to ask if you speak a foreign language, why you chose that one..

[Messyisthenewtidy]

was it to travel to / live in that country, because of a spouse, etc?

Also, do you find it easy? And how are the locals when you speak to them in their language?

I'm trying to get some inspiration to learn a foreign language but I'm not sure which one to choose.

Thai - I live in Thailand
Tagalog and visayas because df is Filipina
DD speaks English, thai, visayas fluently, she’s learning French because she wants to.

สวั สวัสดีค่ะ

Somtam i wish i could. Speak Tagalog since I do some work in the Philippines to, and I have always found it very much needed because I work people who don't speak English. But I can't find many resources to learn it, other than just asking people. I found an iBook, and that's about it. But I can't find a dictionary that I'm able to use. Do you know of a website that is reliable for translation so if I need to find a word, I cannot find it easily. Like in English like our dictionary? English to Tagalog dictionary

Learned German at school until A level but don't remember much, even though I know I used to speak it quite well. Also learned French up to GCSE and although I can't really speak it well I understand an awful lot - probably because it is ex dp of 7 years' native tongue.
Spanish was picked up and worked on (evening classes) due to my fondness for Argentine polo players in my youth.
Italian is the language I can speak most fluently because I lived there for five years. I really miss speaking it and love it when I get the rare opportunity to practice.
I'd say that my overwhelming motivation for language learning was sex.😂

I can understand some Welsh because my Welsh/Nigerian mother used to speak it sometimes. (She was born and grew up in Swansea) I can't speak it because we used to answer her in English!
I'm learning Polish because I've got a lot of Polish friends.
I can read Latin up to a point and Ancient Greek because of my degree.

May I ask the multi lingual on Mumsnet, if you frequently flip between languages day to day, which one do you dream in

My little voice in my head is English, I guess because I live in England, speak English to DH and my friends etc.
If I dream about my mum, then it wall always be her native language because she only speaks English to me if my DH is involved in the conversation! She rarely speaks English to my DCs.

I speak Norwegian because I live here and my DH and DC all have it as their first language. I found the gender forms fiendish and the language difficult, but I am not a linguistic person naturally.. it took me 7 years to achieve fluency.

In the first five years strangers would hear me speak Norwegian but respond in English which i found frustrating! But nobody has done that to me in a very long time now. I spend my working day in Norwegian and we speak English at home.

As to the dream question, I dream in English. My day time thoughts and daydreams can be in either language though.

Your question about learning Arabic - I learnt fus-ha which is modern standard Arabic.
I learnt from a teacher from Syria and then practiced with lots of people from Syria, Iraq, Egypt.

It's all pretty similar in that region. I understand some Levantine Arabic anyway but people make an effort to understand the fus-ha. It's a bit like somebody from Glasgow talking to somebody speaking BBC English.

Folk really struggle to converse with a person who speaks Quranic Arabic as its quite antiquated but it's better than nothing.

I've managed with people from Libya but when I talk with somebody from Morocco we usually speak French.

I learned German at university because all the popular Spanish and French classes were full. I ended up finishing a degree there and writing for 5 years. At work, I made a point of telling my colleagues that they could practice their English with me after work but during work is was all German. In my time there, I met many people, some which spoke English and some not. My clients were always so impressed I spoke German.

I've now been learning Japanese for 3 years. I'm really enjoying it but with 3 young kids (6yrs, 5yrs and 6mos) it's hard to fit it in. I can speak Japanese badly and have been doing Japanese language exams. I currently live here but am moving to Singapore. I will probably continue with Japanese until I'm at a more conversational level

@RottnestFerry

Sorry I didn't specify; not EU geographical territory but Strasberg or Brussels as a policy wonk. The specific jobs I want require either French or English as fluent. And one of the other EU languages to good conversational.

I mostly dream in English when I am in the UK - dreaming in another language tends only to happen in periods of high stress

When I am somewhere I am fluent, it takes me around 10 days to start dreaming in that language consistently again.

I can understand my husband's language almost fluently, Pothwari which is a dialect used in Mirpur. But I also watch alot of Bollywood movies which use Hindi. I can speak both but tend not to because I get laughed at
Although it's fun when his extended family members meet me for the first time and don't realise I understand, I get to hear alot more of their opinions!!

Oh wow. So many multi-lingual mumsnetters! It's inspiring.

Fluent in Italian as DH is Italian and his family don’t speak English.

Good language to learn in that very few of his friends and family speak English (in the south). If you’re in the north then might find more people speaking English. The only Italians I know who speak English well are those living in London.

