Do you think learning a second foreign language is too much for a brain?

this no sense makes.
the european invasion of the western hemispher that began 600 years ago, to rob the home of people who have been here at least 13 THOUSAND years,
"did not send their best people".

 

If you are american, you speak english as a native langauge. Dont compare your english with my english. I grew up in Turkey and my native langauge is Turkish. I speak english as a foreign language.

If you compare how you speak english with how I speak english, it is very stupid

Your grand, grand, grand father moved to America 500 years ago. English is your natice language.

Americans are native english speakers.

 

lol. my grand mother came to the u.s. from poland in 1919, as a young mother with a baby at her nipple who was born onboard the ship coming over who was my mother.
my mother's father was with her. my father's father's father's father's father's father, was the head of the military contractors hired by the british, they were from the principality of hess, in what is now north rhineland-westfalia, which is in what is now germany. the british hired them to make war on the french and their indiginous allies, including my father's mother's mothers people, who were the fire keeprs from the middle of the long house. my father's mother's mother came from scottland.

the native language of where i currently live is numa. i don't speak it and wish i did. wish that the local news was reported on radio and television in it, and that way it wold become easier to learn, because that is the natural way to learn languages, to hear people speaking them all the time, and figure out from observation what different words are referring to. bilingual signage is helpful in this regard where you have the other language on street and traffic signs being one that is local or you might wish to learn. this figuring out the meaning of words from how they are used, is how i furst learned to speak as an infant.

if languages were actually taught that way, instead of being all about doing social things that don't interest me, i really believe i could actually use them.
the local indiginous language where i grew up most of my life was maidu, nissinan maidu and tciaka (tsee-acka) maidu, but i know very little of it,
though i do have some word lists i xeroxed out of a book at a library. the problem of course, is there was no one i knew who spoke it regularly,
though many of my friends in school knew at least a few words.

my understanding in europe, where many countries are small and close together, that kids in school grow up multi-lingual.
and there are still many places (including nearly all of africa) where french, or their localized versions of it, is most people's second language,

in south and central america, its spanish and portugese, again admixed with indiginous roots.

we are handicapped from learning other languages by cultural chauvanistic and narcisstic attitudes, and making excuses for them is illogical.

english in the western hemisphere, inarguably common and dominant, is none the less, entirely an import.

do people understand what native means? how is it not obvious that 13,000 years (and it may be longer then that) is longer then 600 years?
nor did the european invaders 600 years ago speak english, but spanish and portugese. then came the french. and the english speakers,
who gave birth to the u.s., came last.

you can claim all languages are native, that whatever you grew up speaking is native, but been there longer = more native, then been there less long.
how is this in any way non-obvious. how is the point of this thread, anything other then an attempt to justify a dominant inequity?

as for turkey, do people know why armanians and kurds built those underground cities? it was to have a place to live where they could attempt to defend themselves from genocide.

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leaving all that aside to put it more simply:
learning a second language is exactly the same brain load, as learning a first one.

though i will grant already having a vocabulary in one, reduces the urgency to learn another.

 

I'm wrapping up my first semester of Spanish, and last night I had my first dream where I said something in Spanish!

I don't remember what I said though. It was like two words, but still! I think I conjugated everything correctly too.

And I did my final oral interview already. I wasn't terribly impressed with what I said, but el profe gave me a 95. I think I probably should have received more like 85, but whatever. I'll take the A!

 

It is clear from your original posting that you don't want to learn a third language. Of course it is difficult to bring yourself to do something you really don't want to do. So, don't do it.

I grew up speaking two languages, and over time became fluent or near-fluent in two others. In addition to the four languages I now speak well, I have made some progress with four others. How have I been able to do this? Not because there is anything special about me, but rather because I have wanted to do it; I was enthusiastic about doing it; and I put forth the effort to do it.

In order to retain my language ability, I make opportunities to speak these languages. I go looking for them - they don't come looking for me. Again, it takes some effort. Reading helps me a great deal. How hard is it to find an article in an online publication in the language you're interested in improving your knowledge of, or maintaining? Not hard at all.

When people want to do something, they find a way. When they don't want to do something, they find an excuse. If you're satisfied with your lot in life, and you see good prospects for your life knowing only Turkish and English, there's nothing wrong with that. However, you would be dishonest in saying that you "can't" learn another language. Things worth having are worth working for, and it takes work.

