Folks like bummble, whom I'd never guess didn't have English as a first language, make my brain spin.
(I can get along rustily and poorly, though with quickly increasing skill with immersion, in Spanish, French, and ASL, but I'd call myself very far from fluency.)
Ah, maybe that's part of my attraction to my ex, Pam. She is first-language fluent in English and Afrikaans (she had me translating Afrikaans poetry before she moved here), is fluent in Zulu, manages a couple other indigenous South African languages (Sotho and Swana, I think), knows some German and Swedish, and picked up some Greek when she was working in a restaurant. I know she was studying Spanish for a while here - I don't know how much she knows.
Finding people who are able to carry on a multi-lingual conversation with you is also fun. A common set of languages helps a lot.
When talking with Zoya (mostly in English), I occasionally find myself responding in (my admittedly limited) Russian. I use a fair amount of German when my kids are around, and I get fairly good at hearing/speaking Spanish after a week of immersion. Portuguese and Italian I read. After 3 weeks in South Africa a few years ago, I was finally catching on to spoken Afrikaans.
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I know EXACTLY what you mean.
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(I can get along rustily and poorly, though with quickly increasing skill with immersion, in Spanish, French, and ASL, but I'd call myself very far from fluency.)
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Finding people who are able to carry on a multi-lingual conversation with you is also fun. A common set of languages helps a lot.
When talking with Zoya (mostly in English), I occasionally find myself responding in (my admittedly limited) Russian. I use a fair amount of German when my kids are around, and I get fairly good at hearing/speaking Spanish after a week of immersion. Portuguese and Italian I read. After 3 weeks in South Africa a few years ago, I was finally catching on to spoken Afrikaans.
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