# Raising polyglot children.



## Zoidberg

Hi all,

So, the one good thing to happen this year is that I had a baby boy a month ago, and I want to get input from as many people as possible regarding this big question we have about him. I'm already completely bilingual French+Spanish, and the mother is American (she took some French and Spanish but it's not nearly enough for her to get by), so I want to know if anyone here had experience raising trilingual babies in a natural, not forced way. Is it better if I speak both French and Spanish from the beginning and the baby will know how to discriminate both or should I stick to say, French and introduce Spanish later on with books/movies, while I keep French as the main language with him? We live in the UK and we speak English at home, so English will be the lingua franca.

My own experience is slightly different, as we spoke –mostly– French at home but I was raised in Spain, so there was always a very clear demarcation. The last thing I want is to confuse the poor child.


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## DT

despondentdiver said:


> Hi all,
> 
> So, the one good thing to happen this year is that I had a baby boy a month ago




Hey, congrats!  Dig in, enjoy every second, I know it's cliche, but FFS, I'll swear the little G was just racing down the stairs for XMas, sure that Santa had come, and now she's like, "If you and Mom want to do Xmas first, you can, and just wake me up later .."

(though I think she's trying to play it cool, but everytime a shipment comes I can see the excitement ... snicker ...)


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## Zoidberg

Mark said:


> @despondentdiver
> 
> congratulations on the birth of yr baby.
> 
> achieving true bi lingual natural ability for your child  is not difficult if the parents themselves are self disciplined in their approach.
> achieving true tri linqual natural ability is more difficult. but the French/Spanish pairing lends itself well to this aim.
> 
> a lot depends on how much time each parent is actually with the child in a variety of situations.
> the since the world surrounding your home is in the UK, the mother's role as the English role model s less critical.
> if you yourself do not spend adequate time with your boy, he will not become fluent. he will be able to_ get by_ probably, but will end up having large gaps especially in stringing more complex ideas.
> 
> but my actual concern for your situation is not any of the above.
> its the high likelihood, unless you and your wife work very hard at it,  that your boy will speak an ideolect that is common in muiltilnqual families where the child is mixing languages -using whatever word is used in that family. this occurs because there was no riqorous separation of the two/three languages so the child ends up with sub-ability in all of the target languages except the language of the school/community around him.
> the child has natural ability to know what is english vs. french vs. spanish. if he sees cartoons in French he won't think its spanish.
> so show him and speak with him in both French and Spanish, but separate the times you are speaking these to him.
> you have until the age of about twelve to get him situated.  after that, it will be up to him to become fluent through hard work.
> to give your boy true native level ability and power him to higher level studies in any of the 3 languages, mixing is a no-no.
> when youre speaking French with your child, demand French back.
> 
> again, congratulations !



Thanks for your thoughtful answer!

Yes, there are many nuances to being multilingual. With my sister we constantly switch languages based on what we're talking about, who we're talking about (and of course, who's around us!). We also both fall short when it comes to speaking about some fields where our experience only covers one language (leading to interesting situations where we have to speak English). Interestingly, I speak Spanish with a slight undetermined twang, whereas for her it's when she speaks French.

I don't have specific goals regarding the kid being trilingual, but I know speaking several languages opens a lot of doors, so I want to make sure we take advantage of this opportunity, at least to achieve fluency. I tend to speak to him in French, and he might go to a French school later on, so I was trying to think of ways to increase his exposure to Spanish in a natural way.

Our biggest fear, though, is that he starts saying "innit"


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## Alli

Congratulations on parenthood! It’s a marvelous adventure.

You will need to speak a single language at home. Obviously, I’d go for French cause I’m biased. It will be exhausting for Mom if she’s not fluent. I gave up with my son early because his dad is monolingual. Inside is French, outside is English. You could do movies/TV in Spanish.


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## Zoidberg

DT said:


> Hey, congrats!  Dig in, enjoy every second, I know it's cliche, but FFS, I'll swear the little G was just racing down the stairs for XMas, sure that Santa had come, and now she's like, "If you and Mom want to do Xmas first, you can, and just wake me up later .."
> 
> (though I think she's trying to play it cool, but everytime a shipment comes I can see the excitement ... snicker ...)