 

English is a real need. It is the international language of the world between nations.

But other languages? They would be just hobbies. Not a need. Thats the way I see it.

A lot of turks cannot even speak english let alone a second foreign language, not even at university and this is the international language of the world.

Learning english is not like learning an ordinary foreign language, which is any language except for english. Still they will not learn it, anyway.

 

And my english is still far from perfect.

I could keep improving my english better, which is the international language of the world as opposed to starting to learn a second foreign while I may very well speak in english with that nation whose mother langauge I start learning.

 

This is not true at all. 1st of all, we have no official language. We also have plenty of ethnic enclaves in many of our major cities (Japantown, Chinatown, Little Italy, etc) where signage and spoken words might be in more than 1 language. Plus we're a nation made up of immigrants and the children of non english speaking immigrants are often bilingual having learned their parents native languages as they were starting to speak well before learning english in public schools. Yeah, sorry...America is too complex to apply a black or white rule to it. Not every American's native language is english.

¡Felicidades!

 

The official language of US is english. How do you have no official language?

It's because of USA's official language being English that made the english the international language of the world. The US has been the most power country in the world.

But I dont know how english became THE US's official language. After all, it was not only english people that moved to the USA back then. English nation must have been the most power in the US back then. There is no other explaining. Or is there?

 

No she's right, the US has no official language.
And I think the expansive English empire likely contributed to English being a "universal language" moreso than America being a powerful country

 

My guess is that it conflicts with the autonomy and liberty we all hold so dear which is ironic considering how the most "patriotic" Americans think everyone should conform and speak english. I mean, I think everyone should be able to read and speak at least some english here as it will make their lives easier, but in the confines of your family or circle of friends, speak whatever language you want. And plenty of Americans do

 

Gracias. No siempre fue fácil. Todavía estoy tratando de aprender pretérito. Espero que luego me enseñen el tiempo futuro. Sin embargo, para escribir estas palabras necesitaba un traductor. Paja

 

esta muy loca what the fuck

 

Yo estudiar Espanol tambien! Fui Mexico quatro veces este ano. Mi comprehension en espanol esta bien, para hablar es mas dificil. Quiero moverme a Quintana Roo y trabajar la playa.

 

^hey I can read that!
I cant say anything back to you because I've always been like that with languages. My reading and listening comprehension is much better than my ability to compose my own sentences

Which means I could be a really perfect friend to a spanish speaker. I would always listen and never talk back

 

I've been doing Russian on duolingo lately. Learning a new alphabet is next level challenging

 

I bet! I learned a bit of Khmer back in the day, and I decided that I was too dumb to learn a second alphabet, so I can't read a word.

Why Russian? It seems like a really cool language. Russia's very high on my places to go list.

 

Khmer..I had to look that one up. Cambodia?

I just love all things Russian for some reason..their literature, their art, their dark, melancholic soul lol. Their precious little dachas. I just decided on a whim to try it out on duolingo a couple of weeks ago. Learning is slow going though, I'm still stuck on the alphabet

 

Nice. Brothers Karamazov is one of my fav books!

Yeah, I lived there for a year. My plan was just traveling through, but due to an ill-timed pickpocketing I landed with $50, and ended up working at a bar on the beach for 3 weeks. It was a great time, but when I eventually got everything sorted I was going to go to China to teach English.

The guy who owned the bar managed a pool company and was looking for an English speaker to sell swimming pools to the retired Europeans and Australians there.

In Febuary 2011 this war broke our between Cambodia and Thailand over this old temple called Preah Vihear (and Thailand was trying to get people to ignore student protests). There weren't invasions or anything like that, but they shut down the border for trade, and my company imported everything from Thailand.

After that my job became to fly into Bangkok once a month. Load up a backpack with these copper titanium pool filters, take a bus to the southern border, and pay the Thai guards 3000 bhat not to look into my backback. So I've moonlighted as an international smuggler. Of swimming pool parts. It was a rich full year.

 

I think I've learned more about you in that one post than I have in all the years we've been on hipforums together that's an awesome story. It seems like you've lived quite the adventurous life