Has being multilingual helped you host?

[Quincy]

Hello, Hola, Hallo, Bonjour, Guten tag, Salve, Nĭ hăo, Olá, Asalaam alaikum, Konnichiwa, Anyoung haseyo, Zdravstvuyte, everyone! 

I read somewhere that if you want to say ‘hello’ to every person in the world, you would need to learn those words from nearly 6000+ languages!

Being a Host means you will have people from all places and corners of the earth visiting you, and each visitor most likely speaks a different language. 

Currently, I speak both Dutch and English. I can understand Spanish, but I struggle speaking it. Other than English, my significant other speaks fluent Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean, which has helped us a lot when we were Hosts. 

Has being multilingual helped you host?

I look forward to reading your comments, whichever language you choose! 😉

Quincy

[J-Renato0]

@Quincy     I agree with @Elaine701   I believe @Liv will agree with me...

There are some languages that are not difficult to learn, depending on your native language.
For exemple: French, Italian, Portugues, Spanish, Romanian are derived from Latin, all those languages have the same root.  

If one is in the group mentioned above, it is not a feat to speak more than one of that languages.

@Sarah977  may find it interesting.

[Sarah977]

@J-Renato0  Some people are just terrible at languages. It has a lot to do with their "ear"- if they can actually hear the difference between sounds, just like some people are tone deaf- they can't sing on key because they can't hear that they are off-key. 

I have a friend here in Mexico who was born and raised in France. Even though she lived in the US for about 35 years, was married to an American, and her English is completely fluent, her accent is still so strong I often have to ask her to repeat things- she still sounds like she is speaking French.

And even though the Spanish grammar structure is the same as French, and many of the words are similar, after 10 years in Mexico, her Spanish is still awful. She just can't hear the difference in the way she pronounces things and how they are actually pronounced or change the way she uses her lips and tongue to form sounds.

Mexicans are always telling me I speak really good Spanish, but that isn't true- I can get along fine in day to day interactions, but I wouldn't be able to carry on an in-depth political discussion with an educated Mexican, for instance.

My vocabulary is not large and I don't know all the proper verb conjugations, nor can I remember words I only hear spoken, I am visual and have to see them written down to retain them.  But locals think I speak good Spanish because my pronunciation is much better than most foreigners'. 

[Sarah977]

@Quincy  I had a vehicle problem one day when I was out doing my shopping in the city, an hour from my town. I was close to a mechanic's place I had passed many times, so I drove in there. 

I started to explain to the mechanic, a young guy, in my less than fluent Spanish, what the car was doing, when he asked, in perfect, unaccented English, if I'd prefer English. 

He got the car up on the hoist and while his employee was checking it out, I said  he must have lived in the US for awhile? He said, no, he'd always lived in Mexico, why? I said he had no trace of an accent, that his English sounded like he was a native English speaker. 

He said he had been watching English language TV since he was a kid. And that he was teaching himself German and Japanese. When I expressed some surprise and asked why, he said he was interested in travelling, that Germany and Japan were places he wanted to visit, so he wanted to be able to speak the language. 

There he was, in his greasy overalls, in a filthy mechanic shop in the depths of Mexico, with more languages in his repetoire than most university graduates I know.

[Quincy]

This is very impressive to hear @Sarah977!

[J-Renato0]

@Quincy  @Elaine701  @Sarah977  @Liv 

There is an American guy (of course from the US) who has an Youtube channel and he speakes portuguese very well. He also speaks the language from Czech Republic and have another youtube channel to teach english to the Czech Republic citzens.

Once he explained that:
If you speak 2 languages your are bilingual person
If you speak 3 languages your are trilingual person

If you speak more than 3 you are a polyglot
If you speak only 1 language you are an American 🙂

Disclaimer text: 🙂 1- Understand the explanation above as a joke 2- It was that American guy who said that, not me! 🙂
In the internet it is necessary to be cautious! Some people does not understand what you say and take offense. Believe you me!

In my country, in Brazil the vast majority of people speaks only Portuguese.

Actually the ones who have English as native language are fortunate ones.. Usually they dont need to speak anther language except if e.g. they are into diplomacy or if they want to acquire more languages as a hobby.