Thanks! Right now, he's just hard at work soiling diapers, so I'll be honest, I'm not enjoying every second.


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## Zoidberg

Alli said:


> Congratulations on parenthood! It’s a marvelous adventure.
> 
> You will need to speak a single language at home. Obviously, I’d go for French cause I’m biased. It will be exhausting for Mom if she’s not fluent. I gave up with my son early because his dad is monolingual. Inside is French, outside is English. You could do movies/TV in Spanish.



That's the thing, I think one of the hardest parts for me will be being disciplined enough to stick to whichever language knowing that it will automatically exclude the mother.


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## Alli

despondentdiver said:


> That's the thing, I think one of the hardest parts for me will be being disciplined enough to stick to whichever language knowing that it will automatically exclude the mother.



I’ve known plenty of people while living abroad who did it easily. They spoke English in the house, and anyone coming in spoke x language to the children. I was partly successful with my daughter when we had a Haitian housekeeper for a while. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long enough. I have a cousin who did very well, but only because her husband also speaks Hebrew, so they spoke Hebrew at home and English outside or with non-Hebrew speaking guests.

I’m afraid I’m at the age now where I can forget words in multiple languages, and sometimes the only word that comes to me is not in the language that would be helpful.


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## Zoidberg

Alli said:


> I’ve known plenty of people while living abroad who did it easily. They spoke English in the house, and anyone coming in spoke x language to the children. I was partly successful with my daughter when we had a Haitian housekeeper for a while. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long enough. I have a cousin who did very well, but only because her husband also speaks Hebrew, so they spoke Hebrew at home and English outside or with non-Hebrew speaking guests.
> 
> I’m afraid I’m at the age now where I can forget words in multiple languages, and sometimes the only word that comes to me is not in the language that would be helpful.



Don't underestimate my lack of self-discipline.


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## DT

despondentdiver said:


> Thanks! Right now, he's just hard at work soiling diapers, so I'll be honest, I'm not enjoying every second.




Hahaha, yeah, some folks are really into the infant experience, when ours hit about 3 was when we really started digging on things. Full speed mobility, really engaging intellectually in different experiences, got her first [push] bike, started doggy paddling, etc.

Don't get me wrong, right from when we brought her home, she slept through most nights, ate pretty regularly, so as infants go, it was a breeze.


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## User.45

despondentdiver said:


> Hi all,
> 
> So, the one good thing to happen this year is that I had a baby boy a month ago, and I want to get input from as many people as possible regarding this big question we have about him. I'm already completely bilingual French+Spanish, and the mother is American (she took some French and Spanish but it's not nearly enough for her to get by), so I want to know if anyone here had experience raising trilingual babies in a natural, not forced way. Is it better if I speak both French and Spanish from the beginning and the baby will know how to discriminate both or should I stick to say, French and introduce Spanish later on with books/movies, while I keep French as the main language with him? We live in the UK and we speak English at home, so English will be the lingua franca.
> 
> My own experience is slightly different, as we spoke –mostly– French at home but I was raised in Spain, so there was always a very clear demarcation. The last thing I want is to confuse the poor child.




My two cents as someone born into a trilingual household and raising bilingual kids: it really depends on the child. Your advantage is that all 3 languages you mention are the same language in different packages. The general concept is that primary language cortex develops in the first 6 years of life, so whatever you teach them in that time frame will utilize highly efficient language networks, and they'll also do a better job getting phonemes (the elemental unit of sounds) down with languages learned this age. 

We've been speaking our non-romantic first language at home exclusively whereas my older daughter interacts in english with people from outside the household. One of the notions people don't talk about is your kid even with two languages will likely start speaking later, which for me as a neuroscientist had been excruciatingly worrisome/frustrating, even though I myself started speaking at age 3. It's fine. It's normal, but you have to tough it out and it's really really painful when the tamper tantrums come but your kid still does a poor job expressing what's wrong. What happened with my older daughter is she now started speaking in full, nearly grammatically correct full sentences in 6 months from nearly nothing. Trilingual households I know usually assign a paternal and a maternal language, but if one of those languages are english it is harder, so I don't have a good recipe for you. I myself dropped my third language instantaneously the moment our environment dropped to bilingual (i.e. we moved to another country). 


