+Morn.

Then when I grew up and studied English many of Morn words are common to English, I tried to speak Morn to elderly people down south but English word pop up in Morn conversation since then I can speak Southern + Thai + Morn + English.

My son spoke Thai to my family but he speak English to me and when I said something in Thai he says "no momy only English"

Now in NL we using 3 languages at home mainly English then Dutch and I trying to keep up on speaking some Thai to my son cuz i dont want him to forget. But seem he mainly speak dutch but understand all when I speak English and Thai.

My bf also teach him some German extra, I know children they really pick up many language so fast.

In the near future I would like to learn more English and Spanish.

One day if we go back to Thailand and go down south I have no idea what language we gonna speak.

Great weeekend to all readers :D

Cheers.

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