Quality of taught English in schools is terrible and they mispronounce lots of words (black as ‘bleck’, cash as ‘cesh’ and so on) - even on tv and adverts. It’s a problem that perpetuates as no teachers are mother tongue and they in turn won’t have been taught well, so pass on the errors. So - people who say they speak English often find when speaking to me that they don’t understand me, they’ve been taught so badly.

Nice language to learn, fairly easy but if you won’t fly then not easily accessible as a country. I’d go with French - which I also speak but less well.

Yes it's great that so many people are multilingual! Although, it's the norm in most parts of the world to speak at least two.

Speaking another language actually changes the structure of your brain, and helps prevent Alzheimer's, I believe. So go for it!

French. I failed french in my GCSE’s earning an E. I met my fiancé in 2016 and he grew up in Paris, so I started to learn french with him, then in 2017 i moved to marks with him and now I’m completely bilingual and talk french in the work place, I bet my teachers would have been surprised!

I meant moved to Paris, sorry!

Speak 4 languages fluently and various others to a lesser degree due to moving around a lot.

Would recommend checking which language group you feel most at home with. I love the romance languages but found learning Germanic based languages a bit tedious. So if you're learning your first foreign language make sure you like it!

IME people don't normally just respond in English. Many people choose NOT to speak it and using the native language with foreigners where I live is encouraged by the government.

People who are keen to speak English are often in a sales role! Or want an English lesson.

I was brought up speaking English and Spanish. Chose to learn some German but didn't get on with the verbs and started holidaying in Greece in the nineties and couldnt bear to not know what was being said. Learnt Modern Greek, went out with a Greek, seventeen years later I have started again and am surprised as to how much has come back.

I speak French quite well but was quite shocked last year when they all responded to me in English
It annoys when people do that. If a French person in UK spoke to me in English I’d answer in English.

Same. This has happened to me many times when I plainly speak the local language much better than they speak English, so no, they're not 'being helpful'. I would never do that to a tourist in Britain, even if their English was terrible and I spoke their language better, except maybe if communication was impossible through English, but I find with a bit of effort from both sides that rarely happens.

It's very discouraging and you can't really blame English speakers for not learning foreign languages if the locals won't 'allow' them to speak it even if they make the effort.

English is my first language but the second language I learned. Learned the other one at home.

I've got a degree in French and German.

I fell in love with German from my very first lesson at school and it was my thing. Then I lived in Germany and France as part of my degree and it all swapped round - I just naturally connected to France and French and now, at nearly 40, I still love French and have forgotten most of my German.

I go there every year on holiday, I listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos in it every day, I'm a member of a French meetup group - I do everything I can in French.

Spanish.
.
I speak my native language, and English. DCs also fluent in Spanish & Portuguese due to their dad's heritage. I never bothered much with those as could communicate with DCs in both English and my language.

But now they both have Spanish partners, Im the only one here not fluent in Spanish, and I want to be able to speak with my grandchildren in Spanish when they arrive. Also Dcs in laws to be are lovely but theres a language barrier so learning is dealing with that too.

I learned some Italian as I was going there on holiday quite a bit as some friends lived out there at the time. Very useful in more remote parts where people often speak no English. We were visiting way down south and it’s not common for people down there to have great - or any - English.

You mentioned Slovenia and one thing I found out is Italian is often used by people in the countries east of Italy as a bridge, it’s often their lingua franca. Which was nice to know because there’s hardly anywhere else that Italian is commonly spoken! I’d say Spanish is easier though, plus it’s spoken in so many countries if you wanted to travel widely. Italian was hard at first, until I got used to the endings. I so wish I’d learned German at school, stupidly I didn’t do that when I had the chance.

French is useful if you like France as most French people will be delighted if you speak French to them, however badly.

Spanish is simple by comparison and there’s some nice poetry to be had in it. Rural Spain and South America make it handy to have - mainly read only in Central&South America as people are often incomprehensible to outsiders.

Dutch was a waste of time as they all speak excellent English. German is good for the logical order it gives to thought etc and the Idealism is not without appeal. Swearing sounds better in it. However most actual Germans speak some dialect or idiolect ranging from Bavarian to the cuckoo-clock lunacy of Schwyzerdütsch.

Classical Latin and Greek are worth it if you intend to branch out and learn a few. Makes for better graffiti.

In my household we currently speak
Husband: native Indonesian/dutch, fluent in English, learning Danish
Me native Luxembourgish/Italian/danish, fluent in English, german and dutch
Dd 4 years old and dd 2 years hear all the languages and currently speaks Danish Dutch English Luxembourgish and understands Indonesian but answers back in Dutch...
We are one weird set up of languages