Alli said:


> I’ve known plenty of people while living abroad who did it easily. They spoke English in the house, and anyone coming in spoke x language to the children. I was partly successful with my daughter when we had a Haitian housekeeper for a while. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long enough. I have a cousin who did very well, but only because her husband also speaks Hebrew, so they spoke Hebrew at home and English outside or with non-Hebrew speaking guests.
> 
> I’m afraid I’m at the age now where I can forget words in multiple languages, and sometimes the only word that comes to me is not in the language that would be helpful.



The biggest trick is to have peers that speak the target language. Parents will never be as motivating as their buddies.


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## Scepticalscribe

Brilliant thread.

Several of my friends are in this situation; they seem to have resolved it so that the parent who speaks the language that is not spoken in the country where the family lives, addresses the children (but not their spouse, naturally, if the spouse is not familiar with, or fluent in, that language) exclusively in their own native language, while the other parent addresses the children in his or her native language (which may also be the language of the wider environment or society).


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## User.45

Scepticalscribe said:


> Brilliant thread.
> 
> Several of my friends are in this situation; they seem to have resolved it so that the parent who speaks the language that is not spoken in the country where the family lives, addresses the children (but not their spouse, naturally, if the spouse is not familiar with, or fluent in, that language) exclusively in their own native language, while the other parent addresses the children in his or her native language (which may also be the language of the wider environment or society).



Agree, but I think English is also an easy language they can pick up quickly because everything is in English. It unfortunately also has a trapping effect. I used to speak a little German, but my motivation to get it down to a fluent level was thwarted by the great conversations I've had with my German friends in English.


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## Scepticalscribe

PearsonX said:


> Agree, but I think English is also an easy language they can pick up quickly because everything is in English. It unfortunately also has a trapping effect. I used to speak a little German, but my motivation to get it down to a fluent level was thwarted by the great conversations I've had with my German friends in English.




True, but if on parent is a native speaker of another language, for that parent to address the children (in private settings) exclusively in that language while the kids are young should give them an excellent grounding in that language.  

What is interesting is that kids - in the teenage years - may rebel against this, as they want to "fit in" with their peers; as children, or, later, at university, they may well be more open to soaking up what a different language can offer them. 

But, it is more than just language, it is also the more subtle stuff such as "culture" and how that language is used.

A friend of mine is a Scottish university lecturer who teaches English, and is living in, and teaching in, Portugal, where she is also married to a Portuguese academic.  Their children are completely bilingual, but also had to master the cultural nuances of each language when speaking it in the country where that was the dominant language.

Thus, when visiting their grandmother in Scotland, while they knew English perfectly, it took them a day or so to master - or recall, and apply - how English should be spoken in that setting - less directly, less robustly biological, more understated, more "politely"; the converse applied on their return to Portugal, where their Portuguese speech - native, and fluent - was, for a day or so, influenced by the patterns of the more understated English they had been speaking in Scotland, to the scoffing disbelief of their friends.


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## User.45

Scepticalscribe said:


> True, but if on parent is a native speaker of another language, for that parent to address the children (in private settings) exclusively in that language while the kids are young should give them an excellent grounding in that language.



Exactly! The tricky part is on the French vs. Spanish end, because both languages would come from a single parent (on a native speaker level). I think speaking all these languages = fantabulous EU job opportunities (even post-Brexit, lol). 



Scepticalscribe said:


> What is interesting is that kids - in the teenage years - may rebel against this, as they want to "fit in" with their peers; as children, or, later, at university, they may well be more open to soaking up what a different language can offer them.



That's exactly when kids of the American diaspora lose my language.