[Sarah977]

@J-Renato0  Yes, you have to walk on eggshells these days lest someone accuse you of saying something discriminatory, even if it happens to be a fact.  🙂

The larger a country is, or the more isolated, the less likely it is for its residents to be multilingual. You can travel in a straight line for days in the US, Canada, or Russia, and still be in the same country with the same native language. And you could travel from the US/ Mexico border all the way to the southern end of Chile and speak Spanish everywhere unless you went to Brazil. 

It's really different from Europe, where you could travel just a few hours from the middle of one country and be in another country where people speak a completely different language. 

My ex, who was Dutch and grew up in Holland, told me he used to skip school and go to Belgium, then be home in time for dinner.

[Elaine701]

@Sarah977 

Yes, here in Europe we have quite a melting pot. And that encourages people to be multilingual. Most Europeans speak at least 2 languages, many are trilingual, some speak 4 or more languages. Simply because of proximity and intercultural blending. 

Even within one country, you can encounter several different "native" languages. Belgium is a good example (French in South, Flemish in North) . Switzerland has 4 official languages. 

But the US is not the only single language society. There's an island nation off the coast of Europe that's to a large extent, unilingual, and in certain provinces, only embrace their traditional "native" language as a "second", if at all. Although even the "natives" can find it difficult to understand certain accents that have evolved from that one language 🤭

[J-Renato0]

@Sarah977 

Very interesting your comments.
Actually new countries that were founded in the model of the European Civilization, such as US, Mexico, Brazil and all others in North, Central e and South America have just one prevalent native language indeed. As we know, the exception is Canada with the regions that speaks French and English.

Yes, in Europe, civilizations that existed since the ancient times tends to differ one from each other.
Before the appearance of the great empires in the 19th century and the unification of several countries in Europe, such as the unification of Italy, Germany, and others..etc., in each of those countries there were different dialects for each region.
In Italy there are still about 1000 living dialects. Many Italians speak Italian and also some dialect from the region where they were born.
I have two great-grandparents who came from northern Italy in the last decade of the 19th century, they probably never spoke Italian (the official language of Italy after the unification). I believe they spoke a dialect of Veneto, a region of northern Italy.
In Brazil, there are some cities in the south of the country, where a German dialect is still spoken but no longer exists in Germany. And there is another city in the south where an Italian dialect is spoken however it is extinct in Italy.
Just out of curiosity, in Brazil there is also a city named Americana that were founded by Confederates. Some of them came to Brazil after the Civil War.
In Brazil we speak the same language, but there are several accents in different parts of the country. Even in the same state there are some slight difference in terms of accents. Some people here have such a strong accent that we can immediately guess where they're from.

[Sarah977]

@J-Renato0  There are a lot of Argentinians where I live in Mexico. I've noticed that their Spanish has a cadence to it that sounds more like Italian than Spanish. The words are Spanish, but the sing song cadence sounds like Italian.

[J-Renato0]

@Sarah977  

It was nice to have a conversation here with you again!

Sometimes we have disagreed in some other topic... however  maybe most of the times we have agreed .... 

The fact is, I like you! You are a great and experienced host with good advices!

And you have always some funny or interesting stories and comments! 🙂

[Howard-and-Cathie0]

We have an information sheet in the guest's room. If the guest tells us what their preferred language is we can print one in their language. They are always very impressed.

Additionally, our own website is in six languages which was very useful pre-COVID.

[Liv]

@Howard-and-Cathie0 that's a very thoughtful touch! Which language would you say most of your guests speak apart from English?

[Howard-and-Cathie0]

German, French, Dutch, Portuguese in that order. Translated on-line and checked by a native speaker. Very few foreigners of course since the pandemic started.

[Quincy]

I second @Liv here! This is a very thoughtful thing to do @Howard-and-Cathie0 🙂

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Quincy 

I'm only bilingual (Korean and English) but because we used to only host international guests it definitely helped that Henry and I are both comfortable communicating in English 😄 

I'm in awe of people who are able to speak and communicate in 3+ languages fluently....... it's hard enough keeping up with 2~