Languages

Hello Mibbians! I've been thinking about languages lately.

As a flight attendant, every single day I meet people from all over who speak all sorts of languages and dialects and that got me thinking I want to learn more languages.

What languages do you guys speak, fluently or not so fluently? Are you studying any language at the moment? Did you take lessons in school? Is there a specific language you'd love to learn and that you just enjoy the sound of?

I was born in Portugal and I have family from Venezuela, so I grew up bilingual in Portuguese and Spanish. I took English in school for a grand total of twelve years but I learned mostly by watching Cartoon Network which, back in the 90's in Portugal was not dubbed or subtitled at all, it was just in English (it was cable TV) so I have a sort of American accent but I use a lot of British words and expressions, as I've been living in the UK for a few years now, so I sound really odd, lmao.

I also took French in school but only for three years. I understand it and I can read French, but speaking is a different story, I find it very difficult to form sentences and I'm not very confident so I would say I'm really not fluent at all, it would be useful but it's also hard to get the confidence because I feel like French people are not very patient to help me practice, soooo.

As for Dutch, I'm also not fluent in any way but I did take lessons when I lived in Utrecht, in the Netherlands. I can make small talk but not much more than that. It's also not too useful because there's such a limited amount of Dutch speakers and the vast majority of Dutch and Belgian people speak pretty good English. Because of Dutch, I also understand Flemish and Afrikaans which are very similar, and some German.

With Italian, I can sort of communicate, I understand what they say but I have trouble speaking back; I usually just mix Spanish and Portuguese words with the little Italian I know and they understand me, which is good. I do want to learn to speak properly as I have a lot of flights to Italy and a good percentage of the passengers aren't very good at English.

I lived in Korea for a short time but because I worked in a hostel, most people around me were foreigners and we spoke mostly English so I only learned some basic stuff, with a Busan accent! I'd love to learn more. Also Japanese, I like how it sounds but I can only say random anime stuff. Lol.

So tell me guys, tell me about the languages in your life!
January 17th, 2019 at 10:57pm