Scepticalscribe said:


> A friend of mine is a Scottish university lecturer who teaches English, and is living in, and teaching in, Portugal, where she is also married to a Portuguese academic.  Their children are completely bilingual, but also had to master the cultural nuances of each language when speaking it in the country where that was the dominant language.
> 
> Thus, when visiting their grandmother in Scotland, while they knew English perfectly, it took them a day or so to master - or recall, and apply - how English should be spoken in that setting - less directly, less robustly biological, more understated, more "politely"; the converse applied on their return to Portugal, where their Portuguese speech - native, and fluent - was, for a day or so, influenced by the patterns of the more understated English they had been speaking in Scotland, to the scoffing disbelief of their friends.



You are absolutely spot on. There are contextual aspects that go beyond mere language. I for example was taught to be impeccably polite in my native language and tailored it so latent racists cannot make up a reason to get offended (makes life much easier, even if you know some just have ridiculous double standards). That attitude isn't something you can switch back and forth, as I'm getting older it takes many days to adjust. So I can express myself just fine, but I come off somewhat blunt at best, rude at worst during those days of adjustments. 

This said, social skills are very very hard to teach.


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## DT

PearsonX said:


> We've been speaking our non-romantic first language at home exclusively [...]




Japanese, right?  I believe I remember you saying you were Japanese-African-American (apologies if I'm misremembering).


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## Zoidberg

PearsonX said:


> I think speaking all these languages = fantabulous EU job opportunities (even post-Brexit, lol).



Once we have sorted out the paperwork (which is being slow due to covid slowing down everything) the kid will have four citizenships to use as needed (US, UK, FR, ES). And partly due to Brexit and the general way the UK is going, we're already discussing moving to either Australia or New Zealand in a couple of years, which eventually would add a fifth one if the stars align. I've never felt like collecting passports, and when I moved to the UK I didn't plan on getting UK citizenship at all but given the recent turn of events I've changed my view on things and now I'm counting the days (319 to be precise) until I get it.


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## Zoidberg

PearsonX said:


> My two cents as someone born into a trilingual household and raising bilingual kids: it really depends on the child. Your advantage is that all 3 languages you mention are the same language in different packages. The general concept is that primary language cortex develops in the first 6 years of life, so whatever you teach them in that time frame will utilize highly efficient language networks, and they'll also do a better job getting phonemes (the elemental unit of sounds) down with languages learned this age.
> 
> We've been speaking our non-romantic first language at home exclusively whereas my older daughter interacts in english with people from outside the household. One of the notions people don't talk about is your kid even with two languages will likely start speaking later, which for me as a neuroscientist had been excruciatingly worrisome/frustrating, even though I myself started speaking at age 3. It's fine. It's normal, but you have to tough it out and it's really really painful when the tamper tantrums come but your kid still does a poor job expressing what's wrong. What happened with my older daughter is she now started speaking in full, nearly grammatically correct full sentences in 6 months from nearly nothing. Trilingual households I know usually assign a paternal and a maternal language, but if one of those languages are english it is harder, so I don't have a good recipe for you. I myself dropped my third language instantaneously the moment our environment dropped to bilingual (i.e. we moved to another country).
> 
> The biggest trick is to have peers that speak the target language. Parents will never be as motivating as their buddies.



Thanks. I'd already been told that multilingual kids tend to start speaking later. As you said, the conundrum here will be getting two languages from one parent. I'm prepared to have to let one of them take a back seat if needed, as long as he still gets some exposure to it (cartoons, books, etc).


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## User.45

despondentdiver said:


> Thanks. I'd already been told that multilingual kids tend to start speaking later. As you said, the conundrum here will be getting two languages from one parent. I'm prepared to have to let one of them take a back seat if needed, as long as he still gets some exposure to it (cartoons, books, etc).



If you have to make a decision, put the easier language in the back seat. Is that Spanish?


DT said:


> Japanese, right?  I believe I remember you saying you were Japanese-African-American (apologies if I'm misremembering).



EU, but the rest are correct.


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## Zoidberg

PearsonX said:


> If you have to make a decision, put easier language in the back seat. Is that Spanish?



