Hey Polyglot Pandas, What Is The Craziest, Most Interesting, And Most Challenging Thing About Speaking Multiple Languages?

Do you often have dreams in a foreign language? Do you get sometimes so confused that you are getting serious Pandemonium vibes? Let me know all the funny details!

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I've learned a couple different languages in school, but I'm not very good at either, so sometimes I switch from one to the other mid-sentence, or I get the accents mixed up (idk if that makes sense, but trust me, it sounds really weird when I do that), or I forget basic stuff but somehow remember the most useless, obscure phrases.

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6points

A Wild Bean (they/them/any)

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A Wild Bean (they/them/any) (Submission author) 1 year ago

Oh, and sometimes I forget a word in English (which is my first language) and can only remember it in a different language.

5points

1.As long as i have been able to speak i have spoken Finnish and English. differentiating between who i speak to in which language from the age of two. But i find it almost impossible to speak the other language to people i've grown up speaking one language to even if there is other people who don't speak the language we are speaking.
2. When we lived in England me (then born to 6years old) and my brother (born to 11 years) spoke English to each other. the we moved to Finland and slowly it started changing to finish but there was a period where we would mix it up, speaking both languages and understand each other perfectly but no one else could understand us.
3. I have a certain type of dyslexia that can come with learning two languages from such a young age.

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3points

Mis Stake she/her 🇫🇮🇬🇧

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Anouk Badwolf 1 year ago

oh i see! i can slightly relate since i speak both french and english and some words are quite similar such as 'courgette' 'example' 'lingerie' 'queue' and i usually just say it in french kekeke

0points

Sometimes I forget words in English, which is my first language, and can only remember it in malay which is my 2nd language. In Malay there are 2 ways you can pronounce words, pasar and baku. And I usually mix it all up since, I can never remember when to use them correctly. Resulting in me failing during my malay oral exams lol.(basically conversation and reading exams). Onto the next problem, arabic. I can never remember the vocab and how to read fluently. The Quran is also written and read in arabic so it's difficult to switch between modern spoken arabic and Quranic arabic as, you have to read both differently.

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3points

Pigeonvonbirb

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Pigeonvonbirb (Submission author) 1 year ago

Guess what? I often get tested to read both MSA and the quran, on the same days so everything gets incredibly messed up lol

0points

I switch tones when switching languages so I may be talking in a polite tone in English and mid-sentence I switch to either Marathi or Hindi and I suddenly sound very rude. Sometimes I mix Hindi, English and Marathi together in one sentence when I’m feeling very lazy. For example if I want to say the sentence “She told me that this is nice” I say “she said ki yeh changla aahe” which uses very less energy but it confuses people who only know two of those languages so I only speak like this with my crush and my family

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Final score:

2points

Stardust she/her

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Stardust she/her (Submission author) 1 year ago

It’s also kind of challenging when you have a word that has different meanings in different languages. For example, in marathi “taak” means buttermilk but in Hindi I think it means up

0points

when i’m REALLY tired, i forget my friends don’t speak Rus and they end up staring at me lol. Also; i’m not very fluent in english slang terms so naturally i use Russian slang, none of which has a good direct translation to english.

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Final score:

2points

ЛеснойКороль(they/he)🇺🇦🇷🇺

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Anouk Badwolf 1 year ago

haha i do it in french, like i say it to my hungarian friends and i expect them par défaut (see? :D) to understand my french slangs and catchphrases

1point

Not yet fully bilingual, but I'm learning French and the most difficult part is definitely getting things to stick and make sense. I have an integral understanding of the English language and all of the root words and how to use suffixes and prefixes and all that cool stuff, and I'm worried I'll never get that with French. To be fair im only planning to use it in Canada and not actual France so I'll probably never have to totally rely on French

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2points

cartoon ghosts

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I'm in my 50s and learning French (in France). I've had 1 6 week intensive language course (FLE) that really zipped through the "basics" of grammar, which did help somewhat, but out in the real world, you realize that vocabulary is very compartmentalized. The words you use at the market aren't the same you use with the Doctor, the lawyer, at the bank, etc.. While I often understand the "gist" of a conversation, sometimes I'll get stuck on a word or phrase and then I miss the rest of what's been said.

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Final score:

2points

Noname

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Mixing up words in one language or phrasing a sentence in English as I would phrase it in polish, and then it sounds weird.

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Final score:

1point

One Happy Doggo

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cartoon ghosts 1 year ago

Oh that seems interesting, can you give me an example?

0points

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Sometimes I look like an idiot because I misspell basic words. I was in French immersion growing up so my only English class was literally english.

To this day I write bl- and then freeze because i suddenly can't remember if the ending is eu or ue. This proved to be a chuckling point for my professors in university when i could write Phenolphthalein correctly every time but usually wrote bleu after it. The sheer number of half mark deductions for spelling.

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1point

Hales

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LK 1 year ago

It's times like this a person needs to make up rules. Is it 'blue' or 'bleu'? France is in the EU, therefore in French the colour is 'blEU'.

2points

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#10

I know both English and Mandarin. Sometimes I forget a word in English)/Chinese and use a word from the other language, (it goes both ways). This can be really embarrassing in school or when I'm speaking Mandarin to my taipo

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1point

E Eng

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#11

Had to take Spanish. Required to take two years. The hardest thing for me is remembering evrything. I mean I think I got a B or a C so I passed! But I got to take it again this year since..2 years. It was easy at the beginning but my teacher..heh. Changed the grading scale so A’s became B’s and B’s became C’s kinda. Like you had to do EXTRA to get an A. So that made things a bit harder..

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0points

Squidward’s Nose

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#12

I learned some French last semester and plan on continuing with it plus Japanese. I’d say one of the hardest things in French so far is remembering what gender an object is. Like cucumber, or pie, or bookcase. Because if you were trying to say “Beautiful bookcase” the adjective beautiful is an exception where it comes before the word not after. And you have to add an e for feminine and s for plural.

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0points

Mysteria

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LK 1 year ago

In gendered languages, never learn just the noun. Always learn the article and the noun together. It's 'le chat', and 'la pomme', not 'chat' and 'pomme'. Keep the two handcuffed together. It becomes easier with time.

0points

Hey Polyglot Pandas, What Is The Craziest, Most Interesting, And Most Challenging Thing About Speaking Multiple Languages?

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Anouk Badwolf

Anouk Badwolf

Diana Lopetaitė

Diana Lopetaitė