Can a monolingual adult become bilingual?

[msrisotto]

Hello all,

I couldn't find a more appropriate forum and there seem to be some very experienced people here who's input i'd appreciate!

I am desperate to be bilingual or at least fluent in Spanish. I lived in Spain between the ages of 2 and 7 so how i managed to avoid having a good grasp of it is beyond me - english speaking school, parents, surrounded by english speaking expats. Go figure.
We went back to spain 1-2x a year for years after moving back to the UK too.
Anyway, basically i feel i need to right a wrong and i feel distanced from an important part of my life oddly.
Anyway, my partner was bilingual english/spanish as he lived in south america for a few years though currently living in england so is more fluent at the moment and we're building up my conversation skills together, i'm going to spanish classes once a week. I want to do an immersion course in spain which i could afford for about a month. How good do you think i could get? Do you think i'd have to live in a spanish speaking country to really get it? I imagine i'll move to Spain at some distant point in the future but i want to learn sooner rather than later. I'm 24, is it too late?

Thanks in advance for any input!

BlauerEngel - that is enough, I hadn't deeply thought about the differences between being fluent vs bilingual when i posted but yes, i would be very happy being fluent!
I fully intend on living in a spanish speaking country for a period of time when the opportunity arises, it seems a long way off though so if i can start now (the younger the better) 1. it'll make me feel better and 2. i'll have more time to practise!

Madoldcrone - I have looked through the Mamis Espanolas thread which i'm working through! but am hopelessly bad at locating other suitable resources, if you have any suggestions, i am all ears

Tulips - I'm so glad you understand how I feel (although we'd both rather feel differently obviously!) because it's a little odd to feel alienated from a part of your upbringing, as you so eloquently put it and no one else having a clue what your on about, OH didn't understand at all! I'm not the only one then.

BlauerEngel Sun 31-Jan-10 15:53:27
"Agree with macaco and Bucharest. It is not possible for an adult to become completely bilingual. There is a huge difference between speaking a second language completely fluently and being bilingual in it. This is because there is a part of the brain responsible for first language development in the first ten years or so. It shuts down slowly and everything learned after that stays at second language level."

Can you give a link to research on this? It is a popular statement, but the ages given for this supposed ceiling vary hugely- some say you can't become bilingual after age 4, others after age 7, others after age 10, others after your teens. So would be interesting to see some titles.

Yes, it is possible. I know several people who are native speaker standard in english, who learned it at school, and then lived in Britain as adults.

I think I could become native speaker standard in german if I worked at it. I have picked up a fair amount in the same way as a child does, by copyping people around me, as well as what I learn in the grammar books.

I think it depends whether you "acquired" or "learned" a language. You clearly "acquired" a lot of Spanish (even if you can't remember it). I lived in Austria for 5 years as an adult and despite my best efforts did not progress beyond "shopping" German. DS "acquired" it and I hope he will retain it in some form or other.

Otoh my little brother was a native speaker of his first language when he was adopted as a young child. So that was then his first language. He doesn't remember a word of it and attempts to trigger his memory haven't worked, so it clearly isn't his first language any more.

bleur.... i'm afraid you're wrong... my father thinks and dreams in both English and Dutch (and in fact when he was using German alot for work he claims he was able to think in German too which i believe)

Thinking and dreaming in both languages are true bilingualism and my father achieved this in his late 20's

"Thinking and dreaming in both languages are true bilingualism and my father achieved this in his late 20's "

Thanks Tulips, a nice positive message for me there.

I know that biliingual children have more neurons/neuronal connections in the brain related to language. Once a child grows older, what they don't use, they lose. That makes sense and it follows that they will find mental processes invloved in bilingualism less challanging than those who weren't exposed to another language as a child. I wouldn't think it would mean that one can't acquire a second languag later on though.

Think Joseph Conrad .

It's quite a relief to hear that some people on here have gotten to a good level/fluent in a new language as an adult.

My DP is French, and I'm learning at the moment (on my own), but it's SO hard. Been learning for just over a year.

How long did it take most of you to learn the language, at least to a conversational level? (rather than picking up the odd word and guessing most of it).

I have to learn French, as most of DP's family and friends speak very little, if any, English.

In favour of the 'you can learn a language after the age of 10' I point you in the direction of my DH. Monolingual French until he went to a bilingual college at 12 (can't find the accents on a QWERTY keyboard!) where he became bilingual in English and French - I'm an English teacher and I can only very rarely tell that it's not his first language, usually when he's incredibly tired. The he moved to the Netherlands and learned Dutch when he was 18, staying there for 3 years, and is completely trilingual. Native speakers of all 3 languages take him for a native so I'd say really is trilingual and certainly got there after the age of 10!

Serenity will your DP speak to you in French at home? Do you have French tv etc (great for passive language acquisition and understanding)? Do you have any French friends? My own French progressed rather slowly until DH and I started French 'date' nights where we only talk in French. Usually requires a bit of preparation on a topic of discussion for me but does wonders!

I think there's a disagreement on the meaning of bilingual on this thread. I DO NOT see thinking and dreaming in another language as bilingualism, I do this and I do not consider myself bilingual. If bilingualism is just having 2 languages, is someone who gets a 1st in their modern language degree bilingual? I see bilingualism as having 2 native languages, 2 languages in which you have pretty much the same (i.e native speaker) level, i.e a native speaker could not distinguish you from a non native speaker. THIS, I think is pretty much impossible to achieve as an adult.
Of course, it's not what the OP is asking and is largely irrelevant to her, she just wants to achieve extreme fluency, something I see as very possible to do as an adult if she lives in the country where the language is spoken.