Yes, I'd put Spanish last because it's easier to catch up if needed, and also I expect we'll spend the holidays there often so he'd still get the chance to speak even outside of the family bubble.


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## User.45

despondentdiver said:


> Yes, I'd put Spanish last because it's easier to catch up if needed, and also I expect we'll spend the holidays there often so he'd still get the chance to speak even outside of the family bubble.



We only allow the kids to watch cartoons in our language in the hopes of getting them to associate it with fun and make screen time meaningful.


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## lizkat

Multilingual households of my family and friends usually produced kids fluent in both from the get-go,  but they became attuned to speaking English outside the home unless in a venue where the other language was understood.  Children spoke the preferred language of guests in the house at a given time or else replied in the language used in addressing them.  It was their mothers who were proficiently bilingual to begin with, so already used to switching back and forth depending on circumstances. 

Once in awhile the dads might have felt left out of some conversations but not for long.  If it's your mother-in-law talking and you don't get it, your wife will enlighten you before you pay too high a price anyway, no?

Homework assistance was done in English (unless it was about formal instruction in the second language of that family in which case the moms usually oversaw it).  As far as I could tell though,  disciplinary measures were meted out in native language of whichever parent decided to give it a go at the time.  In the kitchen when it wasn't about pizza etc.,  then the language used was perhaps more often the one with the spicier cuisine.


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## User.45

lizkat said:


> Multilingual households of my family and friends usually produced kids fluent in both from the get-go,  but they became attuned to speaking English outside the home unless in a venue where the other language was understood.  Children spoke the preferred language of guests in the house at a given time or else replied in the language used in addressing them.  It was their mothers who were proficiently bilingual to begin with, so already used to switching back and forth depending on circumstances.
> 
> Once in awhile the dads might have felt left out of some conversations but not for long.  If it's your mother-in-law talking and you don't get it, your wife will enlighten you before you pay too high a price anyway, no?
> 
> Homework assistance was done in English (unless it was about formal instruction in the second language of that family in which case the moms usually oversaw it).  As far as I could tell though,  disciplinary measures were meted out in native language of whichever parent decided to give it a go at the time.  In the kitchen when it wasn't about pizza etc.,  then the language used was perhaps more often the one with the spicier cuisine.



Is there cuisine less spicy than the English one?
Just wondering


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## lizkat

PearsonX said:


> Is there cuisine less spicy than the English one?
> Just wondering




Hah, yeah.   Maybe at breakfast time then an English (if not American) breakfast could win out?   Congee may be comfort food but it's probably not what the kids are going to fight for unless some side dishes are also on the menu.

(Second languages in my family have been Chinese, and Mexican Spanish)


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## SuperMatt

You could move to Lake Woebegone, where all the kids are above average!


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## Gutwrench

In my experience if both parents don‘t speak the secondary language it will be an uphill battle to get the kid to be fluent...but there’s nothing wrong with that. The kid’s personality will play a big role in how fluent they actually become.

I’m not sure how to make it a completely natural process. Learning a primary language requires work and study. We sent our daughter to (the secondary) language school on Saturdays.

I’m not sure being trilingual qualifies as a polyglot. A former colleague speaks six so I’d consider her one. She grew up in Switzerland and married a Fin and they lived in many countries over the years. They are a wonderful family and highly intelligent as one who speaks multiple languages would assumed to be.

Good luck with your children.


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## User.45

Gutwrench said:


> I’m not sure being trilingual qualifies as a polyglot.



It does, especially if those 3 languages are learnt before age 6. What typically happens after that age is that the new language gets packed into secondary language centers in the brain that form less efficient networks and thus require more effort to use. Like an ARM Mac running rosetta


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## Gutwrench

PearsonX said:


> It does, especially if those 3 languages are learnt before age 6. What typically happens after that age is that the new language gets packed into secondary language centers in the brain that form less efficient networks and thus require more effort to use. Like an ARM Mac running rosetta




Im a nonglot.


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## User.45

Gutwrench said:


> Im a nonglot.



Someone stole your tongue? BTW, where I'm from you can't get into a good university without knowing 3 languages. But that's also because nobody will learn our language


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## DT

PearsonX said:


> BTW, where I'm from you can't get into a good university without knowing 3 languages.




