mikesiva wrote:I admire you guys and your ability to speak another language or watch TV in another language. How many languages do you guys speak?
I can only do English sadly. I respect my son for living and working in Japan for the past two years
Can your son speak Japanese? Thats crazy hard to learn that!
Ive lived in Norway, Spain and now Belgium, so I speak French, both forms of standardized Norwegian, I can understand Catalan as its very similar to a dialect of Southern France, and my Spanish isnt perfect, but its fine to get by in all but the most complex conversations. Currently learning Dutch (A2 level, so no master, but enough to order things, hold simple conversations). I spent a while working in Russia a long time ago, so know the very basics of that. But then you find that when you know Spanish and French, you can pretty much get Italian when its written. When you know English and Norwegian, you can understand bits of German. When you speak Norwegian, you can pretty much understand Swedish and Danish. Know a bit of Russian, you can get by in Ukraine or Poland.
Certain language groups make learning one very simple to learn another.
The real hard part was learning English properly. We arent taught English properly in Britain, once you start to understand the mechanics of your own language and what the functions are, its suprisingly easy to learn a language. That and being willing to make mistakes and a prat of yourself.