A language learners’ forum

smallwhite wrote:I've always wondered - why does a conversation have to be in ONE language? There's abundant listening opportunity everywhere and every day so it's really just speaking opportunity that we really want, so if Tarvos spoke to me in Chinese and I to her in Dutch, that's great practice, too, no?

I do this all the time Not everyone can handle that speed, it's a lot of pressure.

smallwhite wrote:

tarvos wrote:No. In fact I avoided using it as much as possible. I have spoken more Spanish than English for sure.

Sorry, I shouldn't have said "English". I meant switching to your interlocutor's L1, like switching to Spanish on a Spaniard.

I have done that, but they will switch to something else later, so it doesn't matter in this context.

jeff_lindqvist wrote:

smallwhite wrote:Can we have a legend, please? I've been dying to know whether that's RDearman or Iversen in the middle but I suspect I'd offend one or both of them if I asked...

So, top to bottom, left to right:
tarvos, jeff_lindqvist
zenmonkey, Rdearman, Tim Owen
daegga, vonPeterhof, daveprine, Elenia, Sprachprofi
Serpent, Brun_Ugle, Solfrid Christina

Missing people: Vedun, Iversen, druckfehler, Aidan_Sweeney (I never met the last two, but they were there). girlyrobot wasn't in the picture either (she joined the forum after the gathering).

If you count people who are/were mainly active on HTLAL, we could probably add another ten.

Jeff already did the work of creating a legend, but I thought it would be easier to have the legend and picture in one post.

If anyone wants a copy of the original picture, PM me your e-mail address.

If you really want to avoid using English, you can always brave the hot sun (daytime) or mosquitoes (evening) and go to the .....

Fabrício was there too and said he'd show up for the photo, don't know whether he forgot or what.

smallwhite wrote:I've always wondered - why does a conversation have to be in ONE language? There's abundant listening opportunity everywhere and every day so it's really just speaking opportunity that we really want, so if Tarvos spoke to me in Chinese and I to her in Dutch, that's great practice, too, no?

I actually had a chat in the English-free zone with girlyrobot. I was speaking Swedish, and she was Swedifying her Danish and we got on pretty well. Then someone else came along and we discovered that the only thing we all had any pretensions to was German, so she spoke to us in German for a while and I astounded myself by being able to respond.

A lot of the time English ended up being the group language, but that didn't mean that I hadn't been part of groups where the language changed over the course of the conversation. Russian, Spanish and Mandarin happened around me very often. In fact, I've stayed in touch with some of the gathering participants who speak the latter two and they still speak in Spanish and Mandarin here - although not so often.

EDIT: As for what languages I spoke - English came top, then Swedish*. I spoke enough French to impress Rick and zenmonkey, although not enough to impress myself. And I stumbled through some German on a few occasions.

*Although I hid from tarvos and Jeff when they spoke to me in Swedish on the first day! I got stage fright!

Brun Ugle wrote: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.

Brun Ugle makes it sound like she spat out a scant few words in German, but the actual event was much more impressive. She and I ended up conversing in German a lot about books and languages and random things. It was refreshing and impressive. I knew she knew German, but I didn't realize I had never witnessed her speaking it. We also spoke with some of the staff in German when looking for recommendations, but it seemed automatic at that point, so I don't recall how much German vs English was generated.

So the lesson here? Trap Brun Ugle in a bookstore filled with German-language books and she'll German her way out. But only after several hours of browsing and selecting. If we didn't have dinner and travel obligations, we'd still be there....

daveprine wrote:

Brun Ugle wrote: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.

Brun Ugle makes it sound like she spat out a scant few words in German, but the actual event was much more impressive. She and I ended up conversing in German a lot about books and languages and random things. It was refreshing and impressive. I knew she knew German, but I didn't realize I had never witnessed her speaking it. We also spoke with some of the staff in German when looking for recommendations, but it seemed automatic at that point, so I don't recall how much German vs English was generated.

So the lesson here? Trap Brun Ugle in a bookstore filled with German-language books and she'll German her way out. But only after several hours of browsing and selecting. If we didn't have dinner and travel obligations, we'd still be there....

What I can speak and what I'm willing to admit that I speak might not be quite the same thing. Also, I find that I need some kind of warm-up still in most of my languages in order to speak reasonably fluently. Since I had been looking through the books for a while and reading bits of them, I was naturally already thinking partly in German. I still have a lot of work to do before I can feel comfortable in anything other than Norwegian and English. And to be honest, I often don't even feel comfortable in Norwegian. I'm usually OK until I notice I'm speaking a foreign language and then I get all tongue-tied. So, I'm actually at my worst around polyglots, because then I'm more aware of what language I'm speaking.

Needing a warm-up is perfectly normal. I need a warm-up in order to speak some of my rustier languages.

from Jeff's log:

jeff_lindqvist wrote:Saturday June 3rd

Finally a day when the lectures didn't start at 9AM!

Yeah it makes me laugh how the gathering site says "Yes, we know how much you love going out at night and we have considered your need for a good sleep in the schedule! You’re welcome "
That's kinda one of the reasons I wasn't willing to pay for the whole thing - I knew I'd be too tired if I tried to attend even some morning lectures. While travelling I find it hard enough to do anything before midday tbh I did attend the 11am lecture about the former Yugoslavian languages, but meeeh.