Python, C++ and JS (ugh ...) at the very least.


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## DT




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## User.45

DT said:


> Python, C++ and JS (ugh ...) at the very least.



And you shouldn't even dream of a PhD without speaking fluent Assembly!


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## Gutwrench

PearsonX said:


> Someone stole your tongue? BTW, where I'm from you can't get into a good university without knowing 3 languages. But that's also because nobody will learn our language




I suck at English and it’s my mother tongue.


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## Alli

PearsonX said:


> The biggest trick is to have peers that speak the target language. Parents will never be as motivating as their buddies.



Although I learned a lot of Yiddish as a small child just because I was nosey. I had to know what Nana and Great Grandma were talking about. And that knowledge got me an A years later when I decided to take German as an elective in college. 


PearsonX said:


> Someone stole your tongue? BTW, where I'm from you can't get into a good university without knowing 3 languages. But that's also because nobody will learn our language



Before moving to the south, I worked for a French pharmaceutical company in NY/NJ. The US office was the only one with monolingual employees. They hired me on the spot only because I was not! 


Gutwrench said:


> I suck at English and it’s my mother tongue.



You and my husband. He speaks Alabamian. Poor dear.


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## lizkat

PearsonX said:


> And you shouldn't even dream of a PhD without speaking fluent Assembly!




Those were the days...   there was once a wonderful and mighty little shareware text processor called McSink that ran in 20k and launched in less than half a second that was definitely coded in an assembly language.  Plenty people used that to port code for apps from PCs to Macs...  and shed a tear when that thing was acquired, sidelined after Mac System 8 or so...   and thus subsumed by some component of the bloatware word processing industry.



Alli said:


> You and my husband. He speaks Alabamian. Poor dear.




My bro swears you haven't lived until you've taken a seat in a Louisiana truck stop diner, been handed a menu and offered a glass of water by the waitress.   "Not sure what all I had got myself into there really when she started talking."


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## DT

@Alli Hahaha, I read that as *Albanian*


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## lizkat

DT said:


> @Alli Hahaha, I read that as *Albanian*




Proprietor of our former general store used to warn people getting rowdy with their language in the store --she would evict you for dropping an F-bomb --   that despite her English sounding married name, she herself was half Irish, one quarter Italian and one quarter Albanian:   "I hold the spirits of all my ancestors close and we are as volatile as an aging quarter stick of dynamite."


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## DT

lizkat said:


> Proprietor of our former general store used to warn people getting rowdy with their language in the store --she would evict you for dropping an F-bomb --   that despite her English sounding married name, she herself was half Irish, one quarter Italian and one quarter Albanian:   "I hold the spirits of all my ancestors close and we are as volatile as an aging quarter stick of dynamite."




I've got a mix of Irish and Native American ... I'll let you speculate on my personality 

Weirdly, some "friends" of ours, moved to Albania (Tirana specifically) recently, and when I say, weirdly, it was just a __bizarre__ situation.


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## Zoidberg

PearsonX said:


> It does, especially if those 3 languages are learnt before age 6. What typically happens after that age is that the new language gets packed into secondary language centers in the brain that form less efficient networks and thus require more effort to use. Like an ARM Mac running rosetta



Perfect (and apt, given where we all come from!) analogy. Even when I’m exhausted, my French and Spanish stay the same, they run natively in my brain. If I’m tired, however, my English quickly gets slow and hesitant. I also need to actively pay attention when I listen to a song, or I won’t process the lyrics. On the upside, it’s easier to tune out background noise.


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## lizkat

DT said:


> I've got a mix of Irish and Native American ... I'll let you speculate on my personality
> 
> Weirdly, some "friends" of ours, moved to Albania (Tirana specifically) recently, and when I say, weirdly, it was just a __bizarre__ situation.




Can't decide if your having prefaced that by 'weirdly...'  or the fact you put the word 'friends' in quotes is more intriguing. 

Should we even ask about how the situation was bizarre?  Possibly not....  ?!


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