Learning your third language

Learning your third language
 

For those of you are trilingual, how did you become that way? Did you grow up in this manner? What languages do you speak?

Did you experience great difficulty progressing from bilingual to trilingual ability?

_____________________________________________

Para ustedes que son trilingües, cómo lo hicieron? Hablaban múltiples lenguas en casa de niño? Cuales lenguas hablan?

Era muy difícil para obtener fluidéz en un tercera idioma?

Well, I grew up speaking three languages. I learned Albanian and Serbian as an infant, as my parents are from Kosovo and Montenegro. German would be my third language, though I was born and raised in Austria.

I am American by blood. So American english (notice the lowercase e) is my base. But I understand basic Latin and have a decent enough vocabulary. I know a little Chinese,
but Spanish is my best held extra language. It's not difficult to learn another, in conversation it can be difficult if you are nervous. Because you may swap a word or two haha. I do it all the time.

My mother tonge is German. At school I learn English as my first foreign language and (unfortunately) Latin as my second. Spanish (which I learn by myself) is my fourth language, and I can say, it's not very difficult to get along with four languages. My grandmother even speaks eight languages: Her mother tongue is German. At school she learned English, French and Latin (but her French isn't that good and I think she cannot really speak Latin because they only translated texts at school.) Then she became a teacher of Russian and English. Because she was interested in those Slavonic languages she also learned Polish, Czech and Ukrainian, which she fluently speeks until now. My grandma takes away my doubts that your brain sometime is full and you only can learn a few languages.

Spanish is my mother tongue, I started learning catalan at the age of 3 or so... so I speak it fluently, at native level , english and german came way later at school.

Dicho esto me da bastante vergüenza escribir en inglés en este foro con la cantidad de nativos que hay y lo bien que hablan el castellano comparado con mi paupérrimo inglés.:blackeye:

Elmonorojo,

No, no era difícil para mi aprender un tercer idioma.
Aprendí italiano cuando viví dos años en Italia. Luego volví a
los EE.UU. y aprendí español. La transición de la lengua italiana
a la lengua española fue bastante fácil para mí. (Un amigo mexicano
mio que habia vivido conmigo en Italia aprendió italiano en tres semanas.
El español y el italiano son 70+% similar.)
Entonces aprendí a hablar portugués y el francés, porque sabía el italiano
y el español.
Esta es otra buena razón para aprender español.

En resumen, no es difícil aprender un tercer idioma especialmente cuando tu tercera
lengua después del español es el italiano, portugués, francés u otro idioma que
proviene de la lengua latina.

I think you should learn other languages when you are young. I'm Dutch, so I speak Dutch, can speak fluently English, can speak a little German and French and now I'm trying to learn Spanish on my own. We learn three other languages at school when we are 12 years old.

I highly doubt that's efficient.

I think that becoming polyglot is very possible, but it's culturally defined.
In countries like the Netherlands, so many native speakers also know a second or third language. This, of course, is not the case in nearby Great Britain. I don't think it's because Dutch people are smarter than British people; it's because people are expected to learn other languages there.

I was going to learn Catalan but I think learning Italian, French or something else would be better to learn. Thoughts?

Well, I'm from the Caribbean, and since I am living in such a diverse cultural area with many languages spoken, it is hard to not come across learning more than one language. English being my first, Spanish second, French third. My island speaks English and Spanish most fluently and I learned French in college along with our trip to islands that spoke French like St. Martin. It isn't hard, but it takes constant use of any language to maintain being fluent in it.

As much as I love the catalan language, I must admit you should learn any other language instead..., French or Italian will allow you to communicate with much more people around the world than catalan will allow you to, those who speak catalan also speaks french, spanish or Italian as well ( the vast majority) so go for one of those.

Esppiral,

You're right about people who speak Catalan also speak French, Spanish or Italian.
When I was going to school in Italy I met some people who spoke Catalan and they
understood everything I said in Italian. It's not so much that they speak French
and Italian it's more like they can just understand because Catalan is similar to French
and Italian. Actually contrary to popular belief Catalan is even more similar to Italian
than to French but then again Italian is also similar to French. Italian has the rolled
r sound and Italian vowels are the same as Spanish vowel sounds. Further more Italian
has the ñ sound too.

I would like to learn French but have problems with pronunciation...can someone recommend how to improve it?

https://www.google.at/search?client=...iation&spell=1

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...unciation&sm=3

I really want to learn Catalan for some reason since they speak in Barcelona.

Liquinn,
All the Latin based languages are similar. I learned Italian,
Spanish, Portuguese and French. If you learn to speak Spanish
you can learn all the other Latin based languages including
Catalan. Actually one of the main benefits of learning Spanish
is that it gives you a base to learn one or all of the other Latin
languages.

Claro. Tengo un problema. ¿dónde puedo practicar?

Lo que tienes que hacer es escuchar el catalan primero.
Busca en el internet ejemplos del catalan hablando.
La clave de aprender un idioma en el principio no es
hablar sino escuchar y entender. No se puede hablar
bien una lengua sin entender.
Compra libros que te enseña el catalan.

You need books and bilingual French dictionaries that have the
phonetic pronunciation of the French words. Same goes for
Spanish beginners too but even more so for French since French
is more difficult to pronounce.

All you need is the will to do so. ;-)
My mother tongue's German, but learned in English right after Elementary School and started learning Spanish and Dutch two years ago. Due to much curiosity I even checked out Turkish and French plus Portuguese / Brazilian Portuguese and Italian. But my learning is fixed on Spanish and sometimes Dutch right now. Spanish is getting bbetter with every day.

I even found a new web-series for Spanish-learning:
Extr@ Español 7
Found in the youtube channel:
It has subtitles for Spanish, Russian and English.