Am not planning to come down on either side of this debate.

However, I would say that it is widely accepted among multilinguals that "equal fluency" in both languages" is a myth. Almost every "real" bilingual has one language which is stronger than the other, as well as having certain areas/topics that he or she finds easier in one language than the other (not necessarily the stronger language.) This is obviously particularly common in an OPOL setting where things discussed mainly with the father are stronger in the father's language and vice versa.

I consider myself a "non-native bilingual" so would appreciate the endorsement or otherwise of "real" bilinguals on this front.

Frakkin actually, he hardly ever speaks to me in French, only short little things (like "bonne nuit" etc.). We have some mutual friends who are french speakers. I have a Friends DVD which is in French, but really need to find more stuff to watch online. Any suggestions?

He's from Marseille, (as are most of his friends), so for some of them I cannot understand a word of what they're saying, their accent is so strong. And they use so much slang.

French date night sounds like an idea ... I hope he doesn't mind talking about food (was translating a menu from English to French for his friend on Saturday - my only strong point in French).

I think one can be a bit too fussy about these definitions. I speak English with a non-native-English accent and Chinese with a non-mainland Chinese accent, but both fluently, and I read and write both fluently. So shoot me. I hate this "native" business. WTF is native? After all the dispersions, migrations, colonialisms and globalisation I can't believe we are still talking about languages in such naive terms. Who has the monopoly on nativeness then? It all sounds very imperialistic to me.

Just do it.

Serenity - I found Michel Thomas' foundation Spanish CD's amazing at teaching, I've bought the advanced and language builder CD's as well.

He does French too, maybe that would be of interest to you?

DP and I have started to converse in Spanish and as I learn to express myself more, I will say it to him in Spanish rather than English as much as possible. It's like doing OPOL haha!

Another vote for Michel Thomas

coolio! Went to the library today, and got some BBC French CDs, and saw they had Michael Thomas as well. I think I'll get him next time.

What I'm hoping to do (it worked BRILLIANTLY for another language I learnt), is to fall asleep listening to language courses (particularly where they repeat the word in French, then English). What I found with the other language, was that I started recognising words. It was very bizarre (but worked).

MIFLAW beat me to it - "bilinguals" often do not have exactly equal facility in both languages. One may have been learnt primarily at home, and have more house/family vocab, and colloquialisms, and one primarily out of the family, with consequent differences in focus.

I don't agree with the "think in/dream in" definition either. I lived in Japan for a while and learnt Japanese. Sometimes I thought it in and dreamt in it, despite not getting beyond a basic level of fluency - maybe it depends on how complex your thoughts and dreams are!

Very difficult though I would say to get to a high level of fluency if you are not either living there or living in a family situation where it is the default language.

Message withdrawn

What MIFLAW and planetearth said. I think people often end up asking more of bilinguals than of monolinguals. They won't accept that you're bilingual if there is any area that you can talk about in one language and not the other. What they don't stop to consider is that monolinguals also have areas they can't talk about. Noone has a complete grasp of any language.

Dd can hold a perfectly good conversation, using proper technical terminology, abbout sailing and navigation in Swedish; she can't do that in English. Does that mean she is not a balanced bilingual? But her monolingual English mates can't talk about sailing in any language because they don't know the term- what does that make them?

When I came to England in my twenties, I worked as an archaeologist. This means that all the archaeology speak I know, technical terms and jargon and professional jokes, is all in English: I can't talk about this at all in Swedish. Does this mean that I am no longer a native speaker of Swedish???

As for a native speaker spotting that you're not one of them, wouldn't that depend on the person? Ime most of them don't with me, but somebody with a particular interest in linguistics might. The most common scenario is that they don't spot it until I tell them- and then they claim to suddenly hear it.

Pitchounette also makes a good point about language loss. Hasn't happened to me, as far as I'm aware, but is certainly not unknown amongst immigrants, and again seems to stand the whole concept of first and second language on its head.

It sounds to me that the "native spearker" being able to tell you're not one of them thing is more to do with accent than anything else.

Nobody is perfect, we all make spelling mistakes and use their/they're inappropriately (that kind of thing anyway), I don't think that means much really. I certainly don't think that you're not a native speaker if you mispronounce words or use a word in the wrong way.
Following this logic, I wouldn't be too strict with the term bilingual.

It's not just accent though - it's turns of phrase, using the right register, knowing the cultural references and idioms that mark a native/non-native speaker. I guess that's why bilingualism is so hard to define!

"speaker"......ahem......

Being mistaken as a native also begs the question, "native of where?" When living in Nice as a callow youth I decided to "acquire" an "accent du Sud"? I honed it over the year. Going to the railway station buying my ticket home, I was asked, "vous etes Suisse, monsieur?" No great compliment either culturally or linguistically - BUT I WAS mistaken for a native, even if not the native I meant to be nor a very prestigious kind of native.

So where does that leave me?

I've been told I have a Marseillieas (sorry for spelling), in the limited French I speak. I am very good at mimicking accents, but I am in no way bilingual (I can barely speak French, but when I do, I sound convincing).

I've heard the thing as well, about people losing their native tongue, and the second language takes over as the predominant one. That must be very bizarre.

Huh According to Wikipedia Multilinguals outnumber Monolinguals, globally