A language learners’ forum

rdearman wrote:

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Just for fun, how many total languages can this group speak?

I will have a try at remembering.

• English
• Norwegian
• Swedish
• Russian
• Finnish
• Danish
• French
• Italian
• Spanish
• German
• Mandarin
• Japanese
• Esperanto
• Polish
• Croatian
• Belarusian
• Irish
• Kazakh
• Romanian
• Portuguese
• Greek
• Czech
• Bavarian
• Hebrew
• Icelandic
• Hungarian

I love how about a third of those are on the list thanks to tarvos, yet you left out her native language

Looking at the picture now, I guess I should have taken that damn hat off..

In which language do you talk among youselves, then? And how do you decide?

smallwhite wrote:In which language do you talk among youselves, then? And how do you decide?

Not all of us have a lot of languages in common, so it ends up being mostly English. Also, I find my language levels plummet in that environment with the noise and crowds and lack of sleep. I thought I was the only one, but I found out that other people also struggle a bit.

Anyway, I spoke mostly English, but I was involved briefly in a Spanish language conversation with Zenmonkey and a Spaniard whose name I forget, though I didn't say much myself. I spoke with Cristina sometimes in Norwegian and other times in English. And when I was in the big Thalia bookstore in Vienna and found the mother lode of language books, I ran down the stairs with my arms full of German grammar books, looking for Dave, and I was so excited I accidentally spoke German for probably the third time in my life. Oh, and I also had some text-chats in Esperanto, if that counts.

I also had some conversations in Norwegian, Spanish and Japanese with non-forum people during the Gathering.

English usually, but with Cristina it switches to Spanish or some kind of Scandi-thing (and occasionally French) as well as English. With vonPeterhof Russian gets mixed in. With Jeff it's nearly always Swedish.

I'm not Dutch, secretly :p

You also dragged me out of the English bubble, thanks for that
My weirdest experience was speaking Polish with a German guy We've also spoken a little Italian.

I spoke mostly English because that seemed to be the common language when 3 or more people got together but I spoke Spanish quite a bit, French too. I think I had 3-4 short exchanges in German.

My decision process was to look at the badge or guess. I tend to codeswitch to Spanish/French with people who have that language as their first language - and then I'll ask about if that is ok. So Brun Ugle got a blast of Spanish and a few people go some French when we had lunch with Hugues or helped at the ASSIMIL table. Rdearman and I had a French walk back from a lunch. Bit and pieces here and there.

My Hebrew was disappointingly weak but that is ok, I was expecting that.

zenmonkey wrote:I spoke mostly English because that seemed to be the common language when 3 or more people got together but I spoke Spanish quite a bit, French too. I think I had 3-4 short exchanges in German.

My decision process was to look at the badge or guess. I tend to codeswitch to Spanish/French with people who have that language as their first language - and then I'll ask about if that is ok. So Brun Ugle got a blast of Spanish and a few people go some French when we had lunch with Hugues or helped at the ASSIMIL table. Rdearman and I had a French walk back from a lunch. Bit and pieces here and there.

My Hebrew was disappointingly weak but that is ok, I was expecting that.

I really enjoyed the blasts of Spanish, but I got the feeling that you and that guy whose name I can't remember thought you should switch to English for my benefit. I didn't say much, but I understood what you were saying.

My problem is that all my languages get really bad in that environment. I'm usually much more fluent in Spanish than I was at the Gathering. I just don't do as well without any warm-up time. I think I need to practice switching between languages as well as practicing the languages individually.

Brun Ugle wrote:

zenmonkey wrote:I spoke mostly English because that seemed to be the common language when 3 or more people got together but I spoke Spanish quite a bit, French too. I think I had 3-4 short exchanges in German.

My decision process was to look at the badge or guess. I tend to codeswitch to Spanish/French with people who have that language as their first language - and then I'll ask about if that is ok. So Brun Ugle got a blast of Spanish and a few people go some French when we had lunch with Hugues or helped at the ASSIMIL table. Rdearman and I had a French walk back from a lunch. Bit and pieces here and there.

My Hebrew was disappointingly weak but that is ok, I was expecting that.

I really enjoyed the blasts of Spanish, but I got the feeling that you and that guy whose name I can't remember thought you should switch to English for my benefit. I didn't say much, but I understood what you were saying.

My problem is that all my languages get really bad in that environment. I'm usually much more fluent in Spanish than I was at the Gathering. I just don't do as well without any warm-up time. I think I need to practice switching between languages as well as practicing the languages individually.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. At first I did get that impression that we should switch but you made it clear that it was okay and I was fine with keeping it in Spanish for as long as it went. If I remember correctly, we did eventually switch over and switch back ... I had moments when switching into German was impossible.

I think we are trained to not be rude and this means switching to a language that facilitates communication for all. For example, my girlfriend hates when I speak to her in a study language she doesn't speak. She growls at me. At the polyglot gathering, it is quite the opposite and we generally enjoy hearing something different and know things will switch about soon ... I need to get into my head for the next one that it is expected that some focused talking will occur. And that it is fun to hear for others, I know I immensely enjoyed some of the talking that was going on around me where I only got a tiny bit of the content or where I was a passive listener.

It is overwhelmingly in English. In fact I had a Frenchman tell me: I didn't come here to speak French. The implication being that I should continue to speak in English. Most of my French speaking was with non-native speakers. Bit of a chat in Italian the day after the gathering ended on the castle tour with a nice Italian chap.

They had a non-english area which was a great idea, but would have been nice to have a lecture room dedicated to non-english. Some people were organising impromptu meetups in variuos languages. I think Brun Ugle went to a Japanese one.

I'd say if you're planning on language practice in anything but English you will be disappointed.

I think you can make of it what you will to some extent. There were people that spoke languages other than English a lot of the time. You just have to hang out with the right people. Of course, it helps also to know some languages to a level where you can have an intelligent conversation. I'm hoping to learn to express myself a little more elegantly in some other languages because then I won't have to choose between speaking English or sounding stupid.